Let's start an argument. You know those arguments you have when you've had a few too many beers. The origins of the universe, the existance of God, we've all done it. As far as I can see from reading these posts, opinion seems to be split down the middle (well almost). Some people seem to think that lucid dreaming is purely a product of the brain - those places that we see and have such fun in are contained solely within our own skulls. The motto here is enjoy it while it lasts, we're just chemicals. When we die we cease to exist. Others see lucid dreaming as a spiritual thing, perhaps as a way to better percieve our subconscious, and as away to move beyond it into other planes of being. Which side of the fence do you come down on?

Nick:

Well, this should be interesting! Hopefully we'll get lots of posts (c'mon people!), and hopefully we'll somehow manage to avoid those pesky moderators by staying on the subject of lucid dreaming. ;)

And, not to muddle your question on the first response, but isn't it possible for dreamers who believe that dreams are produced purely by their physical brains to use them to explore and better percieve their subconscious? After all, conscious and subsconscious activity would also "just" be brain functions too, wouldn't they?

Peter

Hello All, My position is a solid straddle the fence kind of opinion. Yes, I believe that Lds are a construct of the mind. However, I do not believe that the mind is nicely boxed up inside the physical brain. I am not religious in the sense of the good boy vs bad boy philosophy but I do consider myself very spiritual. For me spirituality means two things:

1. The realization that we know so very little about what we are or about the potentials that we hold.
2. The desire and commitment to go deeper within ourselves to try to gain insight into these questions.

I definitely believe that Lds offer a pathway into our subconscious and that our subconscious holds the answers to my spirituality questions stated above.

Thomas

Has anyone read any Rupert Sheldrake? (www.sheldrake.org). He has some very interesting things to say about memory, consciousness and a few other things. I would really be interested in seeing Rupert and Stephen collaborate on something or at least get into a good discussion I could be a fly on the wall for.

Andrea

Thomas:

You make a good point -- perhaps LD'ing shouldn't be placed at the center of this argument, but rather listed as a major tool toward one day actually resolving it.

Anyone have any ideas about how?

Peter

Thanks for your responses on this. I think I phrased my original post a bit inaccurately as you've pointed out. Of course we all possess a subconscious, and I think that lucid dreaming can better help us to explore it and give us a deeper understanding of who and what we really are. I suppose what I was getting at is whether the subconscious is purely what the widely accepted view of is says it is or whether it is something more as well ie; a potential gateway into other planes or states of existance. One example of this could be the out of body experience which seems to be quite a common phenomenom for many people who have regular lucid dreams. Another example is dreaming of future events, which is something I have experienced myself on one occasion. I'd go into more detail about this, but I don't want to become boring and anecdotal, so I'll just say that it was a very clear image which recurred through several dreams throughout the night, and was the first thing I saw when I switched on the TV the next morning. It wasn't even anything important, completely trivial in fact, but it was an unusual image, and appeared exactly as I had seen it throughout the night. I've never had a dream like it since, but it got me thinking about the nature of the subconscious, and about the way we percieve time. As a species, we seem to have the need to put everything into a box and put a label on it. Scientists construct these boxes all the time, and then try to "push the sides out" and enlarge the boxes as more scientific data becomes available. But at the end of the day it's still a box, with some theory trapped inside it. Maybe we need to break out of the box and see things from the outside, forget this linear scientific approach, and be more adventurous in our thinking. I think we should take some chances, and maybe we'll get some big results.

on the Jungian side, there is a collective subconscious which we all tap into, in waking and dreaming states. So the LD could be considered taping into that place, and the concept of Active Imagination, which is during consciousness, is taping in when awake. Which some can do, like projection and the like.

Hi Nick, Peter, Thomas, et al,

This discussion -- not really an "argument", is it? ;) -- reminds me of the analogy Stephen has offered on several occasions: During the day, the brightness of the sun obscures from our vision all that the sky truly holds, but at night, we more easily see what has been there all along.

And so it may be likewise that when we dream, the usual suspects are rounded up and put to rest. The overwhelming constraints and distractions of our waking life body and mind are subdued, and perhaps we are then better able to experience more of our hidden potential -- that which lies beyond the limited definitions we give ourselves during the day.

Lucid dreaming make it easy enough for me to understand that my dream body is not me. It's harder though, to grasp that my waking body is not quite the all of "me" either. As Stephen would ask: What does it mean to have an "IBE" (In Body Experience)?

During the recent Dreaming and Awakening retreat, I had a lucid dream in which a few characters asked if I'd ever seen a duplicate of my dream body. "Well yes," I replied, "but it was no more more me than this one who appears to stand before you. For that matter, perhaps no more me than the one who is dreaming this dream version of me now". And I woke to wonder....

Who is dreaming this dreamer now? Keelin

Using lucid dreaming as a tool to "prove" something more such as life after death, would have to involve dematerialising the body and reapearing in this world again somewhere before people would believe it. Yet some claim to have done this and still there is doubt, we believe what we want to believe. We seek the big answer to ...."WHY" What's it all about, who put us here or why. What if the answer is too 'scarey' to accept so we prefer to 'sleep'? What if life/awareness is simply a result of the question itself ...why? What if you were to meet god and think at last I can find out what it is all about. You ask him "where did life come from god what is the purpose of life?" God says "I am alive too or I wouldn't be able to understand your question, but how can I know the answer to where MY own life came from, noone has ever told me. So I chose to create a purpose, the lucid dream you call reality. Yet I often puzzle over why it happened or if it will last forever, I don't honestly know the rules, but I have a lot of experience of the posibilities."

I think it's just human nature to perpetually be searching for the ultimate answer to the meaning of everything. It seems that the more we gain scientific knowledge, the more new questions become available to us. It could be that science is leading us further down the road towards the ultimate answer to our questions, then again it may be telling us that everything is infinate, perhaps in an inward and outward direction and there are no ultimate answers to anything. If you believe in a God though,(taking God to mean some sort of supreme overseeing being or consciousness) I don't think you can apply our human lack of insight and shortcomings to "him" or "her" or "it" or whatever God may be. You're assuming that God would also have no answers to the ultimate question of his/her origins, because you're percieving the idea of God purely within the constaints of our available human experience. Maybe Gods'answer would be "I've always been here, and the mortal concept that everything has to have an origin is false". My point I suppose is that we think this way because as mere mortals we have to measure our lives and every event within our lives. We look at everything as having a start point and an end point, because we are conditioned to think in terms of our own lives. Time after all is only a man-made way of dealing with and measuring "change". We need to get outside of ourselves, and free ourselves of all these human constraints. I believe that it's this conditioning which limits our experiences within lucid dreams. We seem to carry all our baggage with us into our dreams for instance. We readily let go of some of the basic scientific realities of our waking lives: we can walk through walls, drift up through ceilings and teleport from one place to another, yet throughout we remain ourselves, the same person that we are while awake, with all our problems, prejudices and fears. Maybe our dreams should be more than that!?

I agree!!!! yet, we are still 'ourself' even if we expand our consiousness beyond human perception. Whatever the case, I have no big answer, but the answer 'I have always been here' itself isn't an answer either. It's just another description, of the 'NOW'.... I don't personaly believe in 'TIME' only in 'NOW' So to always have been here means nothing more than to be 'alive' right NOW. Science tells us that a place existed before time began so 'WHEN.......' was that? All I have.. is my experience.. until someone offers more than that..... (a burst of... memory of other things.... perhaps... ) it's all words that describe nothing more than what I already know. To have a burst of memory would mean I personaly could remember always having been here. But 'why would that be different from any other day?' (Matrix Morpheus) I would still have to decide what to do next!!! "All that remains is for you to decide how to use the time that has been given you" Gandalf L.R.T. Think about it.................!!!!! 'Live in the dream!!!!' David Aimes - Vanila Sky

Besides I don't think there ever was an original question as to what is life/consiousness is about. It was always been an accident without purpose, without answer or reason. A simple "miracle/accident". That's why the first 'cause' is thought of as a 'creator.' Our first impulse was to create some reason or purpose for the accident of 'our' exsistance.

The answer is ....42.... now, go away and work out what the question was!! If ever there was a question.

It could be that science is leading us further down the path of believing there was actually some question to be answered, and distracting us from the terrifying truth that "we" are alone without anyone to offer any answers, except that, we ourselfs create an answer, or purpose for life, and enjoy it. 'We' the colective we call reality. "I find it hard to tell you cos' I find it hard to take, the dreams in which I'm dying are the best I've ever had." Mad World

If one is to bring God into the picture (at all) it may be important to wonder:

"How would we know if we are communicating with or experiencing God?"

What i mean is this; given the vastness of this universe both in time and space - and our relative teeny-tinyness (to use a scientific term) There are so, so, so, so SO many things that we just do not understand and maybe cannot.

If we assume that life on earth is not just some wierd statistical fluke and that life is common in our universe (in fact for this argument it doesn't even have to be common, merely possible) We could never be sure that our communication with 'God' is not simply a communication with a much more advanced life form whom has its reasons to misinform us.

How could we be sure?

I know this is going down a distinctly sci-fi path - still the existence of other life forms is far more likely than a creator God (in our current models of the universe) I think that if we were to have some 'proven' contact with a higher source claiming to be God, then it would in fact be more likely to be a deception or misinterpretation of communication with a higher life from.

Why? One reason would be Occam's Razor - the scientific principal:

"Pluralitas non est ponenda sine neccesitate" or in English "plurality should not be posited without necessity" Or to be less vauge (as i am so often!) "simplicity is better"

Within the context of the argument that communication with (on whatever level) "God" has been experienced, Occams razor may lead us to ask; Do we actually need God to exist for this to have occurred? Can we find a simpler explanation? One may be the above 'aliens' explanation, whilst still pretty wild and unlikely, it would fit our observations and knowledge of the universe far more than the theory of the existence of God - hence is a far more likely answer. No doubt their are a million simpler and far more likely (and often dull)answers still... Hallucination, imagination, chemical imbalance, simple human deception, need or want to believe.

But if an actual communication has been proven with an entity claiming to be God - are we in any position to assume it is an honest claim? I don't feel that i would be - and i also belive that the combined efforts of humanity would still not suffice. Can we really be so proud a species to think that we cannot be fooled?

Just to be clear i am not saying that God doesn't exist. I have no idea whatsoever. I'm neither a believer or not, to be honest i feel far to small in relation to our universe to hold an opinion - i love the discussion and the ideas, and no doubt shall wonder all my life, but i feel that as humans we don't even know ourselves - how our own minds function for one - how can we really make judgments on a universe in which we have existed for such an teeny tiny time and in which we are so utterly teeny and tiny?

Just to demonstrate how complex our universe is (and also share a really amazing fact) Check this out: If you are to shuffle a standard pack of playing cards (52 cards,) every time you shuffle you will more likely than not get a utterly new - never existed before (for anyone,) combination of cards. In fact there are more combinations between the 52 cards than there have been seconds since the big bang.

Now if you consider that the Universe is about 13.7 billion years old.... not seconds years... try to work out how many seconds that is... and thats how many combinations of cards you can get from shuffling a 52 card deck. Mad isn't it, i can hardly get my head around that let alone God.

To put this in perspective, the Solar System is thought to be 4.5 billion years old and humans have existed as a species for a few million years.

And I've only existed 27 years. It's certainly very, very humbling.

Yet also quite wonderful Consider the fact that this is only the amount of combinations that can be made from 52 cards.

Now how many neurons are there in a human brain?.... there are around 200 billion neurons in the brain alone! And as each of these neurons is connected to between 5,000 and 200,000 other neurons, the number of ways that information flows among neurons in the brain is so large, it is greater than the number atoms that exist in the entire universe!

And people think science takes the wonder out of life!

I don't know where all of this leaves us but i hope it helps you realize just what a wonderful complex creature you are.

We may never know the "BIG" answers, but maybe we can understand ourselves, and that is more than pretty amazing in itself.

One last point on Occams razor:

"If one starts with too complicated foundations for a theory that potentially encompasses the universe, the chances of getting any manageable model are very slim indeed. Moreover, the principle (occams razor) is sometimes the only remaining guideline when entering domains of such a high level of abstraction that no concrete tests or observations can decide between rival models."

I hope you find some of this as interesting and fascinating as i do,

Love, Daniel

Though this is a very fascinating discussion, I fear it is time for me to ask my least favorite "eternal" question:

What does any of this have to do with lucid dreaming?

Any chance we can continue the deep thoughts, but also manage at least an occasional nod toward lucid dreaming? Though discussing the nature of eternity and the Universe is an excellent pastime, we really do need to stick to the intent of this forum (lest we become something else altogether!).

So, what about Nick's original question: Is lucid dreaming a tool for tapping the complex circuitry of our biological brains, having great imaginative fun while revealing secrets of the subconscious, but nothing more? Or is it a key toward spiritually unlocking the doors to other dimensions, other planes of existence, and perhaps divinity itself?

Both options sound pretty good to me"

Your pesky moderator,

Peter

Those(pesky)moderators have filled a large bucket with cold water and they're ready to throw it over our fireworks. So lets change tack a little here and discuss the out-of-body experience. I'll start by saying I have never experienced one of these, but from what I can gather lucid dreaming seems to provide a potential entry point to this phenomenon. I'm assuming from reading many posts on this site that an OBE is a true out-of-body experience and not merely an extention of the dream state. We have to be clear on this because if we can really step outside of ourselves and percieve remote places and events, this would seem to suggest that our subconscious is providing the "door" to other planes or states of existance, as my original post suggested. So what is an OBE? Is it just an extention of the dream state or is it something more, a "stepping outside of ourselves and an actual experience of a remote reality". So come on you people. Let's hear from some of you who've had this experience.

It's a very good question, If..... big IF ... our brains contain a yet undescovered transmitter and reciever frequency. (capable of linking us like a mobile phone to outside information.) After all brains are highly complex computers with a few million years of an edge on evolution over Microsoft or IBM. And then a much simpler 'computer' that decodes digital signals such as mobile phone. If you had a small implant behind your ear with transmitter and mic and speaker, linked bluetooth to your phone, you can even now, it exsists, make a phone call anywhere in the world without even moving a muscle other than to speak. A voice activated phone dials for you and your speaking to someone thousands of miles away. But what if the brain worked out how to do that millions of years ago. It worked out how to see and hear and things our computers can't even dream of. YET... So what if it could pick up any thought or sensory input from any brain animal or human all over the world!! My point ... How would you tell the difference between astral projection, OBE or any such thing, from just 'dreaming' If input from the brain frequency, was gathering remote information? Would you be there or would it be coming to you? Did Mohamid go to the mountain or did the mountain come to Mohamid? And who cares? Only once you die and then know you are still going can you be sure if it's only our brain or something more. ....If it is possible to survive death, how would we stay lucid on the other side? If you can go to bed at night and loose all consiousness where's the imortal soul surviving death that CAN'T even survive sleep? My mission in being lucid is to use only power of reason to maintain lucidity so when I die I won't have to rely on a 'Nova Dreamer' signaling me..... if I exsist at all after death.... (I don't use a Nova Dreamer) So again if you were to ask god 'how did you get here' he might answer "I don't know never worked it out, strange huh? So I just keep having this ...lucid dream... where I create new stuff. Hope it lasts forever, there never was anyone to tell me the rules." Would he know much more than we do??? Only maybe if he's been arround longer. Would HE know if he was an alien or a god? Bottom line I see lucid dreaming as giving me a chance of being a creator, being in a position to make my own world. And if when I die, and there is life beyond, I want to remember who I was, and stay lucid even then, not to become some floating purposeless semi-consiousness, that has to refind a purpose. But which has learned to create one for itself. A very worthy goal and keeps my keen excitement for lucid dreaming.

You make some interesting points there, and you could be right, maybe the information is coming to us rather than us going to it, so to speak. There's obviously a lot we still have to learn about the brain, but the possibility that the human brain has this capabillity seems perfectly plausible to me. But even if that's true, it still means that an OBE is providing us with REAL information rather than fabricated dream information. Maybe there's a crossover point here. Maybe our lucid dreams are a mix of real information interwoven with dream fantasy. If it wasn't for the OBE, I think that lucid dreaming would be exactly what it seems to be, ie; simply a learned ability to become conscious within the dream state and recognise that you are dreaming. But the fact that so many people seem to be able to access this other state from a lucid dream, and experience REAL information and events, makes the whole concept of lucid dreaming much more important.

Many of us have had lucid dreams or dreams we cannot explain, things seemingly psychic. But let us consider the implications of such abilities for not only our dreaming minds, but for the development of our entire species:

If such things as an OBE, astral travel or any ESP producing phenomena did exist in humans, wouldn't this have given us a massive evolutionary advantage? surely the ability to communicate via our minds would negate the need to communicate via language? Evolution is quite ruthless, it tends to opt for the most efficient and effective systems - I find it unlikely that if such abilities were a natural function of the mind that evolution would have not favored these over mere verbal communication - think of the advantages that telepathy etc. would give us over verbal communication for a task as vital to early humans as hunting. Verbal communication is very limited, distance, ambient noise, various languages, misunderstanding etc. Telepathy would possibly have none of these disadvantages and should therefore have been favored over verbal communication.

Also the evolution of both eyes and ears would be less likely as surely if we have an astral (or other) body capable of viewing the environment without these complex biological tools. Why would we waste resources evolving them? If we can see and hear in an OBE we are obviously not doing it with our physical senses, yet if an OBE can give us REAL information about our environment then why do we need physical senses at all?

You could argue that such a phenomena (ESP)may have evolved by chance as part of another mind or body function (such as the sound produced by a heartbeat - this has no evolutionary advantage it is merely a fluke due to the physical workings of the heart - however we can use the sound of the heartbeat for many things) Still the huge advantages of the ESP system would surely mean that we would have very quickly learnt to use it - history and common sense show this is not the case.

So the circumstantial evidence against ESP or any ESP providing mechanism such as an OBE is quite high:

• It is not commonly observed.
• We have evolved many senses and body functions - (indeed having a body at all!!!)that would be redundent if ESP or OBE were possible.
• Even if it were a 'fluke' system in the human mind/body it's huge advantages would have soon been resourced and made common occurence.

If however it is a 'fluke' system that has not been resourced via evolutionary mechanisms then this could point to the system being so inherintly flawed as to make it unuseable. So we are left with two choices; either an ESP system exists and is highly unstable to the point of utter uselessness (and evolution tends to make the most out of even the smallest advantage - so it would truely have to be quite terrible.) Or ESP is non existant in humans.

Considering one of Nicks points:

"If it wasn't for the OBE, I think that lucid dreaming would be exactly what it seems to be, ie; simply a learned ability to become conscious within the dream state and recognise that you are dreaming. But the fact that so many people seem to be able to access this other state from a lucid dream, and experience REAL information and events, makes the whole concept of lucid dreaming much more important."

It seems logical that if so many people have experienced something then there must be something to it, but is it? Think of the billions of people involved in the many religions on this planet (not just the current ones but all that have gone before) Millions of these people claim to have had experiences that 'prove' his or her religion to be the correct and only true religion. This is obvioulsly madness. Either all are wrong but one group, or all are wrong. Certainly they can't all be right. So we cannot really judge the subject only on what people belive to have happened - we have to think of how our world would be if such things were possible, and it would seem that the world we inhabit doesnt fit that model.I know this is an unpopular stance to take, it seemingly takes the magic out of the world. But does it really? Like i said in my previous post:

"there are around 200 billion neurons in the brain alone! And as each of these neurons is connected to between 5,000 and 200,000 other neurons, the number of ways that information flows among neurons in the brain is so large, it is greater than the number atoms that exist in the entire universe!"

Let that sink in, more than the atoms that exist in the entire universe - now that adds an interesting element to the human mind and lucid dreaming doesn't it?

Our universe and ourselves are SO amazing, we are vast and live in vastness. Lucid dreaming is amazing even if it doesn't give us psychic powers!

Still the possibility exists that these things are true, yet it would be quite the most strong evidence against evolution and natural selection theory to have ever been presented.

I personally think that it is highly unlikely that ESP exists, working as an illusionist i have seen the millions of methods that can be used by both professional performers and charlatans to create these illusions. This mixed with peoples need to belive,Chinese whispers, misinterpretation, the human ability to exaggerate (sometimes without meaning to), religion and superstition are all factors. We live in a world where even things that are understood by science can still be misinterpreted as supernatural by an individual - many people still think sleep paralysis is the work of ghosts!

I know I've covered alot of points here, but i think the evolutionary argument is probably the most important.

I hope some of this is useful.

Sweet dreams, Daniel

Nick:

You might also check out the Lucid Dreaming FAQ regarding OBE's (It's question 1.3):

http://lucidity.com/LucidDreamingFAQ2.html#OBE

It might clarify a few points about the relationship between the two, and perhaps why so many lucid dreamers feel that they have OBE's.

Peter

Daniel, Telepathy can not be possible you say because if it were we would have selected it as an evolutionary advantage. Interesting. I see where you're coming from with that. But I like believe in, at least the posibility of both 'god' and evolution as our origins. With god, simply being some form of consiousness, responsible for the biggest, lucid or non lucid, dream there is. Maybe there is a big reason not to select telepathy as our only option of communication. We have eyes that can see, evolution over many years has produced laws to govern the rules by which these eyes see, which colours in the spectrum, how much brightness they can tolerate etc. etc. BUT what is seeing? A computer and a camera can process vision but it cannot "see", not that we know of. What is it that sees? Who is the seer? What if the truth is that, everything is conected together, on a telepathy level, but it is a jumble of everything, not just all the good but all the bad all the pain all the joy, all the colours all the sounds everything all at once. Only by creating or evolving bodies to limit ourselves to block out the everything at once can we enjoy, or experience the stream of time, instead of the madness of everything. By setting lines, boundries, borders limits, rules. So we percive reality at a slower pace than all at once. We think of god as being in heaven, what if he was born in hell, and found refuge only by becoming human? Like when Prometheus stole fire from the gods and gave it to men. God stoped the burning by giving a little of the pain to many of himself. I am talking about how time may have been created. Time is just a concept of consiousness. Not seeing everything at once. Time, the illusion that it's not just one of us experiencing everything in one go, but many of us experiencing little bits of it here and there. Psychics say they like to block peoples emotions sometimes, because it can be overpowering to them. Picking up on too many emotions at one time. What if we selected to evolve our own limits in the telepathic field, just to enjoy emotions one by one and colours paint brush by pencil stroke. With divisions rather than all one thing at once. Lucid dreaming to me is about learning the control needed to select those events that serve me, and to consiously evolve and do away with random natural selection which has got us so far, but to move to the next step of evolution, to becoming a creator, a god. Choose what we want to experience and learn how to surf our emotions and stay fully lucid even at the point of death, not just sleep. At least I hope. But there's no way to know. Faith plays a strong part in lucid dreams the power of suggestion and belief. Probably why religion was invented to try convince us we could stay lucid at death. If you could beleive it enough it may well work. One day people will come back to tell us, but we will still question if they are not just ...'aliens trying to decieve us.' Only your own journey your own lucidity can provide your own answers. But faith in something is needed, for good lucid dreams at least.

We don't want to open the floodgates of heaven till we can stand against the rush of the tide.

Oh dear deep and philosophical back to science someone quick!!!

Daniel,

Who ever said that we are fully evolved? Is it not possible, even probable that we are still evolving and if that is the case maybe new, undreamt of skills are working their way into the Human situation.

Thomas

Test it!

Try putting a playing card face up on your refrigerator, without looking at it. Forget about it until you do an OBE then see if you can read it.

Scott

Hi everyone, Thanks for the ideas! Such a thought provocing subject this one!

Alan i can't really comment on your ideas here as they are really more in the realm of personal religious thought. But i do find the ideas quite fascinatiing, i have pondered such things myself many a time. The problem is its all very much in the realm of the untestable and unobservable.

Scott, it is an interesting test but would not provide clear evidence that suggests proof of ESP. Many other factors could be involved. I agree that these sort of experiments should be attempted, but you have to keep an open mind as to just what caused the results. ESP is just one of many explanations.

Thomas, yes i agree, evolution is an ongoing process so anything is possible in the future, still the original argument still holds. I'd like to add a little something i found on the web earlier whilst researching all this...

The views of Isaac Asimov on the whole Telepathy debate, maybe it will be food for thought:

"One of the curses of being a well-known science-fiction writer is that unsophisticated people assume you to be soft in the head. They come to you for refuge from a hard and skeptical world. Don't you believe in flying saucers, they ask me? Don't you believe in telepathy? - in ancient astronauts? - in the Bermuda triangle? in life after death? No, I reply. No, no, no, no, and again no. One person recently, goaded into desperation by the litany of unrelieved negation, burst out. "Don't you believe in anything?" "Yes," I said. "I believe evidence. I believe observation, measurement, and reasoning, confirmed by independent observation. I'll believe anything, no matter how wild and ridiculous, if there is evidence for it. The wilder and more ridiculous something is, however, the firmer and more solid the evidence will have to be." For instance, where do I stand on telepathy, which I consider among the less wild suggestions along the fringes of knowledge? I don't consider telepathy to be intrinsically impossible. After all the brain produces a small electromagnetic field and the intensity of it wavers, rising and falling in irregular fashion, but with noticeable periodicities. These "brain waves" can be, and are, observed and measured by the technique of encephalography. To be sure, the brain -waves are the overall product of billions of neurons, so that trying to make sense of them is like trying to make sense of the noise of the world's population all talking at once in all their various languages. In listening to the world's overall human noise,we could tell the subsidence into a soft, drowsy hum when night covers a region; or the rise into loud discordance at the coming of catastrophe. In the case of encephalography, there are changes from waking to sleeping, and vice versa, that can be detected. One can also detect the presence of a tumor or an epileptic seizure. But we want something better than that; we want something that would be analogous to hearing the world's noise and picking out an individual conversation. Might not specific thoughts affect the brain-wave pattern? Might not the wavering electromagnetic field then impress itself upon a neighbor-brain and induce that same thought upon it. It is conceivable that this might happen, but the question is, is it conceivable that it does happen? Can one person detect another person's thoughts in actual practice? Of course we can read thoughts indirectly. From the tone of a person's voice, from the expression of a person's face, from bits of a person's unconscious behavior, we can sometimes tell if that person is lying. We might even be able to make a shrewd guess as to what he (or she) is thinking. The more experienced we are, and the better we know the person we are studying, the more likely we are to guess his thoughts. But that is not what we mean by telepathy. Can one person sense another's thoughts directly? Well, consider - If you were born with the ability to sense the thoughts of others, surely that would give you a considerable advantage. To sense what others don't realize is being sensed, to have advance warnings of others' intentions, to find that no secret is hidden - surely that would increase your security no end. It seems to me, then, that telepathic ability has great survival value, and that even a very limited and rudimentary telepathic ability would have considerable survival value. Telepaths would be better off, would live longer, and would have more children (who would also be telepathic, most likely). The principles of natural selection, it seems to me, would surely see to it that more and more people would be more and more efficiently telepathic as time went on. In fact, we might liken telepathy to vision. The ability to sense light and analyze it for information about one's surroundings offers such an advantage that almost all life-forms, even quite primitive ones, have eyes of one sort or another. Very efficient eyes long antedate humanity itself. Therefore, the mere fact that we are now trying to find out if telepathy exists, that there is any question of it at all, is, in itself, very strong evidence that it does not exist. If it did exist, it would by now be an overriding ability that we would all take for granted.

• But wait, I may be going too far. Animals that live out their lives in , total darkness are not likely to have eyes. It may be that telepathy has never developed on Earth because there have never been brains on Earth sufficiently complex to produce brain-waves worth detection, or to receive them, once produced. Only now, in the case of Homo sapiens, are the conditions right, and that just barely. Therefore, we are only now beginning to develop telepathy , so that very primitive effects are sometimes barely detectable in some people. I find that hard to accept. Even simple brains have thoughts that could be powerful and worth receiving. The predator sneaking up on his prey must be thinking, at the very least, the equivalent of " - food - food - food-." If the prey sees, hears, or smells the approaching predator,it is off at once, but surely that is not enough. The predator may be hidden, noiseless, and moving upwind. Would it not be useful for the prey to detect that -"food-" pulsing in the other brain? I see a value to telepathy, an overriding survival value, that should have developed the ability in organisms with brains far too simple to develop complex ideas. We might as well argue that all animals but human beings should be deaf, since none of them have brains complex enough to be able to talk; or blind, since none of them have brains complex enough to be able to read. Hearing and sight have other, and more fundamental, functions than speaking and reading, and telepathy might well have other, and more fundamental, functions than carrying on an abstract conversation. But maybe I'm wrong. Perhaps telepathy simply requires a more complex brain than sight and hearing do, and not all the need in the universe will force it into existence until the brain reaches a certain pitch of development. That would be why we're just beginning to detect it in a few quite rudimentary cases. If that is so, doesn't it make sense to suppose that it is likely to show up in people with particularly efficient and complex brains? Yes,I know there are "idiot savants" who can do amazing things, but if telepathy can develop in backward brains, we're instantly back to wondering why it didn't develop in the lower animals. If telepathy required advanced brains, it will show up in particularly intelligent, shrewd, forceful, charismatic individuals, it seems to me. What's more, it would surely give them, even if it is present in only rudimentary form, a powerful advantage over others. Might it not be, then, that telepathic powers explain how the leaders in politics, business, religion, science, and so on, come to be leaders? Might it not be just the touch of telepathy that does it? I might believe that were it not that the world's leaders in every field, have always shown a perfectly human capacity to be fooled, deceived, and betrayed. Julius Caesar clearly didn't know what was in the mind of Brutus. Napoleon I surely did not suspect his foreign minister, Talleyrand, to be playing the role of double agent for years. Hitler certainly didn't suspect that a bomb had been planted a few feet from him on July 20, 1944. In other words, whether we consider the situation from the standpoint of biology or history, we see a world that simply doesn't make sense if telepathy exists. I therefore conclude that the odds are enormously against the existence of telepathy. In order to make me believe that telepathy exists, despite the evidence of the world around me, I would need very strong evidence, together with foolproof reasoning, and this simply doesn't exist. All that the proponents of telepathy can offer are anecdotal evidence and the kind of statistical analysis of guessing games that J.B. Rhine used to present. In these things, the possibilities of lies, hoaxes, or just honest distortion and wishful thinking are great enough to reduce it all to worthlessness in the face of the overwhelming evidence of the world we experience. This is not to say that telepathy may not be possible sometime in the future. Conceivably, something of the sort may yet evolve as brains become still more complex. Much more likely, in my opinion, is the chance that we may learn how to amplify, analyze, and interpret brain-waves to the point where we can "read minds" by instrument. I can even imagine people having combination amplifier/analyzers strapped unobtrusively behind the ear with fine leads attached to appropriate places on the skull, so that each person can broadcast his own thoughts and read those of others. This, however, would be high technology and would not be the kind of telepathy that unsophisticated people ask me to "believe" in."

Daniel:

Nicely said, and certainly a position I could support. But alas, what does it have to do with lucid dreaming?

Moderately,

Peter

Hi Peter, Thanks for the support

Just to clear things up; we we're discussing the possibility of an OBE or telepathic experience during a Lucid Dream. Sorry for not being more specific with my link to lucidity - but i assure you it was the underlying theme of the conversation

I think the problem with a conversation such as this is that so many factors come into play that you cannot always discuss them all in a single post - and it sort of gets hard to include the lucidity reference in each example.

But i think we're still pretty much in-topic. I hope!

Just want to elaborate in the LD OBE experiment with a single playing card, Playing cards being a big part of my 'illusionist' mind set:

One problem with using playing cards in such an experiment is that our idea of the odds can be misleading. Magicians have been aware of this for a long time. It would apparently seem that you would have a 1 in 52 chance of choosing the correct card in such an experiment, them problem is though is how you define a 'hit' or correct guess.

What if you were to dream/OBE-see the 3 of hearts, when in fact the card is a four of hearts? Its pretty close isn't it? Or even dream a 3 of hearts and the card actually be a 3 of diamonds? still almost a direct hit... Or is it?

A direct hit would HAVE to be the exact card, otherwise the odds are very different...

The value of a card is 1 in 12. The suit 1 in 4. The colour 50/50.

So we have to be quite specific that only a direct hit be considered.

Even then we need a large enough data pool, enough results, to calculate the effects of chance etc.

I'm not all that great with statistics, but i seem to remember that if you were to attempt this experiment (using ESP cards rather tather than a standard seck - so its a 1 in 5 odds) 20 times, then something between 7 to 12 correct hits could be considered chance. (if anyone is better with numbers please confirm or correct this!) And even then, a 20 out of 20 result would be interesting but still not proof. You would need far more results to determine if this was a statistical fluke. And furthermore, even if we we're to collect a large enough amount of evidence to confirm that something unexplained was happening - it would prove only that, not ESP,OBE or telepathy etc. just that something was happening. Who knows our subconscious minds may have somehow recorded the tiny differences on the back of each card. Or our OBE may of in fact been an experience of sleep walking? Many explanations could be valid. So we sort of have to be careful when we test things, we need to know what really constitutes evidence. Even then we need to be aware that our evidence is not proof of our theory - unless we have a pretty damn foolproof experimental design. By the way, scientists have been fooled so often by charlatan psychics and magicians that it is quite embarrassing.

But enough ranting about all that...

On the whole Lucid dream versus OBE subject, i have another question:

If OBE's are a separate phenomena to Lucid dreams then standard LD reality tests should not be effective in an OBE.

What then happens when you reality test whilst in a supposedly OBE state?

Sweet dreams,

Daniel

Greetings:

What sets this forum apart, including Stephen's work is that it is research based. All of the answers don't come from one experiment. I don't know what would happen with the playing card experiment, but it might provide an interesting starting point as to whether or not an OBE is really out of body.

Scott

Yes very good point Scott, It would appear that so far the research done at the Lucidity institute seems to suggest that OBEs are more than likely to be vivid dreams (WILDS more often) misinterpreted See: http://www.lucidity.com/NL32.OBEandLD.html for more details.

Yes personal research is very important, but we must be clear as to what exactly our results really mean. I won't go over all that again though!!

We have to be very careful with our assumptions. Lucid dreaming is still on very dodgey ground in the larger scientific community - largely i suspect due to its associations with the "paranormal." We have to be careful about what we go around stating as fact etc. otherwise we can potentially give the whole field a bad name - "bunch of new-age loonies" i read on one site... rather frustrating when you have not only experienced many lucid dreams, but also know that it has been scientifically proven.

Yes Daniel I did wander a bit on that last post sorry. I think in my head my original point I wanted to say express was not to assume we know what telepathy is or isn't. It may not transmit thoughts just like a telephone message. Which pardon me for assuming so, but seemed to be what you were suggesting? Instead it may be just 'basic language'. What I mean by that term is , that which a child has before ever learning any language, the skill we loose as we fill our mind with more information, and it becomes harder to learn another language. Our brains clearly have more ability to pick up languages skills than do animals. But how we translate thoughts into understandable comunication is a whole unique thing. A child must understand the language concept of 'why' before ever learning the word for why..... It must be able to assosiate the word why it hears with a concept it knows as meaning ......... why........ without words Maybe it's too complicated to pick up all the emotional and pre language based information transmitted, for telepathy to be easy. Maybe it transmits in the 'basic language' we all know before we have learned any langauge, if you can see my point? Could be too tough or too much to analyse when we have a nice simple 'English' langauge to use instead. In dreams this might mean we 'talk' to each other (in a shared or telepathic dream) and instantly filter that information through our own langauge not just English but the language of everything we know, and have learned. So we percieve a particular 'emotion, frequency, thought form'(whatever we should call it), as... not what the other dreamer is 'saying' to us but how we with all our own experience would percieve such a thought form, if originating in our own head. Meaning a much more complex skill of 'listening' and much less biased preconceived opinions of all thoughts before seeing through our own filter to see what someone else is dreaming or telling us via a dream. If so a very tough language to learn..... Think how hard it can be to make a point to a closed minded person. Then think how easy to speak with someone on the 'same ' wave length as us. But we are all totally unique when it comes to the randomness of our brain frequency as was pointed out how many possibilities the brain has in it's neural links. The information is only one aspect of the many pathways in the brain, how we "feel" about it is a whole nother frequency. 2 people will feel very different about the same information. So maybe we are telepathic on an untranslated wave length which only sometimes gets through due to 2 people thinking AND feeling the same way about a particular very specific thing .....hence twins would have more experience of this......?????

I think some great points have been made here ,and this post has demonstrated that lucid dreaming is not a subject that can be considered in isolation. This site seems to come down hard on the scientific side of things. I think this is the wrong way to approach things. Maybe the Lucidity Institute is boxing itself into a scientific corner, and not opening it's mind to the spiritual aspects of lucid dreaming, which, judging by this post, is a subject people want to discuss. A moderator asked earlier "but what does this have to do with lucid dreaming?" I'd say "everything". How can you discuss lucid dreaming in isolation? By it's very nature it is a subject which has its roots in all areas of life and belief. I'd throw the question back and ask "how can you have a discussion about lucid dreaming without considering the dynamics of life, belief, and everything which makes us what we are?

Nick:

Though the Lucidity Institute certainly values a scientific approach to their studies, rest assured the spiritual side of lucid dreaming is not being ignored. As a lucid dreamer, I understand that the impact lucid dreaming has on other, perhaps even all, aspects of my life. And of course when one is discussing the nature of the universe or the genealogy of God one could assume that, since both those subjects basically encompass Everything, they touch lucid dreaming.

And now for a bad analogy: the Pacific Ocean has everything to do with the nature, ecology, history, and sociology of Hawaii. But do we really want to study the entire ocean, along with the rest of earth's waterways, to learn about, say, Hawaii's sociology?

This forum exists to discuss the details, nature, and possibilities of lucid dreaming itself, and not necessarily the extremely expansive subjects that it may touch. We're not looking to isolate it. Just browse the headings of other subjects in the forum ' from meditation to synchronicity to sex to transcendence, I'd say we cover many topics that tend to challenge science. Indeed, I think I suggested a few times in these threads myself that we can use lucid dreaming to help investigate the Great mysteries. All we ask is that the discussions continue to have lucid dreaming as their base. If they do not, then this forum will lose coherency, and become too general (and simultaneously abstract) to be useful to those participants who seek to enrich their lives with lucid dreaming.

I have no problem with what's been written on this thread; much of it is fascinating. All I have been asking is that we focus these ideas through a lens of lucid dreaming, and not to forget why we sign onto this forum in the first place.

The moderators are usually reluctant to curb a conversation. Because we value everyone's contribution, we will continue to be so. But of course, if the conversation leaves lucid dreaming over a distant horizon of deep or pent-up thoughts, I'll be compelled to ask once more what it all has to do with lucid dreaming. However, since I asked the question, an answer is always welcome!

Very moderately,

Peter

Hello everyone,

Just want to add a few points to the debate...

Alan, I understand what you are saying in your last post, but what about communication for those who are deaf and/or dumb, wouldn't we see evidence for increased psychic phenomena with these groups?

Nick:

It's an old stereotype that science and scientists are dogmatic and "closed minded" but is this really true? Isn't science really just our way to look at and record the universe we inhabit? If a subject such as ESP or OBE's do not hold up to close inspection isn't it closed minded to ignore this or make excuses for this? One scientist (and a researcher of lucid dreaming too) named Susan Blackmore has done ALOT of research into many paranormal subjects (due to an OBE she herself experienced) and has unfortunately been seen by a few as a bit of a flake (in the scientific community) for doing so - but still she continued. I would recommend reading her thoughts on the subject (and also her thoughts on lucid dreaming) she finally gave up with her paranormal research, check out the following link to find out more:

http://www.susanblackmore.co.uk/Chapters/Kurtz.htm

Please take the time to read it as it has huge significance to the whole debate.

Lucid dreaming certainly lends itself to the spiritual side of life, but spiritual phenomena shouldn't be outside the realms of criticism or inspection - if we are looking for the truth we need to be willing to change our minds, sometimes we are right, sometimes we are wrong. If science cannot find evidence for a phenomena, non at all, then we cannot blame the scientists or the scientific methods employed for this - don't shoot the messenger - perhaps the phenomena wasn't real after all - the problem comes when we have built our views of the world around an idea and then find it to be false - we can either adapt and grow or become closed minded and dogmatic. An example would be those people who still believe the world to be flat (yes they do exist!)

I think that we need to be balanced, open minded towards the spiritual aspects of lucid dreaming, but at the same time willing to accept that such things need to hold up under research and inspection.

Daniel:

Well stated.

Scott

On the other end of the spectrum, here is a link to a scientist whose skepticism seems to be behind his dogmatic and closed-minded conclusions.

http://skepdic.com/lucdream.html

Skepticism does not equal intellectual rigor and as I think everyone involved in lucid dreaming will agree after reading this link, skepticism can be a front for a lack of intellectual rigor.

Gordon:

You are correct in noting that poorly wielded science is just as useless toward acquiring new knowledge and changing one's personal paradigms as is "I'm right, you're wrong, so there" mysticism. Extremes in either direction simply do not work.

To truly hold your mind open, I advocate moderation ' I would, wouldn't I? A good balance of hope and skepticism mixed with a willingness to allow your mind to change forms a key that will unlock many doors to knowledge and spiritual maturity. That kind of discipline will also certainly help in establishing a beneficial lucid dreaming mindset.

Daniel:

Thanks for the thoughts, and for sharing the link; Dr. Blackmore's essay was truly on the mark.

But, what are you saying, that the world really isn't flat? Who told you that? ;)

Best of dreams,

Peter

Daniel,I'd agree with everything you have said there. Please don't get me wrong, I have the greatest respect for science, and for this Institute which I believe is doing some great work. I think that the scientific approach is (and should be) at the heart of any examination of both dreaming in general and lucid dreaming. But surely there is room for the wider debate also? Science by its very nature is a slow and linear process. It takes an idea or theory and seeks to prove or disprove it, within the confines of what is scientifically accepted at any one given point in time. But science is a fluid concept, and the fact that it continues to evolve and move forward (and sometimes backtrack) suggests that there are always new undiscovered levels which we don't yet have access to. For this reason, I think that our current understanding of science should not be the sole criteria which we use to investigate the phenomenon of dreams. This is why discussions such as this are usefull. They remind us to keep an open mind,and they remind us that there is much of science which is still closed to us. More importantly, they provide us with the ideas and theories which we can attempt to test scientifically. After all, what is science without a theory to test? In response to your comment about the flat world theory, I'd say that this theory was once the widely accepted scientific view of things. It was only when one inspired individual had the insight to realise that it made more sense that the world is round, DESPITE the current scientifically accepted views of the time, that this theory was tested and as such became the new reality. I think it's very likely that science can provide the ultimate answer to life, God, the universe and everything. But this is science we (as yet) have no real grasp of, which is why this kind of discussion is usefull and provides us with new ways of thinking. The concept of lucid dreaming sits very comfortably within all this, because it gives us conscious access to our subconscious, an area which is still little understood, and can perhaps give us an insight into ourselves, which science in its current form, may not be able to do. So science has it's own (very valuable) place. But it's the uniquely human abillity to look beyond the current state of science and consider "what if", which will provide the scientific realities of the future. To dispute that is to be a member of the modern flat-earth society.

Gordon, Yes i came across this link sometime ago, frustrating isn't it!

Peter, Yes it's round - madness i know, probably just a fashionable scientific fad, it'll pass. ;)

Nick, Yes i think i can agree with all that you are saying. Our current scientific model is no doubt going to look very silly in 100 years time - like you say it is much a process of evolution - I think the real point, like Peter said, is to keep a healthy balance.

Sweet dreams, Daniel

I think we're all in agreement, in a roundabout kind of way. Phew! Time to check out all those links now...

Very well presented arguement I couldn't have put it better (so it's just as well you did, Nick)

Hello everyone,

Here's a little something that i just stumbled across whilst web surfing:

Read the following capitals out loud, then reread it once again, out loud:

GODISNOWHERE

Sort of similar to a dream-world reality test don't you think?

Are you dreaming?

Daniel

Daniel:

That's an interesting test of spiritual perspective!

Thanks for sharing!

Peter