October 23, 2025 • 53 mins
Tracking Wisdom
Episode 33
Lucid Dreaming: Science, Spirit, and the Place Between Worlds
Recorded - 08/04/25
DESCRIPTION:
This podcast episode delves into the intriguing phenomenon of lucid dreaming, a state characterized by the awareness that one is dreaming while still in the dream itself. We explore the scientific underpinnings of this experience, highlighting studies that indicate the activation of the prefrontal cortex during lucid dreams, thereby suggesting a level of consciousness typically absent in conventional dreaming. The discussion extends to the historical and cultural significance of lucid dreaming, particularly in spiritual traditions such as Tibetan Dream Yoga, where practitioners intentionally cultivate this state for personal growth and insight. Additionally, we reflect on our personal encounters with lucid dreams, examining both the exhilarating sense of control and the moments of fear that can accompany such experiences. Ultimately, we aim to illuminate the broader implications of lucid dreaming in relation to consciousness, awareness, and the quest for deeper understanding within the human experience.
Takeaways:
- The episode articulately elucidates the concept of lucid dreaming, defining it as a conscious awareness of the dream state.
- Various historical and cultural practices surrounding lucid dreaming, such as Tibetan Dream Yoga, are explored in depth during the discussion.
- Lucid dreaming is distinguished from regular dreaming by the presence of metacognition, enabling self-reflection within the dream.
- Listeners are advised that engaging in practices to induce lucid dreaming can enhance one’s ability to experience this phenomenon purposefully.
Episode Resources
- What Is Dream Yoga and How Do You Do It? | Lion’s Roar
- Neural Correlates of Dream Lucidity Obtained from Contrasting Lucid versus Non-Lucid REM Sleep: A Combined EEG/fMRI Case Study
- Who Really Proved Lucid Dreaming? - Article by Daniel Love
- Daniel Love - The Free Lucid Dreaming Course for Beginners
- The Dream of God: How Do Religion and Science See Lucid Dreaming and Other Conscious States During Sleep? - PMC
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Foreign.
You're listening to theTracking Wisdom podcast, exploring
the universal truths that wesee woven through culture, consciousness
and the human experience.
Good morning, everybody, andwelcome back to another episode of
(00:22):
the Tracking Wisdom Podcast.
I'm Ryan.
I'm Peter.
And today we are discussinglucid dreaming.
We touched on dreaming in thelast episode.
I had mentioned that we weregoing to talk about lucid dreaming.
So here we are.
For anybody who may not beaware exactly what lucid dreaming
is, it is a state of dreamthat is characterized by a conscious
(00:46):
awareness that you are dreaming.
This has been measured instudies that are that indicated that
there is prefrontal cortexactivation during the dream state,
which would indicate brainactivity of consciousness and awareness
as opposed to the traditionalbrain waves that are expected during
(01:06):
a sleep state.
Lucid dreams can happenspontaneously, that there's not an
intent to experience a lucid dream.
It just happens that onebecomes aware of their dreaming state
at that moment.
But there has been historicaluse of lucid dreaming in practices
such as Tibetan Dream Yoga,which is something we're going to
(01:29):
speak about.
But there are spiritualtraditions that have embraced this
practice or this ability andhave trained to be able to induce
these experiences more purposefully.
One thing that is often raisedwhen people first experience lucid
dreaming is the ability tomanipulate your dream state, manipulate
(01:52):
the environment.
In your dream state, peoplereport being able to engage in activities
such as flying and otherthings that would not be experienced
in the waking state.
You were about to say something.
I was just going to comment onthe element of not just awareness,
but control and influence,which I think is not a necessary
(02:14):
component.
Right.
I don't think it defines lucid dreaming.
I mean, awareness is the definition.
Like you're aware that you'rein a dream.
But I would say one of themore interesting aspects is the potential
ability to influence a dream,to take willful action.
Whereas I think in regulardream states, we are just kind of
(02:38):
riding along through a story.
I'm thinking of it in terms ofawakening experiences.
People saying, like, oh,things are just happening to me.
Right?
People post awakeningsometimes say, my life is just happening.
Which sounds weird to the restof us in regular experience.
Right.
But I think if we say thatabout a dream, that's much more familiar,
(03:02):
right?
It's not like, oh, I was in a dream.
And I. I mean, I guess youmight have the feeling, oh, I have
to get up and get to work.
But I think it's moretypically, I'm just caught up in
the what's happening, what'shappening as the narrative or the
flow of the story that I'm inthe midst of, as opposed to having
any intention about different things.
(03:23):
It's funny to me because whenyou were describing the analogy,
my instinct was actually theconverse that, like, the dreaming
caught along with the storyrelates to conventional conditioned
life, where we're just kind oflike, feeling like we're caught up
and being the external isdriving our experience versus having
(03:45):
some level of internal control.
It's just the way I thought about.
It's like, oh, yeah, it islike that.
And then you went kind of theopposite direction.
I'm like, oh, that's not interesting.
So anyways, well, I mean, Ithink, you know, also something a
listener has to appreciatehearing us talk about these things,
is that a lot of our wakingexperience, you and me, are a little
(04:08):
atypical sometimes.
So it might sound weird to have.
We might say some things thatsound weird in terms of, well, normally,
you know, when we're like,wait, it's like this.
So.
So the other element that Iwanted to pick up just from the notes
was this idea ofmetacognition, which is kind of the
nature of the lucid dreamitself, is that you're thinking about
(04:31):
the experience that you're having.
So in a way, you're thinkingabout how you're thinking about the
experience.
Yeah.
Which again, on this podcast,it's what we do all the time.
Basically.
We just.
All of our talk is aboutmetacognition, like, thinking about
how we experience things,think about how we think about things,
but in terms of lucid dreamingcompared to normal dreaming that
(04:55):
we mostly experience when weexperience dreams or remember them
in the lucid dream or thequality of the lucid dream or property
of the lucid dream is that you.
You're able to think aboutyour experience in real time as opposed
to just having the experience.
Right.
Because in normal dreams, youdon't have that metacognition.
(05:18):
You're not thinking about your experience.
You're just having the experience.
It's kind of funny, as I wasreflecting on my waking experience,
and it's like, how much of my waking.
Am I reflecting on myexperience versus being caught up
in the experience in my waking life?
Because I'm trying tocontrast, like.
Right.
(05:38):
And exactly to your point, Ithink, which is, yes, it's true.
A lot of time in waking life,there's this quality of just being
caught up in things and nothaving a larger perspective.
But, of course, this is thewhole conversation about mindfulness.
Right, right.
So what else?
One who is Interested inexperiencing lucid dreaming can engage
(06:01):
in training, practiceactivities that can help over time
to induce this experience.
Yeah, so I think this is whereI want to go into the cultural aspect
of lucid dreaming.
One of the papers we'll linkto is this kind of.
What is it called?
Comparative religion of lucid dreaming.
(06:23):
Like how is lucid dreamingviewed in different cultures, Particularly
through the religion of the culture?
So if you're an Americanlistener your doesn't have any structure
around lucid dreaming.
Now, you may have heard aboutit or you, you know, there may be
some kind of new age thing orsome pop culture thing, but it's
not structured into ourcultural inheritance kind of deal.
(06:45):
Whereas there are othercultures where it's baked in for
thousands of years.
And that's one of the thingsthat this paper talks about is how
Hinduism has thousands ofyears of development of practice
inducing lucid dreaming orpursuing lucid dreaming as a skill
or an art or practice.
(07:06):
The paper also names it inBuddhism and in.
I think there was a third one,but that the abramic religions are
western religions.
So that's interesting.
Abrahamic, not, I guess, notWestern because Islam is included
in Islam and Judaism and Christianity.
Lucid dreaming is not.
(07:27):
And dreams in general are notsomething to be.
They're gifts.
They just happen.
They're gifts.
You know, if they areprophetic or if God comes to you
in the dream, then there's asignificance to it.
But dreaming in general isn'tviewed as something to be valued
or developed or pursued.
(07:48):
And then in particular, baddreams are kind of taboo.
That in the traditions it'slike, oh, don't talk about the bad
dreams.
That's just the devildeceiving you.
So very, very differentperspective on dreams from kind of
one wide branch of majorreligion versus another.
So we reference Buddhism inparticular, Tibetan Buddhism.
(08:11):
That tradition sees bad dreamsas opportunities for work.
So, you know, in psychologicalterms, this would be like doing your
shadow work or working on yoursubconscious issues.
Like it's something to engagewith, not to dismiss and walk away
from and bury and repress that more.
So it's just interest contrastin modern American culture, I guess
(08:33):
lucid dreaming is kind of apop culture topic and it's become
come out more.
And certainly there arecommunities and forums and websites
and lots of practices aboutlucid dreaming.
But in general, it's not partof our culture.
Right.
Or part of the mythical,spiritual, metaphysical culture.
It's not part of our culturaltraditions, I guess is what we want.
(08:55):
Traditional spiritism was thethird One.
Oh yes.
Oh, that's interesting.
So spiritism, again, not manypeople have a cultural tradition
of spiritism.
It's a kind of a sectarianoffshoot of Christian practice that
I think it developed in theturn of century, like early 1900s,
(09:16):
something like that.
Unless I'm confusing spiritismwith spiritualism.
But I just looked it up, itsaid it's another term for spiritualism.
Yeah.
So it's the focus oncommunication with spirits of the
deceased as sources of dealingwith life.
Right.
Like, you know.
Oh, let me go ask my answer.
(09:38):
It's a form of ancestor worship.
It's just not a traditionalform of ancestor worship.
I think it's more just peoplethat have passed on from the spiritual
realm.
Connecting to the spiritual realm.
Exactly.
A guidance.
Right, right.
Just to contrast that with sayChinese ancestor worship, where it's
specifically your ownancestors are a big focal point of
(09:59):
spiritual engagement.
In thinking about the contrastof different religious or spiritual
contexts and cultures, I wasthinking of.
Well, I had discussed myexpectation that, and this is an
assumption, but I think it's afair assumption to make that gnostic
(10:21):
mystic Christianity mostlikely embraced this kind of experience
in a way that is probably morealigned with say Buddhism or Hinduism.
Maybe not practices designedaround it, but that the experience,
it's all grounded in themystical experience versus the current
(10:41):
traditional worldview of the faith.
And when I was thinking aboutshamanism too and the social induction,
the traditions of inductingyouth into coming of age.
Yes, that kind of thing.
But contrasting and comparingI suppose these various mechanisms
(11:03):
of detachment where betweensay for example, the idea of a lucid
dream experience versus an outof body experience obe, but also
thinking like utilizingpsychedelics to induce this kind
of connection or detachmentand connection to a wider source.
(11:27):
And thinking like, I don'tthink that's a lucid dream specifically,
but it seems that therehistorically has been a recognition
of access to higher awareness,access to knowledge.
I mean, talked about this lastepisode with the Akashic records
(11:47):
and the idea around ultimateknowledge being accessible in the
higher plane, so to speak.
And so there seems to be along standing history of recognizing
that this exists and a varietyof different strategies to achieve
that state of mind.
When I think of shamanism, Ioften think of either like a meditative
(12:11):
chant type activity orpsychedelics to achieving this state
of mind.
And the idea or the pursuit ofcomparing and contrasting I think
lends itself to your commentlast episode.
At the very end you mentionedthat you subscribe to the idea that
(12:31):
these are similar or even toSay the same insofar as they all
are bringing consciousness outof time and space.
Okay, they're different.
And that's part of what wewanted to discuss a little later,
how they are differentqualitative and quantitatively, biologically.
(12:52):
However, in a sense they'revery much the same or they're very
adjacent because they havethis quality of detaching from the
physical body and experiencingoutside of sort of the traditional
space time paradigm.
Yeah.
So I think now you're gettinginto kind of one of the points I
have.
(13:13):
I'm finding it a littleconfusing in my own mind talking
about, thinking about,learning about lucid dreaming because
of my interest in physicalversus non physical reality.
So transitioning from culturaltraditions of lucid dreaming, there
(13:33):
is a western bottom body ofscientific research around lucid
dreaming going back a ways,but kind of starting in the 70s with
the first electronicmeasurement of lucid dreaming.
Right.
So Keith Hearn was a graduatestudent in England who arranged to
(13:53):
have an electro oculograph, soa sensor that would measure eye movement
and to have it pre plannedthat the subject would move their
eyes left, right in aparticular way when they knew that
they were in a lucid dream.
And so they in that way gotobjective evidence of lucid dreaming.
(14:15):
So this person was asleep andwas able to register on the measurement
device an eye movement,voluntary eye movement, even though
they were asleep.
So this was the firstmeasurement, but it wasn't rigorously
controlled and it was only onemeasurement in isolation and it wasn't
published primarily throughthe scientific mainstream.
(14:38):
So it's kind of a milestone,but some people kind of take exception
to it.
And the second, around thesame time was Stephen Lebert and
he was a researcher inCalifornia at Stanford who had a
much more mainstream approachbecause he wanted to study this in
a very rigorous way and get itinto mainstream scientific literature.
(15:00):
So he had what's calledpolysomnography, meaning that he
had a variety of differentelectrical measurements of sleep
parameters, parameters toprove that the person was actually
in a sleep state while theywere measuring the eye movements.
So it's a more rigorous studybecause the first study it's like,
(15:21):
well, maybe he wasn't asleep.
I mean you could claim maybehe wasn't asleep, maybe he was just
moving his eyes.
But this one, by using EEGbrain lightwave analysis, they could
demonstrate this guy is inwhat we agree is a sleep state and
then replicate that.
So these two guys are kind ofthe co fathers of or co parents of,
(15:41):
I guess scientific lucid dream research.
And from this grows the modernwestern tradition of lucid dreaming.
And they developed techniquesto induce lucid dreams and develop
lucid dreaming as skills.
And I believe both of themactually created technologies to
help people get into lucid dreams.
(16:03):
I think Hearns had a machinethat would look at your respiratory
rate and then by thatinterpret that you were entering
sleep and then kind of giveyou an electronic tap, like a little
buzz to help you tell yourselfto get into lucid dreaming.
Now I think there are quite awide variety of electronic sleep
masks and those kinds ofthings and apps that are designed
(16:26):
to assist you to get lucid dreaming.
So that's just to transitionfrom this cultural tradition of induction
of lucid dreaming as apractice, which is basically religious
approach, to this moderncultural tradition.
I call it a tradition,scientific tradition of lucid dream
research or practice.
(16:47):
I don't know if there's ametric out there to know.
I'm sure there is.
But how common lucid dreaming is.
I think I saw it.
It's like 10 to 30.
No, 10.
Maybe it's 1 to 10%.
Well, it's in one of thereference papers.
So according to Google's AIoverview of this Google search.
Okay, caveat, caveat.
(17:08):
If you want to look into theactual research articles that we
attached, you're welcome to do that.
But this says around 55% ofpeople have experienced it at least
once.
About 23% experience them,I'll just say more frequently.
That seems high to me.
One of the papers that I cameacross that might have been a reference
(17:29):
in one of the link papersdescribed a study that was based
on Reddit.
It described Reddit as beingthe social platform that is apparently
the subject of a lot ofpsychological research or a source
of material data for selfreported data.
But then they go on todescribe the demographic which is
basically young white males.
(17:49):
There are lucid dreamingsubreddit and so one of the papers
actually that's how they gottheir data.
I just thought that was funny.
So I guess to my point is saywe'll say 30% just to throw it out
there.
My point being it's not allthat common.
But I think that as you hadmentioned, it's becoming more pop
(18:14):
culture, people are becomingmore interested in pursuing it.
And I just wanted to kind ofshare my own experience with lucid
dreaming.
If you think that this is areasonable point to do that.
Yeah.
Just to comment on, on theprevalence, it's not uncommon, but
at the same time most peopledon't have it.
It's like you probably Knowsomeone who can tell you they had
(18:35):
a lucid dream, but odds arebetter than 50% that you personally
haven't had a lucid dream.
I had never had one.
I become aware that it existed.
I don't know when, butdefinitely say last 10 years.
So this is an interesting timeto talk about our personal experiences
here.
So whenever it was that Ibecame aware of it is sort of irrelevant.
(18:58):
But just to say it wasn't likesomething I knew was a thing.
For the majority of my life,I've had two that I can recall, reasonable
lucid dreams.
And I say that because I thinkthere's probably been a small handful
of dreams where maybe I had asense, but it wasn't like really
(19:21):
lucid, understood that I was dreaming.
And so I have recurring andhave had recurring plane crash dreams
for as long as I can remember.
From what I understand,they're not all that uncommon, but
anybody I ever talk to doesn'tseem to dream about these.
But I've also never had azombie dream, which blows my kids
(19:42):
away.
But I have recurring planecrash dreams.
Sometimes I'm on the plane,sometimes I.
Observing plane crashes.
From falling out of the sky orcrashing, it's like crazy.
But I have them regularly.
I would say probably a dozentimes a year.
But it does come in waves.
They cluster.
The point with that comment isthat the first lucid dream I had
(20:05):
was within the past year.
I think, if not, it was within18 months or two years that was having
one of these plane crash dreams.
And I was standing in theaisle and it was like a jetliner,
but I could see out thecockpit, you know, almost like it
was, you know, like a Learjetor something.
And I was standing in theaisle and we crested a.
(20:28):
A climb.
You know, it's.
It's climbing an elevation andthen it kind of crests and we're
starting to look towards theground and had that kind of belly
sink.
And at that moment, all of asudden I said, oh, this is a dream.
Because I have these planecrash dreams so frequently that I
think it finally became sortof a trigger.
(20:50):
Now, it doesn't always happen, right?
But it.
At that moment of potential terror.
And I would say it's notreally terror.
I don't.
I wouldn't classify thesedreams as nightmares.
They don't have a quality ofterrified experience.
But it is uncomfortable.
And I had that moment and Iwas completely at ease and it just
(21:12):
relaxed and we just kind ofwent down.
Then I ended up waking up.
You know, I don't think itActually contacted the ground.
I think I probably woke upbefore that or whatever.
It was not characterized by having.
Now, probably because myawareness was so focused on this
activity of plane crashing.
But I didn't experiencemanipulation of the environment.
(21:35):
I didn't stop the plane fromcrashing or anything like that.
But it was a very distinctsort of fear or concern about what
was happening and then arecognition that this was a dream
and a complete and totalrelaxation to what was happening.
Question, since this is arecurring dream, do you have other
(21:55):
death dreams, like otherdreams that involve a situation where
you should die?
I have dreams where I'm beingchased by people and needing to defend
myself.
But I would say this is theonly kind of trauma based where death
would be the ultimate outcome.
So how do they.
If you're not lucid dreaming,how do they resolve?
(22:15):
Do you wake up or.
I think I wake up.
I don't ever, like, die in mydreams or anything.
I don't think I everexperienced like an actual impact,
really.
And if I did, it would just belike in the movies, right, where
it like hits the ground andwe're riding through the trees.
Oftentimes the plane crashesare also from an external point of
view.
When we started talking aboutour lucid dream experiences informally
(22:41):
and you said, I've had two, Iwas surprised.
I was like, oh, really?
You only had two?
And it's very strange torealize how I take these things for
granted is very strange to me.
And it's kind of like when Iknow a thing, like if I know some
fact, it's like, oh, well,sure, don't you know this?
(23:02):
It's like, everybody knowsthat because I know it, therefore
everybody knows it.
And I forget, number one, howold I am, how much life experience
I have, how much education Ihave, like all these other factors
that are like, it's nottypical of everybody.
And I just assume you're like,oh, well, why don't you know this?
And so similarly, lucid dreamis familiar to me.
(23:25):
It's not common, but it'scompletely familiar to me.
And then as we started movinginto saying we're going to talk about
experiences, I noted down someof my lucid dreams and I have five
just in the past couple of years.
No, these are just types.
These are just types of lucid.
These are not individual occurrences.
These are themes.
(23:46):
Five recurring.
Yeah, so it's like, oh, I'veprobably had at least a dozen, if
not dozens of lucid dreams.
And I wave them off, which, Imean, given my past orientation,
I'm not too surprised.
But from where I'm sittingnow, it's like, oh, my God, I've
been sitting on all this stuff.
(24:06):
I've been pursuing it.
So one of them very analogousto the plane crash is driving off
the road, generally drivingoff a cliff.
And sometimes it's like acliffside of a ridiculously huge
mountain, like super mountainwith clouds far, far below.
Or driving off a bridge, like,going through the rail, or the bridge
(24:29):
doesn't have a rail.
But this is a recurring thingwhere I'm in a car, specifically,
not a plane crash, but a carthat's falling.
And.
And generally it's the sameexperience as you described.
Like, oh, this is just a dream.
Like, my.
My awareness steps in to saveme to say, oh, this is just a dream.
(24:49):
I'm like, oh, okay, all right.
And then somehow it justvaguely resolves.
It's not like, oh, suddenlythe car's flying.
Or it's definitely not that Iwake up saying, oh, my God, I just
dreamed I died.
Honestly, I can't recall thatit must have happened that I must
have had a dream where I wokeup, like, from a bad dream about
dying.
But I would say it's much morecommon for me to dream about dying
(25:14):
in various ways and then havea lucid moment that just says, oh,
it's okay.
This is just a dream.
So it's very odd for me to bereporting this.
Like, oh, my God.
I guess lucid dreams arefairly common for me.
Like, I can't recall anyrecent, but I know that over time
there's certainly been many instances.
(25:34):
So driving off a cliff or abridge or some high space is a recurring
thing.
And that's usually an instanceof lucid dreaming where I have momentary
lucidity at the end to save mefrom thinking that I'm gonna die
(25:56):
from this thing.
Another violent.
So it's a lot of violence inmy lucid dreams.
And again, I was just.
This was the last thing Iwrote down because it didn't occur
to me until some minutes ofactually thinking about past dream
experiences, gunshots.
And that's more recent,actually, that I've been shot in
my dreams.
(26:16):
And I'm aware of not so muchpain, but definitely aware of bleeding,
definitely aware of beingattacked and, like, being in danger
of my life.
And also knife attacks.
I've been in knife fights inmy dream.
Or maybe they're not knives.
Maybe I'm just being attacked.
I mean.
I mean, they're not fightswhere I'm like, I don't have a knife.
But the other person has a knife.
(26:36):
So those are two otherexamples of kind of mortal threat
dreams where I then become lucid.
And I think now I'm thinkingabout a gunshot dream where it's
kind of more explicit that I'mlucidly contrarian the dream, and
(26:57):
I'm not dying from the wound,as opposed to the falling car where
it just kind of vaguelyresolves and it's like, oh, it's
not a problem.
And I just presumably transferinto another dream scenario.
But I think there's.
In terms of these violentattacks, there's a little bit more
control.
And now that I think about it,it's funny how these things kind
(27:20):
of the memories arise as Istart to talk about it.
I can think of some prettygruesome attacks or injuries or I
don't know what.
It's kind of vague, but it'salmost like torture or something.
Like where someone's cuttingmy face or my eye or something like
really gross.
And it's okay because it'sjust a dream.
(27:41):
So I think that's the end ofthe violet stuff.
I've never had a dream whereI've been actually injured.
Oh, God, really?
Wow.
At least one that I can remember.
So those are my anxiety dreams.
Now I have other lucid dreamsthat are not negative.
So one of the earliest ones Iremember, as I told you about earlier,
was I had a kind of playgroundswing seat.
(28:03):
It was basically just a wornwooden board, but I mean, it was
really the swing.
I could tell it was weatheredand it might even had a little bit
of rope on it, but it wasn'tattached to swing.
And I was just holding itunder my seat, like holding it up
to my butt and sitting on itand then able to fly and get off
the ground.
(28:23):
I specifically remember thisand saying, like, oh, I can lift
myself.
I can make myself fly.
And doing it and getting notinto the sky, but a fair distance
off the ground, like into thetrees, easily not going very fast.
And so I'd say the flyingthing, which apparently is a common
lucid dream theme, is somewhatcontrolled but frustrating.
(28:48):
It's kind of funny because wewere saying off mic how.
Because I was discounting.
I was waving off my luciddreams that I just heard this phrase,
you know, well, if you saw adog riding a bicycle, you wouldn't
say, well, he's not going very fast.
You'd say, wow, it's amazingthat he's riding a bicycle.
But my reaction is, well, Icould drive faster than that, you
(29:09):
know, and so you know, I'mtalking about these dream experiences
and it's like, oh, they'rereally frustrating because I can't
fly the way I want.
It's like, but, dude, you're flying.
But, but that's an element ofthe experience is kind of being frustrated
at not being more proficientat doing the thing.
So there's the, the swing set,which is very vivid memory.
(29:31):
There are other kinds offlying, which are more of a prone
Superman kind of flyingposture, but again, not, not proficient
like a superhero, but justlike, oh, I can go from here to there
and I can move in the airunsupported because I'm in a dream
and I'm doing it volitionallyand I'm aware that I'm in the dream
(29:54):
and I'm aware that I'm engagedin this unnatural activity.
And then the final one isSpider man, which I haven't had a
long time, but when I was akid, probably as a teenager, definitely
in college, dreams of beingSpider Man.
And again, this awareness thatI'm in the dream and I'm struggling
(30:15):
to make the web shooters workand I can just barely get off the
ground.
But they're like, they're notlike shooting out like in the movies
or cartoons.
Like, it's just like spec.
They're just like, press itand it's shooting out and oh, it's
almost there.
Because think about it, right?
You're shooting up like 100ftor something to a building.
But I remember those as lucid.
Like, I'm aware that I'm inthe stream trying to do this thing.
(30:38):
Most people don't have luciddreams at all.
And then I have multiple lucid dreams.
So it really points me to now,in my current orientation with pursuing
awakening experiences and allthat, that, oh, this is probably
a productive direction of effort.
And now that now that we'velearned about or come into contact
(31:00):
with these different sourcesof traditional and non traditional
lucid dream induction, I'mreally curious, if I try this stuff,
what is going to happen?
One thing that was quite funnyto me, and only just because you
mentioned it, was I got reallyexcited after that first lucid dream.
I was surprised and feltaccomplished in a way.
(31:22):
Right.
And I shared it with Peter ona meeting.
Oh, I had a lucid dream.
So, yeah, I have those all the time.
I apologize for minimizingyour experience.
No, it's fine.
I just.
It was surprising to me.
Number one, it was surprisingthat you were so casual about it,
and two, that I was completely unaware.
Like this Wasn't somethingthat you ever discussed or brought
(31:44):
up.
And of course, you framed why.
It just seemed like a normalthing that everybody has.
Right.
I had my other lucid dream was.
Was similar.
It was like a flying dream,and I was aware of it, and I just
did some flying around.
But.
And I'm curious what you thinkabout this.
I think I might have had acouple other dreams, and they were
(32:08):
not fully lucid.
Right.
They were dreams where Iactively had manipulative control,
but I wasn't fully aware thatit was a dream.
And I don't know how that kindof fits in here, but I've definitely
experienced that.
And again, these are all very recent.
Like, within the past coupleof years, Maybe even just 12 months,
(32:33):
I've had these handful of experiences.
Now, we talk about theseentertainment versions of lucid dreaming,
but the activity itself hashistory in spiritual pursuits such
as the dream yoga, which seems like.
Especially for you because itseems to be more accessible.
But even for me or for anybodyelse who's interested in lucid dreaming,
(32:56):
it's not just for flying, butthere's actual productive work that
can be done.
So before we.
Because I'm very interested inthis, as you guess.
But just to say that this is arecurring theme also is the cultural
value, the value that ourculture places on these experiences.
So we've said how awakeningexperiences are devalued as not being
(33:19):
real.
And this is very similar,except that I find myself in it in
real time.
So I have talked about theseexperiences in the past.
It's not like it's a deep secret.
I've never told anybody.
I've had casual conversationswith friends like, oh, have you ever
had this kind of dream?
And the response isn't dismissive.
It's like, oh, that's neat.
You know, but it's not a value.
(33:41):
Like, you know, if you were ina shamanic culture and you told the
story to someone, they wouldsay, oh, you should go talk to the
elder, because that's significant.
And for me, it was just like,oh, that's neat.
And so when you told me, I waslike, oh, yeah, that's neat.
Which is surprising becauseour relationship is very much built
around a different kind ofperspective, you know, but when it
(34:05):
came to this, I was just absolutely.
I was just like, yeah.
Oh, really?
That's odd.
So if my conversations as akid or younger person had been different,
my reaction to you might havebeen different.
But there are these oldtraditional Tibetan practices.
But then there were also thisDaniel Love, he's on YouTube and
(34:28):
has apparently some reallyinteresting specific instructions.
I mean, there are multiplewebsites, as we said, there are multiple
businesses engaged in traininglucid dreaming.
And most of them, I think,have some kind of free content.
But specifically Daniel Love,I started looking at his videos when
(34:50):
we were prepping for this.
And it's like, oh, I thinkI'll be looking at some of those
videos and probably lookinginto Tibetan Dream Yoga.
Although realistically, Idoubt I'll really get into it.
We'll have to see, justbecause there's so many practices
out there.
And I know that Tibetan yogicpractices tend to be elaborate.
(35:16):
Yeah.
So.
Well, and it doesn't need tobe the Tibetan Dream Yoga.
I guess my point was thatcultivating this as a regularly occurring
or even purposefully inducedstate has benefit beyond just entertainment.
Right.
That.
That there is an opportunityto use that dream state and the awareness
(35:41):
and cognition that isassociated with it to do deeper work.
Yeah.
And specifically, one of thethings I saw about the Tibetan practices
are that there are versions.
And again, this is in thecontext of an elaborate faith tradition,
so probably shouldn't gotrying to do this on your own.
But one of.
(36:02):
And I think this is what theydescribed as an advanced practice
is to actually induce a fearstate in your dream so that you can
learn that you don't reallyneed to be afraid.
And now here's where we getinto our more traditional topics
of basically, the goal is torealize that your waking life is
(36:23):
no more real and your fears ofyour waking life are no more real.
Now that's kind of a bigstretch for us living regular lives
in the world to say, oh, Idon't really need to be afraid of
that bad driver about to crashinto me.
But it kind of crosses intoour discussions of ultimate reality
and the death of space time.
(36:45):
It also points to our nextdiscussion on Rupert Spira.
I think that was somethingthat I brought out of that.
So can tune into that episode.
Are there any specificpractices that you looked at or that
you're interested in lookinginto in terms of lucid dream?
I have not done a good amountof investigation into the specific
(37:08):
practices.
I have attempted some guidedmeditation things before bed.
I think there's a couple ofthings that tend to block me.
One, I don't think I haveadequate control over my space to
be able to prep myselfwhenever I've done the guided meditation
(37:32):
piece.
It's what it's asking me to do.
I feel like I can't do.
Like, as far as being able toget into an absolutely 100 comfortable,
relaxed position to not belike really moving much.
I have a spouse who shares a bed.
So if I'm doing anything inthe bed, it can be disruptive.
(37:52):
And then that's in my mind.
Right.
So the ultimate block is thatI have distractions and expectations.
Those are like the two things.
So I have tried some things,but I didn't like it.
I think it was Daniel Love hasa free lucid dreaming course for
beginners.
I might look into that.
So it's interesting that.
Well, I mean obviously thereare reasons to be focused on pre
(38:15):
sleep, but I've actually comeacross lucid dreaming techniques
that are not pre sleep.
So one is actually on awakening.
As you come out of sleep, youstart to visualize your daily activities
without leaving bed and kindof reify.
(38:37):
It's almost like inducing afalse awakening.
So false awakening.
This is another thing I've had.
I don't know if you've had itwhere you believe you're gotten out
of bed and started your dayand, and then you realize, oh hey,
I didn't like I got out of bed earlier.
No, you didn't like it's adream and it's called a false awakening.
Okay.
(38:57):
So it comes up in the luciddream research, but there's an actual
practice where as soon as youwake up, you start to visualize yourself
starting your day withoutgetting out of bed.
So it's like having a falsewake, right?
So it's imagine yourselfgetting dressed, getting your coffee,
(39:19):
going out the door and youprep this by kind of reviewing that
process while you're awake andsaying, tomorrow morning I'm going
to go through these steps andI'm going to focus on what is it
like when I stand up out of bed?
Like what is exactly thefeeling of that?
And then like what is thecoffee cup in my hand?
(39:39):
Or what is the act of opening doors?
Like what's exactly around mewhen I open the door so that you
can focus on these things.
But it's interesting thatpractice is a post sleep practice
that is apparently conduciveto having subsequently having lucid
(40:00):
dreams.
So the more you do that andthen the one that really interests
me is one of the Tibetan practices.
I assume that because this hascome up on some of the lucid dream
content that I've just skimmedthrough and I assume that they got
it from Tibetan practice.
But it's challenging yourself.
What's it called?
I guess just, it's just questioning.
(40:22):
So throughout the day, say amI awake or am I dreaming?
And you just test your realityand say, am I dreaming?
How do I know that I'm awake?
So that it's ingrained.
So that when you're in yourdream, it just becomes part of your
normal behavior and you'llfind yourself dreaming.
I assume this is how it works.
You find yourself dreaming.
You say, am I dreaming or am I awake?
And then you get lucid and yousay, oh, I'm actually dreaming.
(40:44):
I'm not awake.
So that's one I was definitelygoing to try because it's definitely
a mindfulness practice.
Sure.
So I find that very intriguingand appealing.
I have heard that one before.
I don't know if I actuallyheard it from you or if I came across
something I just.
As far as I know, I've just.
Heard about it, then I musthave heard it.
I haven't practiced it.
But certainly, at least in myunderstanding, it is the habituation
(41:08):
of activities or the intentthat leads to that awareness.
Unless it's spontaneous, obviously.
But the practice you mentionedbeforehand, I heard or have done.
Maybe I did it on my own,something similar, but it was a little
bit different where when I dowake up, either just I wake up randomly
(41:30):
and I'm sort of in that, like,liminal state where I'm awake but
I'm like on the verge of sleep.
But when I've recognized thatI'm sort of in between sleep and
awake, I have tried makingpurposeful intent in my head to try
and like induce either a lucidstate or out of body state.
(41:53):
But I don't know that it'staught in that way.
Suggestions to my subconscious.
This is what I am looking to do.
Hasn't been productive.
I've only done it probablyonly a handful of times or a dozen
times, but I'm trying to getbetter at that.
So you use the term liminal state.
And I just learned that I'vebeen misapplying a word.
(42:14):
So there are two relatedterms, hypnagogic and hypnopompic.
And they are both thoseliminal states between wake and sleep.
So hypnagogic is when you arefalling asleep and you're in that
weird transitional consciousness.
And hypnopompic is when you'rewaking up the other way.
I heard the first one.
(42:35):
I didn't.
Yeah.
So I just came across againsomewhere in the link, you guys read
through them, you'll comeacross that.
Which I thought was interesting.
Number one, I was justmisusing the word number two, that
they're distinct names foreither coming into or coming out
of sleep.
And it seems that they areboth amenable to facilitating lucid
(43:00):
dreaming.
For me, I have interest inlucid dreaming and certainly I have
some desire.
I guess now I'm thinking itwould be useful as far as maybe inner
work stuff or being more productive.
But primarily inducing luciddreaming has been desirable to me
(43:22):
specifically in pursuit of outof body experience.
Now I've shared previously,I'll share again now that I've had
two out of body experiences.
Now one thing that I wasinterested in about this discussion
was there was a comment fromsomebody that basically said that
(43:44):
lucid dreaming and out of bodyexperience was one and the same thing.
And I took exception to thatstatement having experienced both
that qualitatively I'verecognized in my own experience that
they are very different.
Now that doesn't make it true,but for me, and the reason I took
(44:05):
exception to it was becausethe qualities of the two were very
different.
Now not only that, and we didpull some links as far as research
that has been done around islucid dreaming the same as out of
body experience?
And the suggestion orconsensus seems to be there is a
difference.
Now they are aligned oradjacent insofar as access to higher
(44:30):
states of consciousness oraccess to subconscious elements,
however you want to describe it.
But one defining factor of anout of body experience is that it
can be experienced fromawakened state where a lucid dream
is a function of a sleep state.
(44:51):
Now when I had my first out ofbody experience, it was from a waking
state and it's only been since then.
Like that was my firstexperience with any of this.
Right.
Like I didn't experience lucid dreams.
I didn't experience out ofbody stuff.
I didn't experience any ofthis until after that event.
(45:12):
The reason I bring it up iswhen I dream in general and especially
with my lucid dreams, there'sa fogginess to it.
I don't know the transience isthe right word, but foggy is the
description I feel.
Right.
There's the unrealness in asense, right.
Where the out of bodyexperience had a quality of absolute
(45:37):
reality like a even more clearand real than here.
I didn't have that essence offogginess and detachment detached
from the body.
Yes, but detachment from Idon't know what.
It didn't feel like the dreamstate basically.
And so that's where I was.
(45:58):
Well, not only did it happenwhen I was awake, but also there
was a qualitative differencein my experience between lucid dreaming
and dreaming in general andthis out of body state.
I have great interest inpursuing out of body experience.
And so lucid dreaming is amechanism to try and continue to
(46:22):
try and re engage with thatbecause neither of those were intentional.
And I had tried last year atmy birthday to go into the deprivation
tank and had hoped, of courseI had too much expectation, this
is my assumption, that I hadtoo much expectation around it that
it was never going to happen.
But I had hoped that havingthat space of floating and without
(46:48):
sensory exposure that thismight help to get to that state.
I mentioned last episode,Darius Wright is somebody who is
up and coming or has a lot ofcontent on out of body experiences
and he does work with people.
I haven't paid him foranything, so I don't know how successful
his stuff is.
But he has reportedsignificant access to out of body
(47:12):
experience and a desire tohelp people get there.
So if that's something you'reinterested in, Darius Wright might
be a content creator to lookinto, but you do so at your own risk.
So as we've kind of touchedon, out of body experience and lucid
dream are related and there'sa couple of other things like meditative
(47:34):
states.
Now the other thing I want to talk.
Oh, sleep paralysis.
Now did you mention sleep paralysis?
When I came back into my bodyafter that first experience, there
was that paralysis.
I can say I've had sleepparalysis as far as I can recall
exactly once.
But it was a very intense,vivid experience.
(47:56):
So when I was in college, Iremember waking up, I guess it was
in the morning because I thinkthere was light.
I don't think it was like inthe middle of night, completely dark
and having sleep paralysis andhaving it be absolutely terrifying.
Like there was a feeling ofintense dread.
(48:18):
Wasn't just like, oh, I'mawake, I can't move my body.
There was definitely a senseof weight on the chest of like, you
know, the stereotypical KnightRider demon incubus, whatever you
call it, like somethingmalevolent presence.
Definitely that.
(48:39):
Definitely an idea of a dark,like literal dark shadow presence
somewhere near, like maybe ontop of me.
That's not.
That's kind of vague.
I actually don't rememberopening my eyes.
Interesting.
So.
So it was a non visual vision, right?
Yeah, an impression with myeyes closed of something visibly
(49:00):
dark and an intense buzzing.
Intense like.
And I remember thinking, oh,this is why there's the Lord of the
Flies or Beelzebub or whatever.
There's that, you know,demonic fly association.
Like, oh, this is what that's about.
And I remember having thisdual understanding of like, oh, this
(49:23):
is just that phenomenon.
Right.
And this kind of Westernscientific rationalization about
it.
And then this intensereligious fear.
This was my post religious.
I described myself at thatpoint as post religious because during
high school there were atleast a couple of years where I was
quite intensely religious.
(49:44):
Well, this was a little after that.
The only response I couldthink of was to like be an exorcist
and said something like in thename of Christ.
Some kind of exorcist kind of phrase.
Right.
I have no idea specifically,but I do remember blood being part
(50:04):
of my kind of phrasing of thisincantation to ward off this evil
presence, like just in case.
And I think it was definitely that.
It was like, this is terrifying.
I'm going to say this just incase it's an actual demon.
I didn't believe it wasn'tlike, oh my God, this is a demon.
(50:25):
But it was like absolutelythis sense of I don't know what else
to do and just in case.
So that was my only experiencewith sleep paralysis.
Interesting.
But it was very intense.
I mean, I was really quite shaken.
I don't remember what happenedafter that.
I don't remember if I justfell back asleep or, or what.
But I do remember beingabsolutely terrified.
(50:48):
I've never had sleep paralysisother than this one experience that
I described.
I've never even known of sleepparalysis before that.
It is actually in one of thesepapers noted that this is something
that is frequently reported aspart of OBE but also shared during
(51:09):
lucid dreaming.
So this has been aninteresting excursion into lucid
dreaming and I like that it'sbrought us into contact with a number
of things which we can kind ofrelate to lucid dream, out of body
experience, sleep paralysis,something called de identification,
(51:30):
which I think we'll get intomore, which is kind of related in
the literature related to outof body experience.
Not considered the same, butkind of adjacent part of more familiar
in awakening experiences andthat kind of thing, which I guess
(51:51):
we're going to get to nextepisode to some extent.
Yeah.
So we have a couple ofepisodes related to dreaming, social
dreaming with Dan Lawrence to discuss.
And I think some of what wetalked about here relates in understanding
how social dreaming can beused to try and get some deeper wisdom.
(52:12):
But also the Rupert Spirainterview that we're going to talk
about soon also had an elementof dream that I think is relevant
even though contextually itwas slightly different.
But I think it really kind ofrounds out this whole idea of dreaming
in context with the broadernon duality, awakening, absolute
(52:37):
reality theme that we talk about.
So stay tuned.
We look forward to the discussion.
And until next time, bye bye now.
Thank you for listening to theTracking Wisdom podcast.
Join us next time as wecontinue the discussion.
Don't forget to follow us onFacebook, Instagram and YouTube,
(52:58):
and visit www.eth-studio.comfor more information and content.
Foreign.
You're listening to theTracking Wisdom podcast, exploring
the universal truths that wesee woven through culture, consciousness
and the human experience.
Good morning, everybody, andwelcome back to another episode of
(00:22):
the Tracking Wisdom Podcast.
I'm Ryan.
I'm Peter.
And today we are discussinglucid dreaming.
We touched on dreaming in thelast episode.
I had mentioned that we weregoing to talk about lucid dreaming.
So here we are.
For anybody who may not beaware exactly what lucid dreaming
is, it is a state of dreamthat is characterized by a conscious
(00:46):
awareness that you are dreaming.
This has been measured instudies that are that indicated that
there is prefrontal cortexactivation during the dream state,
which would indicate brainactivity of consciousness and awareness
as opposed to the traditionalbrain waves that are expected during
(01:06):
a sleep state.
Lucid dreams can happenspontaneously, that there's not an
intent to experience a lucid dream.
It just happens that onebecomes aware of their dreaming state
at that moment.
But there has been historicaluse of lucid dreaming in practices
such as Tibetan Dream Yoga,which is something we're going to
(01:29):
speak about.
But there are spiritualtraditions that have embraced this
practice or this ability andhave trained to be able to induce
these experiences more purposefully.
One thing that is often raisedwhen people first experience lucid
dreaming is the ability tomanipulate your dream state, manipulate
(01:52):
the environment.
In your dream state, peoplereport being able to engage in activities
such as flying and otherthings that would not be experienced
in the waking state.
You were about to say something.
I was just going to comment onthe element of not just awareness,
but control and influence,which I think is not a necessary
(02:14):
component.
Right.
I don't think it defines lucid dreaming.
I mean, awareness is the definition.
Like you're aware that you'rein a dream.
But I would say one of themore interesting aspects is the potential
ability to influence a dream,to take willful action.
Whereas I think in regulardream states, we are just kind of
(02:38):
riding along through a story.
I'm thinking of it in terms ofawakening experiences.
People saying, like, oh,things are just happening to me.
Right?
People post awakeningsometimes say, my life is just happening.
Which sounds weird to the restof us in regular experience.
Right.
But I think if we say thatabout a dream, that's much more familiar,
(03:02):
right?
It's not like, oh, I was in a dream.
And I. I mean, I guess youmight have the feeling, oh, I have
to get up and get to work.
But I think it's moretypically, I'm just caught up in
the what's happening, what'shappening as the narrative or the
flow of the story that I'm inthe midst of, as opposed to having
any intention about different things.
(03:23):
It's funny to me because whenyou were describing the analogy,
my instinct was actually theconverse that, like, the dreaming
caught along with the storyrelates to conventional conditioned
life, where we're just kind oflike, feeling like we're caught up
and being the external isdriving our experience versus having
(03:45):
some level of internal control.
It's just the way I thought about.
It's like, oh, yeah, it islike that.
And then you went kind of theopposite direction.
I'm like, oh, that's not interesting.
So anyways, well, I mean, Ithink, you know, also something a
listener has to appreciatehearing us talk about these things,
is that a lot of our wakingexperience, you and me, are a little
(04:08):
atypical sometimes.
So it might sound weird to have.
We might say some things thatsound weird in terms of, well, normally,
you know, when we're like,wait, it's like this.
So.
So the other element that Iwanted to pick up just from the notes
was this idea ofmetacognition, which is kind of the
nature of the lucid dreamitself, is that you're thinking about
(04:31):
the experience that you're having.
So in a way, you're thinkingabout how you're thinking about the
experience.
Yeah.
Which again, on this podcast,it's what we do all the time.
Basically.
We just.
All of our talk is aboutmetacognition, like, thinking about
how we experience things,think about how we think about things,
but in terms of lucid dreamingcompared to normal dreaming that
(04:55):
we mostly experience when weexperience dreams or remember them
in the lucid dream or thequality of the lucid dream or property
of the lucid dream is that you.
You're able to think aboutyour experience in real time as opposed
to just having the experience.
Right.
Because in normal dreams, youdon't have that metacognition.
(05:18):
You're not thinking about your experience.
You're just having the experience.
It's kind of funny, as I wasreflecting on my waking experience,
and it's like, how much of my waking.
Am I reflecting on myexperience versus being caught up
in the experience in my waking life?
Because I'm trying tocontrast, like.
Right.
(05:38):
And exactly to your point, Ithink, which is, yes, it's true.
A lot of time in waking life,there's this quality of just being
caught up in things and nothaving a larger perspective.
But, of course, this is thewhole conversation about mindfulness.
Right, right.
So what else?
One who is Interested inexperiencing lucid dreaming can engage
(06:01):
in training, practiceactivities that can help over time
to induce this experience.
Yeah, so I think this is whereI want to go into the cultural aspect
of lucid dreaming.
One of the papers we'll linkto is this kind of.
What is it called?
Comparative religion of lucid dreaming.
(06:23):
Like how is lucid dreamingviewed in different cultures, Particularly
through the religion of the culture?
So if you're an Americanlistener your doesn't have any structure
around lucid dreaming.
Now, you may have heard aboutit or you, you know, there may be
some kind of new age thing orsome pop culture thing, but it's
not structured into ourcultural inheritance kind of deal.
(06:45):
Whereas there are othercultures where it's baked in for
thousands of years.
And that's one of the thingsthat this paper talks about is how
Hinduism has thousands ofyears of development of practice
inducing lucid dreaming orpursuing lucid dreaming as a skill
or an art or practice.
(07:06):
The paper also names it inBuddhism and in.
I think there was a third one,but that the abramic religions are
western religions.
So that's interesting.
Abrahamic, not, I guess, notWestern because Islam is included
in Islam and Judaism and Christianity.
Lucid dreaming is not.
(07:27):
And dreams in general are notsomething to be.
They're gifts.
They just happen.
They're gifts.
You know, if they areprophetic or if God comes to you
in the dream, then there's asignificance to it.
But dreaming in general isn'tviewed as something to be valued
or developed or pursued.
(07:48):
And then in particular, baddreams are kind of taboo.
That in the traditions it'slike, oh, don't talk about the bad
dreams.
That's just the devildeceiving you.
So very, very differentperspective on dreams from kind of
one wide branch of majorreligion versus another.
So we reference Buddhism inparticular, Tibetan Buddhism.
(08:11):
That tradition sees bad dreamsas opportunities for work.
So, you know, in psychologicalterms, this would be like doing your
shadow work or working on yoursubconscious issues.
Like it's something to engagewith, not to dismiss and walk away
from and bury and repress that more.
So it's just interest contrastin modern American culture, I guess
(08:33):
lucid dreaming is kind of apop culture topic and it's become
come out more.
And certainly there arecommunities and forums and websites
and lots of practices aboutlucid dreaming.
But in general, it's not partof our culture.
Right.
Or part of the mythical,spiritual, metaphysical culture.
It's not part of our culturaltraditions, I guess is what we want.
(08:55):
Traditional spiritism was thethird One.
Oh yes.
Oh, that's interesting.
So spiritism, again, not manypeople have a cultural tradition
of spiritism.
It's a kind of a sectarianoffshoot of Christian practice that
I think it developed in theturn of century, like early 1900s,
(09:16):
something like that.
Unless I'm confusing spiritismwith spiritualism.
But I just looked it up, itsaid it's another term for spiritualism.
Yeah.
So it's the focus oncommunication with spirits of the
deceased as sources of dealingwith life.
Right.
Like, you know.
Oh, let me go ask my answer.
(09:38):
It's a form of ancestor worship.
It's just not a traditionalform of ancestor worship.
I think it's more just peoplethat have passed on from the spiritual
realm.
Connecting to the spiritual realm.
Exactly.
A guidance.
Right, right.
Just to contrast that with sayChinese ancestor worship, where it's
specifically your ownancestors are a big focal point of
(09:59):
spiritual engagement.
In thinking about the contrastof different religious or spiritual
contexts and cultures, I wasthinking of.
Well, I had discussed myexpectation that, and this is an
assumption, but I think it's afair assumption to make that gnostic
(10:21):
mystic Christianity mostlikely embraced this kind of experience
in a way that is probably morealigned with say Buddhism or Hinduism.
Maybe not practices designedaround it, but that the experience,
it's all grounded in themystical experience versus the current
(10:41):
traditional worldview of the faith.
And when I was thinking aboutshamanism too and the social induction,
the traditions of inductingyouth into coming of age.
Yes, that kind of thing.
But contrasting and comparingI suppose these various mechanisms
(11:03):
of detachment where betweensay for example, the idea of a lucid
dream experience versus an outof body experience obe, but also
thinking like utilizingpsychedelics to induce this kind
of connection or detachmentand connection to a wider source.
(11:27):
And thinking like, I don'tthink that's a lucid dream specifically,
but it seems that therehistorically has been a recognition
of access to higher awareness,access to knowledge.
I mean, talked about this lastepisode with the Akashic records
(11:47):
and the idea around ultimateknowledge being accessible in the
higher plane, so to speak.
And so there seems to be along standing history of recognizing
that this exists and a varietyof different strategies to achieve
that state of mind.
When I think of shamanism, Ioften think of either like a meditative
(12:11):
chant type activity orpsychedelics to achieving this state
of mind.
And the idea or the pursuit ofcomparing and contrasting I think
lends itself to your commentlast episode.
At the very end you mentionedthat you subscribe to the idea that
(12:31):
these are similar or even toSay the same insofar as they all
are bringing consciousness outof time and space.
Okay, they're different.
And that's part of what wewanted to discuss a little later,
how they are differentqualitative and quantitatively, biologically.
(12:52):
However, in a sense they'revery much the same or they're very
adjacent because they havethis quality of detaching from the
physical body and experiencingoutside of sort of the traditional
space time paradigm.
Yeah.
So I think now you're gettinginto kind of one of the points I
have.
(13:13):
I'm finding it a littleconfusing in my own mind talking
about, thinking about,learning about lucid dreaming because
of my interest in physicalversus non physical reality.
So transitioning from culturaltraditions of lucid dreaming, there
(13:33):
is a western bottom body ofscientific research around lucid
dreaming going back a ways,but kind of starting in the 70s with
the first electronicmeasurement of lucid dreaming.
Right.
So Keith Hearn was a graduatestudent in England who arranged to
(13:53):
have an electro oculograph, soa sensor that would measure eye movement
and to have it pre plannedthat the subject would move their
eyes left, right in aparticular way when they knew that
they were in a lucid dream.
And so they in that way gotobjective evidence of lucid dreaming.
(14:15):
So this person was asleep andwas able to register on the measurement
device an eye movement,voluntary eye movement, even though
they were asleep.
So this was the firstmeasurement, but it wasn't rigorously
controlled and it was only onemeasurement in isolation and it wasn't
published primarily throughthe scientific mainstream.
(14:38):
So it's kind of a milestone,but some people kind of take exception
to it.
And the second, around thesame time was Stephen Lebert and
he was a researcher inCalifornia at Stanford who had a
much more mainstream approachbecause he wanted to study this in
a very rigorous way and get itinto mainstream scientific literature.
(15:00):
So he had what's calledpolysomnography, meaning that he
had a variety of differentelectrical measurements of sleep
parameters, parameters toprove that the person was actually
in a sleep state while theywere measuring the eye movements.
So it's a more rigorous studybecause the first study it's like,
(15:21):
well, maybe he wasn't asleep.
I mean you could claim maybehe wasn't asleep, maybe he was just
moving his eyes.
But this one, by using EEGbrain lightwave analysis, they could
demonstrate this guy is inwhat we agree is a sleep state and
then replicate that.
So these two guys are kind ofthe co fathers of or co parents of,
(15:41):
I guess scientific lucid dream research.
And from this grows the modernwestern tradition of lucid dreaming.
And they developed techniquesto induce lucid dreams and develop
lucid dreaming as skills.
And I believe both of themactually created technologies to
help people get into lucid dreams.
(16:03):
I think Hearns had a machinethat would look at your respiratory
rate and then by thatinterpret that you were entering
sleep and then kind of giveyou an electronic tap, like a little
buzz to help you tell yourselfto get into lucid dreaming.
Now I think there are quite awide variety of electronic sleep
masks and those kinds ofthings and apps that are designed
(16:26):
to assist you to get lucid dreaming.
So that's just to transitionfrom this cultural tradition of induction
of lucid dreaming as apractice, which is basically religious
approach, to this moderncultural tradition.
I call it a tradition,scientific tradition of lucid dream
research or practice.
(16:47):
I don't know if there's ametric out there to know.
I'm sure there is.
But how common lucid dreaming is.
I think I saw it.
It's like 10 to 30.
No, 10.
Maybe it's 1 to 10%.
Well, it's in one of thereference papers.
So according to Google's AIoverview of this Google search.
Okay, caveat, caveat.
(17:08):
If you want to look into theactual research articles that we
attached, you're welcome to do that.
But this says around 55% ofpeople have experienced it at least
once.
About 23% experience them,I'll just say more frequently.
That seems high to me.
One of the papers that I cameacross that might have been a reference
(17:29):
in one of the link papersdescribed a study that was based
on Reddit.
It described Reddit as beingthe social platform that is apparently
the subject of a lot ofpsychological research or a source
of material data for selfreported data.
But then they go on todescribe the demographic which is
basically young white males.
(17:49):
There are lucid dreamingsubreddit and so one of the papers
actually that's how they gottheir data.
I just thought that was funny.
So I guess to my point is saywe'll say 30% just to throw it out
there.
My point being it's not allthat common.
But I think that as you hadmentioned, it's becoming more pop
(18:14):
culture, people are becomingmore interested in pursuing it.
And I just wanted to kind ofshare my own experience with lucid
dreaming.
If you think that this is areasonable point to do that.
Yeah.
Just to comment on, on theprevalence, it's not uncommon, but
at the same time most peopledon't have it.
It's like you probably Knowsomeone who can tell you they had
(18:35):
a lucid dream, but odds arebetter than 50% that you personally
haven't had a lucid dream.
I had never had one.
I become aware that it existed.
I don't know when, butdefinitely say last 10 years.
So this is an interesting timeto talk about our personal experiences
here.
So whenever it was that Ibecame aware of it is sort of irrelevant.
(18:58):
But just to say it wasn't likesomething I knew was a thing.
For the majority of my life,I've had two that I can recall, reasonable
lucid dreams.
And I say that because I thinkthere's probably been a small handful
of dreams where maybe I had asense, but it wasn't like really
(19:21):
lucid, understood that I was dreaming.
And so I have recurring andhave had recurring plane crash dreams
for as long as I can remember.
From what I understand,they're not all that uncommon, but
anybody I ever talk to doesn'tseem to dream about these.
But I've also never had azombie dream, which blows my kids
(19:42):
away.
But I have recurring planecrash dreams.
Sometimes I'm on the plane,sometimes I.
Observing plane crashes.
From falling out of the sky orcrashing, it's like crazy.
But I have them regularly.
I would say probably a dozentimes a year.
But it does come in waves.
They cluster.
The point with that comment isthat the first lucid dream I had
(20:05):
was within the past year.
I think, if not, it was within18 months or two years that was having
one of these plane crash dreams.
And I was standing in theaisle and it was like a jetliner,
but I could see out thecockpit, you know, almost like it
was, you know, like a Learjetor something.
And I was standing in theaisle and we crested a.
(20:28):
A climb.
You know, it's.
It's climbing an elevation andthen it kind of crests and we're
starting to look towards theground and had that kind of belly
sink.
And at that moment, all of asudden I said, oh, this is a dream.
Because I have these planecrash dreams so frequently that I
think it finally became sortof a trigger.
(20:50):
Now, it doesn't always happen, right?
But it.
At that moment of potential terror.
And I would say it's notreally terror.
I don't.
I wouldn't classify thesedreams as nightmares.
They don't have a quality ofterrified experience.
But it is uncomfortable.
And I had that moment and Iwas completely at ease and it just
(21:12):
relaxed and we just kind ofwent down.
Then I ended up waking up.
You know, I don't think itActually contacted the ground.
I think I probably woke upbefore that or whatever.
It was not characterized by having.
Now, probably because myawareness was so focused on this
activity of plane crashing.
But I didn't experiencemanipulation of the environment.
(21:35):
I didn't stop the plane fromcrashing or anything like that.
But it was a very distinctsort of fear or concern about what
was happening and then arecognition that this was a dream
and a complete and totalrelaxation to what was happening.
Question, since this is arecurring dream, do you have other
(21:55):
death dreams, like otherdreams that involve a situation where
you should die?
I have dreams where I'm beingchased by people and needing to defend
myself.
But I would say this is theonly kind of trauma based where death
would be the ultimate outcome.
So how do they.
If you're not lucid dreaming,how do they resolve?
(22:15):
Do you wake up or.
I think I wake up.
I don't ever, like, die in mydreams or anything.
I don't think I everexperienced like an actual impact,
really.
And if I did, it would just belike in the movies, right, where
it like hits the ground andwe're riding through the trees.
Oftentimes the plane crashesare also from an external point of
view.
When we started talking aboutour lucid dream experiences informally
(22:41):
and you said, I've had two, Iwas surprised.
I was like, oh, really?
You only had two?
And it's very strange torealize how I take these things for
granted is very strange to me.
And it's kind of like when Iknow a thing, like if I know some
fact, it's like, oh, well,sure, don't you know this?
(23:02):
It's like, everybody knowsthat because I know it, therefore
everybody knows it.
And I forget, number one, howold I am, how much life experience
I have, how much education Ihave, like all these other factors
that are like, it's nottypical of everybody.
And I just assume you're like,oh, well, why don't you know this?
And so similarly, lucid dreamis familiar to me.
(23:25):
It's not common, but it'scompletely familiar to me.
And then as we started movinginto saying we're going to talk about
experiences, I noted down someof my lucid dreams and I have five
just in the past couple of years.
No, these are just types.
These are just types of lucid.
These are not individual occurrences.
These are themes.
(23:46):
Five recurring.
Yeah, so it's like, oh, I'veprobably had at least a dozen, if
not dozens of lucid dreams.
And I wave them off, which, Imean, given my past orientation,
I'm not too surprised.
But from where I'm sittingnow, it's like, oh, my God, I've
been sitting on all this stuff.
(24:06):
I've been pursuing it.
So one of them very analogousto the plane crash is driving off
the road, generally drivingoff a cliff.
And sometimes it's like acliffside of a ridiculously huge
mountain, like super mountainwith clouds far, far below.
Or driving off a bridge, like,going through the rail, or the bridge
(24:29):
doesn't have a rail.
But this is a recurring thingwhere I'm in a car, specifically,
not a plane crash, but a carthat's falling.
And.
And generally it's the sameexperience as you described.
Like, oh, this is just a dream.
Like, my.
My awareness steps in to saveme to say, oh, this is just a dream.
(24:49):
I'm like, oh, okay, all right.
And then somehow it justvaguely resolves.
It's not like, oh, suddenlythe car's flying.
Or it's definitely not that Iwake up saying, oh, my God, I just
dreamed I died.
Honestly, I can't recall thatit must have happened that I must
have had a dream where I wokeup, like, from a bad dream about
dying.
But I would say it's much morecommon for me to dream about dying
(25:14):
in various ways and then havea lucid moment that just says, oh,
it's okay.
This is just a dream.
So it's very odd for me to bereporting this.
Like, oh, my God.
I guess lucid dreams arefairly common for me.
Like, I can't recall anyrecent, but I know that over time
there's certainly been many instances.
(25:34):
So driving off a cliff or abridge or some high space is a recurring
thing.
And that's usually an instanceof lucid dreaming where I have momentary
lucidity at the end to save mefrom thinking that I'm gonna die
(25:56):
from this thing.
Another violent.
So it's a lot of violence inmy lucid dreams.
And again, I was just.
This was the last thing Iwrote down because it didn't occur
to me until some minutes ofactually thinking about past dream
experiences, gunshots.
And that's more recent,actually, that I've been shot in
my dreams.
(26:16):
And I'm aware of not so muchpain, but definitely aware of bleeding,
definitely aware of beingattacked and, like, being in danger
of my life.
And also knife attacks.
I've been in knife fights inmy dream.
Or maybe they're not knives.
Maybe I'm just being attacked.
I mean.
I mean, they're not fightswhere I'm like, I don't have a knife.
But the other person has a knife.
(26:36):
So those are two otherexamples of kind of mortal threat
dreams where I then become lucid.
And I think now I'm thinkingabout a gunshot dream where it's
kind of more explicit that I'mlucidly contrarian the dream, and
(26:57):
I'm not dying from the wound,as opposed to the falling car where
it just kind of vaguelyresolves and it's like, oh, it's
not a problem.
And I just presumably transferinto another dream scenario.
But I think there's.
In terms of these violentattacks, there's a little bit more
control.
And now that I think about it,it's funny how these things kind
(27:20):
of the memories arise as Istart to talk about it.
I can think of some prettygruesome attacks or injuries or I
don't know what.
It's kind of vague, but it'salmost like torture or something.
Like where someone's cuttingmy face or my eye or something like
really gross.
And it's okay because it'sjust a dream.
(27:41):
So I think that's the end ofthe violet stuff.
I've never had a dream whereI've been actually injured.
Oh, God, really?
Wow.
At least one that I can remember.
So those are my anxiety dreams.
Now I have other lucid dreamsthat are not negative.
So one of the earliest ones Iremember, as I told you about earlier,
was I had a kind of playgroundswing seat.
(28:03):
It was basically just a wornwooden board, but I mean, it was
really the swing.
I could tell it was weatheredand it might even had a little bit
of rope on it, but it wasn'tattached to swing.
And I was just holding itunder my seat, like holding it up
to my butt and sitting on itand then able to fly and get off
the ground.
(28:23):
I specifically remember thisand saying, like, oh, I can lift
myself.
I can make myself fly.
And doing it and getting notinto the sky, but a fair distance
off the ground, like into thetrees, easily not going very fast.
And so I'd say the flyingthing, which apparently is a common
lucid dream theme, is somewhatcontrolled but frustrating.
(28:48):
It's kind of funny because wewere saying off mic how.
Because I was discounting.
I was waving off my luciddreams that I just heard this phrase,
you know, well, if you saw adog riding a bicycle, you wouldn't
say, well, he's not going very fast.
You'd say, wow, it's amazingthat he's riding a bicycle.
But my reaction is, well, Icould drive faster than that, you
(29:09):
know, and so you know, I'mtalking about these dream experiences
and it's like, oh, they'rereally frustrating because I can't
fly the way I want.
It's like, but, dude, you're flying.
But, but that's an element ofthe experience is kind of being frustrated
at not being more proficientat doing the thing.
So there's the, the swing set,which is very vivid memory.
(29:31):
There are other kinds offlying, which are more of a prone
Superman kind of flyingposture, but again, not, not proficient
like a superhero, but justlike, oh, I can go from here to there
and I can move in the airunsupported because I'm in a dream
and I'm doing it volitionallyand I'm aware that I'm in the dream
(29:54):
and I'm aware that I'm engagedin this unnatural activity.
And then the final one isSpider man, which I haven't had a
long time, but when I was akid, probably as a teenager, definitely
in college, dreams of beingSpider Man.
And again, this awareness thatI'm in the dream and I'm struggling
(30:15):
to make the web shooters workand I can just barely get off the
ground.
But they're like, they're notlike shooting out like in the movies
or cartoons.
Like, it's just like spec.
They're just like, press itand it's shooting out and oh, it's
almost there.
Because think about it, right?
You're shooting up like 100ftor something to a building.
But I remember those as lucid.
Like, I'm aware that I'm inthe stream trying to do this thing.
(30:38):
Most people don't have luciddreams at all.
And then I have multiple lucid dreams.
So it really points me to now,in my current orientation with pursuing
awakening experiences and allthat, that, oh, this is probably
a productive direction of effort.
And now that now that we'velearned about or come into contact
(31:00):
with these different sourcesof traditional and non traditional
lucid dream induction, I'mreally curious, if I try this stuff,
what is going to happen?
One thing that was quite funnyto me, and only just because you
mentioned it, was I got reallyexcited after that first lucid dream.
I was surprised and feltaccomplished in a way.
(31:22):
Right.
And I shared it with Peter ona meeting.
Oh, I had a lucid dream.
So, yeah, I have those all the time.
I apologize for minimizingyour experience.
No, it's fine.
I just.
It was surprising to me.
Number one, it was surprisingthat you were so casual about it,
and two, that I was completely unaware.
Like this Wasn't somethingthat you ever discussed or brought
(31:44):
up.
And of course, you framed why.
It just seemed like a normalthing that everybody has.
Right.
I had my other lucid dream was.
Was similar.
It was like a flying dream,and I was aware of it, and I just
did some flying around.
But.
And I'm curious what you thinkabout this.
I think I might have had acouple other dreams, and they were
(32:08):
not fully lucid.
Right.
They were dreams where Iactively had manipulative control,
but I wasn't fully aware thatit was a dream.
And I don't know how that kindof fits in here, but I've definitely
experienced that.
And again, these are all very recent.
Like, within the past coupleof years, Maybe even just 12 months,
(32:33):
I've had these handful of experiences.
Now, we talk about theseentertainment versions of lucid dreaming,
but the activity itself hashistory in spiritual pursuits such
as the dream yoga, which seems like.
Especially for you because itseems to be more accessible.
But even for me or for anybodyelse who's interested in lucid dreaming,
(32:56):
it's not just for flying, butthere's actual productive work that
can be done.
So before we.
Because I'm very interested inthis, as you guess.
But just to say that this is arecurring theme also is the cultural
value, the value that ourculture places on these experiences.
So we've said how awakeningexperiences are devalued as not being
(33:19):
real.
And this is very similar,except that I find myself in it in
real time.
So I have talked about theseexperiences in the past.
It's not like it's a deep secret.
I've never told anybody.
I've had casual conversationswith friends like, oh, have you ever
had this kind of dream?
And the response isn't dismissive.
It's like, oh, that's neat.
You know, but it's not a value.
(33:41):
Like, you know, if you were ina shamanic culture and you told the
story to someone, they wouldsay, oh, you should go talk to the
elder, because that's significant.
And for me, it was just like,oh, that's neat.
And so when you told me, I waslike, oh, yeah, that's neat.
Which is surprising becauseour relationship is very much built
around a different kind ofperspective, you know, but when it
(34:05):
came to this, I was just absolutely.
I was just like, yeah.
Oh, really?
That's odd.
So if my conversations as akid or younger person had been different,
my reaction to you might havebeen different.
But there are these oldtraditional Tibetan practices.
But then there were also thisDaniel Love, he's on YouTube and
(34:28):
has apparently some reallyinteresting specific instructions.
I mean, there are multiplewebsites, as we said, there are multiple
businesses engaged in traininglucid dreaming.
And most of them, I think,have some kind of free content.
But specifically Daniel Love,I started looking at his videos when
(34:50):
we were prepping for this.
And it's like, oh, I thinkI'll be looking at some of those
videos and probably lookinginto Tibetan Dream Yoga.
Although realistically, Idoubt I'll really get into it.
We'll have to see, justbecause there's so many practices
out there.
And I know that Tibetan yogicpractices tend to be elaborate.
(35:16):
Yeah.
So.
Well, and it doesn't need tobe the Tibetan Dream Yoga.
I guess my point was thatcultivating this as a regularly occurring
or even purposefully inducedstate has benefit beyond just entertainment.
Right.
That.
That there is an opportunityto use that dream state and the awareness
(35:41):
and cognition that isassociated with it to do deeper work.
Yeah.
And specifically, one of thethings I saw about the Tibetan practices
are that there are versions.
And again, this is in thecontext of an elaborate faith tradition,
so probably shouldn't gotrying to do this on your own.
But one of.
(36:02):
And I think this is what theydescribed as an advanced practice
is to actually induce a fearstate in your dream so that you can
learn that you don't reallyneed to be afraid.
And now here's where we getinto our more traditional topics
of basically, the goal is torealize that your waking life is
(36:23):
no more real and your fears ofyour waking life are no more real.
Now that's kind of a bigstretch for us living regular lives
in the world to say, oh, Idon't really need to be afraid of
that bad driver about to crashinto me.
But it kind of crosses intoour discussions of ultimate reality
and the death of space time.
(36:45):
It also points to our nextdiscussion on Rupert Spira.
I think that was somethingthat I brought out of that.
So can tune into that episode.
Are there any specificpractices that you looked at or that
you're interested in lookinginto in terms of lucid dream?
I have not done a good amountof investigation into the specific
(37:08):
practices.
I have attempted some guidedmeditation things before bed.
I think there's a couple ofthings that tend to block me.
One, I don't think I haveadequate control over my space to
be able to prep myselfwhenever I've done the guided meditation
(37:32):
piece.
It's what it's asking me to do.
I feel like I can't do.
Like, as far as being able toget into an absolutely 100 comfortable,
relaxed position to not belike really moving much.
I have a spouse who shares a bed.
So if I'm doing anything inthe bed, it can be disruptive.
(37:52):
And then that's in my mind.
Right.
So the ultimate block is thatI have distractions and expectations.
Those are like the two things.
So I have tried some things,but I didn't like it.
I think it was Daniel Love hasa free lucid dreaming course for
beginners.
I might look into that.
So it's interesting that.
Well, I mean obviously thereare reasons to be focused on pre
(38:15):
sleep, but I've actually comeacross lucid dreaming techniques
that are not pre sleep.
So one is actually on awakening.
As you come out of sleep, youstart to visualize your daily activities
without leaving bed and kindof reify.
(38:37):
It's almost like inducing afalse awakening.
So false awakening.
This is another thing I've had.
I don't know if you've had itwhere you believe you're gotten out
of bed and started your dayand, and then you realize, oh hey,
I didn't like I got out of bed earlier.
No, you didn't like it's adream and it's called a false awakening.
Okay.
(38:57):
So it comes up in the luciddream research, but there's an actual
practice where as soon as youwake up, you start to visualize yourself
starting your day withoutgetting out of bed.
So it's like having a falsewake, right?
So it's imagine yourselfgetting dressed, getting your coffee,
(39:19):
going out the door and youprep this by kind of reviewing that
process while you're awake andsaying, tomorrow morning I'm going
to go through these steps andI'm going to focus on what is it
like when I stand up out of bed?
Like what is exactly thefeeling of that?
And then like what is thecoffee cup in my hand?
(39:39):
Or what is the act of opening doors?
Like what's exactly around mewhen I open the door so that you
can focus on these things.
But it's interesting thatpractice is a post sleep practice
that is apparently conduciveto having subsequently having lucid
(40:00):
dreams.
So the more you do that andthen the one that really interests
me is one of the Tibetan practices.
I assume that because this hascome up on some of the lucid dream
content that I've just skimmedthrough and I assume that they got
it from Tibetan practice.
But it's challenging yourself.
What's it called?
I guess just, it's just questioning.
(40:22):
So throughout the day, say amI awake or am I dreaming?
And you just test your realityand say, am I dreaming?
How do I know that I'm awake?
So that it's ingrained.
So that when you're in yourdream, it just becomes part of your
normal behavior and you'llfind yourself dreaming.
I assume this is how it works.
You find yourself dreaming.
You say, am I dreaming or am I awake?
And then you get lucid and yousay, oh, I'm actually dreaming.
(40:44):
I'm not awake.
So that's one I was definitelygoing to try because it's definitely
a mindfulness practice.
Sure.
So I find that very intriguingand appealing.
I have heard that one before.
I don't know if I actuallyheard it from you or if I came across
something I just.
As far as I know, I've just.
Heard about it, then I musthave heard it.
I haven't practiced it.
But certainly, at least in myunderstanding, it is the habituation
(41:08):
of activities or the intentthat leads to that awareness.
Unless it's spontaneous, obviously.
But the practice you mentionedbeforehand, I heard or have done.
Maybe I did it on my own,something similar, but it was a little
bit different where when I dowake up, either just I wake up randomly
(41:30):
and I'm sort of in that, like,liminal state where I'm awake but
I'm like on the verge of sleep.
But when I've recognized thatI'm sort of in between sleep and
awake, I have tried makingpurposeful intent in my head to try
and like induce either a lucidstate or out of body state.
(41:53):
But I don't know that it'staught in that way.
Suggestions to my subconscious.
This is what I am looking to do.
Hasn't been productive.
I've only done it probablyonly a handful of times or a dozen
times, but I'm trying to getbetter at that.
So you use the term liminal state.
And I just learned that I'vebeen misapplying a word.
(42:14):
So there are two relatedterms, hypnagogic and hypnopompic.
And they are both thoseliminal states between wake and sleep.
So hypnagogic is when you arefalling asleep and you're in that
weird transitional consciousness.
And hypnopompic is when you'rewaking up the other way.
I heard the first one.
(42:35):
I didn't.
Yeah.
So I just came across againsomewhere in the link, you guys read
through them, you'll comeacross that.
Which I thought was interesting.
Number one, I was justmisusing the word number two, that
they're distinct names foreither coming into or coming out
of sleep.
And it seems that they areboth amenable to facilitating lucid
(43:00):
dreaming.
For me, I have interest inlucid dreaming and certainly I have
some desire.
I guess now I'm thinking itwould be useful as far as maybe inner
work stuff or being more productive.
But primarily inducing luciddreaming has been desirable to me
(43:22):
specifically in pursuit of outof body experience.
Now I've shared previously,I'll share again now that I've had
two out of body experiences.
Now one thing that I wasinterested in about this discussion
was there was a comment fromsomebody that basically said that
(43:44):
lucid dreaming and out of bodyexperience was one and the same thing.
And I took exception to thatstatement having experienced both
that qualitatively I'verecognized in my own experience that
they are very different.
Now that doesn't make it true,but for me, and the reason I took
(44:05):
exception to it was becausethe qualities of the two were very
different.
Now not only that, and we didpull some links as far as research
that has been done around islucid dreaming the same as out of
body experience?
And the suggestion orconsensus seems to be there is a
difference.
Now they are aligned oradjacent insofar as access to higher
(44:30):
states of consciousness oraccess to subconscious elements,
however you want to describe it.
But one defining factor of anout of body experience is that it
can be experienced fromawakened state where a lucid dream
is a function of a sleep state.
(44:51):
Now when I had my first out ofbody experience, it was from a waking
state and it's only been since then.
Like that was my firstexperience with any of this.
Right.
Like I didn't experience lucid dreams.
I didn't experience out ofbody stuff.
I didn't experience any ofthis until after that event.
(45:12):
The reason I bring it up iswhen I dream in general and especially
with my lucid dreams, there'sa fogginess to it.
I don't know the transience isthe right word, but foggy is the
description I feel.
Right.
There's the unrealness in asense, right.
Where the out of bodyexperience had a quality of absolute
(45:37):
reality like a even more clearand real than here.
I didn't have that essence offogginess and detachment detached
from the body.
Yes, but detachment from Idon't know what.
It didn't feel like the dreamstate basically.
And so that's where I was.
(45:58):
Well, not only did it happenwhen I was awake, but also there
was a qualitative differencein my experience between lucid dreaming
and dreaming in general andthis out of body state.
I have great interest inpursuing out of body experience.
And so lucid dreaming is amechanism to try and continue to
(46:22):
try and re engage with thatbecause neither of those were intentional.
And I had tried last year atmy birthday to go into the deprivation
tank and had hoped, of courseI had too much expectation, this
is my assumption, that I hadtoo much expectation around it that
it was never going to happen.
But I had hoped that havingthat space of floating and without
(46:48):
sensory exposure that thismight help to get to that state.
I mentioned last episode,Darius Wright is somebody who is
up and coming or has a lot ofcontent on out of body experiences
and he does work with people.
I haven't paid him foranything, so I don't know how successful
his stuff is.
But he has reportedsignificant access to out of body
(47:12):
experience and a desire tohelp people get there.
So if that's something you'reinterested in, Darius Wright might
be a content creator to lookinto, but you do so at your own risk.
So as we've kind of touchedon, out of body experience and lucid
dream are related and there'sa couple of other things like meditative
(47:34):
states.
Now the other thing I want to talk.
Oh, sleep paralysis.
Now did you mention sleep paralysis?
When I came back into my bodyafter that first experience, there
was that paralysis.
I can say I've had sleepparalysis as far as I can recall
exactly once.
But it was a very intense,vivid experience.
(47:56):
So when I was in college, Iremember waking up, I guess it was
in the morning because I thinkthere was light.
I don't think it was like inthe middle of night, completely dark
and having sleep paralysis andhaving it be absolutely terrifying.
Like there was a feeling ofintense dread.
(48:18):
Wasn't just like, oh, I'mawake, I can't move my body.
There was definitely a senseof weight on the chest of like, you
know, the stereotypical KnightRider demon incubus, whatever you
call it, like somethingmalevolent presence.
Definitely that.
(48:39):
Definitely an idea of a dark,like literal dark shadow presence
somewhere near, like maybe ontop of me.
That's not.
That's kind of vague.
I actually don't rememberopening my eyes.
Interesting.
So.
So it was a non visual vision, right?
Yeah, an impression with myeyes closed of something visibly
(49:00):
dark and an intense buzzing.
Intense like.
And I remember thinking, oh,this is why there's the Lord of the
Flies or Beelzebub or whatever.
There's that, you know,demonic fly association.
Like, oh, this is what that's about.
And I remember having thisdual understanding of like, oh, this
(49:23):
is just that phenomenon.
Right.
And this kind of Westernscientific rationalization about
it.
And then this intensereligious fear.
This was my post religious.
I described myself at thatpoint as post religious because during
high school there were atleast a couple of years where I was
quite intensely religious.
(49:44):
Well, this was a little after that.
The only response I couldthink of was to like be an exorcist
and said something like in thename of Christ.
Some kind of exorcist kind of phrase.
Right.
I have no idea specifically,but I do remember blood being part
(50:04):
of my kind of phrasing of thisincantation to ward off this evil
presence, like just in case.
And I think it was definitely that.
It was like, this is terrifying.
I'm going to say this just incase it's an actual demon.
I didn't believe it wasn'tlike, oh my God, this is a demon.
(50:25):
But it was like absolutelythis sense of I don't know what else
to do and just in case.
So that was my only experiencewith sleep paralysis.
Interesting.
But it was very intense.
I mean, I was really quite shaken.
I don't remember what happenedafter that.
I don't remember if I justfell back asleep or, or what.
But I do remember beingabsolutely terrified.
(50:48):
I've never had sleep paralysisother than this one experience that
I described.
I've never even known of sleepparalysis before that.
It is actually in one of thesepapers noted that this is something
that is frequently reported aspart of OBE but also shared during
(51:09):
lucid dreaming.
So this has been aninteresting excursion into lucid
dreaming and I like that it'sbrought us into contact with a number
of things which we can kind ofrelate to lucid dream, out of body
experience, sleep paralysis,something called de identification,
(51:30):
which I think we'll get intomore, which is kind of related in
the literature related to outof body experience.
Not considered the same, butkind of adjacent part of more familiar
in awakening experiences andthat kind of thing, which I guess
(51:51):
we're going to get to nextepisode to some extent.
Yeah.
So we have a couple ofepisodes related to dreaming, social
dreaming with Dan Lawrence to discuss.
And I think some of what wetalked about here relates in understanding
how social dreaming can beused to try and get some deeper wisdom.
(52:12):
But also the Rupert Spirainterview that we're going to talk
about soon also had an elementof dream that I think is relevant
even though contextually itwas slightly different.
But I think it really kind ofrounds out this whole idea of dreaming
in context with the broadernon duality, awakening, absolute
(52:37):
reality theme that we talk about.
So stay tuned.
We look forward to the discussion.
And until next time, bye bye now.
Thank you for listening to theTracking Wisdom podcast.
Join us next time as wecontinue the discussion.
Don't forget to follow us onFacebook, Instagram and YouTube,
(52:58):
and visit www.eth-studio.comfor more information and content.
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