Lucidity in Dreaming

Lucid dreaming, for those of you that haven't seen Inception yet (highly recommended) is a dream where you are aware you are dreaming.  Most often, a person has no mental ability to recognize a dream state while they are in one.  Things that would be quite unbelievable or even impossible in the real world, seem to happen so naturally in dreams:  running in super slow mo whilst being chased, or experiencing first and third person simultaneously, or maybe you can even fly. In the dream, all of this is hunky dory, it's just the way things are....not so!  Wouldn't it be awesome to realize the consequences of a dream aren't real and have fun with it?  Zombies will not eat my braaaaainz, I will not die after falling off this cliff, no one is after me.  The answer appears to be a resounding YES.

My good friend Aditya is an accomplished lucid dreamer, and has been talking it up big time.  I must say, I'm quite intrigued and have been working on recognizing my own dream states.  I've had minor success, and recognized my dream, only to be woken by the shock of the realization :'(  Amongst all of this, (and I'm trying my best), I still trick myself and fail to recognize dreams.  Asking questions of yourself in a dream state can be quite the conundrum and your brain will almost certainly try to 'lie' to you and tell you this is all real (my mind to me: "Yes, John, your peak running speed is actually a 25 minute mile - you're SCREWED...and they're going to get you!").  Give it a shot next time.

I think the following audio clip from Inception, and Ariadne's resulting "Aha!" moment, is a great introductory description of lucid dreaming, and how easy it is to fool yourself.  The accompanying We Plants Are Happy Plants remix of Hans Zimmer's fantastic score is also impressive.

Hans Zimmer - Time (We Plants Are Happy Plants Remix) by WPAHP

(This track is downloadable, don't miss it!)

There are lots of resources out there that will help you learn more about lucid dreaming, or if you know Aditya, you can ask him yourself and watch the smile spread across his face...