Lucid Dreaming

Lucid dreaming is the conscious perception of one's state while dreaming, resulting in a much clearer ("lucid") experience and usually enabling direct control over the content of the dream. The complete experience from start to finish is called a lucid dreaming. Stephen LaBerge, a popular author and experimenter on the subject, has defined Lucid Dreaming as "dreaming while knowing that you are dreaming."

There are many unanswered questions about lucid dreaming, and about dreaming itself. LaBerge and his associates have called people who purposely explore the possibilities of lucid dreaming oneironauts (literally from the Greek meaning "dream explorers"). The topic attracts the attention of a diverse and eclectic group, namely psychologists, self-help authors, New Age groups, mystics, occultists, and artists. This list is by no means exhaustive nor does interest in lucid dreaming apply necessarily to each group. Clear and consistent knowledge about lucid dreaming is difficult to find amongst the many interpretations of the experience, especially considering its highly subjective nature. It may be classified as a protoscience, pending an increase in scientific knowledge about the subject. Researchers such as Allan Hobson with his neurophysiological approach to dreaming have helped to push the understanding of lucid dreaming into a less speculative realm.

Lucid dreamers regularly describe their dreams as exciting, colourful, and fantastic. Many compare it to a spiritual experience and say that it changed their lives or their perception of the world. Some have even reported lucid dreams that take on a hyperreality, seemingly "more real than real", where all the elements of reality are amplified. Lucid dreams are prodigiously more memorable than other kinds of dreaming, even nightmares, which may be why they are often prescribed as a means of ridding one's self of troubling dreams.

There is a substantial cottage industry based around the technique of lucid dreaming, with an array of induction devices (usually based around flickering light arrays) commercially available to allegedly allow induction of lucid dreams. Their proponents also sometimes claim that these devices help achieve a higher level of spiritual consciousness, and associate it with other New Age concepts such as astral travel or dream sharing. Some proponents of the technique claim they can use symbolic methods to research, program, and modify their nervous system itself. Memory management, creative solution generation, accelerated healing, autoinduced priapism, and ecstatic envelopment of one's body are among the various claimed techniques. Regardless of these claims' validity, lucid dreaming as a scientifically verified phenomenon is well-established.

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