“Today I want to talk about lucid nightmares using the metaphor of frightening Near Death Experiences (fNDEs). Both of these states of consciousness are under-reported, most likely due to the taboos I explored in Part I of this series.

In general, Near Death Experiences have been compared to lucid dreams for decades. In both of these “altered states,” the dreamer/visionary undergoes a conscious journey into unknown territory. The journeyer often sees white light, goes through a tunnel or vortex, and meets with ancestors or recently deceased family members. Seeing images of the divine, and having conversations with unseen “entities” is also a strong pattern in both NDEs and lucid dreams.

REM Intrusion or Otherworldly Journey?

The difference, of course, is that NDEs occur after a serious brush with death. And, also, lucid dreamers interpret this class of experience as “a dream” while people who have a NDE interpret their experience as “real.” Interestingly, some neurologists have suggested that NDEs may be due to REM intrusion into waking consciousness. In my mind, this neurological perspective does not reduce a NDE to a biomechanical glitch.

Instead, this material layer complements the imaginal experiences. NDEs are psychologically real, and have been shown in many studies to change people’s views of reality and positively mark their lives forever, REM intrusion or not. But not everyone has a good time in their NDE. The white light, the life review, feelings of love and acceptance…. these are the most common reports, but others have decidedly frightening NDEs. Bruce Greyson and Nancy Evans Bush first collected anecdotes and established a typology back in the 1980s.”

(via The Dream Studies Portal. See also: the entire series of posts on “Lucid Nightmares”)

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Lucid dreams used to be a topic within psychical research and parapsychology. Perhaps their incomprehensibility made them good candidates for being thought paranormal. More recently, however, they have begun to appear in psychology journals and have dropped out of parapsychology—a good example of how the field of parapsychology shrinks when any of its subject matter is actually explained.

Lucidity has also become something of a New Age fad. There are machines and gadgets you can buy and special clubs you can join to learn how to induce lucid dreams. But this commercialization should not let us lose sight of the very real fascination of lucid dreaming. It forces us to ask questions about the nature of consciousness, deliberate control over our actions, and the nature of imaginary worlds.

Full Story: Susan Blackmore

(via Bruce Eisner)

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“A first-generation commercial brain-computer interface (BCI) is being released by Emotiv Systems later this year. What does the future hold for BCI?

By 2050, and likely sooner, you will be able to buy a BCI device that records all your dreams in their entirety. This will be done in one of two ways. One method would be to use distributed nanobots less than a micrometer in diameter to spread throughout the brain and monitor the activation patterns of neurons. By this point, cognitive science will have advanced enough to know which neural activation patterns correspond to which sensory experiences. This has already been done with cats (using electrodes, not nanobots), where researchers led by scientist Garrett Stanley were able to extrapolate what a cat was seeing merely by monitoring the neurons of its visual cortex.”

(via Accelerating Future)

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“Just discovered a new lucid dreaming wiki called Lucidipedia. They provide some great resources for lucid dreaming beginners, as well as an opportunity for more experienced dreamers to edit articles and become a part of the conversation. They also are looking for beginner lucid dreamers to blog for them while they take Lucidipedia’s training. If you’re interested, check out this blog post. Lucidipedia also has some downloadable media like a podcast how-to guide. Great material for the democratization of dreaming!”

(Lucidipedia via The Dream Studies Portal)

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When I first came up with that “Crackpot Historian” title, I didn’t really give it much thought, as these are the types of phrases that sometimes just pop into my head…But what I think I intended to convey was that I enjoy writing about strange and colorful characters–what some would term “crackpots”–and that I also fit that category myself, at times. And yes, as you noted, I don’t take myself too seriously–so don’t you, either!

Perhaps the funniest anecdote I have regarding this “Crackpot Historian” business occurred at the 2006 Retro UFO Convention. I had a table set up there with Greg Bishop, author of Project Beta and Weird California. And I made a couple name tags for us. Greg’s read: “Greg Bishop—U-fool-ologist”. Of course, I asked him if he minded being jokingly referred to in such a manner and he just laughed. And, of course, my name tag said: “Adam Gorightly—Crackpot Historian.” Anyway, at one point a fellow approached me who started going on about crockpots. I just nodded my head, not knowing how to respond. So I guess now I’m a “crockpot historian”, as well! Hail Eris!

Full Story: Waking the Midnight Sun.

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A nasal spray containing a naturally occurring brain hormone called orexin A reversed the effects of sleep deprivation in monkeys, allowing them to perform like well-rested monkeys on cognitive tests. The discovery’s first application will probably be in treatment of the severe sleep disorder narcolepsy.

Full Story: Wired News.

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Nightline had a show on lucid dreaming the other night. Unfortunately, I only caught the second half of it. Since I know some readers (myself included) are working with lucid dreaming, I thought I’d post a link to the article. I also included an exercise from The Dream Studies Portal blog called “Reality Check”. It seems to be working for me. When I remember to do it…

“Somewhere in between the Cinderella school of dreaming and the darker dreamscape of “The Matrix” lies Stephen LaBerge, an expert in a technique called lucid dreaming. He believes that what happens to people in their dreams is as real an experience as what happens in real life. By becoming aware that they’re dreaming while they’re asleep, lucid dreamers say they can learn to consciously control and manipulate the dreamscape, allowing them to live out their wildest fantasies in a virtual reality with no earthly boundaries.”

(via Nightline:ABC News)

(”Reality Check” via Dream Studies Portal)

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Everyone, even coked-out party monsters and meth freaks, must sleep. Even liver-bruising doses of Provigil will only let most people function thirty hours consecutively, and then it’s time to pay dear Morpheus. For those of us who have better things to do then sleep, this is a problem. The past several months, one of my personal projects has been to cultivate lucidity while sleeping in order to make some use of this time. As one Tibetan monk put it, if a man lives one hundred years but remains waking while asleep, “it is as though he lives two hundred years”. And the Tibetan monks would be the ones to listen to on this topic, as they have spent about the past two millenia hanging out in the bleakest environment on earth mastering their minds through magick and meditation. One of the technologies to which they have devoted much attention is Dream Yoga.

Full Story: From the Laboratory.

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