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ABSTRACT Toward
More Light: The Promise And Paradox Of Cognizant Dreaming -
Update On Experiment, Experience, Theory, And Practice Stephen
LaBerge, Ph.D. (The Lucidity Institute) Stephen
LaBerge received his Ph.D. in psychophysiology from Stanford University
where he has been researching lucid dreaming for 25 years. He is the
author of Lucid Dreaming and Exploring the World of Lucid
Dreaming, director of the Lucidity Institute (www.lucidity.com),
and a founder of the ASD. laberge@stanford.edu Summary of Presentation This
update will discuss research and practice in three areas: 1)
Placebo-controlled trials with substances that enhance recall and lucidity
during subsequent dreaming. 2) An ERP study comparing attention and
auditory perception during waking and (lucid) REM with surprising results.
3) What dream workers can learn from Tibetan dream yoga: the balanced
development of lucidity and compassion.
1.
To learn about physiological activation and the psychopharmacology of
lucid dreaming. 2.
To learn about the effects of attention on perception during REM sleep 3.
To learn about methods for using lucid dreaming for personal growth Evaluation
Questions: 1.
Name a class of substances that enhance the likelihood of lucid dreaming. 2.
Name the major determinant of whether or not we perceive environmental
events during REM dreaming. 3.
What Tibetan Buddhist practice is most helpful for working with nightmare
figures? Abstract Experience
and experiment alike indicate that during that most paradoxical state
termed REM sleep, or perhaps more informatively, Paradoxical
Sleep, we are capable of reflective consciousness, voluntary action,
and accurate orientation to person, place, and time to a degree that falls
within the normal range of variation of waking cognitive function.
Although empirical evidence for these claims has been available for a
quarter of a century, the remarkable state of lucid (or more precisely:
cognizant) dreaming still seems widely misunderstood and viewed as, if
no longer outright impossible, of doubtful physiological and logical
status, a sort of 'category error' of consciousness. Likewise the promise
of lucid dreaming seems under-appreciated. This
update on lucid dreaming will review our latest psychopharmacological and
psychophysiological research, focusing on two studies with important
practical and theoretical implications: First, a placebo-controlled trial
of several substances that significantly enhance self-reported cognitive
clarity, self-reflection, and lucidity during subsequent dreaming. Second,
a pilot study comparing attention and auditory perception using the
odd-ball/P300 ERP paradigm during waking and (lucid) REM sleep. Subjects
responded to the infrequent auditory stimuli with eye-movement signals.
Remarkably and unexpectedly, if subjects remembered that they were
dreaming (i.e., were lucid), they were able to perceive and correctly
respond to the auditory targets during unequivocal REM sleep. The
broad implication is that attention is the primary determinant of
whether or not we consciously perceive environmental events during REM
dreaming. Indeed, recent experiments showing ubiquitous inattentional- and
change-blindness imply that attention is a necessary condition for
consciousness. As William James observed a century ago, we are only
conscious of (a little of) what we attend to. Note that testing this
hypothesis during REM dreaming absolutely requires subjects to be
lucid. During non-lucid dreams we cannot attend to particular
environmental stimuli because we do not know that any other world exists
outside of the dream in which we are embedded. The physical world in which
we are actually in bed is inconceivable and hence cannot become the object
of attention without the critical bit of knowledge provided by lucidity,
i.e., that my current experience is a dream and that consequently there is
a world other than the one I am experiencing. Finally,
I will discuss lucid dreaming from an experiential perspective. With a few
exceptions, clinicians have generally been slow to recognize the
potentials of lucid dreaming to facilitate mental health and personal
development. Lucid dreaming too often seems to be viewed by dream-workers
as more problematic than promising. I believe that this point of view
reflects widespread misunderstanding of what lucid dream work actually
entails, with a resultant under-appreciation of the power of the method.
The idea is not to just 'control' and get rid of 'bad dreams'. This view
of lucid dream work is not just oversimplified, it is also simply wrong.
Yet this is the typical straw man so often attacked. Reality is more
complex and I will contrast attitudes to lucid dream work that are, at one
extreme, relatively useless and even counter-productive, with others that
are mostly benign and potentially beneficial. Many of these pro-growth
attitudes are prefigured in the thousand-year old practices of Tibetan
dream yoga. I will propose a modern, secular version of dream yoga as an
answer to the question, "what is lucid dream work?" The goal of
this lucid dream yoga is transcendent wholeness through the
balanced development of lucidity and compassion. What grows in our dream
gardens depends on what we nurture within ourselves. So in Voltaire's
words, "Let us cultivate our gardens!" we find yet another
variation on the call of Hypnos: "Let us learn to dream!"
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