Thread: Is there more to lucid dreaming than most of us realise?..

i like to think that lucidity is like a training ground in your head; from back when "primitive" man had all those extra innate abilities and senses that we have lost though super-civilisation.

when it was a perfectly percievable threat that a tiger might start to chase you down half way through a deer hunt in a forrest somewhere, maybe we readily had the ability to become lucid in our dreams, and could use these dreams as a means of preparation for emotions & physiological responses to stress and 'fight or flight'. or maybe even a means of planning strategies to escape or kill an imposing predator.

perhaps, like a lot of abilities that are still displayed in tribesmen in remote places, lucid dreams have become largely dormant due to our reliance on technology and the security of western civilisation?
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saying that, i had a 5 hour conversation with a friend i'd not seen in a while debating spirituality (Not about religion, that i can understand. More spiritual-agnosticism; interconnected spirits etc). call me what you like, im a hard-headed scientist and will go for the biological, chemical, and evolutionary route in any discussion regarding the mind/spirit/soul, conscious/subconscious.

some might call this a boring viewpoint, but there is nothing boring about simple atoms coming together in such a specific way as to create a living body, with a conscious mind. look at what humankind is capable of. that's twice the miracle of parting the red sea if in my books.

and science requires belief too. if anything, is it not MORE feasible that we were made by some divine being, as opposed to millions of years of evolution in tiny steps creating this perfect structure, the human body?
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does anyone think that animals have lucid dreams? or that animals are always lucid in their dreams? just putting it out there, balls-out question, not a theory. i dont know enough about it.

but, as most animals (not so much including, for instance, larger mammals with considered intelligence) are largely innate beings, ie eat play shit sleep, one might say they are "subconscious". if that were their normal state; awake and in dreams, would they be said to be lucid?

Originally Posted by spaceexplorer

I'd choose to go with occams razor...I think a logical person would question both reality and thier personal perception/sanity.

fair enough on occam, but I keep the opinion that it's a flawed system. and I like both being questioned on a questionable thing, or even nearly certain things, which makes me wonder about the rest of your post:

Originally Posted by spaceexplorer

I would say, it is due to either a lack of, or unwillingness to educate themselves about more mundane possibilities in order to sustain a fictional but more exciting story. Saying "i saw what was probably a flying lantern, but cant be sure" is far more boring than saying "i saw something odd in the sky, it was a UFO! probably aliens"

I guess I was too vague in my first post, but I was talking about things that people have experienced. Like seeing a ghost. A total apparition standing in front of you, maybe you have a conversation. Maybe you're haunted or maybe your house is and you see shit all the time. The UFO gets me tho. Okay, lets say you see a huge disc with lights all around and then more come and they do weird and impossibly fast patterns in the sky. and then one comes over and you can see the people inside, you trade waves and kisses and they fly away.

Originally Posted by spaceexplorer

...It's easy to add to stories... and magicians know this and take advantage of that quirk of human social-psychology.

Let's say you see a magician...

Originally Posted by spaceexplorer

But when it comes down to it, assuming that the more likely explanation is the correct one...I myself think that almost all the evidence points to there being an abundance of alien life in the universe, however, I also think that it is highly unlikely (due to the logistics) that any have visited earth. That's not closed minded, that trying to keep an open mind... but not so open that it falls out and gets lost.

we have not come down, we are still thinking about digging. So you're walking along the road thinking of all the abundance of life of universe that you will never see, due to logistics, and a flying disc creeps in over you and takes you on a tour. Would you expect me to believe you? Would you be so attached to The Laws that you wouldn't believe yourself? and it's hard to not believe you, and at the same time think that you don't have some mental problems. That fine rope is an open and discerning mind.