A Friday Evening Talk for Lucid Dreamers!
On the surface, lucid dreaming seems deceptively simple – a paradoxical state in which you know you are dreaming, while you are dreaming. There, you can fly through space, create fire breathing dragons, and cast spells like Harry Potter, all in the safety of your subconscious mind. Historically though, experienced lucid dreamers have used lucid dreaming as an expressway to greater self-realization, spiritual wisdom and access to creativity’s source. The Indian Buddhist yogi, Naropa, suggested that the main technique of dream yoga, lucid dreaming, provided serious students one of the six pathways to enlightenment.
Scientifically validated for thirty years, recent neuroscientists have deemed lucid dreaming a “hybrid state of consciousness” since the dreaming brain and portions of the waking/conscious brain show simultaneous activation. In other words, when you are lucid dreaming, your conscious mind and your subconscious mind appear joined in a shared creative collaboration or a unique, hybrid state of consciousness.
Now lucid dreamers have begun to explore lucid dreaming’s potential to investigate consciousness, the dream state, and the psyche. Already, numerous accounts exist of lucid dreamers using this special state for emotional healing and even physical healing. Moreover, some lucid dreamers feel that they have encountered another layer of the Self and a reservoir of unconscious information; two concepts which Carl Jung theorized, but did not have the tool to validate. Could lucid dreaming serve as a revolutionary tool to provide science with a new understanding of consciousness and the self?
Robert Waggoner is the author of the acclaimed book, Lucid Dreaming: Gateway to the Inner Self, and co-author of the award-winning book, Lucid Dreaming Plain and Simple. A past President of the International Association for the Study of Dreams (IASD), Robert also co-edits the online magazine, Lucid Dreaming Experience, the only ongoing publication devoted specifically to lucid dreaming. Robert conducts online workshops with GlideWing Productions and routinely speaks at colleges and conferences worldwide on the lucid dream experience. Robert has logged more than 1,000 lucid dreams.