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I was reading a post by Ben over at Dreaming Life about Robert Waggoner’s new book: “Lucid Dreaming: Gateway to the Inner Self,” and I was particularly struck by the idea about the true nature of control in a lucid dream. To quote:
No sailor controls the sea. Only a foolish sailor would say such a thing. Similarly, no lucid dreamer controls the dream. Like a sailor on the sea, we lucid dreamers direct our perceptual awareness within the larger state of dreaming.
Waggoner elaborates on his view in the interview, so I won’t go too much detail here. Instead, I’d like to go into depth on the idea of control based on my experiences. In order to help define control in general terms, let’s look at control in normal and lucid dreams.
Normal Dream Control
In a “normal” dream, one is unaware of the dream. Something in the dream happens, and you react. Sometimes you appear to have an agenda with things to do. This sort of dreaming is very reactionary, at least in my experience. It seems that I’ll have some goal at one point, and the changing surroundings in the dream distract me along my path to that goal. There is no direct “I’d like this to happen because I can make it happen,” it’s more along the lines of trying to effect the change through action. I’ve had many dreams when this has failed often to rather humorous consequences upon waking. For instance, I often experience weakness when trying to fight or punch things/people. I trained in martial arts for a few years, so this is particularly frustrating to me in dreams. I continue to attempt the same attack over and over again. This is a perfect example of how little control one can have in a normal dream. If one’s normal waking day method of doing things (physically altering them) fails, one is rather powerless. I would characterize “normal” dream control as direct and physical .
In between nights of writing this post, I had a dream in which I didn’t exist. I was simply watching some plot play out. This made me think more about how I was defining control. I would define no control as when you lack any sort of power to interact, as an observer. It was a very interesting idea to me, even though I’ve had similar dreams in the past, it came at a very opportune time to give me perspective.
Lucid Dream Control
A lucid dream is a different game entirely. Gone are the limitations of only physical control, and opened are the mental, desire based, and supernatural controls. When one wants something accomplished, one can physically try to do it, or more likely, simply make it happen with some supernatural power or simply by wishing it into existence. This is the more typical type of control I would imagine when I think of lucid dreaming and interacting with the dream. This control is less based in physical action and more in terms of simply “making it happen.”
I wonder if having a lucid dream would make the observer style of dream any different. Perhaps your “thoughts” would be clearer, but then again I don’t remember thinking either.
Dream Control as an Administrator
All of these Ideas I’ve presented so far agree with Waggoner’s assertion about control in dreams. The dreamer controls certain parts about the dream, but never the entirety of the dream. If the sheer amount of things going into the dream are considered, this must be accepted. Even when you create the landscape and the very surroundings and people in the dream, you’re only creating a higher level of the dream. You might create a tree, but did you decide how many leaves it has, how tall it is, how thick the trunk is? Perhaps if you make a rolling meadow. Did you decide how the grass looks on an individual level? Obviously you didn’t go through thousands of blades of grass. The brain seems to take general commands and fill in the details. I can also think of a few times when I meant to create one thing and got another, so perhaps the detail control is imprecise, or just likes toying with the dreamer . It’s almost as though you’re a boss handing instructions to an employee, who does what you ask, as they understand it. This might explain how you get a tree with all of the details without having to ask for them. The big question then, is who is carrying out these instructions?
So I pose a question to my readers: Who do you think carries out these instructions, or more generally, how do you think control in a dream is accomplished and how should it be defined?
-Hatter
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I suppose my answer would be that the subconscious carries out the instructions.However, consider this: when you say, "create a tree", and a tree appears - did you specify the number of leaves? No. Who says the tree has leaves at this point? It could be just a generic "image" of a tree. Now… what if you say, "Gee, I wonder what the leaves look like?" - and go up to the tree to check it out. I believe it is at THIS point that the leaves are created.When you "create a tree" - the individual leaves aren’t created. Only if you choose to walk up to the tree, and inspect it, do the leaves get created out of expectation. You expect the tree to have leaves. So, those expectations fuel the proceding perception when you examine the leaves.~Sean
this is such a juicy topic, thanks Hatter for setting your sights on the debate "who is the dreamer who dreams the dream?" Expectation goes far, as Sean suggests, and I also think you’re right on about the "administrator" role of focus…. this fits in with cognitive psychology as "schema theory," in which any number of associations are brought into consciousness with the "umbrella" term. so leaves, twigs, and birds come with tree, and the tree itself is probably at the center of the schema - more likely a stately oak than a jojoba tree. however, I do think that many elements and themes in lucid dreams are not brought up through an expectation effect, but through other mercurial processes. This was the subject of my thesis on lucid dreaming, in which I used phenomenology within the lucid dream to notice my expectations and let them go - in order to see what eventually materialized in a imageless lucid dream. the results were interesting: a third of lucid scenes were from my deep childhood past, a third of spontaneous nature scenes, and another third of false awakenings where I met some interesting and unexpected dream figures. to tie up a comment that’s gone on too long, I believe that focus and expectation are not as strong as I once believed, and the longer I spend in lucid spaces, the more I realize I’m in a realm that has its own expectations for me!
Interesting ideas guys,
Sean:
I’ve definitely experienced the general to detailed thing you’re talking about. It’s like the dream doesn’t want to render the objects until it has to. The subconscious tends to be my explanation too, but that’s really sort of just naming something a black box you don’t really know much about. I’t'd be nice to crack open that unkown and see it’s individual parts.
Ryan:
That’s a very interesting angle on things. I’d never thought about taking that approach. It certainly seems likely that other processes of the brain add into the combination of what creates the dream, and I know there’s reasearch going in that direction. That is, how do physical processes effect the dream/is the dream just one giant chemical reaction.? I tend to believe not, but I think a mix of concscious control built on some physical influences sounds pretty likely.
-Hatter
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