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Lucid Dreaming: Science, Spirit, and the Place Between Worlds · Tracking Wisdom

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  Foreign.
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  You're listening to the Tracking Wisdom podcast, exploring the universal truths that we see woven through culture, consciousness and the human experience.
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  Good morning, everybody, and welcome back to another episode of the Tracking Wisdom Podcast.
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  I'm Ryan.
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  I'm Peter.
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  And today we are discussing lucid dreaming.
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  We touched on dreaming in the last episode.
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  I had mentioned that we were going to talk about lucid dreaming.
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  So here we are.
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  For anybody who may not be aware exactly what lucid dreaming is, it is a state of dream that is characterized by a conscious awareness that you are dreaming.
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  This has been measured in studies that are that indicated that there is prefrontal cortex activation during the dream state, which would indicate brain activity of consciousness and awareness as opposed to the traditional brain waves that are expected during
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  a sleep state.
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  Lucid dreams can happen spontaneously, that there's not an intent to experience a lucid dream.
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  It just happens that one becomes aware of their dreaming state at that moment.
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  But there has been historical use of lucid dreaming in practices such as Tibetan Dream Yoga, which is something we're going to speak about.
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  But there are spiritual traditions that have embraced this practice or this ability and have trained to be able to induce these experiences more purposefully.
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  One thing that is often raised when people first experience lucid dreaming is the ability to manipulate your dream state, manipulate the environment.
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  In your dream state, people report being able to engage in activities such as flying and other things that would not be experienced in the waking state.
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  You were about to say something.
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  I was just going to comment on the element of not just awareness, but control and influence, which I think is not a necessary component.
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  Right.
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  I don't think it defines lucid dreaming.
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  I mean, awareness is the definition.
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  Like you're aware that you're in a dream.
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  But I would say one of the more interesting aspects is the potential ability to influence a dream, to take willful action.
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  Whereas I think in regular dream states, we are just kind of riding along through a story.
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  I'm thinking of it in terms of awakening experiences.
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  People saying, like, oh, things are just happening to me.
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  Right?
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  People post awakening sometimes say, my life is just happening.
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  Which sounds weird to the rest of us in regular experience.
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  Right.
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  But I think if we say that about a dream, that's much more familiar, right?
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  It's not like, oh, I was in a dream.
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  And I.
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  I mean, I guess you might have the feeling, oh, I have to get up and get to work.
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  But I think it's more typically, I'm just caught up in the what's happening, what's happening as the narrative or the flow of the story that I'm in the midst of, as opposed to having any intention about different things.
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  It's funny to me because when you were describing the analogy, my instinct was actually the converse that, like, the dreaming caught along with the story relates to conventional conditioned life, where we're just kind of like, feeling like we're
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  caught up and being the external is driving our experience versus having some level of internal control.
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  It's just the way I thought about.
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  It's like, oh, yeah, it is like that.
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  And then you went kind of the opposite direction.
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  I'm like, oh, that's not interesting.
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  So anyways, well, I mean, I think, you know, also something a listener has to appreciate hearing us talk about these things, is that a lot of our waking experience, you and me, are a little atypical sometimes.
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  So it might sound weird to have.
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  We might say some things that sound weird in terms of, well, normally, you know, when we're like, wait, it's like this.
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  So.
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  So the other element that I wanted to pick up just from the notes was this idea of metacognition, which is kind of the nature of the lucid dream itself, is that you're thinking about the experience that you're having.
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  So in a way, you're thinking about how you're thinking about the experience.
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  Yeah.
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  Which again, on this podcast, it's what we do all the time.
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  Basically.
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  We just.
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  All of our talk is about metacognition, like, thinking about how we experience things, think about how we think about things, but in terms of lucid dreaming compared to normal dreaming that we mostly experience when we experience dreams or
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  remember them in the lucid dream or the quality of the lucid dream or property of the lucid dream is that you.
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  You're able to think about your experience in real time as opposed to just having the experience.
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  Right.
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  Because in normal dreams, you don't have that metacognition.
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  You're not thinking about your experience.
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  You're just having the experience.
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  It's kind of funny, as I was reflecting on my waking experience, and it's like, how much of my waking.
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  Am I reflecting on my experience versus being caught up in the experience in my waking life?
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  Because I'm trying to contrast, like.
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  Right.
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  And exactly to your point, I think, which is, yes, it's true.
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  A lot of time in waking life, there's this quality of just being caught up in things and not having a larger perspective.
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  But, of course, this is the whole conversation about mindfulness.
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  Right, right.
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  So what else?
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  One who is Interested in experiencing lucid dreaming can engage in training, practice activities that can help over time to induce this experience.
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  Yeah, so I think this is where I want to go into the cultural aspect of lucid dreaming.
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  One of the papers we'll link to is this kind of.
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  What is it called?
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  Comparative religion of lucid dreaming.
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  Like how is lucid dreaming viewed in different cultures, Particularly through the religion of the culture?
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  So if you're an American listener your doesn't have any structure around lucid dreaming.
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  Now, you may have heard about it or you, you know, there may be some kind of new age thing or some pop culture thing, but it's not structured into our cultural inheritance kind of deal.
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  Whereas there are other cultures where it's baked in for thousands of years.
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  And that's one of the things that this paper talks about is how Hinduism has thousands of years of development of practice inducing lucid dreaming or pursuing lucid dreaming as a skill or an art or practice.
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  The paper also names it in Buddhism and in.
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  I think there was a third one, but that the abramic religions are western religions.
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  So that's interesting.
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  Abrahamic, not, I guess, not Western because Islam is included in Islam and Judaism and Christianity.
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  Lucid dreaming is not.
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  And dreams in general are not something to be.
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  They're gifts.
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  They just happen.
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  They're gifts.
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  You know, if they are prophetic or if God comes to you in the dream, then there's a significance to it.
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  But dreaming in general isn't viewed as something to be valued or developed or pursued.
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  And then in particular, bad dreams are kind of taboo.
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  That in the traditions it's like, oh, don't talk about the bad dreams.
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  That's just the devil deceiving you.
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  So very, very different perspective on dreams from kind of one wide branch of major religion versus another.
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  So we reference Buddhism in particular, Tibetan Buddhism.
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  That tradition sees bad dreams as opportunities for work.
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  So, you know, in psychological terms, this would be like doing your shadow work or working on your subconscious issues.
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  Like it's something to engage with, not to dismiss and walk away from and bury and repress that more.
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  So it's just interest contrast in modern American culture, I guess lucid dreaming is kind of a pop culture topic and it's become come out more.
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  And certainly there are communities and forums and websites and lots of practices about lucid dreaming.
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  But in general, it's not part of our culture.
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  Right.
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  Or part of the mythical, spiritual, metaphysical culture.
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  It's not part of our cultural traditions, I guess is what we want.
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  Traditional spiritism was the third One.
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  Oh yes.
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  Oh, that's interesting.
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  So spiritism, again, not many people have a cultural tradition of spiritism.
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  It's a kind of a sectarian offshoot of Christian practice that I think it developed in the turn of century, like early 1900s, something like that.
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  Unless I'm confusing spiritism with spiritualism.
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  But I just looked it up, it said it's another term for spiritualism.
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  Yeah.
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  So it's the focus on communication with spirits of the deceased as sources of dealing with life.
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  Right.
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  Like, you know.
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  Oh, let me go ask my answer.
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  It's a form of ancestor worship.
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  It's just not a traditional form of ancestor worship.
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  I think it's more just people that have passed on from the spiritual realm.
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  Connecting to the spiritual realm.
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  Exactly.
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  A guidance.
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  Right, right.
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  Just to contrast that with say Chinese ancestor worship, where it's specifically your own ancestors are a big focal point of spiritual engagement.
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  In thinking about the contrast of different religious or spiritual contexts and cultures, I was thinking of.
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  Well, I had discussed my expectation that, and this is an assumption, but I think it's a fair assumption to make that gnostic mystic Christianity most likely embraced this kind of experience in a way that is probably more aligned
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  with say Buddhism or Hinduism.
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  Maybe not practices designed around it, but that the experience, it's all grounded in the mystical experience versus the current traditional worldview of the faith.
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  And when I was thinking about shamanism too and the social induction, the traditions of inducting youth into coming of age.
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  Yes, that kind of thing.
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  But contrasting and comparing I suppose these various mechanisms of detachment where between say for example, the idea of a lucid dream experience versus an out of body experience obe, but also thinking like utilizing psychedelics to induce this kind
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  of connection or detachment and connection to a wider source.
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  And thinking like, I don't think that's a lucid dream specifically, but it seems that there historically has been a recognition of access to higher awareness, access to knowledge.
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  I mean, talked about this last episode with the Akashic records and the idea around ultimate knowledge being accessible in the higher plane, so to speak.
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  And so there seems to be a long standing history of recognizing that this exists and a variety of different strategies to achieve that state of mind.
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  When I think of shamanism, I often think of either like a meditative chant type activity or psychedelics to achieving this state of mind.
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  And the idea or the pursuit of comparing and contrasting I think lends itself to your comment last episode.
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  At the very end you mentioned that you subscribe to the idea that these are similar or even to Say the same insofar as they all are bringing consciousness out of time and space.
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  Okay, they're different.
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  And that's part of what we wanted to discuss a little later, how they are different qualitative and quantitatively, biologically.
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  However, in a sense they're very much the same or they're very adjacent because they have this quality of detaching from the physical body and experiencing outside of sort of the traditional space time paradigm.
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  Yeah.
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  So I think now you're getting into kind of one of the points I have.
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  I'm finding it a little confusing in my own mind talking about, thinking about, learning about lucid dreaming because of my interest in physical versus non physical reality.
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  So transitioning from cultural traditions of lucid dreaming, there is a western bottom body of scientific research around lucid dreaming going back a ways, but kind of starting in the 70s with the first electronic measurement of lucid dreaming.
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  Right.
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  So Keith Hearn was a graduate student in England who arranged to have an electro oculograph, so a sensor that would measure eye movement and to have it pre planned that the subject would move their eyes left, right in
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  a particular way when they knew that they were in a lucid dream.
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  And so they in that way got objective evidence of lucid dreaming.
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  So this person was asleep and was able to register on the measurement device an eye movement, voluntary eye movement, even though they were asleep.
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  So this was the first measurement, but it wasn't rigorously controlled and it was only one measurement in isolation and it wasn't published primarily through the scientific mainstream.
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  So it's kind of a milestone, but some people kind of take exception to it.
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  And the second, around the same time was Stephen Lebert and he was a researcher in California at Stanford who had a much more mainstream approach because he wanted to study this in a very rigorous way and get it
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  into mainstream scientific literature.
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  So he had what's called polysomnography, meaning that he had a variety of different electrical measurements of sleep parameters, parameters to prove that the person was actually in a sleep state while they were measuring the eye movements.
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  So it's a more rigorous study because the first study it's like, well, maybe he wasn't asleep.
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  I mean you could claim maybe he wasn't asleep, maybe he was just moving his eyes.
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  But this one, by using EEG brain lightwave analysis, they could demonstrate this guy is in what we agree is a sleep state and then replicate that.
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  So these two guys are kind of the co fathers of or co parents of, I guess scientific lucid dream research.
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  And from this grows the modern western tradition of lucid dreaming.
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  And they developed techniques to induce lucid dreams and develop lucid dreaming as skills.
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  And I believe both of them actually created technologies to help people get into lucid dreams.
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  I think Hearns had a machine that would look at your respiratory rate and then by that interpret that you were entering sleep and then kind of give you an electronic tap, like a little buzz to help you tell
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  yourself to get into lucid dreaming.
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  Now I think there are quite a wide variety of electronic sleep masks and those kinds of things and apps that are designed to assist you to get lucid dreaming.
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  So that's just to transition from this cultural tradition of induction of lucid dreaming as a practice, which is basically religious approach, to this modern cultural tradition.
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  I call it a tradition, scientific tradition of lucid dream research or practice.
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  I don't know if there's a metric out there to know.
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  I'm sure there is.
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  But how common lucid dreaming is.
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  I think I saw it.
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  It's like 10 to 30.
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  No, 10.
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  Maybe it's 1 to 10%.
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  Well, it's in one of the reference papers.
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  So according to Google's AI overview of this Google search.
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  Okay, caveat, caveat.
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  If you want to look into the actual research articles that we attached, you're welcome to do that.
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  But this says around 55% of people have experienced it at least once.
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  About 23% experience them, I'll just say more frequently.
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  That seems high to me.
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  One of the papers that I came across that might have been a reference in one of the link papers described a study that was based on Reddit.
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  It described Reddit as being the social platform that is apparently the subject of a lot of psychological research or a source of material data for self reported data.
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  But then they go on to describe the demographic which is basically young white males.
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  There are lucid dreaming subreddit and so one of the papers actually that's how they got their data.
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  I just thought that was funny.
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  So I guess to my point is say we'll say 30% just to throw it out there.
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  My point being it's not all that common.
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  But I think that as you had mentioned, it's becoming more pop culture, people are becoming more interested in pursuing it.
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  And I just wanted to kind of share my own experience with lucid dreaming.
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  If you think that this is a reasonable point to do that.
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  Yeah.
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  Just to comment on, on the prevalence, it's not uncommon, but at the same time most people don't have it.
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  It's like you probably Know someone who can tell you they had a lucid dream, but odds are better than 50% that you personally haven't had a lucid dream.
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  I had never had one.
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  I become aware that it existed.
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  I don't know when, but definitely say last 10 years.
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  So this is an interesting time to talk about our personal experiences here.
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  So whenever it was that I became aware of it is sort of irrelevant.
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  But just to say it wasn't like something I knew was a thing.
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  For the majority of my life, I've had two that I can recall, reasonable lucid dreams.
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  And I say that because I think there's probably been a small handful of dreams where maybe I had a sense, but it wasn't like really lucid, understood that I was dreaming.
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  And so I have recurring and have had recurring plane crash dreams for as long as I can remember.
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  From what I understand, they're not all that uncommon, but anybody I ever talk to doesn't seem to dream about these.
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  But I've also never had a zombie dream, which blows my kids away.
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  But I have recurring plane crash dreams.
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  Sometimes I'm on the plane, sometimes I.
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  Observing plane crashes.
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  From falling out of the sky or crashing, it's like crazy.
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  But I have them regularly.
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  I would say probably a dozen times a year.
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  But it does come in waves.
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  They cluster.
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  The point with that comment is that the first lucid dream I had was within the past year.
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  I think, if not, it was within 18 months or two years that was having one of these plane crash dreams.
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  And I was standing in the aisle and it was like a jetliner, but I could see out the cockpit, you know, almost like it was, you know, like a Learjet or something.
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  And I was standing in the aisle and we crested a.
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  A climb.
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  You know, it's.
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  It's climbing an elevation and then it kind of crests and we're starting to look towards the ground and had that kind of belly sink.
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  And at that moment, all of a sudden I said, oh, this is a dream.
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  Because I have these plane crash dreams so frequently that I think it finally became sort of a trigger.
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  Now, it doesn't always happen, right?
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  But it.
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  At that moment of potential terror.
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  And I would say it's not really terror.
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  I don't.
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  I wouldn't classify these dreams as nightmares.
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  They don't have a quality of terrified experience.
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  But it is uncomfortable.
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  And I had that moment and I was completely at ease and it just relaxed and we just kind of went down.
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  Then I ended up waking up.
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  You know, I don't think it Actually contacted the ground.
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  I think I probably woke up before that or whatever.
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  It was not characterized by having.
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  Now, probably because my awareness was so focused on this activity of plane crashing.
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  But I didn't experience manipulation of the environment.
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  I didn't stop the plane from crashing or anything like that.
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  But it was a very distinct sort of fear or concern about what was happening and then a recognition that this was a dream and a complete and total relaxation to what was happening.
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  Question, since this is a recurring dream, do you have other death dreams, like other dreams that involve a situation where you should die?
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  I have dreams where I'm being chased by people and needing to defend myself.
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  But I would say this is the only kind of trauma based where death would be the ultimate outcome.
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  So how do they.
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  If you're not lucid dreaming, how do they resolve?
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  Do you wake up or.
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  I think I wake up.
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  I don't ever, like, die in my dreams or anything.
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  I don't think I ever experienced like an actual impact, really.
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  And if I did, it would just be like in the movies, right, where it like hits the ground and we're riding through the trees.
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  Oftentimes the plane crashes are also from an external point of view.
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  When we started talking about our lucid dream experiences informally and you said, I've had two, I was surprised.
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  I was like, oh, really?
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  You only had two?
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  And it's very strange to realize how I take these things for granted is very strange to me.
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  And it's kind of like when I know a thing, like if I know some fact, it's like, oh, well, sure, don't you know this?
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  It's like, everybody knows that because I know it, therefore everybody knows it.
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  And I forget, number one, how old I am, how much life experience I have, how much education I have, like all these other factors that are like, it's not typical of everybody.
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  And I just assume you're like, oh, well, why don't you know this?
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  And so similarly, lucid dream is familiar to me.
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  It's not common, but it's completely familiar to me.
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  And then as we started moving into saying we're going to talk about experiences, I noted down some of my lucid dreams and I have five just in the past couple of years.
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  No, these are just types.
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  These are just types of lucid.
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  These are not individual occurrences.
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  These are themes.
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  Five recurring.
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  Yeah, so it's like, oh, I've probably had at least a dozen, if not dozens of lucid dreams.
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  And I wave them off, which, I mean, given my past orientation, I'm not too surprised.
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  But from where I'm sitting now, it's like, oh, my God, I've been sitting on all this stuff.
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  I've been pursuing it.
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  So one of them very analogous to the plane crash is driving off the road, generally driving off a cliff.
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  And sometimes it's like a cliffside of a ridiculously huge mountain, like super mountain with clouds far, far below.
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  Or driving off a bridge, like, going through the rail, or the bridge doesn't have a rail.
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  But this is a recurring thing where I'm in a car, specifically, not a plane crash, but a car that's falling.
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  And.
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  And generally it's the same experience as you described.
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  Like, oh, this is just a dream.
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  Like, my.
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  My awareness steps in to save me to say, oh, this is just a dream.
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  I'm like, oh, okay, all right.
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  And then somehow it just vaguely resolves.
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  It's not like, oh, suddenly the car's flying.
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  Or it's definitely not that I wake up saying, oh, my God, I just dreamed I died.
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  Honestly, I can't recall that it must have happened that I must have had a dream where I woke up, like, from a bad dream about dying.
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  But I would say it's much more common for me to dream about dying in various ways and then have a lucid moment that just says, oh, it's okay.
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  This is just a dream.
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  So it's very odd for me to be reporting this.
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  Like, oh, my God.
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  I guess lucid dreams are fairly common for me.
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  Like, I can't recall any recent, but I know that over time there's certainly been many instances.
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  So driving off a cliff or a bridge or some high space is a recurring thing.
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  And that's usually an instance of lucid dreaming where I have momentary lucidity at the end to save me from thinking that I'm gonna die from this thing.
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  Another violent.
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  So it's a lot of violence in my lucid dreams.
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  And again, I was just.
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  This was the last thing I wrote down because it didn't occur to me until some minutes of actually thinking about past dream experiences, gunshots.
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  And that's more recent, actually, that I've been shot in my dreams.
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  And I'm aware of not so much pain, but definitely aware of bleeding, definitely aware of being attacked and, like, being in danger of my life.
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  And also knife attacks.
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  I've been in knife fights in my dream.
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  Or maybe they're not knives.
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  Maybe I'm just being attacked.
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  I mean.
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  I mean, they're not fights where I'm like, I don't have a knife.
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  But the other person has a knife.
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  So those are two other examples of kind of mortal threat dreams where I then become lucid.
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  And I think now I'm thinking about a gunshot dream where it's kind of more explicit that I'm lucidly contrarian the dream, and I'm not dying from the wound, as opposed to the falling car where it just kind of
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  vaguely resolves and it's like, oh, it's not a problem.
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  And I just presumably transfer into another dream scenario.
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  But I think there's.
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  In terms of these violent attacks, there's a little bit more control.
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  And now that I think about it, it's funny how these things kind of the memories arise as I start to talk about it.
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  I can think of some pretty gruesome attacks or injuries or I don't know what.
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  It's kind of vague, but it's almost like torture or something.
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  Like where someone's cutting my face or my eye or something like really gross.
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  And it's okay because it's just a dream.
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  So I think that's the end of the violet stuff.
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  I've never had a dream where I've been actually injured.
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  Oh, God, really?
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  Wow.
• 27:48
  At least one that I can remember.
• 27:50
  So those are my anxiety dreams.
• 27:52
  Now I have other lucid dreams that are not negative.
• 27:55
  So one of the earliest ones I remember, as I told you about earlier, was I had a kind of playground swing seat.
• 28:03
  It was basically just a worn wooden board, but I mean, it was really the swing.
• 28:09
  I could tell it was weathered and it might even had a little bit of rope on it, but it wasn't attached to swing.
• 28:14
  And I was just holding it under my seat, like holding it up to my butt and sitting on it and then able to fly and get off the ground.
• 28:23
  I specifically remember this and saying, like, oh, I can lift myself.
• 28:29
  I can make myself fly.
• 28:30
  And doing it and getting not into the sky, but a fair distance off the ground, like into the trees, easily not going very fast.
• 28:39
  And so I'd say the flying thing, which apparently is a common lucid dream theme, is somewhat controlled but frustrating.
• 28:48
  It's kind of funny because we were saying off mic how.
• 28:51
  Because I was discounting.
• 28:53
  I was waving off my lucid dreams that I just heard this phrase, you know, well, if you saw a dog riding a bicycle, you wouldn't say, well, he's not going very fast.
• 29:03
  You'd say, wow, it's amazing that he's riding a bicycle.
• 29:06
  But my reaction is, well, I could drive faster than that, you know, and so you know, I'm talking about these dream experiences and it's like, oh, they're really frustrating because I can't fly the way I want.
• 29:16
  It's like, but, dude, you're flying.
• 29:17
  But, but that's an element of the experience is kind of being frustrated at not being more proficient at doing the thing.
• 29:27
  So there's the, the swing set, which is very vivid memory.
• 29:31
  There are other kinds of flying, which are more of a prone Superman kind of flying posture, but again, not, not proficient like a superhero, but just like, oh, I can go from here to there and I can move
• 29:48
  in the air unsupported because I'm in a dream and I'm doing it volitionally and I'm aware that I'm in the dream and I'm aware that I'm engaged in this unnatural activity.
• 29:58
  And then the final one is Spider man, which I haven't had a long time, but when I was a kid, probably as a teenager, definitely in college, dreams of being Spider Man.
• 30:09
  And again, this awareness that I'm in the dream and I'm struggling to make the web shooters work and I can just barely get off the ground.
• 30:19
  But they're like, they're not like shooting out like in the movies or cartoons.
• 30:22
  Like, it's just like spec.
• 30:24
  They're just like, press it and it's shooting out and oh, it's almost there.
• 30:28
  Because think about it, right?
• 30:29
  You're shooting up like 100ft or something to a building.
• 30:32
  But I remember those as lucid.
• 30:34
  Like, I'm aware that I'm in the stream trying to do this thing.
• 30:38
  Most people don't have lucid dreams at all.
• 30:41
  And then I have multiple lucid dreams.
• 30:42
  So it really points me to now, in my current orientation with pursuing awakening experiences and all that, that, oh, this is probably a productive direction of effort.
• 30:56
  And now that now that we've learned about or come into contact with these different sources of traditional and non traditional lucid dream induction, I'm really curious, if I try this stuff, what is going to happen?
• 31:11
  One thing that was quite funny to me, and only just because you mentioned it, was I got really excited after that first lucid dream.
• 31:18
  I was surprised and felt accomplished in a way.
• 31:22
  Right.
• 31:23
  And I shared it with Peter on a meeting.
• 31:25
  Oh, I had a lucid dream.
• 31:27
  So, yeah, I have those all the time.
• 31:28
  I apologize for minimizing your experience.
• 31:30
  No, it's fine.
• 31:31
  I just.
• 31:32
  It was surprising to me.
• 31:33
  Number one, it was surprising that you were so casual about it, and two, that I was completely unaware.
• 31:41
  Like this Wasn't something that you ever discussed or brought up.
• 31:44
  And of course, you framed why.
• 31:46
  It just seemed like a normal thing that everybody has.
• 31:50
  Right.
• 31:50
  I had my other lucid dream was.
• 31:54
  Was similar.
• 31:55
  It was like a flying dream, and I was aware of it, and I just did some flying around.
• 32:00
  But.
• 32:00
  And I'm curious what you think about this.
• 32:03
  I think I might have had a couple other dreams, and they were not fully lucid.
• 32:09
  Right.
• 32:10
  They were dreams where I actively had manipulative control, but I wasn't fully aware that it was a dream.
• 32:20
  And I don't know how that kind of fits in here, but I've definitely experienced that.
• 32:25
  And again, these are all very recent.
• 32:27
  Like, within the past couple of years, Maybe even just 12 months, I've had these handful of experiences.
• 32:36
  Now, we talk about these entertainment versions of lucid dreaming, but the activity itself has history in spiritual pursuits such as the dream yoga, which seems like.
• 32:49
  Especially for you because it seems to be more accessible.
• 32:52
  But even for me or for anybody else who's interested in lucid dreaming, it's not just for flying, but there's actual productive work that can be done.
• 33:01
  So before we.
• 33:02
  Because I'm very interested in this, as you guess.
• 33:04
  But just to say that this is a recurring theme also is the cultural value, the value that our culture places on these experiences.
• 33:14
  So we've said how awakening experiences are devalued as not being real.
• 33:20
  And this is very similar, except that I find myself in it in real time.
• 33:25
  So I have talked about these experiences in the past.
• 33:27
  It's not like it's a deep secret.
• 33:29
  I've never told anybody.
• 33:30
  I've had casual conversations with friends like, oh, have you ever had this kind of dream?
• 33:34
  And the response isn't dismissive.
• 33:37
  It's like, oh, that's neat.
• 33:38
  You know, but it's not a value.
• 33:41
  Like, you know, if you were in a shamanic culture and you told the story to someone, they would say, oh, you should go talk to the elder, because that's significant.
• 33:50
  And for me, it was just like, oh, that's neat.
• 33:52
  And so when you told me, I was like, oh, yeah, that's neat.
• 33:56
  Which is surprising because our relationship is very much built around a different kind of perspective, you know, but when it came to this, I was just absolutely.
• 34:06
  I was just like, yeah.
• 34:07
  Oh, really?
• 34:08
  That's odd.
• 34:11
  So if my conversations as a kid or younger person had been different, my reaction to you might have been different.
• 34:20
  But there are these old traditional Tibetan practices.
• 34:23
  But then there were also this Daniel Love, he's on YouTube and has apparently some really interesting specific instructions.
• 34:34
  I mean, there are multiple websites, as we said, there are multiple businesses engaged in training lucid dreaming.
• 34:41
  And most of them, I think, have some kind of free content.
• 34:45
  But specifically Daniel Love, I started looking at his videos when we were prepping for this.
• 34:51
  And it's like, oh, I think I'll be looking at some of those videos and probably looking into Tibetan Dream Yoga.
• 35:00
  Although realistically, I doubt I'll really get into it.
• 35:06
  We'll have to see, just because there's so many practices out there.
• 35:10
  And I know that Tibetan yogic practices tend to be elaborate.
• 35:16
  Yeah.
• 35:17
  So.
• 35:17
  Well, and it doesn't need to be the Tibetan Dream Yoga.
• 35:21
  I guess my point was that cultivating this as a regularly occurring or even purposefully induced state has benefit beyond just entertainment.
• 35:35
  Right.
• 35:35
  That.
• 35:36
  That there is an opportunity to use that dream state and the awareness and cognition that is associated with it to do deeper work.
• 35:47
  Yeah.
• 35:47
  And specifically, one of the things I saw about the Tibetan practices are that there are versions.
• 35:52
  And again, this is in the context of an elaborate faith tradition, so probably shouldn't go trying to do this on your own.
• 36:01
  But one of.
• 36:02
  And I think this is what they described as an advanced practice is to actually induce a fear state in your dream so that you can learn that you don't really need to be afraid.
• 36:13
  And now here's where we get into our more traditional topics of basically, the goal is to realize that your waking life is no more real and your fears of your waking life are no more real.
• 36:27
  Now that's kind of a big stretch for us living regular lives in the world to say, oh, I don't really need to be afraid of that bad driver about to crash into me.
• 36:38
  But it kind of crosses into our discussions of ultimate reality and the death of space time.
• 36:45
  It also points to our next discussion on Rupert Spira.
• 36:48
  I think that was something that I brought out of that.
• 36:52
  So can tune into that episode.
• 36:56
  Are there any specific practices that you looked at or that you're interested in looking into in terms of lucid dream?
• 37:02
  I have not done a good amount of investigation into the specific practices.
• 37:09
  I have attempted some guided meditation things before bed.
• 37:16
  I think there's a couple of things that tend to block me.
• 37:20
  One, I don't think I have adequate control over my space to be able to prep myself whenever I've done the guided meditation piece.
• 37:33
  It's what it's asking me to do.
• 37:35
  I feel like I can't do.
• 37:36
  Like, as far as being able to get into an absolutely 100 comfortable, relaxed position to not be like really moving much.
• 37:46
  I have a spouse who shares a bed.
• 37:49
  So if I'm doing anything in the bed, it can be disruptive.
• 37:52
  And then that's in my mind.
• 37:54
  Right.
• 37:54
  So the ultimate block is that I have distractions and expectations.
• 37:59
  Those are like the two things.
• 38:00
  So I have tried some things, but I didn't like it.
• 38:03
  I think it was Daniel Love has a free lucid dreaming course for beginners.
• 38:08
  I might look into that.
• 38:09
  So it's interesting that.
• 38:11
  Well, I mean obviously there are reasons to be focused on pre sleep, but I've actually come across lucid dreaming techniques that are not pre sleep.
• 38:22
  So one is actually on awakening.
• 38:25
  As you come out of sleep, you start to visualize your daily activities without leaving bed and kind of reify.
• 38:37
  It's almost like inducing a false awakening.
• 38:40
  So false awakening.
• 38:41
  This is another thing I've had.
• 38:42
  I don't know if you've had it where you believe you're gotten out of bed and started your day and, and then you realize, oh hey, I didn't like I got out of bed earlier.
• 38:52
  No, you didn't like it's a dream and it's called a false awakening.
• 38:57
  Okay.
• 38:57
  So it comes up in the lucid dream research, but there's an actual practice where as soon as you wake up, you start to visualize yourself starting your day without getting out of bed.
• 39:10
  So it's like having a false wake, right?
• 39:14
  So it's imagine yourself getting dressed, getting your coffee, going out the door and you prep this by kind of reviewing that process while you're awake and saying, tomorrow morning I'm going to go through these steps and I'm going
• 39:30
  to focus on what is it like when I stand up out of bed?
• 39:35
  Like what is exactly the feeling of that?
• 39:37
  And then like what is the coffee cup in my hand?
• 39:39
  Or what is the act of opening doors?
• 39:42
  Like what's exactly around me when I open the door so that you can focus on these things.
• 39:46
  But it's interesting that practice is a post sleep practice that is apparently conducive to having subsequently having lucid dreams.
• 40:00
  So the more you do that and then the one that really interests me is one of the Tibetan practices.
• 40:06
  I assume that because this has come up on some of the lucid dream content that I've just skimmed through and I assume that they got it from Tibetan practice.
• 40:16
  But it's challenging yourself.
• 40:19
  What's it called?
• 40:20
  I guess just, it's just questioning.
• 40:22
  So throughout the day, say am I awake or am I dreaming?
• 40:26
  And you just test your reality and say, am I dreaming?
• 40:28
  How do I know that I'm awake?
• 40:30
  So that it's ingrained.
• 40:31
  So that when you're in your dream, it just becomes part of your normal behavior and you'll find yourself dreaming.
• 40:37
  I assume this is how it works.
• 40:39
  You find yourself dreaming.
• 40:40
  You say, am I dreaming or am I awake?
• 40:42
  And then you get lucid and you say, oh, I'm actually dreaming.
• 40:44
  I'm not awake.
• 40:45
  So that's one I was definitely going to try because it's definitely a mindfulness practice.
• 40:49
  Sure.
• 40:50
  So I find that very intriguing and appealing.
• 40:52
  I have heard that one before.
• 40:53
  I don't know if I actually heard it from you or if I came across something I just.
• 40:58
  As far as I know, I've just.
• 40:59
  Heard about it, then I must have heard it.
• 41:01
  I haven't practiced it.
• 41:03
  But certainly, at least in my understanding, it is the habituation of activities or the intent that leads to that awareness.
• 41:13
  Unless it's spontaneous, obviously.
• 41:14
  But the practice you mentioned beforehand, I heard or have done.
• 41:21
  Maybe I did it on my own, something similar, but it was a little bit different where when I do wake up, either just I wake up randomly and I'm sort of in that, like, liminal state where I'm awake
• 41:34
  but I'm like on the verge of sleep.
• 41:36
  But when I've recognized that I'm sort of in between sleep and awake, I have tried making purposeful intent in my head to try and like induce either a lucid state or out of body state.
• 41:53
  But I don't know that it's taught in that way.
• 41:56
  Suggestions to my subconscious.
• 41:58
  This is what I am looking to do.
• 42:00
  Hasn't been productive.
• 42:01
  I've only done it probably only a handful of times or a dozen times, but I'm trying to get better at that.
• 42:08
  So you use the term liminal state.
• 42:10
  And I just learned that I've been misapplying a word.
• 42:14
  So there are two related terms, hypnagogic and hypnopompic.
• 42:19
  And they are both those liminal states between wake and sleep.
• 42:23
  So hypnagogic is when you are falling asleep and you're in that weird transitional consciousness.
• 42:32
  And hypnopompic is when you're waking up the other way.
• 42:34
  I heard the first one.
• 42:35
  I didn't.
• 42:36
  Yeah.
• 42:36
  So I just came across again somewhere in the link, you guys read through them, you'll come across that.
• 42:41
  Which I thought was interesting.
• 42:43
  Number one, I was just misusing the word number two, that they're distinct names for either coming into or coming out of sleep.
• 42:53
  And it seems that they are both amenable to facilitating lucid dreaming.
• 43:01
  For me, I have interest in lucid dreaming and certainly I have some desire.
• 43:07
  I guess now I'm thinking it would be useful as far as maybe inner work stuff or being more productive.
• 43:15
  But primarily inducing lucid dreaming has been desirable to me specifically in pursuit of out of body experience.
• 43:25
  Now I've shared previously, I'll share again now that I've had two out of body experiences.
• 43:33
  Now one thing that I was interested in about this discussion was there was a comment from somebody that basically said that lucid dreaming and out of body experience was one and the same thing.
• 43:48
  And I took exception to that statement having experienced both that qualitatively I've recognized in my own experience that they are very different.
• 44:01
  Now that doesn't make it true, but for me, and the reason I took exception to it was because the qualities of the two were very different.
• 44:10
  Now not only that, and we did pull some links as far as research that has been done around is lucid dreaming the same as out of body experience?
• 44:20
  And the suggestion or consensus seems to be there is a difference.
• 44:25
  Now they are aligned or adjacent insofar as access to higher states of consciousness or access to subconscious elements, however you want to describe it.
• 44:37
  But one defining factor of an out of body experience is that it can be experienced from awakened state where a lucid dream is a function of a sleep state.
• 44:51
  Now when I had my first out of body experience, it was from a waking state and it's only been since then.
• 45:00
  Like that was my first experience with any of this.
• 45:03
  Right.
• 45:03
  Like I didn't experience lucid dreams.
• 45:05
  I didn't experience out of body stuff.
• 45:07
  I didn't experience any of this until after that event.
• 45:12
  The reason I bring it up is when I dream in general and especially with my lucid dreams, there's a fogginess to it.
• 45:21
  I don't know the transience is the right word, but foggy is the description I feel.
• 45:26
  Right.
• 45:26
  There's the unrealness in a sense, right.
• 45:30
  Where the out of body experience had a quality of absolute reality like a even more clear and real than here.
• 45:43
  I didn't have that essence of fogginess and detachment detached from the body.
• 45:50
  Yes, but detachment from I don't know what.
• 45:53
  It didn't feel like the dream state basically.
• 45:56
  And so that's where I was.
• 45:58
  Well, not only did it happen when I was awake, but also there was a qualitative difference in my experience between lucid dreaming and dreaming in general and this out of body state.
• 46:11
  I have great interest in pursuing out of body experience.
• 46:17
  And so lucid dreaming is a mechanism to try and continue to try and re engage with that because neither of those were intentional.
• 46:27
  And I had tried last year at my birthday to go into the deprivation tank and had hoped, of course I had too much expectation, this is my assumption, that I had too much expectation around it that it was
• 46:40
  never going to happen.
• 46:41
  But I had hoped that having that space of floating and without sensory exposure that this might help to get to that state.
• 46:53
  I mentioned last episode, Darius Wright is somebody who is up and coming or has a lot of content on out of body experiences and he does work with people.
• 47:03
  I haven't paid him for anything, so I don't know how successful his stuff is.
• 47:07
  But he has reported significant access to out of body experience and a desire to help people get there.
• 47:15
  So if that's something you're interested in, Darius Wright might be a content creator to look into, but you do so at your own risk.
• 47:22
  So as we've kind of touched on, out of body experience and lucid dream are related and there's a couple of other things like meditative states.
• 47:35
  Now the other thing I want to talk.
• 47:37
  Oh, sleep paralysis.
• 47:39
  Now did you mention sleep paralysis?
• 47:41
  When I came back into my body after that first experience, there was that paralysis.
• 47:49
  I can say I've had sleep paralysis as far as I can recall exactly once.
• 47:53
  But it was a very intense, vivid experience.
• 47:56
  So when I was in college, I remember waking up, I guess it was in the morning because I think there was light.
• 48:05
  I don't think it was like in the middle of night, completely dark and having sleep paralysis and having it be absolutely terrifying.
• 48:14
  Like there was a feeling of intense dread.
• 48:18
  Wasn't just like, oh, I'm awake, I can't move my body.
• 48:21
  There was definitely a sense of weight on the chest of like, you know, the stereotypical Knight Rider demon incubus, whatever you call it, like something malevolent presence.
• 48:37
  Definitely that.
• 48:39
  Definitely an idea of a dark, like literal dark shadow presence somewhere near, like maybe on top of me.
• 48:46
  That's not.
• 48:47
  That's kind of vague.
• 48:48
  I actually don't remember opening my eyes.
• 48:50
  Interesting.
• 48:51
  So.
• 48:52
  So it was a non visual vision, right?
• 48:55
  Yeah, an impression with my eyes closed of something visibly dark and an intense buzzing.
• 49:04
  Intense like.
• 49:05
  And I remember thinking, oh, this is why there's the Lord of the Flies or Beelzebub or whatever.
• 49:11
  There's that, you know, demonic fly association.
• 49:15
  Like, oh, this is what that's about.
• 49:18
  And I remember having this dual understanding of like, oh, this is just that phenomenon.
• 49:26
  Right.
• 49:26
  And this kind of Western scientific rationalization about it.
• 49:31
  And then this intense religious fear.
• 49:33
  This was my post religious.
• 49:35
  I described myself at that point as post religious because during high school there were at least a couple of years where I was quite intensely religious.
• 49:44
  Well, this was a little after that.
• 49:46
  The only response I could think of was to like be an exorcist and said something like in the name of Christ.
• 49:55
  Some kind of exorcist kind of phrase.
• 49:58
  Right.
• 49:59
  I have no idea specifically, but I do remember blood being part of my kind of phrasing of this incantation to ward off this evil presence, like just in case.
• 50:13
  And I think it was definitely that.
• 50:15
  It was like, this is terrifying.
• 50:18
  I'm going to say this just in case it's an actual demon.
• 50:22
  I didn't believe it wasn't like, oh my God, this is a demon.
• 50:25
  But it was like absolutely this sense of I don't know what else to do and just in case.
• 50:33
  So that was my only experience with sleep paralysis.
• 50:35
  Interesting.
• 50:36
  But it was very intense.
• 50:38
  I mean, I was really quite shaken.
• 50:40
  I don't remember what happened after that.
• 50:42
  I don't remember if I just fell back asleep or, or what.
• 50:45
  But I do remember being absolutely terrified.
• 50:48
  I've never had sleep paralysis other than this one experience that I described.
• 50:54
  I've never even known of sleep paralysis before that.
• 50:59
  It is actually in one of these papers noted that this is something that is frequently reported as part of OBE but also shared during lucid dreaming.
• 51:11
  So this has been an interesting excursion into lucid dreaming and I like that it's brought us into contact with a number of things which we can kind of relate to lucid dream, out of body experience, sleep paralysis, something
• 51:29
  called de identification, which I think we'll get into more, which is kind of related in the literature related to out of body experience.
• 51:40
  Not considered the same, but kind of adjacent part of more familiar in awakening experiences and that kind of thing, which I guess we're going to get to next episode to some extent.
• 51:55
  Yeah.
• 51:55
  So we have a couple of episodes related to dreaming, social dreaming with Dan Lawrence to discuss.
• 52:03
  And I think some of what we talked about here relates in understanding how social dreaming can be used to try and get some deeper wisdom.
• 52:12
  But also the Rupert Spira interview that we're going to talk about soon also had an element of dream that I think is relevant even though contextually it was slightly different.
• 52:27
  But I think it really kind of rounds out this whole idea of dreaming in context with the broader non duality, awakening, absolute reality theme that we talk about.
• 52:40
  So stay tuned.
• 52:42
  We look forward to the discussion.
• 52:44
  And until next time, bye bye now.
• 52:49
  Thank you for listening to the Tracking Wisdom podcast.
• 52:52
  Join us next time as we continue the discussion.
• 52:55
  Don't forget to follow us on Facebook, Instagram and YouTube, and visit www.eth-studio.com for more information and content.