Lucid Dreaming and other "New Agey" Criticism

[Rosewhip137]

I am currently working on an essay for my english class, I need some sources about the criticism things like Lucid Dreaming and the like recieve. Any article explaining someone's discomfort or beliefe with LD-ing would be EXTREMELY appreciated. and I will be sharing the essay upon completion =]

[Captain Sleepalot]

I honestly haven't ever found any scientific, published papers that disprove lucid dreaming. As for criticism of its practice, you might be able to find some fundamentalist religious text somewhere that calls it the an abomination or something but it seems to have largely avoided the ire of fundamentalists. At the most, they might tie it into the realm of an "occult" practice but I haven't ever seen any religious literature that specifically calls out lucid dreaming as sinful. Who knows though, the world is full of crazy so I guess if you look hard enough you might find what you are looking for.

[Captain Sleepalot]

I should say, however, that there is plenty of anecdotal evidence of fears and criticism of lucid dreaming contained in various posts within Dreamviews. See the following thread for an example: Parents think LDing is an occult... Not sure if your teacher will accept message board posts as source material, though.

[Clyde Machine]

Same as Captain Sleepalot said, I can only really say I've found anything "official" here on Dreamviews, which isn't official in an academic sense. However, what you could do is talk one-on-one with someone on Dreamviews, which would amount to an interview, which, assuming that person can prove that their opinion is worth noting (if they were studying the topic in college or something along those lines), would be a credible source for an academic paper. What grade are you in? I ask because that'll give me an idea of how hard the paper will be graded against its sources.

[Rosewhip137]

Same as Captain Sleepalot said, I can only really say I've found anything "official" here on Dreamviews, which isn't official in an academic sense. However, what you could do is talk one-on-one with someone on Dreamviews, which would amount to an interview, which, assuming that person can prove that their opinion is worth noting (if they were studying the topic in college or something along those lines), would be a credible source for an academic paper. What grade are you in? I ask because that'll give me an idea of how hard the paper will be graded against its sources. Thanks for the advice, And I am in 12th grade, a senior. =] Hope it helps.

[J.D.]

That "Parents think LD-ing is occult" thread would probably help you out. I just posted in it with a bit about St. Jerome, who is largely responsible for the Christian church's disdain for dream studies. Apparently, he had a nightmare about his own death. Later, when he translated the Bible into Latin, he deliberately mistranslated the Hebrew for "witchcraft" into "dream studies". We know it was deliberate because he only did it in certain places in order to condemn dream studies. He translated the Hebrew for "witchcraft" correctly elsewhere. I don't know how the Christian church reconciled their stance on dreaming with the fact that the most important prophesies were received from God in dreams. Aside from that, lucid dreaming gets a "demonic" rep from misunderstood episodes of sleep paralysis. When in SP, hallucinations of being held down by a hooded figure or a demon sitting on your chest are common, and can be very vivid. A religious person who never heard of sleep paralysis (and its common side effects, including "visitations") would most likely conclude that Satan was trying to get them. Luckily nowadays, with the internet, a quick google search of their symptoms would soon lead them to an article explaining SP, (and hopefully here, eventually!) but that wasn't always available. I'm looking forward to reading the essay, btw.

[CourtingTheUnknown]

I have the perfect response that doesn't always fit into your cooky cutter response. Both of my brothers have extremely vivid dreams, one to the point where he sleep walks out into the front yard and wakes up standing in the snow. After a few years of me talking about my dream experiences, and they telling me about theirs, the basic bottom line is, they have nightmares and they don't like dreaming, so why the hell would they do something that makes their dreams more powerful? My answer is that it's not making their dreams more powerful, it IS in a sense, but the end result is you are more powerful then your dreams. Mind over mind etc, and that once you have that control you can even wake yourself up when you're uncomfortable in a dream etc, (that takes alot less work then hitting the first LD when you haven't before). But it's like talking to a brick wall. I just get, "no no no Chris, I'm telling you my dreams are scarey and I don't like them so I'd rather not deal with it at all". Pity, since the best way to deal with that is to learn to face it off and use that knowledge to take control. I guess that extends all the way out to the farthest corners of life though. What doesn't kill us makes us stronger, what fears we overcome will enable us to fly?

[innerspacecadet]

The one non-religious (actually anti-religious) criticism of lucid dreaming I know of is that (a) there's no clear evidence that it's neuropsychologically distinguishable from nonlucid dreaming and (b) there's certainly no clear evidence of things like out-of-body experience (astral projections): http://www.skepdic.com/lucdream.html

[CourtingTheUnknown]

Heh, you'd think a skeptic might use the Lucid dreams to describe what people think they are feeling when they have an OBE. Not to discredit OBE's, but eh, it's like telling a skeptic with night terrors that they don't have bad dreams because there is no evidence that good dreams are neuropsychologically distinguishable from bad dreams.