Thread: A Treatise on Proof

So no responses at all, huh?

Okay then, I guess I can take that as a clear display of the disinterest in proof and truth on this site. Either that, or this was just another "TL;DR" post. Both choices are pretty sad in their own right, to me.

Enough said, I suppose. I'll officially give up trying to promote the idea of learning more about what we're doing in our dreams, and growing from that knowledge. "I'm right because I'm sure it happened to me" wins here; fair enough.

1. Since an LD is a moment of waking consciousness, it will be recorded by your brain as a waking memory. Unlike dreams, which are for the most part quickly discarded even by the brain’s short term memory system, waking memories are easily recorded and stand a much better chance of getting filed into long term memory when they have much emotional import, as a lucid dream might. So, lucid dreams are easy to prove, simply because you remember them as any other waking event. And yes, with careful discipline regular dreams can be filed in long term memory, but that only happens after you make a real effort, and therein lies the difference:

Actual LD’s stay with you, whether or not you want them to, but regular dreams take a real effort to remember. So, if you struggle to remember a dream that you were sure was lucid, it most likely was not.

These assertions are not true. At the very least, they are not universal. I have lost lucid dreams just as easily as I have lost non-lucid dreams (merely being able to remember, sometimes, the moment where I became lucid, and maybe a second two that surrounded the incident, but nothing more.) I have also had many non-lucid memories burned into my mind just as vividly as some of my lucid dreams.

2. When retelling the dream, if the dreamer says things like “And then this happened to me,” or “And then that dream character said that to me,” he is very likely retelling a non-lucid dream. Lucidity means, by definition, that the dreamer is consciously involved in the dream, and that he is actively affecting the dream, simply because he knows that everything in this dream is his. To tell it like someone else was in charge betrays the fact that you were not, and the dream was not lucid -- or at least not terribly lucid.

This, again, is untrue, as many recounts of waking memories are told in exactly the same fashion. You also seem to be under the misconception that lucidity means taking conscious control over the entire dreamscape - such as the actions of the dream characters. This is not true, and I would charge you to find any evidence of this. One can simply remain passive and "watch" the dream, as if watching a movie. Your characters will often continue to do their own thing. The 'movie' will play on. Being aware that it is a dream does not automatically facilitate 'controlling' the aspects of the dream, itself.

Again, these are only proofs to the dreamer himself. Even LaBerge couldn’t really prove the existence of lucid dreams to others very effectively. What I’m most concerned with here is what you’re proving to yourself -- I really don’t care what someone else thinks!

Lucid dreaming has been proven to the best level that is possible, at the time. It's no longer a fringe science, and its validity is accepted in even the most mainstream scientific circles.

Proof in other nocturnal events, like shared dreaming, is more complex, because it requires corroboration from someone who is not you; and need preferably also not just proof from the person with whom you are sharing a dream, but from an objective “referee.” This is because two people with very similar desires/history/day residue stand an excellent chance of believing and, more importantly, remembering later that they shared a dream, simply because their dreams were similar -- just as they planned, or were destined by similar or shared waking experience to have. Experiments can be set up with a third party referee instructing potential dream sharers before the dream, and interviewing after the dream to see if information he asked them to share actually was. This is a pretty simple test, which to my knowledge been tried many times, but has yet to succeed.

Proving shared dreaming is more complex because it is not something that can be proven by recounting of experiences alone. The reason for this is that there is a fundamental, scientific disconnect with the alleged phenomenon. Before any account of shared dreaming can be considered scientifically viable, we must first have proven the most basic concept: that human beings can share thoughts/memories/experiences/information, from within their own minds, over a distance. To this point, there is no widely-accepted confirmation of this very basic principle. Without such, any attempt to prove the experience of a shared dream, as more than coincidence, is fundamentally flawed.

On the subject of personal experiences: For someone who alleges to have as many lucid dreams as you have, you seem to be getting confused about a few things. Firstly, there are a few different ways to prove lucid dreaming to one self. One of my common experiences is being in a lucid dream and beginning to wake up, feeling my bed, feeling my pillow, etc. Without fully waking up, I will myself back into the dream with full-knowledge that I just almost woke up, and that I want to try to accomplish (whatever, before I wake back up).

Also, my 10 year old daughter, who has very little knowledge about lucid dreaming, has been telling me about her experiences. She will tell me about dreams where she will (for instance) find a really cool/unique shell on the beach and, with the knowledge that she is dreaming, tell her self that is sucks that she only has a little while to play with the shell before she wakes up.

I don't know how much experience you have with waking yourself up from a lucid dream or nightmare, but to imply that the clarity experienced, while doing so, is illusory requires a mountain of proof, in itself. When you are conscious in a dream (which, again, is a scientifically accepted phenomenon), and you make that decision to wake yourself up (which can sometimes fail) and then that consciousness blends in perfectly with the waking world, upon waking, it happens as an unbroken stream of said consciousness. It's not like waking up from a non-lucid dream, in which you can often wake up disoriented and with a sense of "where the hell am I? What just happened??"

With all the evidence stacked toward the validity of lucid dreaming, it does seem like you're making quite extraordinary accusations.

Lastly, I believe you should be a little more careful about mixing scientifically viable phenomena like lucid dreaming, with 'metaphysical' (highly unproven) phenomena like shared dreaming. It is like trying to put the claim that one can make fire from matches in the same bucket as someone making the claim that they can manipulate fire with their minds.

Largely, I think you ran into a bit of tl;dr, which might have been the reason many people haven't responded to this, but it seems like you might be faced with a few misconceptions, yourself. Really, your "I'm right because I'm sure [X] happened to me" works both ways, and you shouldn't be hanging on to your accusations and assumptions, simply because people haven't yet taken the time to comment on your post.

But hey, that's just my two cents.

Thank you for posting, Oneironaut! I'm truly glad someone paid attention. Now a couple of responses to your two cents:

These assertions are not true. At the very least, they are not universal. I have lost lucid dreams just as easily as I have lost non-lucid dreams (merely being able to remember, sometimes, the moment where I became lucid, and maybe a second two that surrounded the incident, but nothing more.) I have also had many non-lucid memories burned into my mind just as vividly as some of my lucid dreams.

Yes, they are true. And yes, of course their truth is not necessarily universal -- every rule has exceptions, especially when the human mind is involved. That I posted them badly on this abbreviated format is certainly a possibility, but I stand by my "assertions."

First, if an LD is not a moment of waking consciousness, then what is it? Next, you sort of confirmed my point by saying you've lost LD's to memory as easily as Non-LD's. That is exactly what I was saying -- that there is a strong possibility that many dreams that you thought were lucid may not have been, and as you struggle to remember them, you might tend to build lucidity into them (BTW, I'm using the generic "you'" here, I don't mean you specifically). And yes, as I said above, careful discipline or intense moments (like nightmares) can certainly make some non-LD's just as memorable. Some, not all. I should have been more clear about that.

This, again, is untrue, as many recounts of waking memories are told in exactly the same fashion. You also seem to be under the misconception that lucidity means taking conscious control over the entire dreamscape - such as the actions of the dream characters. This is not true, and I would charge you to find any evidence of this. One can simply remain passive and "watch" the dream, as if watching a movie. Your characters will often continue to do their own thing. The 'movie' will play on. Being aware that it is a dream does not automatically facilitate 'controlling' the aspects of the dream, itself.

I stand behind this statement as well, but perhaps I should have used the word "awareness" once or twice in the post. I definitely did not mean to imply that I thought the dreamer's consciousness must be in total control of the dream for an LD to occur. That rarely happens, and never happens in low-level lucids. However, to be truly lucid a dreamer must be aware that the place, plot, and characters that he is experiencing come from his own mind, and nowhere else, even when he's watching the dream as if it were a movie (an extremely low level of lucidity, IMHO). To assume that "it's all from somewhere else" either means that you are not entirely lucid, if at all, or else you are looking at the dream as something else, like an OBE or shared dream.

So yes, "Being aware that it is a dream does not automatically facilitate 'controlling' the aspects of the dream, itself," but you still need to be aware that you are dreaming to be lucid.

You are correct about waking memories being recalled in exactly the same fashion as false lucids, but you left out the part where the universe in which those waking events occurred was not completely of your making. So yes, things would have happened to you, and people would have been spontaneously speaking to you. Again you make my point for me -- lucid dreaming awareness implies that you understand the source of the world you are in, and to describe dreams with words like “And then this happened to me,” or “And then that dream character said that to me,” implies that you think things are happening to you that were not invented by your own mind. Again, this has nothing to do with controlling the dream, it has to do with knowing that the dream, in the end, is you.

Lucid dreaming has been proven to the best level that is possible, at the time. It's no longer a fringe science, and its validity is accepted in even the most mainstream scientific circles.

Okay, I'll give you that. I was stating that opinion simply to lead to my point about how important it is for the dreamer to prove his LD'ing to himself. In the end I really don't care what science has proven. Odd, huh?

Proving shared dreaming is more complex because it is not something that can be proven by recounting of experiences alone. The reason for this is that there is a fundamental, scientific disconnect with the alleged phenomenon. Before any account of shared dreaming can be considered scientifically viable, we must first have proven the most basic concept: that human beings can share thoughts/memories/experiences/information, from within their own minds, over a distance. To this point, there is no widely-accepted confirmation of this very basic principle. Without such, any attempt to prove the experience of a shared dream, as more than coincidence, is fundamentally flawed.

Well said, and I mostly agree, but I'm not totally sure I follow your final logic: For instance, we proved the existence of, say, fire, thousands of years before science proved what it physically is. Do we really need to wait for science to prove the physics of shared dreaming before we can prove it exists? That doesn't sound right. What did I miss?

On the subject of personal experiences: For someone who alleges to have as many lucid dreams as you have, you seem to be getting confused about a few things. Firstly, there are a few different ways to prove lucid dreaming to one self. One of my common experiences is being in a lucid dream and beginning to wake up, feeling my bed, feeling my pillow, etc. Without fully waking up, I will myself back into the dream with full-knowledge that I just almost woke up, and that I want to try to accomplish (whatever, before I wake back up).

I believe I said, in bold italics, that "Proof in LD’ing, for me, is very simple and comes in two parts." I wouldn't have include that "for me" bit if I didn't mean it. Of course there are other ways to prove lucidity to yourself! I've even used the method you listed many times with much success. Indeed, I was hoping that one thing this thread would lead to is people posting their own methods for confirming lucidity.

[On a personal note, I don't feel that I was confused. That I offer unusual thoughts about LD'ing does not imply confusion, but perhaps an interest in looking further into the subject. Those thoughts could certainly be wrong, but they are not the result of confusion. And I was not "alleging" anything about my LD count -- I just loosely added up the averages from my journals over 30 years, and, though I got a much higher number, I figured 2k was the max to list before triggering ridicule (and accusations of allegation). I suppose I should have gone with "A lot," too. ]

Also, my 10 year old daughter, who has very little knowledge about lucid dreaming, has been telling me about her experiences. She will tell me about dreams where she will (for instance) find a really cool/unique shell on the beach and, with the knowledge that she is dreaming, tell her self that is sucks that she only has a little while to play with the shell before she wakes up.

That's a nice story, and reminds me fondly of attempts to bring back toys and ice cream cones when I was around her age. I'm not sure how it fits in here, though; did I miss something again?

I don't know how much experience you have with waking yourself up from a lucid dream or nightmare, but to imply that the clarity experienced, while doing so, is illusory requires a mountain of proof, in itself. When you are conscious in a dream (which, again, is a scientifically accepted phenomenon), and you make that decision to wake yourself up (which can sometimes fail) and then that consciousness blends in perfectly with the waking world, upon waking, it happens as an unbroken stream of said consciousness. It's not like waking up from a non-lucid dream, in which you can often wake up disoriented and with a sense of "where the hell am I? What just happened??"

I have no idea where that paragraph came from, or what it has to do with anything I said. When did I say anything about illusory, or even clarity, for that matter? Was it because I didn't clearly say that some non-lucids can certainly be remembered as well as lucids? If so, then I already discussed above. (Also, isn't the act of waking yourself from a nightmare a lucid event?} I'd appreciate it if you would clarify this, since to me you are stating the obvious, as these things happen pretty regularly to pretty much everybody -- with exceptions, of course!.

With all the evidence stacked toward the validity of lucid dreaming, it does seem like you're making quite extraordinary accusations.

Aside perhaps from my facetious “because I said so” comment, I'm pretty sure I didn't make any accusations about anything, much less extraordinary ones. That was not the point of this post, and I am sorry you got that impression. That said, I'd appreciate it if you could list these accusations, especially the extraordinary ones, so I can admit to them or apologize for them.

Lastly, I believe you should be a little more careful about mixing scientifically viable phenomena like lucid dreaming, with 'metaphysical' (highly unproven) phenomena like shared dreaming. It is like trying to put the claim that one can make fire from matches in the same bucket as someone making the claim that they can manipulate fire with their minds.

Right you are about that -- I guess I was trying to jam too many things under one umbrella, just to get it out there. This stuff should definitely be treated separately. That said, I still think it is paramount that a lucid dreamer finds a way to prove his experience to himself, other than to simply say "I did it."

Largely, I think you ran into a bit of tl;dr, which might have been the reason many people haven't responded to this, but it seems like you might be faced with a few misconceptions, yourself. Really, your "I'm right because I'm sure [X] happened to me" works both ways, and you shouldn't be hanging on to your accusations and assumptions, simply because people haven't yet taken the time to comment on your post.

Still, that whole tl;dr thing bothers me. This stuff can often take a lot of words to properly explain, and to ignore something simply because it might take five minutes to read is distressing on a lot of levels.

A funny thing about that "I'm right because I'm sure [X] happened to me' works both ways" bit: Virtually all of your examples and arguments were based on your personal experience. That said, you are correct, and I have been the victim of telling myself something was true simply because "it happened to me" many many times, and that was a real obstacle towards developing my LD skills and experience. That is also why I struggle to prove that validity of my own LD's to myself first, so I don't get stuck in another rut of non-LD's that behave just like real LD's...

Again, Oneironaut, if you are still here ( tl;dr and all), thank you very much for responding, and I hope you come right back with more responses that explain why I am wrong. That is, in the end, how we learn.

Yes, they are true. And yes, of course their truth is not necessarily universal -- every rule has exceptions, especially when the human mind is involved. That I posted them badly on this abbreviated format is certainly a possibility, but I stand by my "assertions."

Then maybe there was some misunderstanding of your point, on my part. We'll see...

First, if an LD is not a moment of waking consciousness, then what is it?

I believe you are making the mistake of giving 'lucidity' a single value. There are 'levels' of dream awareness, just as there are 'levels' of waking world awareness. Yes, one can make the generalization that someone is either 'awake' or they are 'not,' but this an over-simplification, really. While you are awake, there are levels of awareness that you can experience. Even now, while you are reading this, you are 'awake.' You are 'aware.' But are you just as 'aware' as you are if, say, you'd just survived a near collision with an oncoming vehicle? And how does that level of 'awakeness/awareness differ from, say, if you just woke up in the morning, and are groggy, sluggish, and only loosely oriented?

Lucid dreaming works much like this. Every lucid dream is not a 'BAM-OMG-IM-SO-AWARE-RIGHT-NOW', just like every waking-world moment is like that. What happens when you do something extremely mundane, while you are awake? Your conscious mind beings to wander. You go into autopilot. You are still 'awake,' and you are still functioning, but in these moments, your awareness wanes. These moments are much harder to recal, with full clarity, than when you are in a situation that has you feeling vibrant and full of life.

Next, you sort of confirmed my point by saying you've lost LD's to memory as easily as Non-LD's. That is exactly what I was saying -- that there is a strong possibility that many dreams that you thought were lucid may not have been, and as you struggle to remember them, you might tend to build lucidity into them (BTW, I'm using the generic "you'" here, I don't mean you specifically). And yes, as I said above, careful discipline or intense moments (like nightmares) can certainly make some non-LD's just as memorable. Some, not all. I should have been more clear about that.

Now don't get me wrong - I'm not saying that I don't have moments where I might have mistaken lucidity for a like sensation. In fact, I'm as careful as possible to include this distinction in my journal entries. When I'm not sure about it, I will definitely note it. And, I do completely acknowledge that the line between lucid and not can be very blurry at times. In this, we both agree (and many people on this site do accept and explain that, in their journals, as well). But it seems to me like you are trying to discount many people's experiences for nothing more than how they are wording them. Sure, there is a margin of error, in that we may not always be 100% sure about whether or not we were conscious (just like we can not always be 100% sure that some of the events we remember, from a dream, happened exactly the way that they did), but I believe I'm familiar enough with the lucid state to be fairly sure I had attained it. Can I be 100% sure? No. Just like you can't be 100% sure that the memories from your childhood happened exactly the way they did.

I stand behind this statement as well, but perhaps I should have used the word "awareness" once or twice in the post. I definitely did not mean to imply that I thought the dreamer's consciousness must be in total control of the dream for an LD to occur. That rarely happens, and never happens in low-level lucids. However, to be truly lucid a dreamer must be aware that the place, plot, and characters that he is experiencing come from his own mind, and nowhere else, even when he's watching the dream as if it were a movie (an extremely low level of lucidity, IMHO). To assume that "it's all from somewhere else" either means that you are not entirely lucid, if at all, or else you are looking at the dream as something else, like an OBE or shared dream.

So yes, "Being aware that it is a dream does not automatically facilitate 'controlling' the aspects of the dream, itself," but you still need to be aware that you are dreaming to be lucid.

Ok, then this must have been an instance of bad wording. There is no question from me (or anyone here with any level of experience) that the person must know that everything going on around them is a dream, to be lucid. In fact, that is the most basic principle we teach around here. I recognize that not everyone here is completely knowlegeable of the concept, but I think your portrayal of an ignorance of that concept as being 'the norm' around here is kind of exaggerated. (I do also see that you acknowledged that lucidity/awareness does have 'levels,' so I retract what I'd said, earlier.)

You are correct about waking memories being recalled in exactly the same fashion as false lucids, but you left out the part where the universe in which those waking events occurred was not completely of your making. So yes, things would have happened to you, and people would have been spontaneously speaking to you. Again you make my point for me -- lucid dreaming awareness implies that you understand the source of the world you are in, and to describe dreams with words like “And then this happened to me,” or “And then that dream character said that to me,” implies that you think things are happening to you that were not invented by your own mind. Again, this has nothing to do with controlling the dream, it has to do with knowing that the dream, in the end, is you.

Aha. Now we are getting somewhere.
My friend, what you are arguing, here, is semantics. It is a misinterpretation of what is being said, because of the words that are being used. Now, I can only speak for myself, but I've been around here long enough to know that what I'm about to say goes far beyond just myself, but that many people in this community word things the same way:

When I'm writing my journal, I write the way I would recount the story as if I actually had the experience, in a waking world context. Just because I write "and then the fire-breathing dragon blew fire at me. Then, I, knowing that I was dreaming, stepped out in front of the beast, put up a single hand before me, and created a force field around myself to shield myself from the dragon's attack" does not mean that I'm not 100% aware of the fact that the dragon was a dream creature of my own creation, inside my own head. It is simply the most comfortable, familiar way - for many people, in general - to recount an experience. Yes, when I'm retelling a non-lucid dream, I will use the same language (as if I'm actually living the experience). The distinction doesn't show in the style of writing - as well it shouldn't. When I write out my dreams, I write them as I am experiencing the waking world. What changes is my knowledge that the elements are within a dream.

Well said, and I mostly agree, but I'm not totally sure I follow your final logic: For instance, we proved the existence of, say, fire, thousands of years before science proved what it physically is. Do we really need to wait for science to prove the physics of shared dreaming before we can prove it exists? That doesn't sound right. What did I miss?

You missed the fact that fire - unlike shared dreaming - does not have to combat concepts like psychological delusion and lack of known, physical possibility, for it to exist. It existed long before us, and could never be mistaken for anything other than fire. As humans, we have no choice but to accept the existence of fire. "Hey, look. That's fire. Right there. There it is." There is no one (with a brain) that could honestly smirk at the statement and say "pfft. That's not fire. Fire doesn't exist." It is not some pyschological concept that our brains could just fool us into believing in.

Shared dreaming, on the other hand, is a(n alleged), neurological event. There is no empirical, undeniable, scientifically-scrutinized proof for it. None. Zero (and I say this as someone who is well-aware of some scientific institutions that have had very interesting results that suggest the possibility of it's existence. But the key words here are "suggest" and "possibility"). You cannot equate shared dreaming with something that does have objective, empirical proof - such as fire. Look at it this way: The scientific community, as a whole, is divided even on whether black holes exist, and there is inconceivably more evidence for black holes than there is of shared dreaming.

Fire, though, has not been deniable since the dawn of time. You're comparing apples and oranges.

I believe I said, in bold italics, that "Proof in LD’ing, for me, is very simple and comes in two parts." I wouldn't have include that "for me" bit if I didn't mean it. Of course there are other ways to prove lucidity to yourself! I've even used the method you listed many times with much success. Indeed, I was hoping that one thing this thread would lead to is people posting their own methods for confirming lucidity.

[On a personal note, I don't feel that I was confused. That I offer unusual thoughts about LD'ing does not imply confusion, but perhaps an interest in looking further into the subject. Those thoughts could certainly be wrong, but they are not the result of confusion. And I was not "alleging" anything about my LD count -- I just loosely added up the averages from my journals over 30 years, and, though I got a much higher number, I figured 2k was the max to list before triggering ridicule (and accusations of allegation). I suppose I should have gone with "A lot," too. ]

I think I got a little confused with your wordage, actually. It seemed like you were dipping into the "how can you all be so sure lucid dreams exist?" (...which I found was a strange contradiction to your noting that you've had lucid dreams, but wasn't really sure) I believe it was your comparing lucid dreaming to shared dreaming that made me think this, and respond in kind.

As far as my use of 'alleging' goes: I simply say that because all accounts of how many lucid dreams we have are 'alleged.' There is no empirical proof that any of us have had the numbers of lucid dreams that we say we have. I'm not calling you a liar, I was simply being quite careful (read as: technical) with my words.

That's a nice story, and reminds me fondly of attempts to bring back toys and ice cream cones when I was around her age. I'm not sure how it fits in here, though; did I miss something again?

I have no idea where that paragraph came from, or what it has to do with anything I said. When did I say anything about illusory, or even clarity, for that matter? Was it because I didn't clearly say that some non-lucids can certainly be remembered as well as lucids? If so, then I already discussed above. (Also, isn't the act of waking yourself from a nightmare a lucid event?} I'd appreciate it if you would clarify this, since to me you are stating the obvious, as these things happen pretty regularly to pretty much everybody -- with exceptions, of course!.

Aside perhaps from my facetious “because I said so” comment, I'm pretty sure I didn't make any accusations about anything, much less extraordinary ones. That was not the point of this post, and I am sorry you got that impression. That said, I'd appreciate it if you could list these accusations, especially the extraordinary ones, so I can admit to them or apologize for them.

I'm going to chalk my earlier responses up to having been confused about whether you were trying to imply lucid dreaming might not exist (and be closer to such metaphysical concepts as shared dreaming). I wasn't quite able to understand what you were saying, but I get it now.

Right you are about that -- I guess I was trying to jam too many things under one umbrella, just to get it out there. This stuff should definitely be treated separately. That said, I still think it is paramount that a lucid dreamer finds a way to prove his experience to himself, other than to simply say "I did it."

I agree, but what do you propose? Because someone says "I did it," on the forum, doesn't mean that they haven't otherwise proved it to themselves. I'm not sure how much time you've spent actually going through the dream journals, here, but people (maybe not all) tend to be pretty clear about explaining their experiences/sensations/thoughts through their experiences. Sure, if you are just reading some random thread, someone's might just come up and say "yeah, I got lucid last night," but that does not mean that there isn't a lot of context you aren't missing just because it's not posted up on the screen. In my experience here, nearly everyone who's been here for a while knows and has demonstrated the fundamental understanding of what lucidity is, the sensations associated with it, and the factors to determine whether it was a lucid dream, wasn't a lucid dream, or was just too vague/obscure to tell the difference.

Still, that whole tl;dr thing bothers me. This stuff can often take a lot of words to properly explain, and to ignore something simply because it might take five minutes to read is distressing on a lot of levels.

I know the feeling. My posts can often get a little long, and I know that it may ultimately cause people to not read them all. That just comes with the territory. I know that there are plenty of walls of text that I just wont dive into reading - even if I find them somewhat interesting, at the onset. Hell, I could only wish I had enough time to read all of the interesting posts that come up on this site. Lol. Not possible.

A funny thing about that "I'm right because I'm sure [X] happened to me' works both ways" bit: Virtually all of your examples and arguments were based on your personal experience.

I would never deny that (m)any of my opinions are formed by personal experience (and you'll find that I'm usually pretty anal about openly admitting when something is 'personally,' or 'in my humble opinion').

Again, Oneironaut, if you are still here ( tl;dr and all), thank you very much for responding, and I hope you come right back with more responses that explain why I am wrong. That is, in the end, how we learn.

My pleasure. Sorry about misunderstanding part of the point you were trying to make. I think it was just the jumping back and forth between lucid and shared dreaming, that threw me off.

Sageous, this post is a little tl;dr, but i read it, and i have to say, although this really isnt on topic, but i think that this whole posts revolve around the deeper working of dreams and lucid dreams. Both you and Oneironaut have had many Lucid dreams (my assumption based on your about me section on your profiles) and this topic seems to be more oriented towards more advanced lucid dreamers, and im going to guess there are quite a few of them here, but there are also (relativly speaking) newbies such as myself that will not read this. Its like learning to play the piano; some people just want to learn a song, others will want to learn history and theory.

Quote
1. Since an LD is a moment of waking consciousness, it will be recorded by your brain as a waking memory. Unlike dreams, which are for the most part quickly discarded even by the brain’s short term memory system, waking memories are easily recorded and stand a much better chance of getting filed into long term memory when they have much emotional import, as a lucid dream might. So, lucid dreams are easy to prove, simply because you remember them as any other waking event. And yes, with careful discipline regular dreams can be filed in long term memory, but that only happens after you make a real effort, and therein lies the difference:
/Quote (I dont know how to do the regular quote xD)

Im sure that many people have lost many lucid dreams due to forgetting them, as with any dream. Lucid dreams, although we can harness them and induce them with practice are (as far as i know) natural and it is usually safe to say that everyone has had at least one dream in which they know that they are dreaming. However, it is possible that they don't realize the implications of that fact; they don't realize that there is no danger in their actions or that they can control their actions or what ever else can be regarded as this apparent "proof" of a lucid dream. Dream journals are kept to remind the brain of the importance of dreams. Because you don't normally access the information gathered/learned in a dream in real life, they become less important to you and it and the brain discards the information. So, by writing down and recording your experiences in real life, your brain realizes that the information that it is normally discarding is important, and so it stops discarding it. A lucid dream in which you realize the full implications of your dream has a more emotional impact on your life, thus you remember it. On the contrary, a "weaker" lucid dream will not spark that importance and need to use the dream information later.

QUOTE
Actual LD’s stay with you, whether or not you want them to, but regular dreams take a real effort to remember. So, if you struggle to remember a dream that you were sure was lucid, it most likely was not.
/QUOTE

Again, not necessarily. This whole thing about the levels of lucidity impacts the probability you will remember it.

QUOTE
2. When retelling the dream, if the dreamer says things like “And then this happened to me,” or “And then that dream character said that to me,” he is very likely retelling a non-lucid dream. Lucidity means, by definition, that the dreamer is consciously involved in the dream, and that he is actively affecting the dream, simply because he knows that everything in this dream is his. To tell it like someone else was in charge betrays the fact that you were not, and the dream was not lucid -- or at least not terribly lucid.
/QUOTE
I guess depending on how experienced you are with lucid dreaming, you probably are <i>not</i> in complete control of your environment. You can - as you probably know - as you gain more experience, affect more aspects of your dream consciously. If you can agree that we are in full control of our lives when we are awake, think of it like this. "You are walking down a street, and then you see your friend down the road. You say hi. He said Hi back. Then it began to rain." How you describe that from a first person perspective to someone else effectively? "I was walking down a street, and I saw my friend. I said hi and then he said hi to me. Then the rain started." People in DJ entries communicate what they have experienced in a dream as they would something in real life. There is no syntax to describe a dream. People just write it how they want, their preference.
QUOTE
Again, these are only proofs to the dreamer himself. Even LaBerge couldn’t really prove the existence of lucid dreams to others very effectively. What I’m most concerned with here is what you’re proving to yourself -- I really don’t care what someone else thinks!
/QUOTE
Proof of what? That someone was conscious in a dream? In my opinion, unless someone invents a machine that can see the thought process and mental imagery of someone while they are dreaming, it is impossible to prove to others of something that is in your own brain. Its like trying to describe the color blue without using any examples or other colors. You can picture it in your mind, but you cant describe it.

QUOTE
Proof in other nocturnal events, like shared dreaming, is more complex, because it requires corroboration from someone who is not you; and need preferably also not just proof from the person with whom you are sharing a dream, but from an objective “referee.” This is because two people with very similar desires/history/day residue stand an excellent chance of believing and, more importantly, remembering later that they shared a dream, simply because their dreams were similar -- just as they planned, or were destined by similar or shared waking experience to have. Experiments can be set up with a third party referee instructing potential dream sharers before the dream, and interviewing after the dream to see if information he asked them to share actually was. This is a pretty simple test, which to my knowledge been tried many times, but has yet to succeed.
/QUOTE

I personally do not believe in shared dreaming; if shared dreaming was in fact true, it would mean that all human beings have a potential for telekinesis or at very least, telecommunication. All the stuff about the brain unlocking the full potential and ability to do things it cant usually i think is just BS.

QUOTE
There seems to be a great deal of “because I said so” going on on this site, and I wonder how often someone has been fooled into believing that she had an LD, or a shared dream, because that is exactly what she wanted, and the real experience never happened. I personally call them False LD’s and they have happened to me thousands of times.
/QUOTE
Part of this is because the person was excited that they had a LD and when people start to counter that thought, they get defensive. NO ONE can prove someone else wrong about that persons dreams. What ever though processes where going on at the time were going on and if someone truly believes they were in control, for all intents and purposes they were, and no one (especially over the internet for gods sake) can prove them wrong.

QUOTE
Let it be clear that I truly want to believe in this stuff, and have made it my life’s work to prove it’s all real, or not, and to find out where it all leads, if it is real. That is not the mindset of a skeptic, by any measure. I am in no way trying to say, “It can’t be.” Instead I fear that it has already been discovered “To be,” but those who did it have chosen to believe, rather than to prove.
/QUOTE
LDs are what you make of them. If you have an LD and dont believe you had any control, you didnt have an LD (Which is paradoxal really...)
But really, the people that are here to stay (as in on these forums) accept these "limitations" of lucid dreaming and enjoy it anyway. Do you remember the feeling of satisfaction with your first lucid dream? If you keep believing and having lucid dreams, there is really no reason to get over-critical of trying to prove they dont exist. If someone comes here with the express purpouse of denouncing LDs, then they can go somewhere else (like ld4all for all i care lol just kidding). Cause then this and all the other sites would turn into an astral projection forum - where there is two sides, the believers and the non-believers. I personally think astral projection is just a lucid dream, but im not going to go to an astral projection forum and try to convince everyone that. They have enough controversy already. There has been attempts to prove LDs at least on the physiological level and they worked. That is why LDrs have this great community, they all share something that is just so amazing; the though of even being able to fly without a plane, to controlling everyone and everything in their dream.

So that is why, my friend, I believe (even with my limited experience with lucid dreams) that true proof is not necessary. After people learn how to induce their lucid dreams, even if they really arnt in control, even if lucid dreams dont even exist, people are satisfied. After all, you can play a really nice song on the piano as long as you know the basics of how to do it.
Peace.
-Alias





I think I got carpal tunnel from this post. xD


Holy crap i thought i lost all of this because my session timed out while i was typing and i had to re-login lol

I was put off from answering here because the OP has an aggressive, almost angry tone, and makes some strange claims that I can't agree with.

When I become aware that I'm having a dream, I KNOW I'm lucid. I might even confirm it with a couple reality checks, but by that point I already know. Why is it necessary to prove it? To use the fire analogy presented above, if you build a fire and cook your dinner in it, is it necessary to prove to yourself that you actually built a fire? I think the real question here is semantic... what's the difference between knowing and proving? And this is probably unanswerable, because let's not forget, in the entire history of human thought, no-one hasbeen able to so much as prove that reality itself exists. We haven't made it past "I know, therefore I am". Unless I missed the memo on that one. So, while what we know as concrete reality does have a very different character to it than dreams, we still can't actually prove that they aren't essentially the same type of phenomenon. Basically because the only apparatus we have for doing experiments is our own subjective senses sending signals to the brain. We have no way to prove the validity of any external devices because we can't really prove that such devices themselves even exit. If we can't prove the difference between waking reality and an ordinary dream, how then can we prove a difference between two different kinds of dreams? I'm afraid it's an area where we can never have actual proof of the kind you seem to want - we can only rely on our own experiences.

However, to be truly lucid a dreamer must be aware that the place, plot, and characters that he is experiencing come from his own mind, and nowhere else, even when he's watching the dream as if it were a movie (an extremely low level of lucidity, IMHO). To assume that "it's all from somewhere else" either means that you are not entirely lucid, if at all, or else you are looking at the dream as something else, like an OBE or shared drea

There's a basic mistake here - in that while every element of a dream is produced by your mind, it comes from the subconscious. Not from consciousness. So while it's true that every element of the dream is created by your mind, including the dream environment itself, in many lucid dreams we fail to recognize the full implications that everything is a creation of our own mind. To realize this means you're having the highest level of lucidity, or at least an extremely high level of it. Personally I haven't even reached that level yet, though I have been absolutely aware that I was experiencing a dream and able to control some aspects of it. You've already admitted that you acknowledge 'levels of lucidity', so I don't understand why you automatically expect every lucid dream to come will full awareness that every character and every element in the dream is a mental fabrication? This statement seems to imply that anything less than absolute highest level lucidity is not lucidity at all.

Oneironaut:

Well, we are now both definitely on the same page...I had a feeling that would happen.

Just a couple short notes:

Originally Posted by Oneironaut

Then maybe there was some misunderstanding of your point, on my part. We'll see...

I believe you are making the mistake of giving 'lucidity' a single value. There are 'levels' of dream awareness, just as there are 'levels' of waking world awareness. Yes, one can make the generalization that someone is either 'awake' or they are 'not,' but this an over-simplification, really. While you are awake, there are levels of awareness that you can experience. Even now, while you are reading this, you are 'awake.' You are 'aware.' But are you just as 'aware' as you are if, say, you'd just survived a near collision with an oncoming vehicle? And how does that level of 'awakeness/awareness differ from, say, if you just woke up in the morning, and are groggy, sluggish, and only loosely oriented?

Lucid dreaming works much like this. Every lucid dream is not a 'BAM-OMG-IM-SO-AWARE-RIGHT-NOW', just like every waking-world moment is like that. What happens when you do something extremely mundane, while you are awake? Your conscious mind beings to wander. You go into autopilot. You are still 'awake,' and you are still functioning, but in these moments, your awareness wanes. These moments are much harder to recal, with full clarity, than when you are in a situation that has you feeling vibrant and full of life.

When I reread, in the context of your response, my statement "... if an LD is not a moment of waking consciousness, then what is it?" I realized that I made semantic error that for me is almost a nervous tick. If I had said an LD is a moment of self-awareness in a dream, would that have made a difference?

You are absolutely right, it is not about being awake, but rather about being aware. That makes a huge difference, given that awareness is a rarity in waking life as well, and waking lucidity certainly exists, I think. I could not agree more with the rest of this paragraph.

Now don't get me wrong - I'm not saying that I don't have moments where I might have mistaken lucidity for a like sensation. In fact, I'm as careful as possible to include this distinction in my journal entries. When I'm not sure about it, I will definitely note it. And, I do completely acknowledge that the line between lucid and not can be very blurry at times. In this, we both agree (and many people on this site do accept and explain that, in their journals, as well). But it seems to me like you are trying to discount many people's experiences for nothing more than how they are wording them. Sure, there is a margin of error, in that we may not always be 100% sure about whether or not we were conscious (just like we can not always be 100% sure that some of the events we remember, from a dream, happened exactly the way that they did), but I believe I'm familiar enough with the lucid state to be fairly sure I had attained it. Can I be 100% sure? No. Just like you can't be 100% sure that the memories from your childhood happened exactly the way they did.

Good point, and you're right, I think. I'll try harder.

That said, perhaps I could readjust by, instead of questioning the wording of his dream in a DJ, suggesting that the the dreamer should question how he remembers it himself. This way my "as if it were a waking memory" step might still be valid. In other words, if, while the dreamer is retelling the dream to himself upon waking, he finds himself grasping at vagaries, or adding things that were not there, or remembers honestly that it did not seem like it was a world of his creation he was wandering, and his dream-character self just thought it was lucid, maybe then he'll question his state. If that exercise is used then, after that, whoever is reading that dreamer's DJ (including him) can do so with the clear understanding that this was indeed an LD.

[QUOTE]Aha. Now we are getting somewhere.
My friend, what you are arguing, here, is semantics. It is a misinterpretation of what is being said, because of the words that are being used. Now, I can only speak for myself, but I've been around here long enough to know that what I'm about to say goes far beyond just myself, but that many people in this community word things the same way:

When I'm writing my journal, I write the way I would recount the story as if I actually had the experience, in a waking world context. Just because I write "and then the fire-breathing dragon blew fire at me. Then, I, knowing that I was dreaming, stepped out in front of the beast, put up a single hand before me, and created a force field around myself to shield myself from the dragon's attack" does not mean that I'm not 100% aware of the fact that the dragon was a dream creature of my own creation, inside my own head. It is simply the most comfortable, familiar way - for many people, in general - to recount an experience. Yes, when I'm retelling a non-lucid dream, I will use the same language (as if I'm actually living the experience). The distinction doesn't show in the style of writing - as well it shouldn't. When I write out my dreams, I write them as I am experiencing the waking world. What changes is my knowledge that the elements are within a dream. [QUOTE] Understood, mea culpa, and please see my last paragraph, as it fits nicely here too.

You missed the fact that fire - unlike shared dreaming - does not have to combat concepts like psychological delusion and lack of known, physical possibility, for it to exist. It existed long before us, and could never be mistaken for anything other than fire. As humans, we have no choice but to accept the existence of fire. "Hey, look. That's fire. Right there. There it is." There is no one (with a brain) that could honestly smirk at the statement and say "pfft. That's not fire. Fire doesn't exist." It is not some pyschological concept that our brains could just fool us into believing in.

Shared dreaming, on the other hand, is a(n alleged), neurological event. There is no empirical, undeniable, scientifically-scrutinized proof for it. None. Zero (and I say this as someone who is well-aware of some scientific institutions that have had very interesting results that suggest the possibility of it's existence. But the key words here are "suggest" and "possibility"). You cannot equate shared dreaming with something that does have objective, empirical proof - such as fire. Look at it this way: The scientific community, as a whole, is divided even on whether black holes exist, and there is inconceivably more evidence for black holes than there is of shared dreaming.

Fire, though, has not been deniable since the dawn of time. You're comparing apples and oranges.

I think I got a little confused with your wordage, actually. It seemed like you were dipping into the "how can you all be so sure lucid dreams exist?" (...which I found was a strange contradiction to your noting that you've had lucid dreams, but wasn't really sure) I believe it was your comparing lucid dreaming to shared dreaming that made me think this, and respond in kind.

Ah, but how many dream-sharers out there are already sure that shared dreams are as real as fire, and their reality just as eternal? That is where I was going with this, I think. So, if you go with dream-sharing as real, then it is apples to apples. But you know what? You were right... this should be about LD'ing only, just to avoid further confusion...

I agree, but what do you propose? Because someone says "I did it," on the forum, doesn't mean that they haven't otherwise proved it to themselves. I'm not sure how much time you've spent actually going through the dream journals, here, but people (maybe not all) tend to be pretty clear about explaining their experiences/sensations/thoughts through their experiences. Sure, if you are just reading some random thread, someone's might just come up and say "yeah, I got lucid last night," but that does not mean that there isn't a lot of context you aren't missing just because it's not posted up on the screen. In my experience here, nearly everyone who's been here for a while knows and has demonstrated the fundamental understanding of what lucidity is, the sensations associated with it, and the factors to determine whether it was a lucid dream, wasn't a lucid dream, or was just too vague/obscure to tell the difference.

And here we stumble into (or I remember) another personal quirk on my part: In my mind, dreams are a very personal thing, both in terms of privacy and in actually understanding what the hell is going on. Because of that, I do not keep a DJ on this site, and do not read those of other people -- to me that would be wrong. Major dysfunction, I know, but that's me. The real problem here was that I made assumptions about DJ entries that I had no right to make, and failed to notice the level of import members here place on those entries. For that I apologize, and consider it a lesson learned.

So I'm glad we're on the same page now, and also that the process of getting there added some very importance nuance to the conversation.

Now I think we're getting down to the nitty-gritty. I think your real beef is with shared dreaming. You confused the issue by adding in all the stuff about lucidity. Maybe it would be best to start a new thread that's focused solely on proof of shared dreaming?

**EDIT**

I also think this is a part of what you're after -

I believe the majority of people involved in the IOSDP are proceeding from the assumption (a good one IMO) that shared dreaming - even more than lucidity - depends to a large extent on confidence and positive outlook. To go into it with a negative outlook is likely to cause failure. Skepticism itself can be a detriment. It's possible that skeptics are incapable of shared dreaming due entirely to said skepticism. So I tend to agree with the general consensus that open-minded positivity is the best way to approach it. Especially for those who are new to it and still trying to ascertain whether their experiences even ARE shared dreams or just similar day residue. I'd think proof would be more for those who are advanced and have reached a level where they're personally sure it has happened.


**EDIT**

In fact, I wonder if that isn't your actual point... maybe you should create a thread asking whether skepticism is a detriment to shared dreaming. To determine this, it would be necessary to create a double-blind test. Some people going in with positive belief, some skeptical, and some convinced that it's impossible but willing to experiment with it honestly. Your position seems to be entirely aimed at going into it with a skeptical attitude.

Aliasmk and Darkmatters:

First, all apologies if I sounded aggressive or angry in my OP; that was not intended. Sometimes I get abrupt or sarcastic, and forget that both often come off badly in print.

Aliasmk, your point was well taken, and you make a lot of sense. Funny thing is, I made this post, and make these unpopular arguments, especially for newbies, because it can be easy to be led astray by the anticipation of LD'ing, and you might miss a chance to enjoy the real experience. This is of course my opinion. Also, I honestly cannot remember my first LD, and feel a bit at a loss for that. Oh, and if you stick brackets [] around the word quote, it'll work!

Darkmatters: I hear you, and I think my answers lie in the stuff I said to Oneironaut, so I won't bore you with more. One thing, though, the subconscious is part of the mind, and certainly part of you. I tend to call it the dreaming mind, myself, but I was including it in my statements.

And yes, I might be speaking too much of full-on lucidity here in terms of awareness, but at least an inkling of that awareness should exist for lucidity to exist. As there are levels of lucidity, so are there levels of awareness.

About yout ideas being directed at beginners...

Speaking as a newbie myself with only 8 LDs to my credit, we don't usually start off with full-blown lucidity and full understanding that everything in the dream is the creation of our subconscious (with some direction coming from consciousness). For most of us the 1st one is simply one momentary burst of awareness that we're dreaming, then excitement wakes us up. That seems to be very common. And because the experience of being aware in a dream is totally new and strange, it takes time to get used to it and to gradually deepen your awareness to the point of this full lucidity that you seem to feel is the only true kind. Gradually they begin to last longer, eventually you start to remember to do RCs and stabilize, and to try some task or other, and after a long time of this, if you're capable, you might reach full-blown lucidity and realize that every character and feature in the dream is the creation of your mind.

But even then, the subconscious is at least partly in control. It would be very weird to say "I then created a dragon and made it breathe fire at me" unless you actually consciously summoned it and told it to breathe fire. Usually the sub-c does a lot of things on its own.

Originally Posted by Darkmatters

About yout ideas being directed at beginners...

Speaking as a newbie myself with only 8 LDs to my credit, we don't usually start off with full-blown lucidity and full understanding that everything in the dream is the creation of our subconscious (with some direction coming from consciousness). For most of us the 1st one is simply one momentary burst of awareness that we're dreaming, then excitement wakes us up. That seems to be very common. And because the experience of being aware in a dream is totally new and strange, it takes time to get used to it and to gradually deepen your awareness to the point of this full lucidity that you seem to feel is the only true kind. Gradually they begin to last longer, eventually you start to remember to do RCs and stabilize, and to try some task or other, and after a long time of this, if you're capable, you might reach full-blown lucidity and realize that every character and feature in the dream is the creation of your mind.

But even then, the subconscious is at least partly in control. It would be very weird to say "I then created a dragon and made it breathe fire at me" unless you actually consciously summoned it and told it to breathe fire. Usually the sub-c does a lot of things on its own.

This was exactly what i meant with the newbies part and the subconscious part, except you explained it much better
Well said.

Okay...so maybe it wasn't meant for absolute, first time out newbies. How about aimed at the people who have had a few LD's and are comfortable with the state?

Originally Posted by Darkmatters

Now I think we're getting down to the nitty-gritty. I think your real beef is with shared dreaming. You confused the issue by adding in all the stuff about lucidity. Maybe it would be best to start a new thread that's focused solely on proof of shared dreaming? ...

...In fact, I wonder if that isn't your actual point... maybe you should create a thread asking whether skepticism is a detriment to shared dreaming. To determine this, it would be necessary to create a double-blind test. Some people going in with positive belief, some skeptical, and some convinced that it's impossible but willing to experiment with it honestly. Your position seems to be entirely aimed at going into it with a skeptical attitude.

Darkmatters, I think you're assuming much more anger and skepticism in me than is there. I have no "beef," and did not want to imply that. I suppose to many that grabber line I used, "It's true because I said so," might sound like anger, but it's more an observation about the nature of proof and truth on this site -- I guess I should have used another phrase. All I was trying to suggest was that, if dreamers aren't careful, they might fall into a trap of false lucids, where they think that they are lucid dreaming, but there is no actual waking awareness present. To me, presenting this idea is a very positive thing, not a beef.

In all honesty, I'm not a big fan of shared dreaming -- I really do not understand the need to meet and greet folks in my dreams, when I have to do enough of that in waking life. I guess I don't have much herding instinct in me! In fact, I started a thread a while back about "other people's dreams," where I noted that my possible shared dreaming events amounted to "others" coming into my dream and blocking my lucidity. So, since by extension I really have no interest in proving or disproving shared dreaming. I don't think I could honestly introduce a thread about it. Indeed, I should have left it out of this one, as it does muddle my point.

Originally Posted by Sageous

Okay...so maybe it wasn't meant for absolute, first time out newbies. How about aimed at the people who have had a few LD's and are comfortable with the state?

Thats basically me, and i replied... but im quite familiar (not an expert) with Stephen LaBerge's research and brainstates in general.

Originally Posted by Darkmatters

About yout ideas being directed at beginners...

Speaking as a newbie myself with only 8 LDs to my credit, we don't usually start off with full-blown lucidity and full understanding that everything in the dream is the creation of our subconscious (with some direction coming from consciousness). For most of us the 1st one is simply one momentary burst of awareness that we're dreaming, then excitement wakes us up. That seems to be very common. And because the experience of being aware in a dream is totally new and strange, it takes time to get used to it and to gradually deepen your awareness to the point of this full lucidity that you seem to feel is the only true kind. Gradually they begin to last longer, eventually you start to remember to do RCs and stabilize, and to try some task or other, and after a long time of this, if you're capable, you might reach full-blown lucidity and realize that every character and feature in the dream is the creation of your mind.

But even then, the subconscious is at least partly in control. It would be very weird to say "I then created a dragon and made it breathe fire at me" unless you actually consciously summoned it and told it to breathe fire. Usually the sub-c does a lot of things on its own.

Good point, but I think you're still missing mine. Of course I don't assume everyone must have full-on lucidity in order to have a lucid dream. That is absurd on it's face, simply because full-on lucidity is extremely rare.

Lucidity comes in stages, as does awareness. What I am saying is that even minimal awareness in a dream where no control exists at all still demands that the dreamer understands, even minimally, that this is a dream, and not the waking world. Doing reality checks, for instance, is a sign of this understanding, and they can and should be done in even the weakest of lucid dreams.

If after even a newbie tried and failed to be lucid for a long period of time and his dreaming mind (or subconscious, as it were) finally obliges and gives him a dream with all the factors of lucidity in it as the newbie expects them, the dreamer will wake up assuming he was lucid, even though he never was. If he had a way to prove the lucidity (i.e., my memory tests, RC's, etc) to himself, then he can realize that there was no awareness present in his dream and avoid being fooled again. This kind of testing and discipline will help the newbie, or perhaps advanced newbie, as we suggested above, to develop his LD'ing skills to the point where full-on lucidity is possible. And, conversely, not checking that the dreams you had were lucid might bring on a long, perhaps permanent, period of having dreams about being lucid without ever actually being lucid. I knew a woman once who often discussed her lucids, and in every one of them she was flying, and very little else. As I listened to her describe oh, about the 20th dream, I realized that there was an excellent chance that her dreams were not lucid at all, since she seemed to recall no self-awareness at all, and was constantly surprised by the things her "dreaming world" showed her. There was a lot more detail to convince me that I won't go into here, but suffice it to say I was concerned, because she was sure (and convinced those around her) that she was quite the expert, but in reality she was missing out on the whole experience. I tried to discuss this with her, once. Once: she was not interested in hearing anything about that, and of course called me am unthinking skeptic, Mr. Negativity, and lots of other things. I am sure to this day she is still not proving the nature of her dreams to herself, and is likely having those same flying NLD's.

Oneironaut already straightened me out on the flaws in my retelling test, so I won't go into that again. However, I have to ask you what exactly you think the subconscious is? Isn't it just another part of you? Wouldn't that mean that the dream is by definition (and not semantics) always your invention, even if your current level of awareness is preventing you from controlling all aspects of it? Your subconscious, if it exists at all (something that has become a subject of debate in the last few decades), is not a separate entity lurking in your brain, sending signals when necessary -- it is you. I believe that a dreamer must understand that before they can attain full-on lucidity.

So bottom line here for me: Yes even the newbiest of dreamers can acknowledge that the world they are in is their own, even if they have zero control -- and that acknowledgement will bring them one step closer to having control.

Originally Posted by Aliasmk

Im sure that many people have lost many lucid dreams due to forgetting them, as with any dream. Lucid dreams, although we can harness them and induce them with practice are (as far as i know) natural and it is usually safe to say that everyone has had at least one dream in which they know that they are dreaming. However, it is possible that they don't realize the implications of that fact; they don't realize that there is no danger in their actions or that they can control their actions or what ever else can be regarded as this apparent "proof" of a lucid dream. Dream journals are kept to remind the brain of the importance of dreams. Because you don't normally access the information gathered/learned in a dream in real life, they become less important to you and it and the brain discards the information. So, by writing down and recording your experiences in real life, your brain realizes that the information that it is normally discarding is important, and so it stops discarding it. A lucid dream in which you realize the full implications of your dream has a more emotional impact on your life, thus you remember it. On the contrary, a "weaker" lucid dream will not spark that importance and need to use the dream information later.

That is an excellent point, but I'm not sure it serves to counter a need for proof. Isn't a dream journal, in the end a device for properly remembering your dreams, perhaps a test of their lucidity? After all, recording that weak lucid will help burn the experience into long-term memory, and recording it honestly (as in don't add in stuff because you figure it must have happened) might lead you to honestly judge for yourself whether you were actually lucid. And yes, the reinforcement value of a dream journal is enormous, and has for me even appeared as a reference in my dreams. (If I misunderstood you here, please try again -- I think this is important and I want to get it right).

I guess depending on how experienced you are with lucid dreaming, you probably are <i>not</i> in complete control of your environment. You can - as you probably know - as you gain more experience, affect more aspects of your dream consciously. If you can agree that we are in full control of our lives when we are awake, think of it like this. "You are walking down a street, and then you see your friend down the road. You say hi. He said Hi back. Then it began to rain." How you describe that from a first person perspective to someone else effectively? "I was walking down a street, and I saw my friend. I said hi and then he said hi to me. Then the rain started." People in DJ entries communicate what they have experienced in a dream as they would something in real life. There is no syntax to describe a dream. People just write it how they want, their preference.

Okay, okay, I get it!

Proof of what? That someone was conscious in a dream? In my opinion, unless someone invents a machine that can see the thought process and mental imagery of someone while they are dreaming, it is impossible to prove to others of something that is in your own brain. Its like trying to describe the color blue without using any examples or other colors. You can picture it in your mind, but you cant describe it.

As you probably suspect by now, I was not trying to go there in terms of proof. However, much has been done to "prove" specific activities in the brain, using FMRI and similar devices; neuro psychologists are "seeing" the thought process" of many brain activities, including dreams. I'm guessing that lucidity would not be that hard to prove, if science had an interest in doing so.

Part of this is because the person was excited that they had a LD and when people start to counter that thought, they get defensive. NO ONE can prove someone else wrong about that persons dreams. What ever though processes where going on at the time were going on and if someone truly believes they were in control, for all intents and purposes they were, and no one (especially over the internet for gods sake) can prove them wrong.

I have no interest in proving someone is wrong -- I want individual dreamers to prove to themselves that they are right. Those are two very different perspectives.

LDs are what you make of them. If you have an LD and dont believe you had any control, you didnt have an LD (Which is paradoxal really...)

Not a paradox at all, because if you actually had an LD and then deny it, you still had the LD -- denying an event does not make it go away. And again, I am NOT talking about control here.

But really, the people that are here to stay (as in on these forums) accept these "limitations" of lucid dreaming and enjoy it anyway. Do you remember the feeling of satisfaction with your first lucid dream? If you keep believing and having lucid dreams, there is really no reason to get over-critical of trying to prove they dont exist.

Honestly, I cannot remember my first lucids as an adult (I firmly believe that most kids have lucids regularly, and I actually do remember those, but I was a kid and was not impressed), but I can tell you they were not pleasant (mostly confusion and the like, as I had no idea what was going on)...I cannot understand why mentioning something like proof means I am "over critical" and am trying to prove that LD's do not exist. I am vehemently neither of those things, and I wonder where that interpretation comes from.

If someone comes here with the express purpose of denouncing LDs, then they can go somewhere else (like ld4all for all i care lol just kidding). Cause then this and all the other sites would turn into an astral projection forum - where there is two sides, the believers and the non-believers. I personally think astral projection is just a lucid dream, but im not going to go to an astral projection forum and try to convince everyone that. They have enough controversy already. There has been attempts to prove LDs at least on the physiological level and they worked. That is why LDrs have this great community, they all share something that is just so amazing; the though of even being able to fly without a plane, to controlling everyone and everything in their dream.

Again, why on earth would a person with the nerve to list 2,000 + as the number of LD's he's had be "denouncing" them? That is categorically not true. Period.

I think I got carpal tunnel from this post. xD

I hear ya!

I'm starting to feel like I'm getting where you're coming from. Oh, and I really only got that sense of aggression and anger from your first post... as soon as you started responding after that you don't sound that way anymore. Sorry if I made it seem like you did!

When you described the woman who told you about her flying dreams but didn't seem to actually be lucid and didn't want to hear about it - now I think I understand what you're getting at. Heh yeah, it sounds like she really wasn't lucid, and didn't like you casting a spotlight into her dreams. Denial on her part.

So, you consider doing RCs and things of that nature proof? Heh, I wish you had said THAT earlier!! Though possibly you did and I missed it in one of the massive walls-o-text above!

I can say that in my case I definitely dreamed ABOUT lucidity and then dreamed that I WAS lucid before I started experiencing actual lucidity. It's like my brain was moving toward it step by step. Then I started having dreams where I knew without a doubt that I was dreaming, but failed to in any way PROVE that to myself... and then I began to check lucidity through RC's and in my most recent couple of LD's I've even remembered to stabilize and remembered some personal goals I wanted to try to achieve.

We're not really on the same page about the subconscious though. And I might be using the term incorrectly. What I'm talking about is what Freud and Jung called the unconscious... the vast majority of the mind on which that tiny island called consciousness is founded, and from which it grows. Most of our development has been unconscious... through various animal forms and early protohumans and eventually to the dawning of human consciousness so recently. Most of what goes on in our minds is totally unconscious and totally unknown to us. The tip of the iceberg is absolutely subject to the deep movements of the oceanic current that pull on the submerged part of it, though the tip is completely unaware of that. It arrogantly assumes that it is totally in control when that control is largely an illusion.

When the unconscious throws dragons or whatever at us in dreams, they often (not always) represent emotional content we're struggling with. I haven't achieved a high enough level of awareness yet in a lucid to determine whether this is still true in a lucid dream, but I suspect at least sometimes it is. So while your conscious mind is totally unaware of why that dragon just appeared or why it somehow reminds you of your aunt Millie, it's coming from the deeply buried and unfathomable unconscious. YOUR mind, yes, but not a part you have any conscious volition of.

The dream schema we learned about from LaBerge (at least that's where I first learned of them) are spawned in the unconscious... they HAVE to be, or we wouldn't dream unconsciously the way most people do every night!

So the way I look at it... the dream environment and everything in a 'normal' dream is supplied entirely unconsciously... but in a lucid dream it's like that little piece of the mind called the consciousness awakens, or apart of it does anyway, and is like a little lantern we can carry to dispel some of the darkness of the otherwise unconscious dream. As we gain greater levels of awareness, it seems that lantern gets brighter and begins to cast it's light into formerly dark corners. And if you reach the highest level of lucidity, it seems you can develop the ability to control almost every element consciously. But still the gaming engine of the unconscious must be creating the schema - maintaining it from moment to moment and supplying new directions for it to move in. Certainly we don't consciously control all of that! It would take way too much computing power!! But we can certainly suggest directions for the schema to move in... environments we want to see etc, and the unconscious will oblige if we're aware enough.

Originally Posted by Darkmatters

When you described the woman who told you about her flying dreams but didn't seem to actually be lucid and didn't want to hear about it - now I think I understand what you're getting at. Heh yeah, it sounds like she really wasn't lucid, and didn't like you casting a spotlight into her dreams. Denial on her part.

I can say that in my case I definitely dreamed ABOUT lucidity and then dreamed that I WAS lucid before I started experiencing actual lucidity. It's like my brain was moving toward it step by step. Then I started having dreams where I knew without a doubt that I was dreaming, but failed to in any way PROVE that to myself... and then I began to check lucidity through RC's and in my most recent couple of LD's I've even remembered to stabilize and remembered some personal goals I wanted to try to achieve.

So you are living my treatise then! Seriously, your route took you form false lucids to doublechecking q/ RC's (aka proofs) to more advanced LD's (remembering personal goals is a step up from just knowing you're dreaming). By doing things to prove the LD's to yourself, you improved your ability to groe and hold your awareness. And that is what itis all about.

We're not really on the same page about the subconscious though. And I might be using the term incorrectly. What I'm talking about is what Freud and Jung called the unconscious... the vast majority of the mind on which that tiny island called consciousness is founded, and from which it grows. Most of our development has been unconscious... through various animal forms and early protohumans and eventually to the dawning of human consciousness so recently. Most of what goes on in our minds is totally unconscious and totally unknown to us. The tip of the iceberg is absolutely subject to the deep movements of the oceanic current that pull on the submerged part of it, though the tip is completely unaware of that. It arrogantly assumes that it is totally in control when that control is largely an illusion.

I think we're both stuck on different pages about this, but that's fine, because I think in the end we're both talking about the same thing, even if we're using different terms (more in a second)

When the unconscious throws dragons or whatever at us in dreams, they often (not always) represent emotional content we're struggling with. I haven't achieved a high enough level of awareness yet in a lucid to determine whether this is still true in a lucid dream, but I suspect at least sometimes it is. So while your conscious mind is totally unaware of why that dragon just appeared or why it somehow reminds you of your aunt Millie, it's coming from the deeply buried and unfathomable unconscious. YOUR mind, yes, but not a part you have any conscious volition of.

I don't bother with this stuff myself, but there is a whole sect of lucid dreamers who use lucidity for "healing" purposes. So yes, from that I would guess that you can use lucidity to better understand what your (okay, okay) unconscious is trying to tell you -- ie, asking a dream character why he is there.

The dream schema we learned about from LaBerge (at least that's where I first learned of them) are spawned in the unconscious... they HAVE to be, or we wouldn't dream unconsciously the way most people do every night!

So the way I look at it... the dream environment and everything in a 'normal' dream is supplied entirely unconsciously... but in a lucid dream it's like that little piece of the mind called the consciousness awakens, or apart of it does anyway, and is like a little lantern we can carry to dispel some of the darkness of the otherwise unconscious dream. As we gain greater levels of awareness, it seems that lantern gets brighter and begins to cast it's light into formerly dark corners. And if you reach the highest level of lucidity, it seems you can develop the ability to control almost every element consciously. But still the gaming engine of the unconscious must be creating the schema - maintaining it from moment to moment and supplying new directions for it to move in. Certainly we don't consciously control all of that! It would take way too much computing power!! But we can certainly suggest directions for the schema to move in... environments we want to see etc, and the unconscious will oblige if we're aware enough.

Now that is about the most "lucid" description of the relationship between a lucid dreamer and his dreaming mind I've heard in a while! Here's another thought, though: Forget for a moment about controlling the dream, or generating schema on "your own." Instead: what if a very high level of lucidity allowed you to "tap in" to that computing power, to see it at work, and perhaps use some of it to your waking life benefit? Perhaps you could develop the ability to think of many things at once, as your dreaming mind must do to create the images and plot lines that it does. Not only that, but you could do so with much more coherency than the dreaming mind, since you can add your conscious rationale does. Quite a bit of mental power there. One caveat, though: What I just described is exactly what psychotics do by nature, so you have to be very careful how you handle that "power," lest it handles you -- a good start is a disciplined proof habit.

That said, why not try to establish your own schema when highly lucid? Seems like a decent long-term goal to me... I can tell you I've done so myself, but I won't say it's possible simply "because I said so." I can at least hang the possibility out there for you since I know, but can't prove, that it's been done before. Odd how that works! Anyway, the schema doesn't have to be complex -- indeed, I am in the habit of erasing everything in my dreams and floating in absolute nothingness. It's a lot cooler than it sounds, and I believe opens the door to even higher things, like experiencing schema that are completely alien to my dreaming mind (aka, transcendental).

The potential of lucid dreaming as a tool for mental/spiritual/metaphysical/esoteric/etc exploration is enormous, especially when it comes to tapping parts of our mind that nature has to date held at arm's length. There is much to learn, but hazards (like psychosis) and roadblocks (like false LD's) exist all along the way -- obstacles than can be easily recognized by a dreamer who chooses to prove to himself what really just happened to him.

Ah, such a relief!! I feel like I'm really starting to understand what you're getting at here.

After writing that last night I googled the difference between the unconscious and the subconscious. Ran across a lot of very different explanations, but most of them were using the term unconscious in the wrong way... as in "knocked unconscious", rather than "the unconscious". The entries I found using the term correctly said that the subconscious is apparently a subset of consciousness that you're not currently aware of but that can be brought into awareness... example, like if you're trying to remember something but it's just beyond your reach. Contents of the subconscious can be brought into conscious awareness.

The only way to bring contents of the unconscious into conscious awareness is through psychotherapy... things like rorsach tests and word association or the therapist noting resistance or projection on the part of the patient. I want to look into it farther, I'm interested in which part is actually creating the schema. If it's the deep unconscious then those parts should be pretty well inaccessible to conscious manipulation, but if it comes from the subconscious, then it can be done.

I've heard of what you describe - doing away entirely with schema and going into a transcendent state. It's what the Dream Yogis do... what they call the Clear Light.

I tried to follow this thread, but it's gotten really long and would take a lot of effort to read and follow each individual argument, so I would just like to address a small point.

Oneironaut, I agree with most everything you said in your first post except for your statement that the need for the mechanism for shared dreaming to be proven before the acceptance of shared dreaming. If rigorous scientific study were done on two isolated individuals and they were found to recount similar dreams with statistical significance, then even if we didn't know how it happens exactly, we could still say that the phenomenon is probably real.

This is all hypothetical, of course. And as far as the OP's assertion that this forum doesn't care about proof, that isn't entirely true. I like to deal with lucid dreaming realistically and pragmatically; I listen to people's experiences, filter them through my own rationalization abilities, and then decide whether to pursue the ideas further or not. I'm interested in things like time dilation and would like to do some experimentation, but I take what people say with a grain of salt.

Anyway, continue!

Originally Posted by Darkmatters

After writing that last night I googled the difference between the unconscious and the subconscious. Ran across a lot of very different explanations, but most of them were using the term unconscious in the wrong way... as in "knocked unconscious", rather than "the unconscious". The entries I found using the term correctly said that the subconscious is apparently a subset of consciousness that you're not currently aware of but that can be brought into awareness... example, like if you're trying to remember something but it's just beyond your reach. Contents of the subconscious can be brought into conscious awareness.

The only way to bring contents of the unconscious into conscious awareness is through psychotherapy... things like rorsach tests and word association or the therapist noting resistance or projection on the part of the patient. I want to look into it farther, I'm interested in which part is actually creating the schema. If it's the deep unconscious then those parts should be pretty well inaccessible to conscious manipulation, but if it comes from the subconscious, then it can be done.

Psychotherapy, yes, but I still suggest that advanced lucid dreaming can also tap the stuff of the "subconscious." and more than just the dream-oriented schema. To be self-aware in the dream state is, I believe, a very powerful tool of exploration of the mind. And you can do it without paying someone $200 an hour!

I've heard of what you describe - doing away entirely with schema and going into a transcendent state. It's what the Dream Yogis do... what they call the Clear Light.

I'm very aware of the Yogi's version of this, and yes, what I do is very similar, especially to Samadhi practices, though I do not follow any of their specific traditions or dogma (both of which I feel cloud the potential experience). But none of that is important here, except to say that even the yogis have exercises that offer proof to themselves that what they are doing is working, and that they are not misleading themselves with false mystic perceptions.

Originally Posted by Sabre2552

I tried to follow this thread, but it's gotten really long and would take a lot of effort to read and follow each individual argument, so I would just like to address a small point.

Sorry about the length of the posts -- but there is much to be said...much of what we're talking about here has consumed volumes of books; it ain't easy to keep it short! I hope you'll find time to check it all out, though; you might find it worth it.

This is all hypothetical, of course. And as far as the OP's assertion that this forum doesn't care about proof, that isn't entirely true. I like to deal with lucid dreaming realistically and pragmatically; I listen to people's experiences, filter them through my own rationalization abilities, and then decide whether to pursue the ideas further or not. I'm interested in things like time dilation and would like to do some experimentation, but I take what people say with a grain of salt.

Very nice to hear, and by the very nature of this thread I'm coming to believe that there are many of you out there...it's beginning to shift my assertion a bit. Thank you!

Originally Posted by Sageous

1. Since an LD is a moment of waking consciousness, it will be recorded by your brain as a waking memory. Unlike dreams, which are for the most part quickly discarded even by the brain’s short term memory system, waking memories are easily recorded and stand a much better chance of getting filed into long term memory when they have much emotional import, as a lucid dream might. So, lucid dreams are easy to prove, simply because you remember them as any other waking event. And yes, with careful discipline regular dreams can be filed in long term memory, but that only happens after you make a real effort, and therein lies the difference:

Actual LD’s stay with you, whether or not you want them to, but regular dreams take a real effort to remember. So, if you struggle to remember a dream that you were sure was lucid, it most likely was not.

2. When retelling the dream, if the dreamer says things like “And then this happened to me,” or “And then that dream character said that to me,” he is very likely retelling a non-lucid dream. Lucidity means, by definition, that the dreamer is consciously involved in the dream, and that he is actively affecting the dream, simply because he knows that everything in this dream is his. To tell it like someone else was in charge betrays the fact that you were not, and the dream was not lucid -- or at least not terribly lucid.

I had to reply to this general point: memory is not even close to 1:1 of events. This has been tested time and time again that when we recall something, the further back it happened, the more embellished it is, even if unintentional. One test took people who were in college for 9/11 and asked them two months later to describe the day. They visited these people two years later and nearly every detail was changed. That was for a significant event like 9/11. This, among many other experiments, is why witness testimonies aren't the only evidence to convict. Witnesses are unreliable.

Originally Posted by TheKing

I had to reply to this general point: memory is not even close to 1:1 of events. This has been tested time and time again that when we recall something, the further back it happened, the more embellished it is, even if unintentional. One test took people who were in college for 9/11 and asked them two months later to describe the day. They visited these people two years later and nearly every detail was changed. That was for a significant event like 9/11. This, among many other experiments, is why witness testimonies aren't the only evidence to convict. Witnesses are unreliable.

Though I've already adjusted my "thesis" with regard to #2 of these tests, I think you're focusing more on #1, so let me just say this:

You are absolutely right. The thing is, I am talking about making that test moments after waking up, when conscious memories are very close to 1:1, not years, or even days, later. That's why the test needs to be made immediately, and that memory recorded honestly into a DJ, to hold it in a place other than your mind. That said, memories of regular dreams, as opposed to LD's, tend to behave just like those distant conscious memories immediately upon waking, and can be lost or misremembered very quickly (with the exception, of course, of very intense NLD's). And there is the difference I am trying to point out.