Monday, March 26, 2007

Lucid dreaming on the radio

Veteran lucid dream researchers will be live on the web on Wednesday, March 28, 2007 - 9am Pacific (noon Eastern) to share their experiences about dreaming and consciousness.

Check them out at Bob Hoss's portal for the live radio program.

Below is the blurb from sponsors the Association for the Study of Dreams:

Lucid Dreaming – Exploring the Inner Space of Your Dreams!
Robert Waggoner and Dr. Ed Kellogg

Description: Have you ever become aware you were dreaming while in your dream? Did you know that with proper training you can explore your own dreamscape from within? This week Robert Waggoner and Dr. Ed Kellogg will discuss the research, as well as well as decades of personal experience, into the profound nature of the lucid dream. They will discuss methods for learning to dream lucidly as well as some of the extraordinary experiences they have encountered in this inner space exploration of dreams. Conscious explorations of your dreams can help you understand the nature dream reality, your own inner mental processes, and perhaps become a personal aid in the self-healing and transformational process of dreaming.

8 comments:

ermaloff said...

Wow, this totally give me impetus to hurry up my 11 o'clock work appointments so that I'll be done by noon tomorrow!

Anonymous said...

This gives me the impetus to put off all my appointments and practice dreaming zzzzZZZZZZZ

Ryan said...

dreaming or waking through your impeti, don't matter. lucid dreaming suggests that our mind can't really tell the difference. it's all mythological space to me.

ermaloff said...

Actually, the program gave me impetus to learn how to practice dreaming. Perty interesting...

Ryan said...

awesome! those are a couple of switched on cats. start with LaBerge' s Lucidity Institute for sure. the Lucid Dream exchange is Robert's site, also highly recommended.

Anonymous said...

have you read anything about coma victims dreaming? if so does this replace an implied reality that the victim once had. Or are they aware that they are dreaming? Has there been any studies on this topic?

Ryan said...

I don't know any studies about coma sufferers who woke up and reported dreams. There are some accounts. Check out lazurous.com for a first hand account.

You've pointed out a good cental issue in consciousness studies, tho, which is the question of interiority for those who can't communicate that interiority (such as animals, dream characters, or the toaster models on Battlestar Galactica). Traditionally, coma is the best example of embodied unconsciousness, if you're defining consciousness from a medical perspective such as "awareness of self and environment." People enter comas when their brain stems are suspended or damaged... that's what a coma is. ye ole reticular activating system is not working.

here's where lucid dreams muck it up: there is awareness of self and the interior world, but not direct information of the environment.
Clearly we have to rethink what it means to be conscious. We don't know what coma sufferers are experiencing, and that is not the same as knowing they are not experiencing anything at all.

Dream researcher Patricia Garfield has some interesting cases of reported dreams BEFORE patients entered a coma.... and the dreams included interactions with strangely immobile characters and sensations of being "stuck." I would imagine that the interior feelings of coma victims would be along these lines, of being stuck, with time flow feeling infinite... or possibly instantaneous.

The Dalai Lama discusses coma with doctor Peter Engel in the book "sleeping dreaming and dying." Engels makes a good point when he says that coma is a transient state and people eventually come out of it:" They'll either die or wake up." Good to keep in mind.

And according to Doctor M. Grosclaude, many patients come out of the coma state saying "It is a dream." That gives me shivers. Grosclaude dismisses this as the memory of waking up, not the coma itself. As a lucid dreamer, I'm not so sure.

Ryan said...

oops, that's http://www.lazarous.com/