What can Lucid Dreaming tell us about consciousness?

[Music] [Applause] [Music] so can you tell us why did you decide to study lucid dreaming It's Curious I was interested in Consciousness and this was he still in the Dark Ages that we have been hearing about that island so well described that uh conscious was a dirty word and this is in the late 70s and I was ahe at Stanford with the possibility to do a dissertation on whatever topic I wanted but it had to be for me Consciousness how to do that because it was a dirty word really in the psychology department field didn't use that term you know wasn't polite so uh I noticed though an oddity is that there were some people doing research on Consciousness at Stanford at the time in fact uh William ditt uh had been doing research on dreams the psychophysiology of dreaming and that means uh measuring the physiological correlates while a person is having uh some sort of conscious experience and then after they wake them up they would report their conscious experience and then use the physiology to understand more or to corroborate those reports now that's not what they called it but that's exactly what it was it was Consciousness studies so I thought ah here's something I can do and at the same time I had also had sufficient experiences with lucid dreams being in a dream so here I am and a suddenly something tells me that this is actually all in my mind that I am asleep in bed now yet here I am in this room with all these apparent people and it seems as that and it was like uh more you know the exact example was climbing up K2 in a snow storm and I'm wearing shorts and short sleeve you know I'm going up this mountain and say I don't seem to be properly prepared for this and aha this is a dream so I flew off the the the mountain and that was a start of course now I would say will uh going up the mountain we'll go up the mountain what's that's the idea don't just fly off and whatever but we it takes learning but so the idea was going from chemical physics through the Psychedelic Revolution happening in California in the late 60s I wanted to do research which we don't know anything about we don't know anything about but I did want to research then for my dissertation the chemistry of the mind understand how psychedelics somehow mysteriously can produce this amazing States Of Consciousness but of course it was impossible in those days and that's how years later finally found something practical which was dreaming so that that practical yeah yeah that's right it's what it happened to be so uh and I was surprised at how much uh interest and potential there was in this state that I had been working on it ever since so I spent uh 25 years at Stan for doing laboratory research on lucid dreaming understanding how to how to do it and what to do with it so but how can lucid dreaming what can lucid dreaming teach us about Consciousness how do you what the result of your study what did you come up with well there are are many answers to the question but they really starting at the most basic one it's uh one has the experience of being in a dream we say meaning that you know that whatever you're experiencing is somehow only in your mind and that you're not eyes open seeing a world out there and so you but you say wait look this all seems as real as real can be how can that be that tells you that the reality of the world the experiential reality of the world cannot be outside of ourselves it's not what common sense says which is that you look through the windows of the eyes and there you see the world and that's the physical world that's what's real that and in fact fact you understand no the experience of seeing anything has to be in your mind and there's nowhere else it can be and so that but it's not just an a an intellectual understanding of that but having a firsthand experience where you see for yourself it must be so and this is a very important distinction between sort of you know about it in theory versus you experience it directly and see uh reality has to be other than what I have I've been led to believe all this time so it's has the possibility for a a life transforming a certainly a worldview transforming uh potential that uh has changed my life in many particular ways um so but there there are many other answers to the question about it's a I think just one other angle on it to think about is that most of the studies we have scientific studies in Consciousness are based on the waking state that's you know what we do experience the waking State measure brain waves and so on and make conclusions based on that but we need another data set of data points that are a different state and when we compare what we learned from in the waking State and how things work here with how things work in a state with very little sensory input so it's sort of the Mind in pure culture it's the Mind left to its own devices now how does it work and so that provides an extra angle and it shows us also it's like knowing a second language if you know a second language then you know what a language is if you only have your the the language you uh learn from your mother the mother tongue then that is a foreign tongue to you you just don't know and you've got a comparison so we We Know by comparison by contrast by uh seeing more than one state and you've got to do that to understand to me the thing that the major gift that I received from meeting you and and learning about lucd dream when it was 16 18 years ago I I as I said I was a lousy Lucy dreamer I've been still a lousy Lucy dreamer but I still can go there once in a while and I love it I love it the thing I learned I trans trans transferred the lucid dreaming attitude to real life so to me what I did I found this reality way more valuable and manageable than than what is supposed to be you know and so and so I want to hear from you what is in your in your opinion like this conference is an example there's no way anybody that is not thinking is dreaming can come up with an idea of putting something like this it's totally stupid sure but it happened and it happened because we there was no fear because it was a dream really the reality so how do you see the relationship between Lucy dreaming and reality yeah well well first of all I I I I only um by laziness use reality in that sense it's sort of it's the usual way it's used but for me I I wouldn't say that reality is limited to actuality and that's a term for whatever is the physical reality plus whatever else is a specific uh level of reality with extra features of certainty but it it's that a reality is what you experience directly and this of course what you just heard from Alan the thing the only thing you know directly the reality is experience that here I am that the the basic uh point of the the awareness that it's at the the root The Matrix of all experience is I am or even I am is the wrong word because it's it's you can't use any word for it but it's referring to the awareness the sort of the primordial state that is prior to Brains it's prior to space and time it's the uh the source of the world it's the potential not the actual and so this the same difference of the world of actuality um the distinction might be think of all card games you might play just as one world of discourse uh and if you've got a card game where you say the ace is high in that particular card game it's an actual game there is no way the Deuce beats and Ace right and period it's it's limited but of course there's an infinite number of card games for example in which well the deuce is high right why not so somebody's got to be so the the the idea is actuality is a selection of a broader set of potential realities what can be I think this is analogous to the the no that that consciousness of course is what we are attending to it's the selections we've made out of many other possibilities and this is where we get to the idea of what this uh what I prefer to call awareness uh and in fact in uh I'm followed or preceded by um you know the reading of the day from yes here we go the very Bible of this grrip Bible our yes yes yes and and that is that I think one of the problems with we have with Consciousness studies in general is the confusion of Consciousness and awareness is that people don't make the distinction and that gets things complicated so I hear um people will say things like Consciousness is eternal or continues uh Beyond form but that to me doesn't quite compute because form is what changes and so but the thing that doesn't that's like Consciousness but isn't Consciousness is awareness and so uh here says chapter 11 right here so he you use the words aware and conscious are they not the same he says awareness is primordial it is the original state beginningless endless uncaused unsupported without Parts without change Consciousness is on contact a reflection against a surface a state of Duality there can be no consciousness without awareness but there can be awareness without Consciousness as in deep Sleep awareness is absolute Consciousness is relative to its content Consciousness is always of something right con I'm conscious of something always Consciousness is partial and changable awareness is total changeless calm and silent and it is the common Matrix of every experience so that sense of call it Consciousness without an object or the somehow the purest simplest form but it is beyond change right it's prior to change and so that it isn't Consciousness Consciousness with is a knowledge with that's the con in Consciousness where we're shown an illusion a very useful illusion as as we we've uh uh heard already that it's a the user interface if you'd like a simplification that helps us get by in this particular world so it serves survival but it's nothing like the ultimate truth to use the word truth is not quite right but that's back to the awareness if you use the same word for both then you're bound to be muddled so I really I'm I'm with the teacher of let's use awareness for this particular term and I I was first really struck by this by uh thinking about well when I uh go through the the netty nety process of removing all my thoughts and all my I might be this but I'm not I've Got a Feeling here I am sitting to the right inste to the left we could switch that all the things that change all the features that could change you go through the whole less what are you left with you're left with something the because you've removed all the things that change so you're still oh here I I've removed all the things that change that's a thought already but but there's something that you have given to you your being your presence that there is a something there already now to me that at first feels like well it's sort of like a nothing you know seems like dim you know or a point or just it's contracted to to something that doesn't seem inherently interesting yet I read Allen's description of of what how the Tibetans view this and what is the nature of this it's luminous you know luminous where's that illumination come from it doesn't but why do they see it as having you know they being people who have spent uh years and generations developing uh an ability to observe what is at the core of being why do they see something different from what you might see on the surface we see you know our Consciousness it reflects what in the call it the mirror of awareness to use that metaphor it reflects something going on in the world but how does it reflect it it depends on the mirror right it's it if you've got a funhouse mirror and you're distorted by your uh fears and wishes and desires and everything that causes it not to reflect better what's just there but it adds to it what you want to be there what you fear to be there those biases and so you don't get the clear mirror any longer instead you get something closer from not reflective Consciousness but refractive Consciousness and that's what our ordinary Consciousness is like when we you know think we're reflecting we're really refracting we're taking the input and we change it as we give it back so they kind of symbol for the the Consciousness that isn't Consciousness the awareness you know it would be something like here we've got the this nice little reflective sphere and this sphere could be a symbol then of what our awareness would be if we could know it without the obscurations the things that are in the way and so what is in the way it's it's not just what I've described of the distortions and biases but it's also all of the conceptual overlay that we add to any experience that one of the features that we know Consciousness has is that uh different parts of it are simply superimposed the superposition that and so that when we have a visual experience here's I think that's water uh we also have many other elements that may not be sensory at all that goes with that of the context here I am I'm feeling thirsty should I grab that water now Etc all this stuff but it's also things that we're totally unconscious of we don't really even know what we're bringing to this experience and so all of that stuff is harder to get rid of you can't just say okay forget all that stuff you don't even know what it is and so that's the thing that's very hard to to to get uh to what is at the core so may I share a very short dream that illustrates how lucid dreaming can lead you to this experience of how you can actually have a closer view of the kinds of things that certainly come from extensive meditation and practice and that but uh you can also in a lucid dream say I want this dream not to be what I want not what the dream ego wants what I'm used to wanting but to say I like to be the shown something that's beyond myself I want to be guided by whatever Guru uh source of wisdom is in me something that knows better than I in The Limited self that's what I want to be shown and so for me I I formulated that as I want to have an experience of the highest potential and so here I'm uh going directly into lucid dream one morning I'm find myself driving down the road uh it seems as if I just got in my little sports car and then the way to Stanford because there's everything is green and the the golf course and all vividly beautiful and I'm driving down the road and I see off to the side there an attractive hitchhiker and my first impulses to think well I could stop pick her up Etc you know but then I remember that I've already had that dream and and and that what I want is beyond that it's The Highest Potential now the moment I make that little bit of renunciation so give up something you know it's sort of a direct pleasure of a lesser sort say all right that's not what matters here's you know remember and so I have to deliberately do that the car now and I start to fly into the air and as we fly upward into the clouds through the clouds there are symbols of traditional religion Star of David a steeple on with a cross on top of it and but it's basically there's religion in these clouds and I fly higher and my the car disappears the vehicle of the car is gone and so is the vehicle of my body now has fallen away as well so I go beyond that into whatever is beyond all all that it's an emptiness this inner outer space it's going into this vast space that is empty and surprisingly amazingly it feels like homecoming I just what's this I had forgotten all about this state this presence this level of being that has always been here it still is where is it not over there somewhere it's here I just haven't saw seen it I've forgotten about it overwhelmed with joy to singing songs of praise about the Bliss of how the worlds are perfectly arranged and woke up with a sense of of yes I remember the joy and I remember the sense of Harmony and connection and Oneness but much of what I knew in the dream was no longer with me was the like the esoteric component didn't um come along with me when I was back on my usual Beach monkey level right but when I and then when I interpreted this dream say well what is that that somehow was an answer to what I was asking for of The Highest Potential it felt like an answer felt yes this is something but it was surprising what it was basically nothing right it was a an emptiness and but the surprisingness is that nothing was more like a plenum it was full of potential of all being love and it was the source of it all it was home somehow and that that realization also then unfolded further to the say what about death what happens at death we think in terms of this Annihilation that uh Allan was referring to a bit ago the standard Western view of what happens if you're materialist it's like the analogy that I'll take so consider Steven is an a specific individual the he's a unique individual he's you might say he's this particular snowflake right a nice unique crystalline structure different from everyone else right this one that's me so this flake you know sees himself falling into the sea of death there's this vast ocean and what's going to happen oh my God it's the end I'm just going to be melted annihilated it's the end of me period R it's obious that's it but maybe what happens instead is one experiences instead of that whatever the nothingness would be Annihilation you know not feeling happy or unhappy or anything instead an infinite expansion of being as I remember that I wasn't just that one droplet of Frozen water but all water the sea you see and that I've been identifying only with this one partial tiny piece you know it's really very lovely isn't it there this this crystaline form you know it's Unique and all that yes and but in comparison to the infinitude the Majesty of the sea that is something that's easily let go of say ah okay maybe I continue in some other form or not I don't know but doesn't matter compared to the other sense the deeper sense of identification being that I experience say there's something vastly more than what I thought I was but this realization of this this realization of the vastness and your rle into it happened in the dream or in the waking state or is there a separation what well they they connect together because one of the things that uh when you have this kind of realization it's a real realization that isn't dependent on the dream the dream was an occasion for one having an experience and but then also it's the reflection upon the experience it wasn't just yeah there that was it and that's the whole story it uh what we remember perceive is our interpretation of reality so it's that interpretive process is important here and so by unwrapping the package say all right here was the dream that I felt this answered the question somehow is what it was asking for so now how do I understand it how do I make the most of what it's showing me somehow and of course it's not the answer it's but it is an answer that provided value for me so that value is just as much available to me in the waking State as in the dream state the dream state gives us a special occasion where we can test realities do things that you can't do ordinarily you can't do uh because it violates the laws of physics or the laws of society in the dream world you have a freedom you have your kind of sandbox where you can try out anything not just play but safely experiment with how to be and from that you can learn and apply that to the rest of your life so by uh also by choosing to make what you decide to do in the dream changing your frame on the circumstance the way you experience and respond to the circumstances as opposed to magically altering it you then get something you could uh use in other states so if I encounter uh an ogre in one state and I say oh okay it's a dream so I can just turn this ogre into a toad and small no problem right okay maybe so but now I'm in another life situation it's my boss that's seems like the ogre now can I just turn him into a toad and that solves the problem no not at all that's doesn't help it's too its state specific so let's have something instead where if I realize that by looking at this ogre with love and as any sensient being is worthy of then why not you know they change in the dream you see the immediate effect of what's in your heart in terms of other dream figures they change instantly unlike in this world where it takes more time and maybe not in a lifetime you experience it but in the dream state there's this perfect instantaneous response it's like the place where Christianity Works love your enemies and they become your friends the moment you love them and this is something that I I really wish everybody could experience for themselves the power of being able to transform your experience in the dream just by the genuine you authenticity of love for example so you're in touch with love you feel you know what love is and you apply it directly and it gives a direct result so that for me is the most powerful aspect of of how one can learn from the lucid dreaming uh in a quicker way what can happen in the rest of your life with more time and work right and so it's it's not say okay I'm done I'm it you know it's a lucid dream I'm that's it I'm through here right because you know you got a uh you understand that you get what you pay for right and in terms of spiritual as well as anything else and if you don't keep up the payments they take it back so it's beautiful beautiful that that's what I loved when I when when we when I first encounter you I thought about lucd dreaming would have pick up the chiker yes but then we inter duh sure but but when when when we interview you the first time I realize this is a serious tool yeah this is a serious tool in the spiritual path not to be taken lightly yes and so can you give us a little bit ammunition about the relationship between lucd dream and nonduality or is Lucy dream a meditation like well well um the sort of the issues of nality and identification U apply on all levels and they apply in the state we're in right now and in the dream state and so there are different ways to approach the concept but these are still conceptual approaches uh so the experience aspect that the dream I described was something it was nonu that was the problem remember I said it was somehow I praise the oh Lord but there wasn't any I there wasn't any Lord there wasn't two things that you know that didn't make sense right so it was about the unity the nonduality but the very nature of nonduality is that's what can't be said everything that you can say as vidin Stein tells us can be said clearly but that doesn't exhaust all the possibilities because that is to say if I would distinguish this table I mean not the things surrounding not the chair not the people here right and I have to make a distinction I can't make a particular indication without making a distinction so that's just the way it is for specific indication but there is another way and that is what you would call metaphor the indirect path so I can we can talk about what can't be talked about as I'm just doing right now to say I can talk about what can't be talked about it's it's ironic it's part of what it is it is not Direct so you have to go indirectly around this and that's one of the reasons there's so much diversity in what how different people describe the state or the situation or the the nature of non-duality as well as a commonality that are all sort of pointing in the same direction uh for me that that the the way to I encapsulated it in in a haou for example about what the the sense of of the distinctions between things that are separate and we can talk about and that other thing that is what I and by I I mean every one of you same I truly am and that is that that I am a metaphor little finger pointing Beyond either or so we have that that sense that the sign language a little letter I somehow refers to me but is point in where Beyond either or not to uh something can be distinguished yet we know what that is see it's the one thing that we can't talk about say that in itself is a reference the thing we can't talk about the thing we can't put into words that there can't be two of them right if there were two of them it's something you can describe in words it's this thing you can't talk about and that thing you can't talk about it and again you made a distinction so so the one thing the given is is my favorite term for it the simply the given what we all you know can't doubt it's it's what must be so it's the only thing like that that there is a something prior to all these changes and call it God call it I am call it awareness those are just different words whatever we prefer okay and what about meditation can you use it can was the relationship can you use lucid dreaming yeah some people uh think that lucid dreaming is itself a meditative State I don't think that's quite right I think it's more like it's got a lot in common with various meditative practices and it can be used for meditative purposes but U it's also for example the most typical you you'll find in lucid dreaming with your teenage boy uh I wasn't thinking of Dream Sex I was thinking actually of sort of the video game thing where you know all right so here I am and I know I'm dreaming and then the bad guy are after me okay so I'm going to make this super machine gun where I can shoot everybody more effectively sort of like what you saw in Inception right the the concept you really think big when you're dreaming right that thinking big a big gun not really so but but that's a starting point you see and so that we all start with simply pleasure we start with we do things because we like it right and we tend to re experience and do it again because if it's pleasurable that is worth a repetition right and that's sort of one of the definitions of pleasure but we find that there are limits to whatever level we're on we find there are deeper meanings deeper values something like think of art the that we cultivate an appreciation for art that we didn't have as children you know children can do many things that we have forgotten how as adults but one of them isn't really to to appreciate art in its many forms that it takes a an education a Sentimental education of of the person which can also be attained through dreams for example so we don't have to in order to learn from experience we don't have to have experiences that are external they can be imaginative you might say right the things that we experience by going within and dreams I think are a wonderful example of that where we have real experiences real things happen to us that can change our lives so uh that potential say that dreams have that ability to show us what kind of world may be here's another alternative we have the opportunity with lucid dreaming to say I can take responsibility for this dream and I can only do that by knowing what is going on and understanding what my situation is otherwise I'm not going to be able to so dur responsibility requires Lucidity and then we can actually say if the world I'm experiencing say a nightmare suppose I have unpleasant dreams say well this is the kind of world that we'd have if it were only up to me because it's my own private experience I'm by my responses reactions BN lack thereof trying to escape I'm creating a world for myself and so that same question reversed to say I want to make the most of what I want to say for example I'm going to embrace every figure I find in the dream so if there's anyone I'm avoiding any unpleasant ogreish figure somebody I want to get away from I'm going to do the opposite instead I'm going to seek them out I'm going to embrace and and do my best to accept them in the open-heartedness that really is in common with the Buddhist ideal of extending that Wish For Goodness to all sensient beings not just yourself for me I go a slightly a bit further because I don't really require it of sension beings because mostly uh I don't know whether or not the beings I encounter are sensient or not so here's a crowd apparently of a lot of people some some of you may actually just be some sort of you know uh robot or don't look at me now this one seems pretty real but but I don't know so what I'm going to do is I'm going to say I'm just going to extend that as a matter of principle to whatever I meet in any way and say I don't need to see your reality papers before I act with love I love it I I so love it I so love it thank you just one more one more cuz likely the time is the so are you say that lucid dreaming are better than regular dreaming yeah well U th this is a it's a kind of controversial issue which to say are lucid dreams better or the more developed or the you know more exalted spiritual or anything like that it depends and I gave an example where they weren't you know with a video game teenagers or clearly that's not a more advanced State now in fact I think that you don't always want to be EXP explicitly conscious of this fact that you're dreaming and a very simple example of that is one dream I had when I was about 20 in the dream I'm going up a Mountain Road and it's beginning to get kind of hard going and I I feel that my legs are getting a bit leaden you know and that in fact now I'm crawling and I feel this sense of of uh absolute weakness is filling my body it's like the Socrates and the hemlock and I can just suddenly feel this is the end I in another moment I'm going to just plain die it's the end really it this what am I going to do with my last moment and I decide I'm going to embrace it with full acceptance I'm going to completely accept this last moment and that amounted to action I could let out my last breath and with that expiration a rainbow came out of my heart and wow what a different view of death so cool now ask yourself would that have happened if I said oh yeah yeah I'm Dreaming I'm about to die right you know it would have lacked the the dramatic power it wouldn't have really drawn out that really this is you're not going to wake up in a minute you know and be able to tell this is it it's the end so I'd say that shows us that in some circumstances it makes sense that we may do better get more from the experience by not thinking about oh yes this is all a dream uh right it even though that in other circumstances it's vastly better to know it's a dream because then you can act in a way that makes real sense that it makes the most of it so I think we have to be flexible about the use of that because he can also say here we are in life okay and this is this life thing is often described as you know God pretending that he doesn't know he's God right and that's what each of us were finding that out right and and sure would spoil the game if we all just playing knew at the very beginning oh yeah right here I'm God pretending I'm not God right so so what you know the point is that that life must have some purpose some value some reason for being aside from just a mistake I don't think the and this is what I hear often in the East is that the view that life is just a mistake you know it's the just you know if you knew better you wouldn't be doing this right well that's that's about equivalent to the materialist view that there's no meaning to life it's all just random it's all just an accident right so it's not like you know a stupid accident it's just you know just an accident though it just happened but there is no deeper meaning and I think what is the deepest meaning for us all it's meaning it's the and love is usually the answer of of why actually that that we come up as a you know a reasonable start for what might be an answer for that but so I think there's got to be more to it and um um katees described it as uh the process of of going through life is not a veil of tears but instead it is the uh we have the horn book you know the the uh notebook in which we are the soul is is writing down the experiences is impressing on this somehow level of ourselves the meaning of of what's true in life and so this learning this educational process then actually requires s at some points pain suffering in order to get the message across that that somehow we are become so thickheaded so slow to perceive reality that that that's what it takes and nothing less will get our attention somehow so so that may be a reason for pain and suffering it again it doesn't mean we must persist in it that would seem to not getting the message somehow right so but but I I think the the more the broader problem is that any formulation anything we say this is what it's all about or this is how it works one distinct thing it's like a particular map so to say materialism the basic what is behind Consciousness are brains you know and brains evolving out of matter and all and and that explains a lot it makes sense in certain perspectives say well what mind was on Earth you know four and a half billion years ago when there weren't any organisms no brains no anything like that then you have to if you believe mind was Prior then you have to say well it was some other kind of mind is sort of the Mind beyond all of anything you know the very the awareness thing that I'm agreeing must be there but uh if you look at other aspects the the materialist view is very hard to explain consciousness so you're now looking at Consciousness and it's much easier to look at it from the idealism point of view so we've got maps that if they're global maps they must have errors in them it must have if we're going from the sphere here to a plane representation a map and we're projecting there must be a tear in that map where things just don't work so that if you've got a a map where you're looking at the local part on North Pole then fine but it's going to be wrong around the equator and vice versa if you got a good map of the Equator it's going to be absurd at the poles where every direction is South for example no matter where you go and and other anomalies what that tells us every map every worldview every way it might be is a limited map of reality and we should remember that say and that's a great line to close I love it incredible so we talk about dreaming and we find ourself with a A New Path that we can explore we can find A New Path of exploration of our so we it's not that we only explore our spiritual search daytime now we can work at nighttime yeah no no no it's they're real Seekers yeah thank you Steph so so that exploration right we come they going to kill me because we I'm 10 minutes over time we're 10 minutes over time that's kill me you know we're already dead there you go since we're already dead Voices From Beyond and they're saying that the end of all are exploring they going to kill me will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time oh thank [Applause] you [Music]

Channel: Science and Nonduality

Views: 123,566

Keywords: lucid dreaming, waking state, brain, Lucidity, Mind, Lucid Dream (Literature Subject), Consciousness (Quotation Subject)

Id: _feBOCW50Dg

Length: 43min 34sec (2614 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 17 2015