Lucid Dreaming: From D'Hervey, to Eeden, to Tholey

[Summerlander]

Frederik van Eeden can be analogously seen as the 'Buddha of modern lucid dreamers'. In his book Little Johannes, influenced by the ethics of Spinoza and sympathising with early socialism, a philosophical Eeden writes: 'Where mankind is, and her woe, there is my path.' The protagonist of his existentialistic story represents every person who grows up to face the harsh realities of life, going through a phase of hoping for a joyous hereafter, only to realise that it is only an empty dream, finally discovering meaning in the mitigation of suffering that surrounds him. Eeden was concerned with the mental well-being of others as a psychiatrist, and did what he could to understand the human condition in order to find ways to improve it. In America, he contacted William James, who is regarded as the 'father' of American psychology. In Vienna, he met Sigmund Freud! He also familiarised himself with psychosomatic observations made by the likes of Gustav Fechner, whose psychophysics demonstrated how mind and body relate—coming up with the formula: S=K ln I, the foundation for the Weber-Fechner law. It is not surprising, then, that Frederik van Eeden would discover lucid dreaming. If a man is in the habit of paying attention in waking life, eventually, he'll find himself paying attention in dreams. Indeed, he is credited with having coined the term 'lucid dream', but he was certainly not the first oneironaut to have distinguished and identified those dreams in which the dreamer is awake and aware of the situation. Before Eeden, there was a Frenchman who stumbled upon such paradoxical sleep, one known as the Marquis D'Hervey de Saint-Denys, one of the earliest oneirologists who came to be known as the 'father' of modern lucid dreaming. At the dawn of adolescence, D'Hervey began to diligently record his dreams and described many instances of being aware of dreaming in his book Dreams and the Ways to Direct Them: Practical Observations. We can take valuable lessons from both men: Eeden was very observant and descriptive; D'Hervey was good with trials pertaining to dream control, testing the oneiric waters, as it were. Another great oneironaut to be remembered, who emphasised the importance of questioning reality for every aspirant lucid dreamer, is Paul Tholey. This oneirologist inspired serious research on the behaviour of dream figures, which, as we have discovered, can be good with language and creativity but terrible with arithmetic. Because of Tholey, we learned that dream characters are surprisingly better at multiplication and division than addition and subtraction, despite the fact that they make terrible mathematicians—often being worse than primary school children! Tholey's studies also concluded that dream characters can write and draw as instructed, and can even come up with words whose meaning is unknown to the lucid dreamer. Even more astounding is that these characters seem to have access to waking memory as well as memory of previous dreams! Reports from Tholey's subjects also revealed that dream people are capable of witty retorts and assert sentience when questioned on these matters—ostensibly lending some credit to theories that they are conscious or represent prototypes for multiple personality alter egos. Based on the cognitive abilities demonstrated by dream characters, Paul Tholey concluded that they should be 'taken as seriously as if they had consciousness of their own'—something that Frederik van Eeden was already doing with his oneiric devils who exhibited a 'lower moral order' by mocking him and seemingly deriving pleasure from it. Feel free to add more information about these three pioneering researchers of lucid dreaming and conduct your own experiments. I certainly won't be relying on dream characters to be my personal calculators!

[Eonnn]

Yes, I been doing this my whole life LOL. always questioned reality, always question what I learn or get told, always felt it is an illusion like something is off, not right, missing, like there is a disconnection between my self and the world I perceive around me, just don't feel a connection there only a connection with own body but not the world it's in. Other people seem real conscious intelligent beings, and often perceive connection with them, but the actual world the physical floor and walls, etc just seems fake some how? mother nature feels alive and real and I connect with that, but physical buildings definitely not. So unintentionally I am pretty much always reality checking because things never seem right. This not only helps me lucid dream easily, but raises my level of awareness on a constant basis. I've mocked dream characters before, but I wouldn't go around mocking every character you encounter in case they are living sentient beings they might not take it so well.

[Summerlander]

I tend to do that, too. Questioning reality at every opportunity and testing it. It helps me to pay attention to the present moment and promotes my mindful mode—which tends to translate into lucid dreaming when I'm asleep. I've killed people in lucid dreams before. I've shared one here which happened years ago which I believe I called 'Psychokinetic Killer'. I went on a killing spree in Wonderland, drunk on lucid power like a naughty god. I apparently terrorised several dream characters and even had a Merlin-like wizard seemingly trying to stop me with his superpowers. But I was simply too godlike. You might say I had great control, in a sense, but I was also apparently a slave to a weird serial-killing urge. I'm going to hell.

[Eonnn]

Yes, I done same a few times just to see what happens, where it leads and all that. In a dream it's okay because it's all just your own mind, so only person you could be hurting would be yourself. We have the freedom to do things like this in a dream, entirely up to oneself if they wish to try it or not. But I found after trying it, that even though it's all fantasy you are still crossing borders and boundaries you wouldn't normally and it's almost like going against your own better moral judgment. For example, I decided in one lucid dream I would just destroy, and terrorize everyone and everything become as godlike and evil as I could at same time, power-obsessed. By the end of dream I had lots of power and control, but who I was at the end of the dream is something I didn't like or enjoy and would never do it again. But in a way, I had to try it at least once to learn through experience. I've had some other similar dreams in the past, one I think is recorded in my dream journal where I became lucid whilst in a normal dream. Flying around at night on a massive black dragon as a ghostly hooded figure with people from the demolished city below firing weapons up at the sky towards me. It's weird because the dream actually started like this, and I became lucid pretty much immediately. Happened a long time ago but I remember clearly because I felt powerful, I mean I was riding a dragon for christ's sake. It felt like I had complete control over the dragon and connection with it like it was my pet. Bullets would bounce off it's underbelly, and if any were to hit me they'd just pass straight through. I've since wondered, what it would be like to land the dragon and walk around the demolished city in that form. Is the dragon even real? maybe it's a mental creation? would I walk around with the dragon by my side or flying above me? If people shot at me while I'm walking around I could destroy them instantly with a single thought, or command the dragon to burn them to death with it's fire breath. One last example here, is me figuring out ways to kill a DC, when they are after me or trying to kill me. I have phased my hand into the body of a DC and stopped their heart, then realized I could just stop their heart thinking about it with no need to use my hand. I have killed them with orbs of death projected out of my hands, and demanifested them completely with just a wave of the hand. Again, all just a learning experience to understand and gain better ability and control. Once I understood it, I stopped and moved on to testing other things of a less evil nature, like preventing DC's attacking me just by phasing my body, creating a reflective shield, or using a kinetic blast to push them into a wall and phase the wall so they pass through it and never come back. I like that last one in particular as it was quite creative, combining techniques can be quite useful and effective.

[Summerlander]

I suppose it's not really killing any aspects of yourself as there is nothing physical to kill. Anything is possible in the dream world, including the Lazarus effect, so the murdered DCs can return from the grave in future dreams. I think in order to really get rid of what they represent, something more radical than 'dream play' would have to change—perhaps a transformation on the basis of personality. We could literally revive those dead DCs in a lucid dream, if we wanted to, and embrace them—which would probably trigger a far more powerful reaction on an emotional level, I'd imagine; far more transformative than the enactment of murder. But you touched upon a kind of guilt which is experienced by a lot of lucid dreamers who have committed crimes against DCs on the assumption that they are not sentient. But what if they are and some representational part of you—subconscious to you but conscious to itself—experienced real terror? I think it was on the Joe Rogan podcast that a lucid dreamer raised the question of morality even though there are no judiciary laws in the dream world. He described a scenario in which a fellow lucid dreamer forced himself on a female DC because he was horny and raped her even though she was resisting and expressed dissent. He woke up feeling extremely guilty because a thought in his mind entertained the possibility that the dream woman was conscious, and he also felt disappointed in himself because his behaviour had contradicted his morality. Definitely someone he would not like to be in waking life. I guess we shouldn't be too hard on ourselves for at least trying. In mine and your case, the destructive and amoral ways in which we behaved in those power-obsessed lucid dreams probably take root in a playful, gamer mentality—perhaps a childlike exultation that would understandably manifest in Black Ops fans if they played a VR version of the game. That 'black dragon' lucid dream is pretty cool, by the way. It's hard not to draw comparisons with reported DMT trips. It's pretty far out—as though your awareness is suddenly living in another universe somewhat divorced from what is real in this one. It might have happened a long time ago but it seems to have had a lasting mnemonic impact on you. Your other example clearly illustrates how much we are used to our hands for getting things done. The thought of using them is primary. The realisation that hands are not really required to crush hearts in a dream environment is secondary. Similar things have happened to me. Like me knocking for Morpheus when I could have just passed through the red door to find him inside. Or he could have simply emerged from a bush outside the castle! But I guess I was also curious about the castle's interior ... Superpowers can definitely become a practiced habit in lucid dreams, and I suppose it's useful to plan and cultivate confidence that we can rely on events taking place in the dream world that we know to be impossible in the real world.