Dream And Dreamer

What Are Nightmares? I began to try to recognize my dreams as products of my mind, even as I dreamed them. The breakthrough came one night soon after a nightmare. I decided I could not live fully while I let my fears roam about on their own power, so to speak. I entered the dream state determined not to yield. I had read somewhere that a fear could only be dissipated by friendliness and trust. Anger, threats, aggressiveness were out. These reactions were actually fearful reactions. So I made up my mind to be friendly.   The dream evolved, and I barely had time to remind myself to smile before the nightmare began. This time it was an almost childish nightmare, in which my collective fears took the shape of a large, nebulous but very scary monster. I quailed and almost turned tail, but by sheer will (I was really scared) I stayed and let it approach. I said to myself "it's my dream, and if I forget this, I'll have to go through it again," and I sm...

Stephen LaBerge The Lucidity Institute, Stanford CA 94309 ABSTRACT : Lucid dreaming provides a test case for theories of dreaming. For example, whether or not "loss of self-reflective awareness" is characteristic of dreaming, it is clearly not necessary to dreaming. Theories of dreaming that do not account for lucidity are incomplete, and theories that do not allow for lucidity are incorrect. The fact that lucid dreamers can remember to perform predetermined actions and signal to the laboratory allows them to mark the time of particular dream events accurately, allowing experiments to establish precise correlations between physiology and subjective reports, and enabling the methodical testing of hypotheses. Just as dreaming provides a test case for theories of consciousness, lucid dreaming provides a test case for theories of dreaming. Although one is not usually explicitl...