MacEwan Open Journals (MacEwan University)
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Healing Through Lucid Dreaming
No full textAccording to Jaffe and Bresler (1980), “mental imagery mobilizes the latent, inner powers of the person, which have immense potential to aid in the healing process and in the promotion of health.” We believe this statement applies a fortiorito lucid dreaming, a state that possesses the most vivid imagery possible. In the following, we will survey potential applications of lucid dreaming to healing
Letter from the Editor
No full textAs you can see Lucidity Letter has radically changed with this issue. This is one step in the move from a newsletter to a journal format. Another step, which is in progress, is the formation of an editorial board
Visual Phenomena After Sleeping or Resting
No full textI shall comment on visual phenomena after which I have noticed after I have awakened from sleep, or on occasion after just sitting and resting with my eyes closed. I have asked a number of people if they experience similar sensations, but found only one person thought that she did
Ordinary Dreams, Lucid Dreams and Mystical Experiences
No full textIt is difficult to give a definition of mystical experience that would satisfy every scholar. I use the expression mystical experience to mean an apparent experience of some reality greater than oneself that come by transcending to some degree awareness of one’s own physical and mental self and one’s physical surroundings. This reality may be understood as God or some other spiritual being, brahman, Being, the universe, oneness, the void, or nirvana. I would distinguish for my purposes here between the phenomenon that is seen as the mystical experience itself and other more incidental phenomena that precede or accompany the mystical experience, such as visions of disks of light, the feeling of levitation, or bliss
Discussant
No full textI’ll start with some interesting features in both Jayne Gackenbach’s and Celia Green’s descriptions of lucid dreams which I believe become understandable if we relate lucid dreaming to what we know of meditation. Specifically, I’d like to start with what Green in her 1968 book calls the psychological and perceptualrealism of lucid dreams, possibly in turn related to what Jayne today has talked about as a sort of thematic flatness. Such observations are important, but have been hard to fit with other findings. Certainly, the cognitive clarity of lucid dreams does seem to be the opposite of the tendency in normative dreaming toward clouding and confusion, what Rechtscaffen calls their single-mindedness. And since cognitive reflection within the dream can initiate lucidity, this has given rise, for many of us to the view that lucid dreaming might be an approximation to our full waking faculties within the dream, with their supposed clarity. Similarly, Green has rightly pointed to the perceptual realism and clarity of lucid dreams, their tendency at times to meticulously imitate physical reality, and to the relative absence of extreme forms of bizarre transformation, which was also reflected in some of Jayne’s comments today. So again we could get the picture of a single continuum running through dreams, from bizarre dreams through more realistic true to daily life dreams and into lucidity and control. And if dream bizarreness is to be taken as direct evidence of creative symbolism operating in dream formation, which follows from both Fraud and Jung, then we seem to again to have a single continuum between symbolic dreams and lucid dreams on which all dreams could be placed
Waking Up: Overcoming the Obstacles to Human Potential
No full textIn "Waking Up", Dr. Tart takes the reader on a journey of awakening to a life of greater awareness, joy, effectiveness, and peace. He shows how ordinary, "normal" consciousness is actually a kind of trance in which the essential self is suppressed, controlled by mechanical habits of thought, perception, and behavior. To help the reader escape from this condition, the author offers insights and techniques drawn from the teachings of G. I. Gurdjieff as well as his own experience with such disciplines as Aikido, Buddhism, and psychological growth processes. These methods, involving balanced work on the intellect, emotions, and body, are ideally suited for practical use in everyday life
Lucid Dreaming, Witnessing Dreaming, and the Transcendental Meditation Technique: A Developmental Relationship
No full textThe recent growth of interest in dream lucidity, reflected in descriptive and experimental research, has led to a consideration of the theoretical and practical significance this type of dream experience might have. Whereas some researchers have suggested that lucidity offers an important phenomenological tool for the investigation of dreaming processes (LaBerge, 1985), others have emphasized the similarities between lucidity and certain types of meditative states and have suggested that they may promote psychological development in related ways (e.g., Hunt, 1985; Hunt & Ogilvie, in press)
“With The Eyes of the Mind: An Empirical Analysis of Out-of-Body States" by Glen O. Gabbard and Stuart W. Twenlow
No full textWith the Eyes of the Mind is the first book on OBEs written by practicing psychiatrists; a fact which is both its strength and its weakness. It is full of interesting survey results as well as fascinating case material, but its theoretical contribution is narrowly psychoanalytic and displays little understanding of broader psychological and parapsychological perspectives
