Want to find your mind? Learn to direct your dreams

NewScientist ^ | June 15, 2010 | Jessica Hamzelou

[shibumi]

Editorial: Wake up dreaming to explore consciousness

AM I awake or am I dreaming?" I ask myself for probably the hundredth time. I am fully awake, just like all the other times I asked, and to be honest I am beginning to feel a bit silly. All week I have been performing this "reality check" in the hope that it will become so ingrained in my mind that I will start asking it in my dreams too.

If I succeed, I will have a lucid dream - a thrilling state of consciousness somewhere between waking and sleeping in which, unlike conventional dreams, you are aware that you are dreaming and able to control your actions. Once you have figured this out, the dream world is theoretically your oyster, and you can act out your fantasies to your heart's content.

Journalistic interest notwithstanding, I am pursuing lucid dreaming for entertainment. To some neuroscientists, however, the phenomenon is of profound interest, and they are using lucid dreamers to explore some of the weirder aspects of the brain's behaviour during the dream state (see "Dream mysteries"). Their results are even shedding light on the way our brains produce our rich and complex conscious experience.

It's a central issue in the study of consciousness. In 1992, Gerald Edelman at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California, proposed that there are two possible states of consciousness, which he called primary and secondary consciousness. Primary consciousness is the simple subjective experience of sensory perception and emotions, which could be applied to most animals. It's a state of "just being, feeling, floating", according to Ursula Voss at the University of Frankfurt in Germany.

[shibumi]

I was doing this for most of my life until I found out only ten years ago (or so) that there was a name for it.

[GeronL]

I have always been able to control my dreams.

[James C. Bennett]

Lucid dreams are the best.

In my opinion, these will be the next frontier of entertainment, where media interacts directly with the brain, bypassing the sensory organs.

It will lead to a lot of crazies, but it sure will be fun!

[historyrepeatz]

Wish I could learn how to do that. Wish I could learn how to dream, PERIOD.

[shibumi]

"Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?"

How about electric hippos?

[Chode]

the two hardest things to overcome are fear and desire...

soon as you think "I hope the plane don't crash" it will, and sometimes the more you want something the harder it is to get it...

[Pelham]

Blade Runner

[Red_Devil 232]

If the government ever finds out how to intercept my dreams the Secret Service will be at my door - like tomorrow morning.

[A CA Guy]

I never remember dreaming. Maybe twice a year I remember I dreamed.

[happyathome]

You dream all night. The trick is to remember it in the morning. Carlos Castaneda said that the way to have a lucid dream is to try, during dreaming, to remember to look at your hands. If you can do that, you can start to move your hands and then you take over the dream. ‘Course Castaneda was a mid-70’s UCLA drug addled hippie.

[shibumi]

True, but he was also right about a lot of stuff.

[workerbee]

The other night, I dreamed an ex-boyfriend (my “first love”) had committed murder — of his brother, his brother’s girlfriend, and another friend. It was sooo real and truly bizarre. News cameras, TV coverage, the works.

What made me think of — much less, dream of him after so many (nearly 20) years?

[2111USMC]

I thought people only dreamed while they are in REM (rapid eye movement) just prior to fully falling asleep or fully waking up.

That’s been my experience. I think.

[JoeProBono]

[timeflies]

I have always had dreams. I can’t imagine not having dreams. As a child I was a sleepwalker. I look forward to sleep because I will dream.

[gitmo]

You could easily see an outrageous event - a fluorescent pink kitten flying past on golden wings, to name but one - without batting a dream eyelid.

Thank God!!! I thought I was the only one seeing those things. They look cute, but believe me they are very dangerous.

[apillar]

I can do this on occasion. The trick is, when you're dreaming, most of the time your don't realize you're dreaming, but sometimes something just seems wrong and you say to yourself “Is this a dream?” Then you have to do something in the dream to prove to yourself it's a dream. What I always do is fall hard to my knees, except in my dream I don't fall but get a general sensation of bobbing up and down like a cork in water. From then on, I know it's a dream and can manipulate it any way I want (which usually involves the Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders and a hot tub...but that's probably more than you wanted to know...)

[Exit148]

Why do crazy dreams seem so logical, but in reality are nutty? Like when, in a dream, I asked for a bottle of vinegar and someone pointed to an open closet door, where the bottle was hanging from a wire hanger, right beside clothing hanging on hangers! In the dream it was perfectly normal. When I woke up -— I wondered about my senses!

But so many dreams are like that. Totally upside down in crazy situations, that have nothing to do with reality.

[BreezyDog]

I have frequent dreams of ex’s and some wish were ex’s. Only with an occasional body buried beneath the flower bed. I think dreams can be very therapeutic and happen for a good reason.

[Mama Shawna]

Ok, I had a weird dream the other day about rutabagas (<<—spelling?) growing in my garden and then pop pop pop...sprouting eyes all down the row, and then grew in to life sized humanoid rutabagas... what the hell? I fed them chocolate chip cookies, and we all figured out they were rutabagas, and would have to go back to the garden and squish their toes in the ground to get nourishment...that’s where it ended...analyze that!