[crazygringo]

I frequently have lucid dreams, in that I'm entirely aware of that fact that I'm dreaming while in the dream.

What I find interesting, however, is that if I have a dream I forgot to study for my test, or I'm naked at school because I left my clothes somewhere else, or the school play starts tonight and I haven't memorized a single line... the fact that I know I'm dreaming doesn't help at all.

Because the problem is that, while lucid dreaming, I have no access to any real-life knowledge or memories. I figure that I'm having the dream because I actually am in school in real life, with an exam I forgot about in the morning. I simply have no access to the fact that I left school many years ago. And if there's a monster behind the door in my dream, it seems entirely plausible in my dream that that's simply because there are monsters in the real world too.

And quite often my dreams are related to real-life situations that happened yesterday or are happening tomorrow or this week -- so it's not like I can try to convince myself of some "rule" that dream anxieties are never anything to worry about.

So my whole anxious lucid dream I'm just thinking, "boy I really hope that I'm not actually in a play that opens tomorrow night..." And then I wake up and it is suddenly crystal-clear that I haven't been in a high school play in decades.

But during my lucid dream, there's absolutely no way of knowing. Curious if this is universal or if other people who lucid dream do always know the details of their actual true reality -- their age, what city and home they live in, current job, etc.

[wruza]

I’ve explored it in my 30s and it wasn’t like you described. Once I’m aware, I can change the plot by soft transition, remove the eerie elements, somewhat control flights, etc. But not too much because something monitors “glitches the matrix” and disconnects me for cheating. Not that I didn’t know who I am or what is or isn’t absurd, but thinking about it long enough wakes me up. I believe your lucidness is not too deep or something. Maybe you just found a way to see dreams in which you believe it’s lucid but it’s really not? Maybe this whole lucid dreaming thing is just a coincidence - we remember being aware, but it’s just a dream of us being aware, and mine for some reason has this “not too much” rule.

[tetris11]

> soft transition

This completely. I learned early on to not get excited, and to not immediately do the things I want to do, e.g. fly at breakneak speed into space, but gently learn to hover and then build speed and to undetail my surroundings so that a change in speed won't be too jarring that I wake up.

[bitmasher9]

Exactly. If I find myself in a school taking an exam I did not study for I have to realize I’m dreaming, remember I have total control of my surroundings, stand up, walk out of the classroom while thinking about where I want to go. Sometimes the dream throws roadblocks like “I can’t find the door out of this classroom.” The trick when a roadblock happens is to remain clam, remain confident, and find an alternative “Oh yea, the door is behind me.” If I begin losing control I often begin losing lucidity. If I exert too much control (Let’s just walk through the wall, I can do anything) then I will wake up.

[jcul]

I haven't had a lucid dream for a long time, but used to make this mistake too and wake up.

I love the parent comment's description about the system detecting a "glitch in the matrix".

Though I feel it is just if you rouse your consciousness enough you will just break the sleep state.

I do wonder if lucid dreaming affects how rested you are from sleep.

My intuition is that the mind resting comes during deeper sleep and during REM the mind is kind of freewheeling anyway.

[hosh]

I think that depends upon the dream space you find yourself in. If it is an internal dream space for yourself, you tend to have more control (if you do have control).

However, I've been in many shared spaces that have varying rules on how much things can be changed. Many of them are what I describe as "sim" spaces. There are also spaces where it is procedurally-generated -- for example, deliberately taking a path you know has not been used, and the whole space pauses, as things are procedurally generated to create that new area on the fly.

Finally, it's a two way street. Connection to a space has as much to do with how your consciousness is attuned to that space; trying to change the environment too much is as much as your consciousness shifting out of alignment with that space, and disconnecting as it is the space resisting changes.

As an example, I remember one interesting experience where I was talking to someone. Three people entered the space, with their own (subconcious) idea of things, which created changes in the environment to fit their consciousness state. It's similar to how Will Wight described things in his Traveler's Gate series, when someone from one realm goes into another, and that other realm starts morphing towards the first realm. I don't think those three knew what they were doing, and it was kinda rude.

[fsiefken]

Hi hosh, you mention shared dream space, how do you know for certain the others are real dreamers and not just imagined, anticipated or dreamed ones by your own consciousness?

If they were real this would imply solid proof of ESP - which I think would be all over the news, or at least mentioned in the Noema magazine article by Claire Evans. Is there a subculture of dream parapsychologists publishing this in underground channels I am not aware of? Are these hypothetical dream parapsychologists using scientific rigor and peer review I wonder? Or do people 'just know'?

You mention "procedurally generated" and the dream "sim" space pausing because of computation, I am working in IT and can't square that with with a dream space taking place in the mind. The mind doesn't operate like a computer or has procedures that take so much time that the dream space is paused. My dreams do not pause. How do you know the pause itself is not your imagination of an imagined procedurally generated dream scene? The idea of perceived reality as computational simulation was popularized by the The Matrix, that this is a popular metaphor doesn't mean shared lucid dreaming are computed somehow.

Because of these questions I wondered if this comment is LLM generated or a kind of fantasy or metaphor. After reading your profile this doesn't seem to be the case, you are serious and generally knowledgable about matters of consciousness. I am puzzled.

[hosh]

Sometimes I see threads here on HN related to the occult or the very weird spaces psychonauts explore and I forget the audience I am talking to. I generally have to compartmentalize; this is the kind of stuff I talk to in other communities, forums, and private Discord channels, not here. I would have thought other lucid dreamers here would have encountered this kind of stuff, but I guess not. What I said here is relatively tame compared to the weirdness you can get diving into this.

Put it this way, permaculture is weird for all but a minority of folks here, even if it stays within the bounds of known science. This stuff with consciousness is the kind of hill people die on.

I don’t know if you really want to jump into this rabbit hole. There are many entrances, and given the reception, I am reluctant to speak further. But if you are really curious, Hank Wesselman’s work can be a good starting point. One of his books specifically talks about “reenchantment”, in reference to the disenchantment of the scientific inquiries of the 19th century that lead us to our modern worldview.

[fsiefken]

Thanks for the pointer hosh, as a psychonaut, vajrayana practitioner reading books from for example bernardo kastrup, zoe7's void books, robert anton wilson, dean radin and robert bruce I can relate. I've had various interesting experiences and entertained a variety of 'reality tunnels' and am for sure in favor of 're-enchantment'. Still the comment didn't compute for me, I understand and respect your reluctance!

[codeflo]

Serious question, do you need help?

[hosh]

Why would you think I need help?

[chrisnight]

> But during my lucid dream, there's absolutely no way of knowing. Curious if this is universal or if other people who lucid dream do always know the details of their actual true reality -- their age, what city and home they live in, current job, etc.

This is referred to as different levels of lucidity. While lucidity is technically a binary state (know or don't know), it can sometimes be better described as a spectrum where you can "know" but not fully understand what it means.

Some levels you might think of are: Thinking it's 100% real. Having a "feeling" something is off. "Feeling" its a dream. Consciously expressing its a dream. Understanding its a dream. And then actually understanding the full consequences that its a dream.

Usually this comes down to a matter of thought clarity, not memories. If you understand its a dream, then it has no consequences period. Even if you think the worry is real, you still can't affect the physical world in a dream. Perhaps you could try practicing/studying in your dream, and writing stuff down when you awake, or just forcing yourself awake in order to study/practice more. However, outside of that, nothing you do affects the real world, so there's no logical reason to worry about it, even if you don't have the memories to understand "oh its entirely fabricated".

As for others, it obviously depends on the dream, as each have their own level of lucidity, but I can personally say I know basic facts that don't require any specific memory, like my dad being alive is impossible, because he passed. I probably couldn't take a quiz though. I can also remember specific goals, though again, more as a natural feeling than a specific memory.

If you want to try to get out of the dream's story, you have to be willing to accept that if something is impossible, no story can explain it; it has to just not be real.

[ElDji]

When I have lucid dream, I know that i'm sleeping in my bed (street location, city) and which day of week it is. So I have access to real life knowledge.

So I believe there is different level of lucidity, depending on each individuals.

[JeremyNT]

Yes, I used to practice lucid dreaming and parent post's description is different than what I experienced. When entering the lucid state I was similarly fully (or nearly fully) context aware.

My problem was always maintaining the lucid state. Doing anything to change the dream risked awakening early and I never got great at maintaining the state for long.

[joachimma]

I used to have lucid dreams regularly until I was 17, until I told a friend and never had a "real" one since. I am not sure if it is connected. I mostly used it to avoid nightmares as a child, unfortunately after a while, I got psychological nightmares instead. Waking up multiple times within a dream (There is no Limbo from Inception for me) with something really stressful having happened (dead body under the bed and police knocking on the door, it's just a dream there are no police, but the body is there, type stuff). I still have partially aware lucid-dreams occationally.

[lawrenceyan]

Same for the most part. I get the rare "super lucid" dream where it's almost 1:1 to being awake, but 99% of the time it's like how you describe.

I think this is because our brains will happily "predict the next token". We've never evolved to have to consider doing anything else. So when you're asleep and placed into a scenario with some context associated with yourself, the brain does the natural thing and performs prediction.

[smusamashah]

Mine are like yours in that I am never certain where and when I am in real life. But they don't last very long, I become too conscious and wakeup or just go with the flow and forget being lucid. They rarely last very long to think and experiment.

But in situations like yours, I am never sure where I am in my real life. I know that its a dream and I am sleep, but where and when are never certain.

[karmakaze]

I've had a handful of clear lucid dreams with different levels of awareness/control. In most of them I know that there's no real consequences but I rarely try things that would seem dangerous/extreme. One time I was flying and knew it was a dream, I could control how/where I was flying but for whatever reason I couldn't fly above a certain height like there was yet another unconscious limit to my lucid dream control. At least in that one I was trying and testing what I could do in the dream.

In most other cases after I wake up, I think to myself I knew I was dreaming why didn't I try more stuff?! Waking up from lucid dreaming can be very smooth fade-out/fade-in and sometimes I can extend the lucid dream state after partially waking up by reimagining the world I was leaving then on finally waking up I just wish I could have stayed longer but is no surprise at all.

[saghm]

> Curious if this is universal or if other people who lucid dream do always know the details of their actual true reality -- their age, what city and home they live in, current job, etc.

I have lucid dreams somewhat frequently since I was maybe 8 or 9 after I started getting prescribed medication to help me sleep (initially it had been almost nightly, but it reduced over the years to the point where it happens maybe a couple times a month now a couple decades later), and generally I do remember the details of my life in lucid dream, but I sometimes have trouble determining whether they're details of my life in the past or the present. If in my dream I'm back at school, it's usually not the case that I don't remember graduating, getting a job, and moving; often times I have a vague sense that all of that had happened, but then some issue was discovered with my records that forced me have to go back and retake a class or two. (This obviously is pretty implausible, but dream logic isn't always airtight!)

> What I find interesting, however, is that if I have a dream I forgot to study for my test, or I'm naked at school because I left my clothes somewhere else, or the school play starts tonight and I haven't memorized a single line... the fact that I know I'm dreaming doesn't help at all.

Having real world knowledge doesn't always mitigate the "issue" in the dream though; in my lucid dreams, I don't have any control over what happens beyond my own actions, so a teacher expecting me to hand in some assignment won't generally accept "it's a dream so I don't have to" as an excuse. There is a way that knowing that I'm dreaming helps though; I can just choose to wake up! I'm not sure whether being able to forcibly wake up is typical or not for people dreaming lucidly, but I've never had much trouble doing it. Sometimes I'll end up back in the same scenario if I fall back asleep again after though, so it might end up being worth it to suffer through the imaginary misfortune to get the real world benefit of sufficient sleep.

[chrisnight]

> I'm not sure whether being able to forcibly wake up is typical or not for people dreaming lucidly, but I've never had much trouble doing it.

REM (Rapid Eye Movement) sleep has paralysis on every part of your body except one part: Your eyes. As such, anyone can indeed force themselves away by attempting to open their eyes. Note though that you can "open" your eyes and it still be a dream, so you have to be sure open your eyes in real life, which requires actually physically moving the muscles.

There is of course also other ways of doing it, but this is probably the most universal and has an associated logic to it.

[shostack]

Similar to my experience. I also find my control of my body is still somewhat linked to my real body.

For example, one way of maintaining and strengthening the lucid experience is supposedly spinning around in place with your arms spread. When I do that, I find a dream sensation that feels a bit like my arms trying to move out from under my pillow or caught in the sheets. I then wake up shortly after that.

Other times I'll know I'm lucid and can do some tricks, but still feel a bit limited, whether by the dream or my beliefs of what I think I can do in the dream. I cannot manifest scenery or people. Mostly I can get a small hop glide for flying, sometimes I can shoot a magic projectile. This may be due to limited control and practice.

[ajuc]

I hurt my hand once when I had a dream I was playing basketball and I woke up in the middle of throwing a 3-pointer - so I "jumped" and raised my hands in my bed and hit my hand against the wall.

> Mostly I can get a small hop glide for flying

I can do that very often in dreams, even when I don't realize I'm dreaming and the dream is about something completely different - somehow I often remember that it's a "superpower" I have. I have to run very fast and jump and then if I focus I can slow down the fall and eventually start to ascend. Feels very weird but also very "physical" - I have a lot of intertia and can't decide where I want to fly - just very slowly add some acceleration going up.

[7thaccount]

I sometimes fly in dreams by slowly flapping my arms like a bird. It's a little depressing when I wake up and realize I can't really do this.

[LawrenceKerr]

Did you ever try though? Did you try to initiate a lucid dream with the conscious intention of recalling your waking state?

A lot of limits in lucid dreams are entirely self-imposed and often broken through or bypassed with conscious intention.

I participated in lucid dream research years ago, and definitely could recall exactly where I was sleeping and more details about my waking state, while executing the experiment task inside the lucid dream.

[mllev]

Interesting. I lucid dream quite frequently, and not only am I perfectly aware of my waking reality, but I have full dual body control. Like if I’m flying around but I can tell that my real leg is uncomfortable I can make the adjustment without thinking twice about it.

[pozol]

This is fascinating. I had a period where I was really trying to be able to lucid dream but never could. It’s interesting that this sounds so much like my normal dreams, but just adding that you do realize it’s a dream. I didn’t think it would be so similar.

[burnished]

They aren't always. I got lucky one time, I read about lucid dreaming techniques and when I fell asleep was able to use one. The dream was otherwise a nightmare but when it became lucid that stopped being a consideration. What I remember is immediately trying to fly, succeeding somewhat, then finding that my attempts to exert control over the dream were waking me up (which I guess is a not uncommon experience).

[smusamashah]

As a kid, I detected it to be a dream when I was reading something in a dream. The text kept changing. That was the start. You will have to notice something in a dream which can not be real (for you in your dream, because its perfectly normal for a watch to become TV and people to change their faces)