Thread: The future of Lucid Dreaming

For me, the most important thing will be to develop ways to make everyone able to achieve lucidity easily and without all the nonsense we have to use now.

I think that someday virtual reality will become a common form of entertainment, and those who can lucid dream will have an advantage over those who are limited by VR technology and software only.

Then there is the "small" issue of whether life is a dream overall. If it is than the sky is not the limit whether waking or sleeping, and LDing ought to open up all kinds of interesting doors like the ones you mentioned, but not just limited to them.

If LDing were accepted in popular culture and no longer a fringe hobby, that would change things. Can you imagine LDing becoming a college course or an elective in school? Yes, that would require improvements in methods so that they are more approachable to the average person, but at some point we might reach a critical mass of practitioners, and then peer pressure might play a role if LDing becomes the thing to do, and no longer that weird thing some eccentrics are prone to.

i think the remote communication could be easily tested on this site get one member to say for example right tonight i,m going to tell tierd phil something in my dream if they achieve it and you or whoever does it gets the right question its proved may take long time but i reckon someone would eventually do it , The premonition dreams already do happen psychics help the police on cases sometimes i am not sure on the last one as i dont know much about it .

Which do you think are bull, and which could be true.

I think all you mentioned won't happen They violate laws of physics, or require such advanced technology that I doubt we'll see them in the upcoming decades. But who knows?

Personally, I think the future of lucid dreaming is in sports psychology and health care. So many possibilities in these fields ^^

I think one of the first things to pop up is something like a lucid dream therapy. Maybe hypnosis is the start of something like this. surely there's great potential in this field of psychology.

Originally Posted by Bobblehat

For me, the most important thing will be to develop ways to make everyone able to achieve lucidity easily and without all the nonsense we have to use now.

I must have to agree with this. I'm yet to experience my first lucid dream, but I've been reading quite a lot about lucid dreams, and I'm by the belief that lucid dreams have amazing posibilities for the individual as well as the society. Imagine if you can make any rapist stick to raping in his dreams, to prevent him from being tempted to do it in waking life? Or to prevent stuff like school shootings to happen? I know that is high expectations, but I don't understand why lucid dreaming isn't more well known than it is, because I think amazing posibilities lies ahead.

I don't understand why lucid dreaming isn't more well known than it is, because I think amazing posibilities lies ahead.

Lucid dreaming does have the potential for health care of educational therapy. The huge problem that lies in it's future (or lack of), is that scientists still haven't found a reliable and effective method for inducing lucidity in a regular basis, and without a large amount of practice. This is crucial, because you don't want a patient to wait 1 year before having 2-3 lucid dreams per week, because in that time, he's suffering. Only with a relatively quick method patients with PSTD, OCD, phobias, etc etc, could have a proper benefit from it. There's for example virtual-reality therapy in some countries already, and lucid dreaming would be even more effective due obvious reasons.

Same applies to the use of lucid dreaming in sports: it has great potential, and large part of the studies (especially german studies) are actually oriented towards that field. But an athlete won't get much use of them unless he can induce them in a regular basis.

EILD might be the future of lucid dreaming I believe. That, and supplements.

Originally Posted by Zoth

Lucid dreaming does have the potential for health care of educational therapy. The huge problem that lies in it's future (or lack of), is that scientists still haven't found a reliable and effective method for inducing lucidity in a regular basis, and without a large amount of practice. This is crucial, because you don't want a patient to wait 1 year before having 2-3 lucid dreams per week, because in that time, he's suffering. Only with a relatively quick method patients with PSTD, OCD, phobias, etc etc, could have a proper benefit from it. There's for example virtual-reality therapy in some countries already, and lucid dreaming would be even more effective due obvious reasons.

Same applies to the use of lucid dreaming in sports: it has great potential, and large part of the studies (especially german studies) are actually oriented towards that field. But an athlete won't get much use of them unless he can induce them in a regular basis.

EILD might be the future of lucid dreaming I believe. That, and supplements.

I am not so sure about that. I don't believe that successful induction is necessary for lucid dream practice to be effective therapy. It's the process not just necessarily the end result. Most LD induction methods can provide huge psychological benefits even if the dreamer does not have end results for months. Time flies anyway, and so what does a few months delay matter ultimately, when really a year ago seems like yesterday? And I think the greatest benefits of lucid dream practice come from greater awareness, questioning reality and self, and a change in attitude and world view for the better. Yes, lucid dreams themselves are awesome, but a therapy using LD induction technique could maybe even be effective even if the patient did not end up having a lucid dream but improved due to the effort.

Originally Posted by JoannaB

I am not so sure about that. I don't believe that successful induction is necessary for lucid dream practice to be effective therapy. It's the process not just necessarily the end result. Most LD induction methods can provide huge psychological benefits even if the dreamer does not have end results for months. Time flies anyway, and so what does a few months delay matter ultimately, when really a year ago seems like yesterday? And I think the greatest benefits of lucid dream practice come from greater awareness, questioning reality and self, and a change in attitude and world view for the better. Yes, lucid dreams themselves are awesome, but a therapy using LD induction technique could maybe even be effective even if the patient did not end up having a lucid dream but improved due to the effort.

I think I get your point (let me know if I'm wrong), but I believe you and I are not in the same page when we're talking about lucid dream therapy. Besides, lucid dreaming therapy stops being "lucid dreaming therapy" when the goal is not necessarily achieving lucid dreams. Why? Because you're mistaking things like "stress reduction exercises", in which mindfulness (it encompasses most of the daily exercises that matter for the patient) is present, sleep hygiene (already suggested by any therapy related to mental health care), with the function of the lucid dream itself. CBT (cognitive behavioral therapy) already may include (depending on the professional you're being treated by, because there's a lack of uniformity on talk therapy in practically every country) elements like mindfulness, sleep hygiene (this one is practically encouraged by any good professional), with methods of implementation far more effective than lucidity.
Let's be realistic: apart from mindfulness, there's not many benefits from the natural lucid dreaming techniques laying around. What good would a reality check do? What good would a mantra do? And besides, even if they do any good, it's not hard to realize that compared to other stress reduction exercises, these lucid dreaming ones fall behind. Except for mindfulness, but it may already be present like I mentioned above.

Second of all, I'm talking about preventive/abortive therapy, and you seem to be talking about supportive therapy, which are completely different things.
For the range of patients that I described, like PSTD, OCD, phobic, etc, lucid dreaming therapy has no use (when I say no use, I mean "if we compare it's effectiveness with other methods) apart from the core of it: the lucid dream.
The patient needs a lucid dream for the same reason virtual reality is used when possible: to create the scenario which the stimulus affects the patient (have it be a memory, a compulsion, a object etc) so the patient can learn to face it. This leads to extinction of the association (for example, patient learns to stop associating the horn of a car with a bomb), which will be the therapeutic act. A PTSD patient wins nothing by doing reality checks, or mantras, or WILDs, or ADAs. In fact, some of those techniques can actually hurt (tell a PTSD patient like a solider to perform ADA and you'll see him freaking out most likely, or an phobic patient to MILD with visualization of the scenario). That said:

Most LD induction methods can provide huge psychological benefits even if the dreamer does not have end results for months.

Most? Can you point out the technique and why it helps? I know of reports of dying cancer patients reporting happier/more comfortable psychological states due lucid dreaming, but how can you even distinguish that it is the process and not the lucid dream that is helping? Besides, if it is the process and not the dream, then it technically isn't "lucid dreaming" therapy right?

Time flies anyway, and so what does a few months delay matter ultimately, when really a year ago seems like yesterday?

Well, you normally don't mix therapies, and patient-professional time is limited. What does a few months better? A LOT, you have no idea oh miserable many of these patients are. It's not like we can "bet" in lucid dreaming therapy without knowing it is really effective. And while you may say "yes we can", it will never be used by the majority of professionals if it is state as such a high gamble. This is health care after all, we need to think on what's best for the patient.

And this talk is all about mental health. If we begin to talk about physical therapy (like fractured limbs, problems with muscles, etc etc), then lucid dreaming therapy is entirely useless except for the part of the dream itself. Visualization can indeed affect your muscles and performance, coordination, but questioning/reality checking/whatever technique you may refer has no practical purpose, because it's all about visualizing the action in the most intense and vivid way (dreaming>visualization, and that's why we would use it).

Ok, Zoth, clearly you know way more than I know what you are talking about. What I was talking about was more toward stress reduction and mild depression but not really PTSD or phobia and such which I do not know enough about. And the time flies is more my own observation of time racing, but clearly people who are miserable must conceive time as moving slower and yes for patient therapist timely results matter more, so never mind what I said - you have many great points.

The future of LD'ing?

Well, barring any breakthroughs in EILD, the future of LD'ing will very likely resemble the present -- sparsely practiced, rarely mastered, and misunderstood by the 99.9% of the population, including many of those who embrace and attempt LD’ing.

That unhappy thought aside, how's about this for a potential future? Two very large things are on humanity's immediate horizon: One is the next step in human evolution, which "They" are already assuming will be one of mind and not body; the other is the coming wave of technology that will eliminate things like a need to work at all for most people in first-world countries (initially). These two things will be huge, and will likely prove a great deal of trouble for most people; except the rich (of course), and, yes, LD'ers!

Why? Lucid dreaming, especially of the advanced variety, could well be a harbinger of that coming evolutionary leap. After all, that leap will likely involve a merging of our conscious/unconscious minds in the context of self-awareness, and, since that is basically the definition of LD'ing, LD'ers will have a jump on that new paradigm.

And that technology wave? LD'ers can ride its crest I think, because, while the world is left adrift with nothing creative to do all day thanks to the sea of "labor-saving" devices in which we're already half-submerged (think Vonnegut's Player Piano), LD'ers will have plenty to do, and ought to be able to teach functional imagination to those who need a way to fill their empty days. Who knows? Given this stuff, accomplished LD’er’s might be running things in a century or two!

Oh, and for what it’s worth, the future of LD’ing may also be death. Or, rather, life after death… if there is and afterlife, to die while self-aware (as if in a WILD) and then to approach that afterlife with your self-awareness intact might make things very interesting. [Yes, that was a very bad paraphrasing of Sleep Yoga, from an agnostic western point of view]

Originally Posted by Sageous

Well, barring any breakthroughs in EILD.

It amazes me really. We sent someone to the moon in 1969 in a giant tin can with a computer less powerful than today's cheap calculators, yet the best we can do for EILD devices in 2013 is a crappy mask with a few pretty lights that flash while you're asleep.

^^ Priorities, I guess.

Also, it's probably a whole lot easier to send a large firecracker into space than it is to tinker with things as complex as the human brain and as etherial as human consciousness.

Saw an episode of through the wormhole with morgan freeman "is there a sixth sense" One experiment I saw that was really interesting was when they got two people in two separate rooms. They put some big thing on their head that monitors brainwaves and also emits an EMF (electromagnetic field). In room 1 is a man, room 2 is a woman. In room 1 every few minutes they remotely make a flashlight in the room go off and on very quickly. They do this every once in awhile. Now when the test was over here were some interesting results. When the light flashed in the mans room (room 1) his brainwave spiked a bit. Ok not surprising, the really interesting part was that at that exact same time the woman in room 2 had a spike in her brainwaves. Their brainwave spikes matched each time they spiked. When they asked the woman what she experienced, she said she saw a brief flash of light in her room even though there was no flashlight in her room, it was only in the mans room. This has many implications. First this seems to show that thoughts and experiences are able to be transmitted from one person to another. This also means that thoughts are not just localized in our brains. The scientist think it is the earths magnetic field responsible for this transmission, this is why they gave the two test subjects a mini EMF thing to test it out. Now if our thoughts and experiences can be transmitted to each other then shared dreaming or even astral projection seems more likely to be possible. And of course, telepathy, if one finds a way to block out the "mental noise" and hone in on a specific person.

Originally Posted by Zoth

I think all you mentioned won't happen They violate laws of physics, or require such advanced technology that I doubt we'll see them in the upcoming decades. But who knows?

Personally, I think the future of lucid dreaming is in sports psychology and health care. So many possibilities in these fields ^^

There plenty of anecdotal evidence of people having precognitive dreams. Yes, anecdotal evidence doesn't "prove" it is real but it does prove that the phenomena occurs and is worth looking into.

Originally Posted by Daredevilpwn

There plenty of anecdotal evidence of people having precognitive dreams. Yes, anecdotal evidence doesn't "prove" it is real but it does prove that the phenomena occurs and is worth looking into.

While personally I am open minded about precognitive dreams, and think that they may or may not be real. However, I am cautious in basing truth claims on plenty of anecdotal evidence because in the 17th century there was plenty of anecdotal evidence of witchcraft in Salem, Massachussets, and before that the Spanish Inquisition also had anecdotal evidence. I would be very reluctant to say that they were right. And given what we know about human nature and tendency to find scapegoats, the alternative explanation of complete fabrication in the witch trials seems very likely. Of course, that does not necessarily apply to precognitive dreams.

Yeah. I see what you are trying to convey and I agree. As long as we are open minded to the possibilities we can't do no wrong. The people I dislike are what I call unhealthy skeptics, those that will refuse to acknowledge the slightest possibility of something "weird" such as precognitive dreams and such.

my long time friend who isn't into any kind of metaphysical, lucid dreaming, spiritual, whatever you want to call it stuff had a precognitive dream about 9/11.

He was young (is 24 now), and he had a dream that he told his mother about (she's a psychologist) and she wrote it down at the time. He dreamed about two planes flying into two buildings and it really freaked him out, to the point that he went in and told his mom about it at age 12. A couple of days later it happened. I don't believe his mom got her written record time stamped or notarized or anything so it's not pure proof, but it's all I need.

Originally Posted by Daredevilpwn

There plenty of anecdotal evidence of people having precognitive dreams. Yes, anecdotal evidence doesn't "prove" it is real but it does prove that the phenomena occurs and is worth looking into.

IF the phenomenon is precognitive dreams. Take a look at this article. There's so much that we don't understand regarding memory and our brain and we already begin to see that many of these occurrences are indeed explained by something other than precognition. I wouldn't call that unhealthy skepticism at all. I'm personally more a fan of "let's find more about it, and then give it a name" and not the other way around. If it really turns out to be precognitive dreaming, then cool. I don't think that people who believe in precognitive dreams are wrong, I just think they, just as I (as someone who hasn't an opinion yet), don't have the whole story in their hands

edit: Sorry TiredPhil! I'll abstain from further off-topic posts

We sent someone to the moon in 1969 in a giant tin can with a computer less powerful than today's cheap calculators, yet the best we can do for EILD devices in 2013 is a crappy mask with a few pretty lights that flash while you're asleep.

Like Sageous said, priorities ^^ I've read in a book The mind at night (can't remember the author atm) that the biggest problem was funding. At some point, and still up to these days, the crushing majority of research funds has gone to sleep disorders. A real shame, but somewhat justified.

I carry Mr Occam's razor with me everywhere I go. It's boring, but it keeps one's feet firmly on the ground.

I "dream" of a day where EVERYONE has the access to lucid dream on command.

Push a button - Lucid. Bam.

Of course, that's way easier said than done and it will probably be a LONG time before EILD technology like that is available, or it may never will be in our lifetime. If scientists/researchers somehow make this technology, I believe the whole world will change. Most people will spend their time sleeping and eating. I have no idea what would happen to the real world as everybody would just be LDing 24/7 and no work would get done. It may be scary if this type of technology is released. Who knows, maybe I'm just stupid and none of this makes any sense.

Also, shared lucid dreaming would be awesome if scientists were able to connect 2 people together, sort of like in Inception. How cool would it be to go to your lucid dreaming device and have a huge LAN party. There could be different servers you could join that dreamers create. IE: "Flight Training", "Waterbending Practice", "Medieval Sword Fight To The Death!"

That would be so awesome, but highly unlikely to happen any time soon.

Originally Posted by mahoogie

I "dream" of a day where EVERYONE has the access to lucid dream on command.

Push a button - Lucid. Bam.

Of course, that's way easier said than done and it will probably be a LONG time before EILD technology like that is available, or it may never will be in our lifetime. If scientists/researchers somehow make this technology, I believe the whole world will change. Most people will spend their time sleeping and eating. I have no idea what would happen to the real world as everybody would just be LDing 24/7 and no work would get done. It may be scary if this type of technology is released. Who knows, maybe I'm just stupid and none of this makes any sense.

Also, shared lucid dreaming would be awesome if scientists were able to connect 2 people together, sort of like in Inception. How cool would it be to go to your lucid dreaming device and have a huge LAN party. There could be different servers you could join that dreamers create. IE: "Flight Training", "Waterbending Practice", "Medieval Sword Fight To The Death!"

That would be so awesome, but highly unlikely to happen any time soon.

For some reason, I think if such technology were to get to the public, some religious people would bash it saying its satanic or some nonsense. I am not trying to make fun of any religious people here, but you cannot deny that religion sometimes get in the way of scientific advancements and there are still some people saying lucid dreaming is satanic. I just hope this disinformation will be delt with. Others may be scared to even try out such technology since lucid dreaming seems so.....strange to people that don't care about dreams.

^^ "Religious" and other people who maintain power or self-assurance with what they know as opposed to what is being learned anew are going to react like that to new ideas, whether it be technology, philosophy, science, or a particularly edgy TV show. They always have. But don't worry; if the technology to LD effortlessly is ever invented, it'll spread like wildfire, no matter what kind of curses some folks might attach to it.

In other words worry not; we'll find a way past the naysayers, come that day.

Originally Posted by mahoogie

I "dream" of a day where EVERYONE has the access to lucid dream on command.

Push a button - Lucid. Bam.

Of course, that's way easier said than done and it will probably be a LONG time before EILD technology like that is available, or it may never will be in our lifetime. If scientists/researchers somehow make this technology, I believe the whole world will change. Most people will spend their time sleeping and eating. I have no idea what would happen to the real world as everybody would just be LDing 24/7 and no work would get done. It may be scary if this type of technology is released. Who knows, maybe I'm just stupid and none of this makes any sense.

Also, shared lucid dreaming would be awesome if scientists were able to connect 2 people together, sort of like in Inception. How cool would it be to go to your lucid dreaming device and have a huge LAN party. There could be different servers you could join that dreamers create. IE: "Flight Training", "Waterbending Practice", "Medieval Sword Fight To The Death!"

That would be so awesome, but highly unlikely to happen any time soon.

I think we should all team up and offer a big financial reward to anyone who works out a way that enables anyone and everyone to LD every night. Who would have the money and the interest and be able to get the publicity? Probably someone like Richard Wiseman.