Introduction to Dreams

Every human being needs sleep. We spend a third of our lives asleep.

In fact, every organism on Earth - from rats to dolphins to mosquitoes to microorganisms - relies on sleep for its survival.

Why do we need sleep? Well, that's a big question for people from different streams - from psychologists to scientists to brain researchers.

Still bigger question is - what actually happens in your mind when you sleep?

Few moments before you are awake and aware of yourself and surrounding environment. And suddenly you are gone. No awareness either of yourself or your surrounding environment!

It's really like magic, but we have taken it for granted and don't much question this automatic daily routine set by nature. We just go to sleep - which is almost like death - without much fuss! And wake up and go to our daily life, not concerned about what happened to you during night, or where have you been? How did you connect the missing dots - as there was no 'you' during sleep!

Still bigger magic happens when you are asleep. You dream!

You dream every night, whether you recall your dreams or not.

The main purpose of this course is to first bring these dreams to your awareness so that lot of miracles can start to happen. Dreams provide a very effective direct channel for your Higher Self - your Soul - your inner Guru - to send you messages bypassing your busy conscious mind. Imagine receiving intuitive messages for achieving success in your life in your dreams and you are not at all aware about them! And you spend your life time running after success in vain.

What is a dream?
Dictionary meaning: A series of thoughts, images, and sensations occurring in a person's mind during sleep. Most people have between 3 to 7 dreams per night. However, most people forget all the dreams upon waking up. In lecture about sleep pattern, we will learn how dreams lasts longer as night progresses and how that gives us opportunity to do more with dreams.

As you can understand from it's definition that dreams are multi dimensional in nature. They employ all of your sense organs that you normally use during your waking consciousness - sight, sound, touch, taste and smell.

What is a Lucid Dream?
A lucid dream is any dream in which one is aware that one is dreaming and gain the ability to consciously observe, control, or participate in that dream. The term was coined by the Dutch psychiatrist and writer Frederik (Willem) van Eeden in 1913. The term lucid means expressed clearly.

Note the main difference between regular dream and a lucid dream. It's all about awareness.

In fact, the whole journey of spirituality is nothing but from ignorance to awareness. In general dreams, you are ignorant of the dream reality and your relationship with the dream self. As you progress with increased awareness, you move from regular dreams to lucid dreams.

History

Lucid dreaming is very ancient and totally safe practice . The first known textual description of lucid dreaming dates back thousands of years from the Upanishads, the Hindu oral tradition of spiritual lessons, philosophy and proverbs. The Vigyan Bhairav Tantra is another ancient Hindu tract that describes how best to direct consciousness within the dream and vision states of sleep. In the early centuries, Indian influence spread to the mountainous region of Tibet, where the animistic tradition of Bonpo maintains that lucid dreaming has been used in their meditations for over several thousands of years.

In modern times, with more scientific studies finding lots of proven benefits of meditations and practices like lucid dreaming, it has again found a prominent place in self development practices.

Levels of Lucidity

As mentioned above, the degree of lucidity of dreams is directly proportional to degree of your awareness in the dreams. So it may range from just being aware that you are dreaming (passive dreaming) to taking up entire control of dream and co-creating it with your sub-conscious mind (controlled lucid dream) for a particular purpose as defined by your conscious mind. So for example, if you wish to fly, your sub conscious will populate the environment as needed, but the main focus of the lucid dream will be on your experience of free flight - with the only limits that your conscious mind can put. You can fly over a road, or to another country or to another planet, as you desire.

Even within a lucid dream, the degree of lucidity can vary as per your awareness and level of pranic energy at that moment.

Is Lucid Dreaming proven by Science?

Lucid dreaming has been researched scientifically since 1980s, and its existence is well established. For example, when a person is dreaming, the eyes move rapidly. Scientific research has found that these eye movements may correspond to the direction the dreamer "looks" at in the dreamscape.

References:

Lucid Dreaming: A State of Consciousness with Features of Both Waking and Non-Lucid Dreaming

Lucid dreams and metacognition: Awareness of thinking – awareness of dreaming: Brain researchers discover similarities between dreaming and wakefulness

Above is just an introduction to dreaming and lucid dreaming. It's ok if certain concepts do not make any sense as of now. Things will get clear as you move forward.