[Video] Lucid Dreaming is The DEVIL?! (Not Really)

Hey guys, I've just made this quick video. I thought about this particular idea because I saw a thread about how someone's parents didn't agree with their lucid dreaming.
So, this video is basically explaining why it ISN'T the Devil.

I kinda wanted to draw the attention of people who think negatively about LDing on YouTube to it, but I may as well post it here for anyone who might find it useful to show to someone.

Here it is on DV's DreamTube: Lucid Dreaming is The DEVIL?!

Spoiler for nevermind, resolved:

EDIT: On this computer I'm using, that DreamTube vid is being a bit buggy, so if you're having problems, just go to the vid actually on youtube: www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3MiLzujS-E
EDIT2: It's being buggy there too, can someone tell me if they're having problems with it or not? Cause I dunno if it's just me or not

Nice to see the videos coming so fast ^^

Pretty interesting topic too, I also became a bit "surprised" by how lucid dreaming is seen by some religious people. I think dreams were for so long associated with mystical subjects (and with the supernatural) that many people still find it hard to view them as simple brain processes. It's also a shame when people heard about lucid dreaming and dismiss it due being "just a dream". They have no interest on it because they perceive it as a mere memory, and lack the understanding that it is a real, live experience.

Thanks for the video ;)

Hi Slash,

Nice video. It played it both without any problems. Thanks, hopefully it will help some people to stop being worried about LDing.

Yeah the ignorance blows my mind, but like I said in the video, I do understand that people do tend to dismiss what they don't know or understand.

Also, I'll assume the video is working for you then? It must just be this damn computer lol.

EDIT: Ah cool gab, cheers.

Great job slash! :muffin:

It kinda makes me sad that people miss out on the chances of exploring another magical world when they dream just because they are too eager to dismiss unfamiliar ideas x__x

Oh and lol @ driving while doing the vid. Tsk tsk ;)

I can't watch videos, but I approve.

What are the arguments against lucid dreaming, anyway? I really can't fathom the possibility that anyone would have good evidence to support the idea that it is harmful in some way.
I've been lucid dreaming for twenty years, and I've turned out okay.
Give me back my bagel!
STOP LAUGHING AT ME, SNAKES!!

Possible disagreements:
- Not possible
- Unnatural
- Work of the devil

All disagreements are pretty much caused by not understanding what it even is, or why it happens.

Those can't possibly be the only arguments.
The second two are self-evidently false, and the first has been disproven in a lab experiment. ...disproven... Why is spell checker angry with me? disproved? disprovened? disproveded... disprovfsda...

I don't know why I ask questions that I can predict will piss me off.

Hey don't worry, it pisses us all off, it's exactly why I made the video lol.
It honestly all comes down to lack of education in this area. It's not taught in schools, nor is anything else sleep/dream related, so nobody knows about this stuff unless they bother to find out for themselves, which is what everyone on DV did, as well as millions of other people.

No. I don't think it comes down to a lack of education. Most people aren't educated about Simple Network Management Protocol, but we all use it, and nobody associates it with the work of the devil (Okay, very few people associate it with the work of the devil.)
It must have to do with a creepiness factor of some sort. Why has lucid dreaming been given the same stigmas as witchcraft or voodoo. I'm not saying that I agree with those stigmas, of course. But I don't understand what aspect of lucid dreaming puts it in the same category of ridicule.
And of course I'm not charging you with these interrogations. I'm just expressing disbelief and confusion.

First story:

My sister introduced me to lucid dreaming. She just mentioned it one day. We both went off and did research on it on the internet. She learned "how evil it is" I learned "how amazingly fun it is." This research caused both of us to lucid dream. I had an amazing lucid dream, and as you can expect from someone that has just learned that lucid dreaming is evil, she had a "demonic" dream. She convinced my whole family that it is wrong because she feels it is wrong. I decided to keep it hidden. I was moved out anyways, so no big deal.

I did as much research as I could into why it would be against the Bible. And I had tons of Christians saying it was evil. Not a single verse that worked with it though. I have never found one, and am open to someone showing me one at any time. :/

Second story:
At school, on DV, browsing the forum. A girl asked me what I was looking at and I asked her if she had ever heard of lucid dreaming. She said that she had heard about it on psychology. She said that her teacher talked about how there are "crazy people that take drugs so that they can manipulate their dreams."

Both of these things make me angry. I love lucid dreaming, it is soooo fun, and there is nothing wrong with it.

Sloth: It's not as simple as comparing it to something else. To be honest there isn't a rhyme or reason to it, but it really does come down to lack of understanding. When the understanding is gained, it is made much clearer, meaning less disagreements (or to put my point across clearer: less misunderstandings)

BrandonBoss: Damn that's a tough one, if I was in your situation I would go mental. My mum has been a hard one to convince, but it's because she thinks it isn't possible, and she's too closed minded to even listen to my explanation of what it is. I got real pissed, and I couldn't be bothered with it any more, so I just ignored it and now I've not talked to her about it in years, which is a shame, given how much this all means to me.

I don't comprehend not thinking it is possible. I guess the whole unconscious while conscious thing might seem impossible, but I thought that most people had had at least one time in their life that they woke themselves up from a nightmare or such.

Yeah... funny enough my sisters and mom watch all sorts of stuff that scares them. They will tell me their dreams where they are getting chased or something and they realize they are dreaming. Sometimes they even stay in the dream for a while before waking themselves up. I guess doing it on purpose is bad? They make no sense to me, which is crazy since I agree with most everything my family does. :panic: it is aggravating.

Ah. Well, funny thing about nightmares is, it goes both ways in relation to lucid dreaming: lucid dreaming can help with nightmares, and recurring nightmares can actually help gain lucidity (recurring dreams means really easy dream signs to use with a technique such as DILD).

In fact I intend on making a video soon about nightmares and lucid dreaming, probably after the WILD tutorial.

Whenever I think of someone calling anything "the devil" I imagine someone like Adam Sandler's mom from Waterboy saying it. Theres always those "fringe christians" or extremists which call everything "the devil", just like adam sandlers mom from waterboy. They've put that label on Dungeons and Dragons, Harry Potter, Pokemon, Star Wars, and many other things. Seems like mostly geeky things but you get the idea. Of course to even be that kind of christian means you have a severe lack of questioning reality, and ultimately only very gullible people get to that level. You aern't going to win in a debate, simply because their mind will never be open to one. It's really such a shame to see a religious person unable to experience the real beauty of life.

and to Sloth: you have to remember you are debating christians, they don't have any evidence to back up their side whatsoever. If you could actually have an open-minded, intellectual debate with them they probably would have stopped believing in their religion before you could even start the debate.

Hahah yeah man, when I came home from uni (after making and uploading that video), my dad actually put on the film Waterboy, and I was laughing my head off cause of the timing.
But yea, the wording I used in the title did indeed come from that film :D

P.S. I saw your comment on the video; It's a Scottish accent not Irish, goodness me haha

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Originally Posted by slash112

Sloth: It's not as simple as comparing it to something else. To be honest there isn't a rhyme or reason to it, but it really does come down to lack of understanding. When the understanding is gained, it is made much clearer, meaning less disagreements (or to put my point across clearer: less misunderstandings)

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No, I get your point. And I did not mean to imply that it is not stemmed from a lack of education (I heard that unintended hint upon reading it agian). What I am saying is that it is not ONLY stemmed from a lack of eduaction. What I intended to convey was that there were other factors that go along with that. I don't understand why dreams would be considered evil.

Anyway, I have been blessed with charisma, or have gotten incredibly lucky in the people I have spoken to, for so far I have never met a skeptic. Maybe I'm lucky, or maybe I state it in such a way that they know better than to dispute it.

This is why the only way I can progress with learning things that are abnormal is to simply not be fixated too much on other people's misunderstandings of those concepts. I think people are just afraid of losing their foundation and having their ideal schemata of life demoted or degraded when something like this acknowledged by a vast number of individuals.

If something completely out of the norm comes up, whether I find it on Dream Views or any other site, if it's of interest, I will explore that concept, go into the realm of the individuals who believe in it, see their world, see their perspectives to the best of my ability, knowing that I can easily go back to the foundations I had before exploring it. Even if it's something I think might be improbable based on the principles that try to define it, I still try to be open-minded and at least attempt to understand it if I must reject it.

Another note, lucid dreaming and dreaming overall, is just one of many ways to go beyond our limited scope of reality and expand on it rather than going on a linear path of ignorance. Ever since I came on this site to find out about lucid dreaming, I can't even have the audacity to say something is so absurd that I would completely try to disregard it.

It's just a matter of finding the connections that will lead to a discovery that makes it practical for the majority of individuals who are willing to be open-minded.




off-topic:

Nice video too slash, and I swear you look like you could be a Doctor Who or something, or maybe it's just me? :D

Sloth: Ah, fair point actually. As CloudlessSky pointed out, some people are at that incredible level of being blind following, gullible, closed minded numpties. And in those cases my video will actually do no good, cause they think they've got it all figured out.

EDIT:
Zelda, agreed.
Also, I'll take that as a major major compliment :D

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Originally Posted by sloth

I don't understand why dreams would be considered evil.

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Evil is of course a religious term, and religion is about mind control - thought policing. Religions seem opposed to anything that promises the individual freedom and power, and they want to be able to frighten people into thinking their way because when people open up their minds and develop knowledge of their own inner nature they stop believing religious claims. Add to that the fact that to uneducated people Lucid sounds a lot like Lurid, and also that many people (not just religious) are afraid of psychology and the subconscious mind (Freud made it out to be pretty messed up!) and I think it's pretty clear why a majority of people (those who aren't well educated or liberal in their beliefs in particular, in other words most people) get pretty freaked out when people want to talk about dreams in an open and honest way.

I've known a few people who claim never to have dreams and to become indignant and apparently angry if I start talking about them, and to me it screams repression and fear of the repressed. And after all, isn't repression a big feature of many religiouns?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by slash112

Ah. Well, funny thing about nightmares is, it goes both ways in relation to lucid dreaming: lucid dreaming can help with nightmares, and recurring nightmares can actually help gain lucidity (recurring dreams means really easy dream signs to use with a technique such as DILD).

In fact I intend on making a video soon about nightmares and lucid dreaming, probably after the WILD tutorial.

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I used to always come aware during nightmares, but I haven't had them in such a long time. I have been hoping to induce them for lucidity, but the amount of fear needed is hard to incubate.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Darkmatters

Evil is of course a religious term,

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Do you mean that it originated from religion?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Darkmatters

and religion is about mind control - thought policing.

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It can be, for some.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Darkmatters

Religions seem opposed to anything that promises the individual freedom and power, and they want to be able to frighten people into thinking their way because when people open up their minds and develop knowledge of their own inner nature they stop believing religious claims. Add to that the fact that to uneducated people Lucid sounds a lot like Lurid, and also that many people (not just religious) are afraid of psychology and the subconscious mind (Freud made it out to be pretty messed up!) and I think it's pretty clear why a majority of people (those who aren't well educated or liberal in their beliefs in particular, in other words most people) get pretty freaked out when people want to talk about dreams in an open and honest way.

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An interesting hypothesis, and one that warrants considerable thought.

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Originally Posted by sloth

Do you mean that it originated from religion? (meaning Evil)

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Of course. As a non-religious person I don't believe in Good and Evil as external forces that control us and are presided over respectively by God and Satan.

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Originally Posted by sloth

It can be, for some. (I said religion is about mind control and thought policing)

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For some yes - obviously not in Buddhism which actually encourages self-exploration - in fact lucid dreaming is practiced by Buddhist monks. But many religions are written in such a way as to try to frighten the practitioners into thinking 'properly' (ie, God knows if you've been bad or good, so be good for goodness' sake, don't even lust in your heart etc - mankind was condemed to sin and misery because we didn't unthinkingly follow God's law even before we knew the difference between good and evil - it goes on and on). In fact it's why Creationists want their pseudo-science taught alongside (or preferably in place of) real science because they know ignorance serves their purpose and knowledge makes people usually turn away from religious restrictions. It's also the reason they invented the eternal reward and punishment system, as a carrot and a whip to frighten people away from openminded inquiry and into blind faith instead.

I don't mean that all religious people believe in mind control or thought policing - many of them are quite open-minded themselves (as many Christians in here are) but I've also seen threads on DV where Christians have come in fearfully asking if it's OK to Lucid dream because their parents or pastor told them it was temptation from Satan to allow them to 'stray from the path' (very telling language). The path of course being to believe and not question. I've heard countless stories of people in Catholic schools who asked perfectly reasonable questions only to be physically punished by stern nuns who had no actual answers, refused to conjecture on the issue, but just knew that asking the question itself was wrong. What does all this point to if not thought policing? At least from many of the leaders, and written into the original texts - though many churches today are very relaxed and open minded.

I realize I should state clearly that I don't believe all religious leaders want blind obedience from the 'flock' - but often religion is used by powerhungry or just screwed-up and repressed puritanical people who want to punish others for their own repressed 'inner demons'.

Great vid. I think it's great that someone faces the issue that some parents may keep their children from lucid dreaming or what so ever. It would be great if lucid dreaming would be recognized and that would be a more accessible topic.

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Originally Posted by Darkmatters

Of course. As a non-religious person I don't believe in Good and Evil as external forces that control us and are presided over respectively by God and Satan.

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And is that the accepted definition of evil? Surely the term existed before Satan. Obviously the term was made up by humans, just like "table", "life", "truth", and "know". Why does the word hold such strong connotation? What would make something "evil"?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Darkmatters

For some yes - obviously not in Buddhism which actually encourages self-exploration - in fact lucid dreaming is practiced by Buddhist monks. But many religions are written in such a way as to try to frighten the practitioners into thinking 'properly' (ie, God knows if you've been bad or good, so be good for goodness' sake, don't even lust in your heart etc - mankind was condemed to sin and misery because we didn't unthinkingly follow God's law even before we knew the difference between good and evil - it goes on and on). In fact it's why Creationists want their pseudo-science taught alongside (or preferably in place of) real science because they know ignorance serves their purpose and knowledge makes people usually turn away from religious restrictions. It's also the reason they invented the eternal reward and punishment system, as a carrot and a whip to frighten people away from openminded inquiry and into blind faith instead.

I don't mean that all religious people believe in mind control or thought policing - many of them are quite open-minded themselves (as many Christians in here are) but I've also seen threads on DV where Christians have come in fearfully asking if it's OK to Lucid dream because their parents or pastor told them it was temptation from Satan to allow them to 'stray from the path' (very telling language). The path of course being to believe and not question. I've heard countless stories of people in Catholic schools who asked perfectly reasonable questions only to be physically punished by stern nuns who had no actual answers, refused to conjecture on the issue, but just knew that asking the question itself was wrong. What does all this point to if not thought policing? At least from many of the leaders, and written into the original texts - though many churches today are very relaxed and open minded.

I realize I should state clearly that I don't believe all religious leaders want blind obedience from the 'flock' - but often religion is used by powerhungry or just screwed-up and repressed puritanical people who want to punish others for their own repressed 'inner demons'.

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Many times I will debate against arguments that I actually agree with, but I'm leaving this be, because it actually makes me angry to talk about some things.

Plus, I'm at the end of a long day of work, and I just don't have my usual conversation inside of me that I usually do.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by sloth

And is that the accepted definition of evil? Surely the term existed before Satan. Obviously the term was made up by humans, just like "table", "life", "truth", and "know". Why does the word hold such strong connotation? What would make something "evil"?

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Look up at the title of the thread - this is about people telling people that lucid dreaming is the work of the devil. Not just evil but Evil (pronounced the way Dr Evil does it).

** Edit:

Ok, it seems Mr. Sloth is looking for a more philosophical answer. I'll crack open my calcified thought process that resulted in the above answer and look at it again..

Of course the idea of evil existed before Christianity - but then, did anything human exist before religion? Or at least before the suprestitious dread that marked the earliest glimmerings of what came to be religion. It was because we feared the thunder and the earthquakes and volcanoes and marvelled at natural beauty and hoped fervently that the sun would come up again each time it went down that we felt the need to try to explain these phenomenae in some way that would allow us some measure of control over them, and the earliest answers we came up with were superstitions, giving way later to religions and eventually to the scientific method. When you think of that progression alongside human evolution, it seems clear to me that among our very first conscious glimmerings were superstitious dreads that demanded appeasing and propitiation. The idea of evil was with us from the beginning, always associated with superstition or religion.

For my part, and I've heard the same sentiments expressed by other liberal-minded atheists - the very terms Good and Evil pervert moral thinking and should be abolished. What the religious or conservative call Evil I try to classify more accurately as terrible decisions and actions made by people for selfish reasons often under the influence of some type of personality disorder or psychosis.

So by this reasoning, the act of lucid dreaming itself is not evil (selfish behavior that hurts others for personal gain) - however telling others that lucid dreaming is evil because you believe they should unquestioningly follow conventional beliefs without exploring the potentials of your own mind IS. Or to be more accurate, maybe not selfish behavior exactly, but it is a strict and unthinking knee-jerk reaction by the close-minded to maintain the staus quo and frighten people into following tradition. These injunctions against mental freedom always seem to come from the religious or the conservative.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Darkmatters

Look up at the title of the thread - this is about people telling people that lucid dreaming is the work of the devil. Not just evil but Evil (pronounced the way Dr Evil does it).

** Edit:

Ok, it seems Mr. Sloth is looking for a more philosophical answer. I'll crack open my calcified thought process that resulted in the above answer and look at it again..

Of course the idea of evil existed before Christianity - but then, did anything human exist before religion? Or at least before the suprestitious dread that marked the earliest glimmerings of what came to be religion. It was because we feared the thunder and the earthquakes and volcanoes and marvelled at natural beauty and hoped fervently that the sun would come up again each time it went down that we felt the need to try to explain these phenomenae in some way that would allow us some measure of control over them, and the earliest answers we came up with were superstitions, giving way later to religions and eventually to the scientific method. When you think of that progression alongside human evolution, it seems clear to me that among our very first conscious glimmerings were superstitious dreads that demanded appeasing and propitiation. The idea of evil was with us from the beginning, always associated with superstition or religion.

For my part, and I've heard the same sentiments expressed by other liberal-minded atheists - the very terms Good and Evil pervert moral thinking and should be abolished. What the religious or conservative call Evil I try to classify more accurately as terrible decisions and actions made by people for selfish reasons often under the influence of some type of personality disorder or psychosis.

So by this reasoning, the act of lucid dreaming itself is not evil (selfish behavior that hurts others for personal gain) - however telling others that lucid dreaming is evil because you believe they should unquestioningly follow conventional beliefs without exploring the potentials of your own mind IS. Or to be more accurate, maybe not selfish behavior exactly, but it is a strict and unthinking knee-jerk reaction by the close-minded to maintain the staus quo and frighten people into following tradition. These injunctions against mental freedom always seem to come from the religious or the conservative.

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Nuh uh!