This excerpt is from a chapter in _A Brief History of Dream Sharing: Theory, Techniques and Cyberspace_. 1999, DreamGate Publishing.
Available on CD. Send request for info to Richard Wilkerson at rcwilk@dreamgate.com


"I have been dreaming for some time and suddenly I realize that I am dreaming. As soon as I become lucid, I feel a flow of tingling energy rising up into my head and settling in my forehead. The dream images shift suddenly and now I see an amazingly beautiful evergreen tree in from of me. "
 Ken Kelzer

If the writings of the Ancient Eastern mystics are to be considered, the first mention of lucid like dream control comes from about 1000 BCE in the Upanishads "...having subdued by sleep all that belongs to the body, he not asleep himself , looks down upon the sleeping senses. Having taken to himself light, he goes again to his place - the golden person, the lonely swan." (Shafton, pg 431).

The doctrines moved from India into Tibet and as Gillespie (1988) has published, became part of the complex systems of enlightenment in Buddhism. Though generally unknown in the West, they were know to esotericists from Evans-Wentz's 1935 book Tibetan Yoga and Secret Doctrines.

Both the Greeks and the Romans spoke about lucid dreaming, but the credit for the first full description is usually given to St. Augustine who in 415 AD recounted two dreams of a former Roman physician Gennadius. In the first dream appeared a guide and the next night the guide returns and when Gennadius recognized him, the guide said they had met in the previous night's dream. The guide goes on to instruct him that he is dreaming, though his body is lying asleep, and that this is what it is like after death.

Hervey de Saint-Denys investigated and wrote in France about lucid dreaming in _"Dreams and how to Guide them_" which Freud knew of but didn't read. Freud should have read him as it would have perhaps gave him pause in saying it just wasn't possible.

Actually, it was Frederick Van Eeden that brought the issue up to the mainstream Western public in 1913 at a meeting for the Proceedings for the Society of Psychical Research, but the audience was small and reacted much in the same way they had to dreams in general - "So what?"

Other writers and individual pioneers like Hervey de Saint-Denys and Mary Arnold-Foster tried to bring public attention to lucid dreaming, but without success.

But by the 1960's Western Culture had reached a degree of self awareness that allowed us to see that excessive material gain didn't necessarily increase the meaning in one's life. Alternative realities were explored, some with success and some with disaster. Charles Tart was at the center of this exploration and published Altered States which among other articles, included one on how the Senoi tribe controlled their dreams and a reprint of Van Eeden's article "A Study of Dreams".

A few other writers also were able to reach people, including Patricia Garfield and her chapter on lucid dreams in Creative Dreaming, Celia Green's 1968 Lucid Dreams and Sparrow's 1976 Lucid Dreaming: Dawning of the Clear Light. Another influential stream were the popular Castaneda books, particularly the 1972 Journey to Ixtlan where Castaneda is supposedly taught the secret of lucid dreaming by the guide Don Juan. The now famous technique is to become conscious of one's hands while sleeping and thereby become lucid. What was actually suggested was to pick *any* pre-sleep selected object. It's just that the hands were something that would always be available.

But it wasn't until two independent researcher groups were able to actually signal from the lucid dream state in laboratories that the first objective evidence was available. The first was a subject named Alan Worlsely who signaled to Keith Hearne in the English sleep laboratories of Hull University. But Hearne held off on publishing his work and it was unknown to the parallel work being done in California at Sanford by Stephen LaBerge. Both had drawn on the current REM dream research that found that while most of the body is pretty much cut off from movement during dreaming, the eyes are actually quite active (thus REM or Rapid Eye Movement). Why not signal from the dream state with a pre-chosen series of eye movements that would be obvious and statistically significant? The only question was whether or not the lucid dream eye movements would correspond or connect with the psychical eye.

LaBerge describes the first night he was sleeping in the lab and was able to signal after some initial problems:

"I slept very well, indeed, and after seven and a half hours in bed had my first lucid dream in the lab. A moment before, I had been dreaming- but then I suddenly realized that I must be asleep because I couldn't see, feel, or hear anything. I recalled with delight that I was sleeping in the laboratory. The image of what seemed to be the instruction booklet for a vacuum cleaner or some such appliance floated by. it struck me as mere flotsam on the stream of consciousness, but as I focused on it and tried to read the writing, the image gradually stabilized and I had the sensation of opening my dream eyes. Then my hands appeared, with the rest of my dream body, and I was looking at the booklet in bed. My dream room was a reasonably good copy of the room in which I was actually asleep. Since I now had a dream body I decided to do the eye movements that we had agreed upon as a signal. I moved my finger in a vertical line in front of me, following it with my eyes. But I had become very excited over being able to do this at last, and the thought disrupted my dream so that it faded a few seconds later." (1985, pg 70)

Two large eye movements were found on the polygraph and the results were sent to the Association for the Psychophysiological Study of Sleep. But then the research began to come up against skepticism by reviewers in the journal where LaBerge and his mentor Lynn Nagel tried to publish. A reviewer for the <i>Science</i> Journal kept saying that it was impossible and therefore invalid, not on technical grounds, but philosophical ones! But they continued research, doubling efforts and finally by around 1981 the sleep research community could no longer deny the evidence.

Now lucid dreaming is a large sub-branch of dreaming in general. The lucid dreaming papers and symposiums are quite popular at the annual ASD (Association for the Study of Dreams) conventions and besides the Lucidity Institute in Palo Alto, there are multitudes of smaller groups run by interested and informed individuals. The Internet has spawned not only several web sites devoted to lucid dreaming, but two newsgroups, alt.dreams.lucid and alt.dreams.castaneda which continually discuss lucid dreaming.

The benefits of learning and practicing lucid dreaming are still being debated, but some positive trends are becoming clear. Generally, they follow the benefits of becoming mindful & conscious in general:

Nightmare Control. Bringing consciousness to dreams allows the dreamer to feel more empowered. This can be especially helpful to those who suffer from nightmares.

Increase Life Expectancy. Usually we see this increase as living longer. But what if you could be conscious an extra 10% of your sleeping time and feel more refreshed than ever?

Amazing Adventure for Free. How often in waking life do we get the chance to fly, to breath under water, to walk through walls and cuddle up next to movie stars?

Rehearsal. Just as practice visualization helps before an event, so to can rehearsal in a dream.

Health. Lucid dreamers tend to resist disease more and have shorter periods of illness when they are sick.

Advance Enlightenment. Many lucid researchers have now connected lucid dreaming with states of consciousness promoted by Tibetan Buddhism.

Lucid dreaming, which once shared the shelf with esoteric and occult beliefs, has now been brought out onto the table of verifiable knowledge and teachable skills. We now have the platter before us, and a nightly feast awaits.

From Here:

Return to the Lucid Dreaming Index for Lucid Dream Techniques, History, and uses in psychology.

BIBLIOGRAPHY AND CITATIONS

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Garfield, Patricia (1979). _Pathway to Ecstasy_. New York, NY: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.

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Gillespie, George (1988). see Gackenbach 1988, pg 27-63.

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Shafton, Anthony (1995). Dream Reader: Contemporary Approaches to the Understanding of Dreams. Albany, NY: Suny Press. See esp Chapter 14 Lucidity, pg 431-485.

Sparrow, G. S. (1976). _Lucid Dreaming: Dawning of the Clear Light_. Virginia Beach, VA: A.R.E. Press

--------. (1976). Effects of meditation on dreams. _Sundance Community Dream Journal._ 1(1), 48-49.

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Wilkerson, Richard Catlett (1996). Lucid Dreaming and Lucid Control. San Francisco, CA : DreamGate Publications.

Worsley, Alan (1982). Alan Worsely's work on lucid dreaming. _Lucidity Letter_ 1(4) 21-22.