Lucid Dreaming Part 1

Stephen LaBerge.

Lucid Dreaming.

Acknowledgments.

"Originality," it has been said, "is merely unconscious plagiarism." Because the ideas in this book derive from so many sources, I have not always been able to remember whom to credit. My apologies to those not explicitly cited, and my thanks to all.

Daniel Goleman and Robert Eckhardt provided early encouragement for the writing of this book. The Holmes Center for Research in Holistic Healing and the Monteverde Foundation graciously awarded me grants.

I wish to thank Dr. William Dement who provided laboratory s.p.a.ce at the Stanford Sleep Research Center for my experiments, and Dr. Lynn Nagel for his crucial a.s.sistance at the beginning of our work. I also wish to thank my research a.s.sistants for their help, and all of the Oneironauts who partic.i.p.ated in our lucid dream project, especially Dr. Beverly Kedzierski.

A number of individuals have my grat.i.tude for reading and commenting upon various drafts of the ma.n.u.script; they include Loma Catford, Henry Greenberg, Dorothy Marie Jones, Lynne Levitan, Robert Ornstein, Howard Rhinegold and Jon Singer. I am also indebted to Jeremy Tarcher for sage advice, and to Hank Stine and Laurie LaBerge who heroically edited the entire ma.n.u.script.

Finally, I am grateful to L. P. for only she knows how much.

Foreword.

Stephen LaBerge has done something unusual: he has shown that what was once thought to be impossible in the realm of consciousness is in fact possible. He has proven scientifically that people can be fully conscious while remaining asleep and dreaming at the same time. How he has done this makes a fascinating story told in the first section of this book.

LaBerge's proof is important because it shows, once again, that the possibilities of human consciousness are greater than we had thought. Many scientists had believed that dreams were in their very nature "irrational" and "unconscious." From this perspective, lucid dreaming was beyond the pale.

Incorrect conceptions frequently act as barriers to understanding, thereby concealing possibilities from view. To give a parallel example, it was once considered impossible to run a mile in less than four minutes. In fact, this idea seemed to form a real barrier for many runners until one man succeeded. Soon after this conceptual barrier was broken, many others found themselves able to run four-minute miles. We seem to attempt only what we a.s.sume to be possible.

The same principle holds for consciousness, and LaBerge's demonstration of the possibility of conscious and deliberate action in the dream state may serve to inspire others to do the same.

For readers interested in developing the skill of lucid dreaming, LaBerge's book provides not only inspiration, but also advice and techniques showing how to become a lucid dreamer and how to make practical use of the state for stimulating personal growth, enhancing self-confidence, promoting mental and perhaps also physical health, and facilitating creative problem solving.

Dr. LaBerge has written a provocative and eminently readable book. Readers of the last section of Lucid Dreaming especially will be richly rewarded with ideas and insights that forbid, in the words of William James, "a premature closing of our accounts with reality." The author has shown that lucid dreaming-as much as any other activity-if followed with an open and sensitive mind, can lead to a more unified understanding of consciousness.

Robert E. Ornstein, Ph.D.

1.

Awake in Your Dreams

As I wandered through a high-vaulted corridor deep within a mighty citadel, I paused to admire the magnificent architecture.

Somehow the contemplation of these majestic surroundings stimulated the realization that I was dreaming! In the light of my lucid consciousness, the already impressive splendor of the castle appeared even more of a marvel, and with great excitement I began to explore the imaginary reality of my "castle in the air." Walking down the hall, I could feel the cold hardness of the stones beneath my feet and hear the echo of my steps. Every element of this enchanting spectacle seemed real-in spite of the fact that I remained perfectly aware it was all a dream!

Fantastic as it may sound, I was in full possession of my waking faculties while dreaming and soundly asleep: I could think as clearly as ever, freely remember details of my waking life, and act deliberately upon conscious reflection. Yet none of this diminished the vividness of my dream. Paradox or no, I was awake in my dream!

Finding myself before two diverging pa.s.sageways in the castle, I exercised my free will, choosing to take the right-hand one, and shortly came upon a stairway. Curious about where it might lead, I descended the flight of steps and found myself near the top of an enormous subterranean vault. From where I stood at the foot of the stairs, the floor of the cavern sloped steeply down, fading in the distance into darkness. Several hundred yards below I could see what appeared to be a fountain surrounded by marble statuary. The idea of bathing in these symbolically renewing waters captured my fancy, and I proceeded at once down the hillside. Not on foot, however, for whenever I want to get somewhere in my dreams, I fly. As soon as I landed beside the pool, I was at once startled by the discovery that what from above had seemed merely an inanimate statue now appeared unmistakably and ominously alive. Towering above the fountain stood a huge and intimidating genie, the Guardian of the Spring, as I somehow immediately knew. All my instincts cried out "Flee!" But I remembered that this terrifying sight was only a dream. Emboldened by the thought, I cast aside fear and flew not away, but straight up to the apparition. As is the way of dreams, no sooner was I within reach than we had somehow become of equal size and I was able to look him in the eyes, face to face. Realizing that my fear had created his terrible appearance, I resolved to embrace what I had been eager to reject, and with open arms and heart I took both his hands in mine. As the dream slowly faded, the genie's power seemed to flow into me, and I awoke filled with vibrant energy. I felt like I was ready for anything.

The dream I have just recounted is a sample of a little-explored and fascinating world of inner experiences. Being "awake in your dreams" provides the opportunity for unique and compelling adventures rarely surpa.s.sed elsewhere in life. That alone ought to be more than enough to spark the interest of the adventurous in lucid dreaming, as this remarkable phenomenon of dreaming while being fully conscious that you are dreaming is called. Yet adventure may prove to be the least important of a variety of reasons you might find it rewarding to cultivate the skill of lucid dreaming. (It is learnable, as you will see in Chapter 6.) For example, lucid dreaming has considerable potential for promoting personal growth and self-development, enhancing self-confidence, improving mental and physical health, facilitating creative problem-solving, and helping you to progress on the path to self-mastery.

The foregoing list may strike some as extravagant, but I believe there is substantial evidence supporting these claims. The particulars will be dealt with in due course, but first it may be helpful to take a more general approach. All of these applications of lucid dreaming sleep under the same blanket: They each possess, to a greater or lesser extent, the potential for improving the quality of your life and enhancing your sense of well-being by enriching, broadening, and even radically transforming the varieties of experience open to you as a human being.

The suggestion that lucid dreams could improve the quality of your life applies to both your everyday and everynight life. One reason for this is that whatever wisdom you acquire in your lucid dreams seems to remain at your disposal to help you live your waking life. Moreover, the reverse is equally true: You can remember the lessons you have learned in waking life in your lucid dreams. Unfortunately, neither is usually the case for the ordinary dreamer, who experiences a lack of connection between dreams and waking life. Typically, non-lucid dreamers suffer from a state-specific form of amnesia, so that while awake they remember their dreams only with difficulty, and while asleep they recall their waking lives through a carnival mirror, darkly and distortedly, or not at all. You might conceivably ask, Is this so bad? Why should it matter whether we live two lives or one? By way of an answer, I would offer an a.n.a.logy: Suppose the odd and even days of the months were for some reason so unrelated for you that on any given day you could only remember thoughts and actions from half (the even or the odd, as the case might be) of your past. I leave it to you: Would this be so bad? In lucid dreams, however, the veil of amnesia is lifted, and with the help of memory, lucidity builds a bridge between the two worlds of day and night.

A skeptic might object that this a.n.a.logy is misleading. After all, the odd and even days of waking life are equally valuable, but what is the world of dreams able to offer that compares to the world of waking reality? Is a bridge between our waking and dream worlds worth the trouble? Specifically, what sort of return could you expect on the time and energy needed to seriously cultivate dreams in general and lucid dreams in particular?

A number of answers could be given. One line of argument might start from Freud's conception of the dream as the Via Regia, or royal road to the unconscious mind. Anyone interested in personal growth can hardly afford to ignore the insights derived from a study of his or her own dreams. And to reap the fullest harvest from the dream state requires lucidity. In a word, dreams are a must for those interested in self-development.

Mental health aside, what else does the world of dreams have to offer? The answer that springs first to mind is "physical health." For one thing, the distinction between "mental" and "physical" is not always easy to make, and is in fact based on outdated philosophies. The more modern, "systems" view sees health as a matter of integration of the whole person. "Integration," here refers to the coordinated functioning of the human biosystem as a unit. For h.o.m.o sapiens, this involves interactions among at least three levels of organization: the biological, the psychological, and the sociological. The intuitive appeal of this conception of health seems clear enough as it is. Still, it seems even more sensible if one considers some of the synonyms of health, such as wholesome, sound, and hale: all share the root meaning of integration or wholeness.

I stress the concept of wholeness at this point because it will help you appreciate the emphasis I place on self-integration later in this chapter. Also, it sets the stage for presenting the fact that psychological events of the dream can indeed affect biological functioning of the body, as the experiments at Stanford University have shown. Considering that most diseases have at least a partial psychosomatic component, there may even be reason to believe that lucid dreams can be used to facilitate the healing of psychosomatic syndromes.

One more application of lucid dreaming should be mentioned: creative problem solving and decision making. In the course of history, dreams have frequently been credited as an important source of creativity in a wide range of human endeavors, including literature, science, engineering, painting, music, cinema, and even sports. Among the first creative dreamers to come to mind is Robert Louis Stevenson, who attributed many of his writings to dreams, including The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde; an even more famous example is Samuel Taylor Coleridge and his opium-dream poem, "Kubla Khan." Among scientists, we may cite the nineteenth-century German chemist Friedrich August Kekule's dream discovery of the structure of the benzene molecule, and Otto Loewi's dream-inspired experiment demonstrating the chemical mediation of nerve impulses, which won him the n.o.bel prize for physiology in 1938. In the field of engineering, there are several instances of inventions revealed in dreams, including Elias Howe's sewing machine. Painters also attribute some of their works to dreams; William Blake and Paul Klee provide two of the best-doc.u.mented cases. Likewise, among composers, we find that quite a number-including Mozart, Beethoven, Wagner, Tartini, and Saint-Saens-have credited dreams as a source of inspiration. As for cinema, there are many instances of dream-inspired films-to cite a few at random, Alain Resnais's Last Year at Marienbad, Ingmar Bergman's Hour of the Wolf, and Judith Guest's screenplay for Ordinary People. Finally, the famous golfer, Jack Nicklaus, claims to have made a discovery in a dream that improved his game by ten strokes-overnight! These examples will have served their purpose if you are now willing to accept the premise that people have not infrequently received creative ideas in dreams.

Up until now, we have had little or no control over the occurrence of creative dreams. But at this point, it seems well within the realm of possibility that the fantastic and heretofore unruly creativity of the dream state might be brought within our conscious control by means of lucid dreaming. Kekule's words on the occasion of presenting his dream discovery to his colleagues are worth repeating:

"Gentlemen"-to which I hasten to add, "and ladies"- "let us learn to dream."

Let us turn now from such possibly prosaic applications of lucid dreaming to what is perhaps its most sublime potentiality. Suppose I were to tell you that hidden within your dreams there is a precious jewel, a treasure of incalculable value if you were to find it. But to find it, you must first master the power of being awake in your dreams. The reason why is easily explained. If you had lost something, say the key to your house, would you sooner find it searching with your eyes open or closed? What is obvious in regard to your outer vision applies, I believe, a.n.a.logously to your inner vision.

In most of our dreams, our inner eye of reflection is shut and we sleep within our sleep. We are usually unconscious that what we are doing is dreaming. There are profound possibilities inherent in the dream state, but it is difficult to take advantage of them if we fail to recognize them until after we awaken. Fortunately, while this condition of ignorance is usually the rule, it is not the only rule. The exception takes place when we "awaken" within our dreams-without disturbing or ending the dream state-and learn to recognize that we are dreaming while the dream is still happening. During such lucid dreams we become and remain fully conscious of the fact that we are dreaming-and therefore that we are asleep. Thus we are, in a sense, simultaneously both "awake" and "asleep."

Asleep but conscious? Conscious yet dreaming? Phrases such as these may seem at first glance to embody the very essence of self-contradiction. However, this paradox is only an apparent one. It is resolved by realizing that "asleep" and "conscious" refer, here, to two entirely different domains. I say that lucid dreamers are asleep in regard to the physical world because they are not in conscious sensory contact with it; likewise, they are awake to the inner worlds of their dreams because they are in conscious contact with them. It is in this precise sense that I speak of being "awake in your dreams."

While I am clarifying terms, I have been speaking of the lucid dreamer as "conscious." What exactly does this mean? In general terms, you are acting consciously if you know what you are doing while you are doing it, and are able to spell it out explicitly. So if, you can say to yourself while dreaming that "what I am doing just now is dreaming," you are, in fact, conscious.

Most of our behavior, whether waking or dreaming, is relatively unconscious, because consciousness is limited-in the sense that we can only focus our attention on one thing, or at most a few things, at a time. We cannot, therefore, be conscious of everything around us at any given time. But still we tend to be less conscious than we could be, and this is because "paying attention" requires mental effort. Under normal circ.u.mstances we only take the trouble to be as conscious of any aspect of our current experiential world as we need to be. More precisely, we tend to focus attention only where we believe it is necessary for achieving our current goals.

Under most ordinary circ.u.mstances, our lives are so predictably arranged that unconscious habits are adequate to get us where we want to go. Thus, for example, if you habitually drive to work, you do so with very little attention focused on what you are doing. Occasionally you have found yourself driving to work on "automatic pilot," only to awaken from your reverie to the realization that you were not, in fact, intending to go to work at all! Habit was driving you to work; you actually may have wanted to go out and buy a book about (why not?) lucid dreams! But once you became conscious that your automatic behavior was not serving your intended goal, you were able to change deliberately course in order to arrive at the bookstore.

This ill.u.s.trates the special usefulness of conscious, deliberate action: it gives you more flexible and creative responses to unexpected, non-routine situations. Consciousness confers the same advantages on the dream state as it does on the waking state. As a consequence, while awake in your dreams you are in a unique position to respond creatively to the unexpected situations you can encounter there. This quality of flexible control, which is characteristic of lucid dreams, brings within reach a remarkable range of possibilities-from indulging your boldest fantasies to fulfilling your highest spiritual aspirations.

Consciousness brings the lucid dreamer other gifts besides the capacity for deliberate action. The lucid dreamer is also generally able to think clearly and to remember past experience and intentions. Lucid dreamers can usually recall any particular plans they may have previously made regarding what they would like to do in their dreams. This opens up a whole new approach to the scientific study of dreams and consciousness, as will be described shortly. But for the average lucid dreamer, it means being able to race one's fears in dreams, or to explore new realms of experience, or to work on some particular problem within the dream.

This new dimension in dreaming can be likened to seeing things in living color when before you saw only the lifeless shades between black and white. The impact of the sudden emergence of lucidity can be profound. A hint of it might be conveyed to readers who have seen The Wizard of Oz. Who could forget Dorothy's reaction when she unexpectedly found herself transported from the black-and-white world of Kansas to the spectacular color of the Land of Oz? The lucid dreamer would certainly agree with the conclusion the astonished Dorothy shared with her canine companion upon arriving over the rainbow: "Toto, I don't think we're in Kansas anymore!" This cinematic example suggests something of the excitement and exhilaration that seems especially characteristic of a dreamer's first experience of full lucidity. However, this feeling has not altogether disappeared from my own lucid dreams even after the nearly nine hundred such experiences I have recorded since 1977.

The impact resulting from the emergence of lucidity is probably proportional to the clarity and completeness of the dreamer's change of consciousness. There are degrees of lucidity, and the common experience of awakening from a nightmare after realizing it was "only a dream" is typical of the lower ranges (or why escape from what is "only a dream"?), and is usually accompanied by no greater feeling than relative relief. But the full-blown lucid dream, in which the dreamer stays in the dream for a period extended enough to allow the experience of wonder, can be a.s.sociated with an electrifying sensation of rebirth and the discovery of a new world of experience.

First-time lucid dreamers are often overwhelmed by the realization that they have never before experienced their dreams with all their being, and now they are utterly awake in their sleep! This is how one lucid dreamer described the expanded sense of aliveness brought by the lightning flash of lucidity: he felt himself possessed of a sense of freedom "as never before"; the dream was suffused with such vital animation that "the darkness itself seemed alive." At this point, a thought presented itself with such undeniable force that he was driven to declare: "I have never been awake before."

This is an extreme, but by no means uncharacteristic, instance of the overwhelming impact the emergence of lucidity sometimes brings. To take another example, let us consider one young woman's first lucid dream. On the night before it took place, she had read a short piece by Scott Sparrow, ent.i.tled "Lucid Dreaming as an Evolutionary Process." The article described the ordinary dream state as "a level where man is still a child" and compared the development of lucid dreaming to the earlier development of consciousness in primitive humanity, making repeated references to the "infantile ego" and stressing the importance of "taking responsibility" for our disowned conflicts and especially for the immature aspects of our personalities. Evidently these ideas made a profound impression on her mind-both conscious and unconscious-for she went to bed with a strong desire to give lucidity a try, and sometime after dawn, dreamed that she "seemed to be responsible for a baby which was very messy and sitting on a pot." (Shades of "taking responsibility" for the "infantile ego"!) She went looking for a bathroom in order to clean up the baby "without being noticed." As she picked up the baby, she distinctly felt "that it should be older and better trained." When she looked more closely at the child's face, she found it full of wisdom, and suddenly she knew that she was dreaming. Excitedly, she "tried to remember the advice in the article," but the only thought that came to mind was a phrase of her own: "Ultimate Experience." Leaving behind the concerns dealt with in her bedtime reading, she felt herself taken over by a "blissful sensation... of blending and melting with colors and light" that continued to unfold, "opening up into a total 'o.r.g.a.s.m.'" Afterward, she "gently floated into waking consciousness and was left with "a feeling of bubbling joy" that persisted for a week or more.1

The carry-over of positive feelings into the waking state shown in this example is an important feature of lucid dreaming. Dreams, remembered or not, can color our mood for a good part of the day. Just as the negative aftereffect of "bad" dreams can cause us to feel as if we got up "on the wrong side of the bed," the positive feelings of a good dream can give us an emotional uplift, helping us to start the day with confidence and vigor. This is all the more true of an inspirational lucid dream: As a result of such experiences, lucid dreamers may be motivated to try out new behaviors leading to psychological growth and positive changes in their waking lives. Since we are free to try out untested behaviors in our lucid dreams without fear of harming ourselves or others, the lucid dream state provides a uniquely secure environment for personal (as well as scientific) experimentation-a laboratory as well as a playground for developing new ways of living.

Fully lucid dreams produce an effect on the dreamer's thinking that is no less profound than the emotional impact a.s.sociated with the emergence of lucidity. To understand why this impact is so powerful, it is first necessary to consider the way in which ordinary dreamers experience being in the dream world. Non-lucid dreamers perceive themselves as being contained within the experiential world of their dreams. Whether they play starring roles or are only p.a.w.ns in the dream game, they are still contained in a dream that they take for external reality. As long as they perceive themselves contained in this world, they are sentenced to a virtual prison with walls no less impenetrable for the fact that they are made of delusion.

In contrast, lucid dreamers realize that they themselves contain, and thus transcend, the entire dream world and all of its contents, because they know that their imaginations have created the dream. So the transition to lucidity turns dreamers' worlds upside down. Rather than seeing themselves as a mere part of the whole, they see themselves as the container rather than the contents. Thus they freely pa.s.s through dream prison walls that only seemed impenetrable, and venture forth into the larger world of the mind.

Although lucid dreamers normally continue to take the leading role in their dream plays, they no longer fully identify with the part they are playing. They are in the dream, but not altogether of it. This detached but not uninterested frame of mind allows them to confront otherwise fearful nightmares and anxieties, and by resolving inner conflicts, furthers psychological development toward self-integration and inner harmony.

One of my own experiences can serve as an example of how the awareness that you are dreaming can help you overcome anxieties and move toward harmony. I dreamed that I was in the middle of a cla.s.sroom riot; a furious mob was raging about, throwing chairs and trading punches. A huge, repulsive barbarian with a pockmarked face, the Goliath among them, had me hopelessly locked in an iron grip from which I was desperately trying to free myself. At this point, I recognized I was dreaming, and remembering what I had learned from handling similar situations previously, I immediately stopped struggling. As soon as I realized the struggle was a dream, I knew that as a matter of principle, the conflict was with myself. It was clear that this repulsive barbarian was a dream personification of something I wanted to deny and set myself apart from. Perhaps it was merely a representation of someone, or some quality in another, that I disliked. But since whatever it was touched me closely and deeply enough to cause me to have this dream, I knew that the way to inner harmony lay in accepting whatever I might find in myself-even the odious barbarian-as part of myself. Doing so invariably resolved my dream conflicts and brought me closer to my goal of self-integration. My experience had shown me that, in the dream world at least, the best and perhaps only ultimately effective way to bring hate and conflict to an end was to love my enemies as myself.

When I attained lucidity in this particular dream and stopped fighting (with myself, I a.s.sumed) I was absolutely certain about the proper course of action. I knew only love could truly resolve my inner conflict, and I tried to feel loving as I stood face to face with my ogre. At first I failed utterly, feeling only revulsion and disgust for the ogre. He was simply too ugly to love: that was my visceral reaction. But I tried to ignore the image and seek love within my own heart. Finding it, I looked my ogre in the eyes, trusting my intuition to supply the right things to say. Beautiful words of acceptance flowed out of me, and as they did, he melted into me. As for the riot, it had vanished without a trace. The dream was over, and I awoke feeling wonderfully calm.

Up to this point, I have mentioned only possibilities. At present only one area of application for lucid dreaming has been established to any degree; this is lucid dreaming as a tool for scientific research on the psychophysiological nature of the dream state, which provides a model for a powerful approach to research on human consciousness as well. For several years now, at the Stanford University Sleep Laboratory, we have been using lucid dreaming as a tool to study mind-body relationships. For the first time in history, we have been able to receive on-the-scene reports from the dream world as dream events happen (or, I should say, seem to happen). At Stanford and elsewhere, lucid dreamers in laboratories have been able to signal to observers while remaining physiologically asleep.

Such messages from the dream world prove beyond any reasonable doubt that lucid dreams normally occur exclusively during the "rapid eye movement" (REM) stage of sleep. This remarkable brain state has also been called "paradoxical sleep" since the late 1950s, when experiments revealed it to be a much more active state than the traditional view of sleep as a pa.s.sive condition of withdrawal from the world would allow. The active REM periods normally last ten to thirty minutes and recur every sixty to ninety minutes throughout the night (about four to five times per night). They alternate cyclically with relatively quiet phases of sleep, referred to as "non-REM," "quiet sleep," and a variety of other names.

All normal people go through this pattern of quiet sleep, active sleep, quiet sleep, and so on throughout their sleeping lives. Experiments have shown that during REM sleep, everybody dreams, every night-whether they remember anything or not. During the four or five REM periods you will pa.s.s through tonight, your dreaming brain will in most cases be considerably more active than it is right now-unless you happen to be reading this book while jogging, making love, or drowning! In spite of REM's paradoxical and unexpected properties, all the experts agree (for once!) that it is a bona fide form of genuine sleep.

The same cannot be said quite yet for lucid dreaming, and indeed this phenomenon would seem to qualify as the strangest paradox yet to emerge from paradoxical sleep. What makes lucid dreaming so paradoxical is that lucid dreamers, while being completely out of sensory contact and therefore fully asleep to the outer world, are at the same time fully conscious of their dreams and as much (or nearly so) in possession of their mental faculties as when awake. They seem to qualify, then, as being fully awake to the inner worlds of their dreams. Among the majority of professional sleep researchers, such a notion seemed so difficult to credit, before our unequivocal proof to the contrary at Stanford, that it was generally a.s.sumed that accounts of so-called lucid dreaming resulted from the waking fantasies of overly imaginative minds. To most sleep and dream researchers, it seemed that such things as lucid dreams did not-could not-take place during sleep at all. And if lucid dreams, whatever they were, were not a phenomenon of sleep, then they became someone else's problem, outside the scope of sleep research, and that was that. Philosophers have also tended to find anecdotes of lucid dreaming problematic and even absurd, and this is one of the reasons that the mere existence of lucid dreams is conceptually important. The proven fact of lucid dreaming effectively challenges a number of conventionally held misconceptions about dreaming, consciousness, and reality.

"Dreams are a reservoir of knowledge and experience," writes Tarthang Tulku, a contemporary Tibetan teacher, "yet they are often overlooked as a vehicle for exploring reality."2