Consciousness as a scale - Lucid or Incubated?

I keep noticing during the mornings as I wake up, my eyes have been open for several minutes, but I suddenly come awake (albeit drowsy) and do an RC. When fully conscious I do an RC every minute or so (probably becoming antiproductive), so I know that if I was conscious when my eyes opened, I would have RC'ed. So it seems we have states of consciousness (alert, drowsy, awake but unconscious, asleep but lucid, asleep), which apparently have something to do with our brain vibrating at different speeds (hence the hemisync brainwave generators).

This got me thinking: what if, during my lucids (all low level), I was barely conscious, not even enough to make proper decisions, or even that I never became conscious at all. A lucid dream is simply a dream where you know you're dreaming, but what if it was really just incubated? We condition ourselves to think 'If this RC fails, then I'm in a dream', so when we dream about an RC failing, we instantly think 'I must be dreaming', because we've told ourselves that is what we'd do.

Our conscious minds essentially allow us to do things we wouldn't normally do; eg You subconsciously turn the keys when you get in a car to drive, but you could decide not to if you wanted. Because you are unconscious in dreams, you'll always turn that key when you get in (hopefully you get that example). In my lucids, I've never had that feeling that I was really dreaming. Although I kept telling myself I was dreaming, as soon as something was a little out from what I expected (e.g there not being a way to exit the room I'm in so I can't go outside and fly), I don't think to myself 'This is a dream, I can just float through the wall' I think 'hmm, I'd better go out the window', which is what I would do in real life, when bound by real physics.

What I suppose i'm asking is: When you excercise more control like being able to fly, does it mean you become 'more conscious' and can make real descisions, rather than predecided paths?

Thanks for reading my rant :roll:

Degrees of consciousness or awareness vary in dreams and in waking life.

I have had flying dreams without becoming lucid.

I have been awake and going along with choices other people were making even though I didn't like them.

I like to plan to have a task to do when I become lucid so that I don't simply drift in the dream. However it is a challenge for me to stay asleep if I am very consciously active in the dream.

In my longest LD which was about 15 minutes long, the degree of lucidity ebbed and flowed a lot. Many times I forgot it was a dream. But when more lucid I could take more control.

I believe it helps prepare for greater lucidity if you think about the nature of dreams while awake.

hey this is an interesting subject. you both seem to be saying that lucidity is flowing state, so the question being, where does our normal waking consciousness end and the dream consciousness begin? then there is the lucid state which is a combination of waking consciousness and normal dreams. its the third state that seems to flow most easily, eve against our greatest efforts.

one of the most interesting things involved in this is that we lose our temporal identities in lucid dreams. we are never thinking about what we are going to do tomorrow, what we did yesterday, and so on. i think this is a good thing, but it also seems to be the reason we dont recognize ourselves in dreams too often and wake up in them. i think this is because waking life is sorta ruled by a form of consciousness that is focused on praticality, language, and our senses. this doesnt mean that non-conceptual states arent also opertaing (like emotions,moods, and cares) and attaching themselves to our waking states through unconscious processes. this may be why dreams in general are so powerful since they are exploiting the emotional core of our self and our self-representations.

just a theory in progress, but do either of you notice in non-lucid dreams anything peculiar about that moment when you realize that you are in a dream? i cant figure how there can such a phenomenal shift in our consciousness but only seem like a simple perspective being transposed onto the rest of our dream world.

anyways, enough rambling

That's precisely what I was thinking. When I go 'lucid' I don't neccessarily feel any great change, it's just like another bit of knowledge popped into my head, rather than me suddenly becoming conscious.
This is why I think there may be a scale. At the moment, i'm only reaching a low level of lucidity, with little to no 'lucid feeling'. Hopefully as I progress in proficiency at LDing I will feel more and more conscious, and becoming lucid will feel more powerful as I gain a higher level of lucidity faster.

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Originally posted by memeticverb+--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(memeticverb)</div>

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just a theory in progress, but do either of you notice in non-lucid dreams anything peculiar about that moment when you realize that you are in a dream? i cant figure how there can such a phenomenal shift in our consciousness but only seem like a simple perspective being transposed onto the rest of our dream world.
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It does seem like a small shift in consciousness, although it can feel very exciting. To me the key is thinking. In most NDs I'm just reacting or making up explanations for what's happening but not really thinking. In dreams where I become lucid, the lucidity happens because I question what's going on, and conclude I'm dreaming. For example how does that stranger know my name? Who is this person talking to me?

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jwe lose our temporal identities in lucid dreams. we are never thinking about what we are going to do tomorrow, what we did yesterday, and so on

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Time and memories are definitely confused in my dreams. I go back to places I haven't lived in years. People are the wrong age. I can't remember by real job or my real home. But I am able to remember dream tasks, and sometimes I can remember dream signs. So there is some memory that is working, but most of it is defective.

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Originally posted by AnonymousTipster+--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(AnonymousTipster)</div>

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That's precisely what I was thinking. When I go 'lucid' I don't neccessarily feel any great change, it's just like another bit of knowledge popped into my head, rather than me suddenly becoming conscious.
This is why I think there may be a scale. At the moment, i'm only reaching a low level of lucidity, with little to no 'lucid feeling'. Hopefully as I progress in proficiency at LDing I will feel more and more conscious, and becoming lucid will feel more powerful as I gain a higher level of lucidity faster.[/b]

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so maybe the reason we don’t feel like anything has changed about “the content” of our sensory experience in a normal dream is that once we become lucid our normal range of conscious has simply enlarged its perspective for “possible” states of reality, to include one that is an illusion,:shock: and in which we have no physical presence. yeah, the excitement is pretty cool. Sometimes it’s a big problem for me though when im trying to stay lucid.

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Originally posted by Asclepius@
It does seem like a small shift in consciousness, although it can feel very exciting. To me the key is thinking. In most NDs I'm just reacting or making up explanations for what's happening but not really thinking. In dreams where I become lucid, the lucidity happens because I question what's going on, and conclude I'm dreaming. For example how does that stranger know my name? Who is this person talking to me?

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Ok so in your view, (correct me if im wrong) what is characteristic of ‘thinking’ is the questioning of your experiences, which would entail the imagining of multiple possibilities for future outcomes in order to see how the ones in your experience match up. but in a dream we simply receive what is happening to us as already explained, and we are motivated by something else when we experience something in a dream that upsets this schema.

so in waking consciousness we are focused primarily on the purposes behind things, and on connecting our experiences in a temporal narrative, whereas, in a dream, this narrative identity disappears, and the dream lets our most cherished purposes and emotions receive an extra-temporal field for playful rearrangement, just using the tools of our past physically sensed experiences.

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Time and memories are definitely confused in my dreams. I go back to places I haven't lived in years. People are the wrong age. I can't remember by real job or my real home. But I am able to remember dream tasks, and sometimes I can remember dream signs. So there is some memory that is working, but most of it is defective.

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yeah this interesting, i get that too where i am in completely different times and places in my childhood or whatnot. i think what ever is in charge of our memory reorganizes our dreams by taking all of the individual memories that are most essential to our self-identity and then rendering a scene for the mind. maybe this is to take our current cares and concerns and give them new expression, like a merging of our present self (without the practical preoccupation with present obligations) with our past or more stable self.

and then maybe lucid consciousness is an awareness of that merging, but now that i think about it im not sure if when i become lucid whether or not I start thinking about my current activities in waking life :? usually i think im just trying to explore as much as possible before I wake up. what about you guys, do you find that when you become lucid stuff like what you are going to do tomorrow and such are soemthing you can think aobut and still stay lucid?

As yet, my lucids have been wholly preoccupied with the dream at hand, and I have never thought 'What shall I do tomorrow once I wake up?' it is always what shall I do now? seeing as I am dreaming.

It sounds like you want to introduce the concept of dimension to dreaming and attach it consciousness. It does not have to be a spatial dimension, but a measurable extent of some kind. Like a scale.

If so, then this is a very popular view of consciousness. It's mostly adopted by occultists and spiritualists, and their stance is dubious because this dimension, for the moment, is only subjectively defined. I have read quite a bit of neurological literature on consciousness and no where have I seen a neuroscientist suggest that consciousness is measurable or scalable. Perhaps with new discoveries we'll know more someday.

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Originally posted by Ex Nine
It sounds like you want to introduce the concept of dimension to dreaming and attach it consciousness. It does not have to be a spatial dimension, but a measurable extent of some kind. Like a scale.

If so, then this is a very popular view of consciousness. It's mostly adopted by occultists and spiritualists, and their stance is dubious because this dimension, for the moment, is only subjectively defined. I have read quite a bit of neurological literature on consciousness and no where have I seen a neuroscientist suggest that consciousness is measurable or scalable. Perhaps with new discoveries we'll know more someday.

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Check out John Smythies. "Space, Time, and Consciousness." He's not a spiritualist, just an analyitc philosopher and he thinks consciousness is an extra-dimension not unlike the the compactified dimensions of m-theory.

as for neurologists, check our Varela " A Neurophenomenology of Time Consciousness." He thinks that consciousness is scalable in layers from the neurocognitive, to what he calls "emotional tonality".

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Originally posted by AnonymousTipster
That's precisely what I was thinking. When I go 'lucid' I don't neccessarily feel any great change, it's just like another bit of knowledge popped into my head, rather than me suddenly becoming conscious.
This is why I think there may be a scale. At the moment, i'm only reaching a low level of lucidity, with little to no 'lucid feeling'. Hopefully as I progress in proficiency at LDing I will feel more and more conscious, and becoming lucid will feel more powerful as I gain a higher level of lucidity faster.

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I think this is actually really interesting and I've had similar experiences, making me kinda wonder what being "lucid" really is. Most people say it's just being "aware that you're dreaming", but does that doesn't necessarily mean you're conscious of your actions and actually know to be dreaming. In my earlier LDs, I was a bit confused when I woke up, because in them I would act in ways that I know I wouldn't if I was really in control, so I started thinking that maybe some of my LDs were actually just "dreaming of being lucid".

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Originally posted by AnonymousTipster
What I suppose i'm asking is: When you excercise more control like being able to fly, does it mean you become 'more conscious' and can make real descisions, rather than predecided paths? "

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I don't think how much consciousness/awareness and "control" you actually have depends on what things in the dream itself you can manipulate, but more on how much you can control yourself. Usually, when you have less lucidity, you're (or at least me and some others I've talked to) instantly thinking of things to do and you go do them, without really admitting to yourself that you're dreaming. For me, being completely lucid is really being patient and actually thinking about that consequences of being in a dream, instead of rushing into things without any real focus.
Ex Nine is right though that there isn't really a way of 'measuring' consciousness, so I guess what I mean here by being more or less conscious is based on how much you actually control yourself and question your environment, but that is pretty vague and unprecise.

being truly lucid is thinking "my God iv done it, this is all being created by my mind" then being amazed by the detail your mind has created, truly stunned to the point that you just HAVE to look at everything more closely....

being half lucid is saying "RC failed im dreaming" then jumping into the air and flying because "its a dream theres no rules"

having a dream about LDing is where a reality check is deeply incorporated into the storyline of your dream (ie. you become lucid and suddenly you realize you can save earth from the space vampires and help millions of people)

theres spaces inbetween that, but thats how i grade my "LDs"

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Originally posted by BillyBob_001
being truly lucid is thinking "my God iv done it, this is all being created by my mind" then being amazed by the detail your mind has created, truly stunned to the point that you just HAVE to look at everything more closely....

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I agree this is high lucidity. Is total control possible? Can I direct my mind to construct a marble palace in Hawaii and populate it with a replica of Jessica Alba, and extend time to enjoy a few years? Or do visual systems remain partially unconscious and I have to trick them (e.g. portals, spinning) and rely on what appears?

I am not sure about consciousness as a dimension, but I experience consciousness/awareness as a scale - sometimes there is very little awareness other times there can be hyper awareness.

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Originally posted by memeticverb
what is characteristic of ‘thinking’ is the questioning of your experiences, which would entail the imagining of multiple possibilities for future outcomes in order to see how the ones in your experience match up

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My thoughts are different. In most of my dreams there is no thinking - there is stream of consciousness, flow of emotions, action and reaction. When I become lucid there is a different level. It involves reflecting on what is happening, rather than flowing with it. Oh this beautiful stranger knows my name - wait! how does she know my name? Imagining is different for me. In reflective thinking there's an attempt to critique the experience to separate out from the flow and reflect on what is happening. Its that element I try to strenghten via MILD.

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Originally posted by Asclepius

My thoughts are different. *In most of my dreams there is no thinking - there is stream of consciousness, flow of emotions, action and reaction. *When I become lucid there is a different level. *It involves reflecting on what is happening, rather than flowing with it. *Oh this beautiful stranger knows my name - wait! how does she know my name? *Imagining is different for me. *In reflective thinking there's an attempt to critique the experience to separate out from the flow and reflect on what is happening. *Its that element I try to strenghten via MILD.

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thats very interesting, and ive heard a lot of people say that. but in most of my dreams i do recall having thought processes, meaning i am thinking things to myself, questioning and changing my persepctive on what is happening, all with out being lucid.

I also feel like I'm thinking about things whilst dreaming (not all dreams though), the same sort of internal monologue you get whilst awake.

A few days ago, I had an interesting dream which was very much in real-time and nothing seemed out of the ordinary. This was until I went into the room and thought to myself .o0(I bet this light won't turn on) in my sort of synical way, and it didn't, the room stayed dark. Thing is, instead of becoming lucid, I just continued the dream in the dark, and woke up shortly after.

It must be that your subconscious knows you're dreaming, but without a significant trigger or the conscious mind, you cannot quiz the subconscious on whether you are asleep or not, so you just continue with the dream.

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Originally posted by memeticverb+--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(memeticverb)</div>

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in most of my dreams i do recall having thought processes, meaning i am thinking things to myself, questioning and changing my persepctive on what is happening, all with out being lucid.[/b]

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I also feel like I'm thinking about things whilst dreaming (not all dreams though), the same sort of internal monologue you get whilst awake.

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I guess I would like to differentiate between mental activity (thoughts) versus reflexive analysis (what is going on, why did something occur).

For example in one lucid dream I saw my grandmother - I questioned how could I see her if she's dead - I must be dreaming.

In many dreams I see women and "think" wow they are attractive but there is no lucidity.

Much of what passes for thinking in my dreams is just reaction or association. Whenever I question what is going on I have become lucid. And I believe this is related to being higher on the scale of consciousness.

Tipster in your example you have a thought "I bet this light won't turn on" but if you had questioned why it didn't maybe you would have become lucid.

I believe WBTB and MILD are effective when they stimulate this questioning/reasoning activity.

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Originally posted by memeticverb


thats very interesting, and ive heard a lot of people say that. *but in most of my dreams i do recall having thought processes, meaning i am thinking things to myself, questioning and changing my persepctive on what is happening, all with out being lucid.

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Precisley!!
I believe that this is a factor that causes many people to believe they have had lucid dreams before, but in fact they have not.
There are differences. Measurable? Wow, so many variables and states of consciousness.

And consciousness as a dimension. Not an occultist view by any means.
Consciousness resides where?
A whole nother ball game I guess.
:P

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Originally posted by Asclepius
Tipster in your example you have a thought "I bet this light won't turn on" but if you had questioned why it didn't maybe you would have become lucid.

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Exactly the point I was making, because I wasn't conscious, I didn't think why, but I need to build a habit of questioning why whenever a light doesn't turn on.
This is the difference you were pointing out, in my dream I had a thought, but as I wasn't concious, I couldn't qualify anything (the why).

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Originally posted by Howetzer+--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Howetzer)</div>

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Precisley!! *
I believe that this is a factor that causes many people to believe they have had lucid dreams before, but in fact they have not. *
There are differences. Measurable? Wow, so many variables and states of consciousness.
And consciousness as a dimension. Not an occultist view by any means. *
Consciousness resides where? *
A whole nother ball game I guess.
:P[/b]

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Exactly the point I was making, because I wasn't conscious, I didn't think why, but I need to build a habit of questioning why whenever a light doesn't turn on.
This is the difference you were pointing out, in my dream I had a thought, but as I wasn't concious, I couldn't qualify anything (the why).

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I remeber asking myself "why" all the time in NDs, but I rationalize it away the anomoly away, usually at great lengths and even avoidance, but always after some questioning procedure.. it seems like we are alwyas asking ourselves questions in dreams, and yeah a lot of people have an inkinling of what a lucid dream is like because they have had those times where they didnt acept the rationalization as good enough.

The point in question seems to be whether there is any qualitative difference between a dream expereince in wakking expereince or dream experience. I propose it is not, and like AnonymousTipster said before, lucidity is simply the addition of a piece of information that " this is a dream" which is usually followed by astonishment with its reality. but all of our though processes are there already, we arent robots until we reach lucidity, imo :)

I think it is all to do with the links in your mind. For example; say your dreamsign is the colour purple, whenever you see something purple in RL, you do a RC, so you're creating a link in your brain between purple and RCing. As you do this more and more, the link becomes stronger and you're more likely to recognise that dream sign in your dream. I think it is similar to consciousness. Whenever you do a RC in a dream and become 'lucid', you begin to create a link between lucidity and consciousness. Unlike RCing, this link is only strengthened whilst LDing, not in RL. This means that the only way to strengthen the link is to have LDs. This would explain why more experienced LDers can make true conscious descisions in their LDs. I think that the strength of this link is proportional to your level of consciousness, so when you've had more LDs and your link is stronger, you'll have a higher level of consciousness to explore.
Just something I was thinking about :)

I was also thinking about consciousness as a dimension in reality, and I don't think that works unless you're a relativist (i'm an open minded realist :wink: ). All other dimensions affect the world. Imagine a circle (2D), when we add a third dimension it becomes a sphere (3D) and when we add time, we get an infinite number of spheres, each for a moment of time (4D). Whether you are asleep or awake, a sphere is still a sphere, so adding consciousness as a dimension does not seem to work.
It only really works in the dream realm, where the world does depend on your perspective.

I am very interested in what pushes up the scale of consciousness in a dream so that we become lucid. I hope if we keep bashing away at this topic some new insights will appear:idea:

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Originally posted by memeticverb

I remeber asking myself "why" all the time in NDs, but I rationalize it away the anomoly away, usually at great lengths and even avoidance, but always after some questioning procedure.. *

The point in question seems to be whether there is any qualitative difference between a dream expereince in wakking expereince or dream experience. *I propose it is not, and like AnonymousTipster said before, lucidity is simply the addition of a piece of information that " this is a dream" which is usually followed by astonishment with its reality. *but all of our though processes are there already, we arent robots until we reach lucidity, imo *:)

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I believe there are differences between waking consciousness and dreaming consciousness:
[list]defective memory
more intense affective/emotional states
less questioning
less internal dialogue[list]
When becoming lucid, I notice more about the dream and feel less engaged in it. Sometimes it feels like part of my brain has clicked on (and early on this tended to cause an abrubt ending to the dream as I actually woke up).

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Originally posted by Asclepius

I believe there are differences between waking consciousness and dreaming consciousness:
[list]defective memory
more intense affective/emotional states
less questioning
less internal dialogue[list]
When becoming lucid, I notice more about the dream and feel less engaged in it. *Sometimes it feels like part of my brain has clicked on (and early on this tended to cause *an abrubt ending to the dream as I actually woke up).

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Good points Asclepius.
I think that you can't be fully in a conscious state and the dream state at the same time. So the cognitive, more waking conscious part of your brain (mostly the left hemisphere) has clicked on.
How can one be FULLY conscious in a dream regardless of how real and vivid your consciousness seems when you are in a realm of the brain that you are interacting with a dream scene that is actively playing out as you are conscious in it?

I have had on few occasions had dreams that have NO surreal scene.
The level of consciousness seemed every bit of when I am awake. I posted this in another topic and received a lot of rebuttal from members who thought that I could control the dream scene if I believed I could. Maybe they are correct. However in those few dreams I did try to manifest a dream like atmosphere and perform tasks that I had in previous lucid dreams... to no avail.

http://img397.imageshack.us/img397/8...ure23ia.th.jpg

Well, im not sure if this answers your question Howezter, or anyone else’s really. But this view we’ve been discussing where memory and temporal awareness recede into the background to be replaced by the influence of affectual states, is fairly acceptable. If the above posted image works, I tried my hand at paintshop to show how all of these overlap and how while consciousness might be open to the world in waking perceptual experience, in the dreaming world we are holding up a mirror that mixes up our experiences, plus the symbolism and emotional states attached to them. Lucidity seems like a reversion back from the flip-flop caused by the submersion of memory into the background.

Language and concepts that normally operate in consciousness and organize our perceptions into a representational schema for our internal dialogue to express our experience, gets deconstructed by the subconscious, which picks out the most salient images and symbols and connects them according to a new schema determined like rainbow said - that’s been filtered by our past experiences.

1. Is it more important to figure out how our past experiences sediment together and self-organize?

2. or how our dream “language” organizes our perceptual experiences?

Or do neither of these systems (defined by temporality and change) represent the scale of consciousness we seek?
:wink:

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Originally posted by BillyBob_001
being truly lucid is thinking "my God iv done it, this is all being created by my mind" then being amazed by the detail your mind has created, truly stunned to the point that you just HAVE to look at everything more closely....

being half lucid is saying "RC failed im dreaming" then jumping into the air and flying because "its a dream theres no rules"

having a dream about LDing is where a reality check is deeply incorporated into the storyline of your dream (ie. you become lucid and suddenly you realize you can save earth from the space vampires and help millions of people)

theres spaces inbetween that, but thats how i grade my "LDs"

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I personally base my level criteria off of one's ability to think logically. As for the last one you stated, that technically doesn't fit under the criteria of lucid dreaming. It's quite possible to dream of having extraordinary powers without lucid dreaming and it's possible to lucid dream without having extraordinary powers. Lucid dreaming is after all, merely dreaming with the conscious awareness that one is dreaming. On my list, technically the first one isn’t even a lucid dream, which is why it’s marked with a negative number. However, it was placed there to show the large difference between “normal” dreaming and those that are lucid.

Level –1: Dreamer behaves in a fashion similar to a very mentally ill person with schizophrenic disposition. The dreamer will have no problem believing that they’ve been chosen by Mickey Mouse to fight off the invading ninja pirates. Though the dreamer in question may exhibit startling powers, they never question their abilities to levitate and speak to super-powered cows.

Level 0: Dreamer is in a reality quite similar to the real world. They often perform their daily activities and think relatively logically; as such, it would merely take a bizarre event to bring them into the realization that they’re in a dream. Most false awakenings fall under this category.

Level 1: Dreamer has a vague idea that they’re in a dream but is unable to react logically to the knowledge; lucidness typically fades quickly.

Level 2: Dreamer is certain that they’re in a dream and is able to think in a strategic and logical manner (objective-based). This use of logic often leads to overexcitement is by extension, expulsion from the dream. However, once in a stable position, they may be able to perform extraordinary, physics defying acts such as flight, the ability to go through matter, or even a combination of the two. These dreams are among the easiest to remember after awakening, even outranking nightmares.

That's a good scale, LunarMoon and similar to what I was thinking about.
However, what I'm still thinking of is the possibility that my low-level lucids are in fact just normal dreams that I'm dreaming of being lucid. It feels like it should be a level1, yet I have exercised impossible powers (level2), and may not even be conscious at all (0 or less).

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Originally posted by memeticverb
http://img397.imageshack.us/img397/8...ure23ia.th.jpg

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Nice!
When we become lucid in a dream this image on the right would likely change no?. Albeit that you would only have internal stimuli but the addition of lucidity brings about similar thought patterns to that of the wakeful state.
Like the anticipation for example.