Thread: Philosophical question: If you're dreaming you're having an LD are you actually having an LD?

Originally Posted by dolphin

One of each or both of the dreams could be real or false lucid dreams. As Lang says, only the dreamer themselves can know for sure whether or not they were conscious of the fact they knew they were are dreaming.

The dreamer can, however, make an indication in their description of the dream whether or not they realized they were dreaming. If the dreamer says they realized they were dreaming in some way, they were likely having a real lucid dream. Realization is by definition full awareness, which implies enough self-awareness was present for the dreamer to be conscious that they knew they were dreaming.

I think you may have hit on the answer, dolphin! Or at least a good answer. If you have full awareness during a dream you definitely are fully lucid. But what is full awareness? Knowing you're dreaming certainly has to be part of it. And maybe any dream where you know you're dreaming should be considered to be a type of LD, though it might only be a fairly "low-level" LD.

However, it seems like being fully aware should go beyond just knowing you're dreaming. Because if you're really fully aware, you should also have awareness of what your waking reality is. For example, you should know who you are, what the date is, where you live, where and with whome you're sleeping at the moment, what you're planning on doing after you wake up, etc. The more you know about what your waking reality is, the more aware you are. In the dream I described in my first post, I knew I was dreaming. But I didn't know it was just a dream within a dream. For example, I thought I was actually living in the desert compound of an LDing cult, rather than in my actual house. So I can't claim to have been even close to being fully aware.

It might be interesting and useful to do reality fact checks (RFCs) whenever we realize we're dreaming. This would be similar to, but would go well beyond, what is normally thought of as a reality check (RC). In an RC, you're simply trying to establish that what you're experiencing is not waking reality. The purpose of an RFC would be to see how aware you are of what your waking reality actually is. To do this, you might simply repeat to yourself a few facts about your waking reality. In other words, you might say things like, "My name is _____. At this moment I'm asleep in my bedroom in my house in [city and state]. Today's date is _______." The more you're able to make correct statements of this type, the more lucid you can consider yourself to be.

I'm going to do some RFCs next time I get lucid. Assuming I actually remember to do them.