Quote Originally Posted by Avian View Post
Could you explain how lucid dreaming became so popular and widely known in the West, and when (I have always assumed it came with the explosion of "Eastern" practices in America, but I don't really know)?
I would say that LD'ing has not become popular or widely known in the West (or the East, for that matter), and that, in the Grand Scheme of Things, it's about as popular and practiced as it was when I was a kid back in the 1970's.

Yes, it has gained a small increase in popularity thanks to the internet, and for some reason has, according to Steph, become quite popular in Germany, but I really believe that most of the people who practice -- and stick with practicing -- consistent LD'ing probably has not gone up very much. It's climbing, yes, but hasn't approached the level of "popular" yet, in my opinion.

There may have been a tiny burst after LaBerge wrote EWOLD, which actually was coinciding with a burst of popular introspection during the New Age movement in the '80's & '90's (aka, that "explosion of Eastern Practices), and fueled by technological developments and movies like Dreamscape and Altered States. But I would bet that if I asked a hundred people what they thought lucid dreaming was, much less do they do it, I would still get 90 people just looking at me funny.

The Internet creates an interesting illusion of popularity sometimes: I think that if you looked at the traffic of this site, easily the most visited LD'ing site, you will find that its overall ranking is far below what could be conceived as popular.

I could be wrong, of course, but that is my (very brief) take on the history, anyway.