Quote Originally Posted by Linkzelda View Post
But there's also greater risk of people being provided the wrong information on lucid dreaming, and this can lead to others falling for potential scammers who guarantee lucidity if you buy their books, CDs, etc. Which means greater emphasis on providing them decent and free knowledge on the matter must be sustained.
Very much so, and this is also certainly the age of charlatan gurus, whether lucid dreamers or of any other type. We had Carlos Castaneda, who probably plagiarized the whole Don Juan series, and then definitely used his fame to go spiritually crusing for young babes, Osho, who stockpiled guns outside Seattle and tried to poison the locals with Botulism, Chogyam Trungpa who ran his ashram like a brothel and ended up spreading AIDS among his followers. Whether he ever got it himself is problematic, but his #1 disciple certainly did.

It amazes me that so many New Agers see Christians as frauds, when their ranks are equally full of interesting types.

Quote Originally Posted by Linkzelda View Post
For #3, correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems you're associating this with a universal collective consciousness, where we all become aware that we all could be connected in the universe and beyond. That may not happen for a long time, but if it does, it will surely cause a huge paradigm shift in mentality of dreaming and beyond.
That I'm not sure about. However, I tend to be very pragmatic about this stuff. Way too often, people who get into experiences like lucid dreaming seem to have a tendency to charge off after any and every wild and whacky belief, and often get themselves into things that can hurt them, like psychedelic drugs, predatory gurus, etc.

I look at all of this stuff simply as mental phenomena. The mind is a vast universe all on it's own, so I am very scrutinizing before I accept anything beyond it as an explanation. The mind is also very powerful, and can make things that are quite miraculous happen.

So I guess my point is simply that it is wonderful enough that we have the opportunity to learn what we do. Collective consciousness or not, humanity could only benefit from greater understanding of the subconscious. Getting to know the man behind the mirror, so to speak.

Quote Originally Posted by Linkzelda View Post
Yes, the potential really is something to behold, and hopefully factors like religion, social norms, etc. won't be used to try and challenge that.

Those urges, those rudimentary temptations that are often repressed (because we don't have to actually work to get our prey, as in, hunt and kill, be efficient and conservative of our resources), they have the potential to be expressed, but of course, those are things that have been repressed generations and generations ago. Who knows?

As long as people take lucid dreaming as something they have to experience themselves, and to not rely too much on other people's views on it, they will find their own personal enlightenment, and who knows what can come from that?
I agree with you completely. I will even go so far as to say that too many New Agers are themselves fundamentalist and dogmatic in what they believe. For example, there seems to be an almost universal idea that the violent side of our nature (Jungian shadow, or whatever it really is) is somehow repulsive. But it seems to me that there is enormous power there that, if redirected, could probably be extremely beneficial, like a properly controlled nuclear reactor, as opposed to an atom bomb.

Just my thoughts.