Stephen LaBerge

So can you modify dream content? Can you, for instance, facilitate two-way communication between scientists and dreamers while they are dreaming? This is a long-standing interest of mine.

I first read Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming by someone named Stephen LaBerge the v- very, very beginning of high school and became very interested in lucid dreaming, which is, just to define terms, where you train yourself, and there is a process for this, to induce lucidity while you're dreaming.

That just means you become conscious of the fact that you are dreaming, and with exercises you can get to the point where you're able to modify your own dream content.

And I used to, for instance, in high school when I was competing in wrestling, I would do additional training sessions at night in my dreams.

Because the eye muscles are not paralyzed during REM, Worsley was able to signal to Hearne that he was aware he was dreaming by moving his eyes in a specific left-right pattern.

This experiment was independently replicated in nineteen eighty-one by Stephen LaBerge at Stanford University, who became the most prominent researcher in the field.

LaBerge founded the Lucidity Institute in nineteen eighty-seven to promote research into lucid dreaming and to develop techniques for inducing it.

One of the most common techniques is called reality testing, in which a person regularly asks themselves throughout the day, "Am I dreaming?" The habit eventually carries over into the dream state.

Whose is it? What is the one source that the world and the eyes that look at it are both arising from together right now? I had a small taste of that once on a meditation retreat.

I'd been reading Stephen LaBerge's book on lucid dreaming, the very last chapter of it.

And on the way to the hall, I stopped at a mirror, fixing my hair the way you do when you're sure no one's watching.

And then I noticed someone else reflected there, busy with their own business, and saw that they weren't watching me at all.

Now, what happens when you do this too much, too often, too many times each day, you start having what's called a false awakening.

I'd signal them, they wake me up, I do my reporting into the mic, I draw the picture, and while I was drawing the picture, a wolf would come in the door, walk around, climb up onto a chair, and start speaking English to Dr. Steven Lambert.

I know I'm still dreaming.

Signal them again, I wake up, report into the mic, draw the picture.