Thread: Lucid dreaming as a developmental tool toward higher brain function

I have been lucid dreaming for over 30 years. I believe it is a tool for the evolution of human potential. I believe that its purpose is not to enhance the dream experience, but rather the potential for accelerated and multi-dimensional thinking while awake. Dream experience is simply practice, like lifting weights is for sports competition.

Here is what I do. I can go into the lucid dream state within seconds of closing my eyes. For me, this method works best sitting up. I then pose a thought question. The question does not have to have a verbal construction. It can just be a general wondering. Immediately, answers appear in rapid-fire release. I usually need to awaken so as to not lose the information that is provided and also so as to not sink into the lucid experience, but to more closely integrate the lucid information with conscious thought. I go back and forth several times between the two states in just a few minutes while in an in-between consciousness. I can imagine making the process even more seamless, but not there yet.

I believe that a method like this is what Einstein used in his "thought experiments", which gives an indication of its potential.

Resources of others utilizing this technique would be very welcome.

JJ

Was actually just thinking about this 2 weeks ago or so. Cept for me, I can't do it on demand like you can.

I enter that state though when say, I wake up 2-3am in the middle of the night and usually, you wake up for that 2-3 seconds and you open one eye look aorund then once your head hits that pillow - 10 seconds later your gone - back into deep sleep.

What I did was, instead of letting yourself plunge into that abyss, I held it there, my head hit the pillow but I was consciously holding that state "Just" before it enters the deep sleep.
I remember how blissful it felt, it felt so numbing (for your physical body) and your brain just somehow seems to work @ 500% efficiency, everything seemed so seamless and effortless - just exactly as you described. Any question you think of doesn't have to have any verbal construction. It's just mere wondering and your mind instantaneously comes up with so many ideas at once, in so many shapes and forms.

Whilst in this state, it's like this is the ideal state for thinking - the brains catalyst. For it to be activated, the rest of the physical body must be in some sort of a numb state.

Thank you, COL.

Yes, that is exactly the state, and I first became familiar with it just as you describe. I have been trying to bring that state into conscious action for decades. It seems that the process cannot be rushed. I found it very hard to force it to evolve but my desire caused it to evolve at its own speed. And evolution is known to be a slow process.

Over the years, its seems that my desire led life to alter me to its own ways, the ways that would be more conducive to attaining more direct access to this state. Most of these changes were not entirely desireable to my ego. Ego wants control over everything and this process seems to be about allowing the unconscious to have more influence in the world of the ego. So my ego has had to be broken down through very difficult experiences.

Some people who meet me say that I seem to be only about half in this world, so that is another issue. I am accessing the physical world, the mental world, the emotional world, and the unconscious world simultaneously. This is too much input for the mind to contol by itself, so another paradigm for awareness has to be allowed for. Its a tricky process. I can understand how some people exploring these levels of conscious awareness can inadvertently slip into states commonly referred to as insanity.

JJ

I have heard that buddhist monks meditate in their dreams, can anyone confirm?

and how would meditating versus this work? would it be the same or different?

The best description for this type of thought in the english language I can come up with is non-conceptual thinking or non-verbal creative expression.

Eonnn,

I have practiced meditation for decades simultaneously with lucid dreaming experimentation. And they are both useful tools for accessing these states of awareness. I would say that they access it from slightly different directions. Just as meditation can become such a natural part of your awareness that you can slip into the meditative state at any time, so too once one is adept at lucidity the state can be slipped into at will. I believe that the goal of meditation is to maintain the meditative state 24/7. The peaceful bliss continues during wakefulness and sleep without interruption. The world is seen through the eyes of the meditator rather than the person meditating.

JJ

This explains how we come up with great ideas while sleeping. It happened to me sometimes waking up in the middle of the night saying: "Yes! That's it!" because of a problem with no solution bugging me the day before.

DH,

Yes, I used the technique during college Calculus when I didn't know how to solve a problem, which was almost always. I would slip into the dream state with the problem in mind and a solution would be shown. I would write it down and turn it in, not really understanding what I was writing. The professor said that my solutions were correct, but that I was using methods that he hadn't taught yet. I don't recommend this approach because even though I passed the course, I never had any idea what was going on and still know nothing about Calculus.

JJ

Thanks JJFrank, in today's western society it's not practical to be in a blissful state 24/7 it's also not well tolerated by others either. What would your advice be regarding this? Should it be used as merely a tool to accessing altered states and nothing more?

Eonnn,

I used to seek states of awareness as though they were independent of daily living. I imagined that I would someday transcend daily awareness and relocate consciousness to some ethereal world. I now believe that such a fantasy is unrealistic, unattainable and yet widely promoted by charlatans.

While I have been successful in the world of daily consciousness, I have never found a single expanded awareness experience that could not have beneficial effects on daily consciousness. Not that I always could find the beneficial effect. Sometimes the benefits need to be collected into a useable form, like wiring together electronic components to create a useful computing tool. They might not carry much apparent usefulness by themselves.

Also, all of the bad effects of conscious exploration that I have had where when I was seeking to escape daily life and relocate consciousness elsewehere. I believe that the best use of all explorations of consciousness is to become a better person in daily life. If you can imagine the most noble and enlightened consciousness possible on this planet, then also know that you are capable of even more than what you can imagine as the highest possibility. Then set out to find how to live that reality. Luicd dreaming is a good tool and very powerful toward making the impossible possible.

JJ

Thanks again JJFrank, what you said makes perfect sense on so many levels. In fact, when I woke up this morning the first thought in my mind was about these charlatans. They all cling onto one main desire "to know your life's purpose" and exploit that theme. I have read that once you know this you can live life more fully but on the same hand new age spirituality talks about how once you know your life purpose and have completed said purpose then you pass from this world to the next. The only thing this does is make people wonder endlessly about what their purpose is, with the charlatans never actually telling them anything concrete.

I have been using altered states of consciousness to escape reality most my life, but never applying it to waking life, instead just enjoying the experience in the moment. I was always striving for the afterlife like you said trying to relocate consciousness elsewhere but also soaking up as much experience as I could in the process. Finally, I am beginning to see that the benefits of such states don't need to wait until death, but can be applied in the here and now.

Eonnn,

A wise man was once asked why there were so many false teachers. He replied "Because there are so many false students".

While I call them charlatans because what they say is false, I also appreciate that they are able to make a living by inventing clever fairy tales that people want to purchase. JK Rowling does it, but she admits that it is fantasy. The only difference between her and the charlatans is that they say that the tales they spin are true.

As far as purpose goes, we always have a purpose. When we go to bed our purpose is to rest. When we awaken, our purpose is to get out of bed. We can go to a job with the purpose to earn money. These are all valid purposes. Our purpose does not have to be "end world hunger" to be valid. A purpose is simply a reason to move ahead. If you like living with passion, then use a purpose that you get excited about. It doesn't make you better, just more passionate. If that's what you want to be, be it.

If it is a really good purpose, then it will change very rapidly. A simple purpose can stay the same for a long time because you know exactly what it looks like and you simply pursue it until you arrive (then you create a new one). A really great purpose changes constantly because everytime you take a few steps toward it, you become wiser and from that perspective can see a better goal than the one you started with.

So don't worry about finding THE purpose. Just do what you love to do and do it with people you love to do things with.

JJ