Tool Module: Lucid Dreaming Sometimes
some people have dreams in which they realize that they are dreaming and can then
influence the subsequent course of their dreams. This remarkable mental state
is called “lucid dreaming”, an expression first proposed by Dutch
psychiatrist Frederik Willem Van Eeden in 1913. This lucidity–the
recognition that one is dreaming–often occurs right in the middle of a dream,
when the dreamer suddenly realizes that what he or she is experiencing does not
happen in ordinary physical reality. This realization may occur, for example,
when someone has a dream in which they suddenly begin to fly through the air,
or have a conversation with relatives who died years ago. But lucid dreamers may
also realize that they are dreaming even when there are no obvious indications
that this is the case. They may then be able to do anything they want in their
dreams, such as walk through walls or fly to Mars. Lucid dreamers recognize
their current state of consciousness for what it is. It is not exactly like being
awake. It is more like daydreaming. But unlike daydreamers, who are in a diminished
state of alertness, lucid dreamers have gone from a state of sleep to a state
closer to being awake, in which their conscious mind has taken back some control
over their thoughts. The degree of this control–the degree of lucidity–can
vary, ranging from the mere impression that they can alter the course of their
dreams to the certainty that they are dreaming and that nothing that happens to
them in these dreams can really affect them or hurt them. Some lucid dreams
may occur during periods of transition between wakefulness and sleep, such as
when someone falls asleep after a micro-awakening during the night, or gradually
awakens in the morning. At such times, lucid dreamers may employ a learned skill
so as to fall asleep or awaken very gradually, thus enabling a certain degree
of consciousness to infiltrate their dream activities. Dreaming in general
is a distinctive, subjective phenomenon, and even though it is very common, scientists
still understand it incompletely at best. Hence it is no surprise that they understand
even less about a particular variant such as lucid dreaming.
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