Dreaming is one of the common phenomena and at the same time a mysterious phenomenon in our life. Until now, everything that happens to a person in this borderline state is shrouded in mystery.
Does what happens in dreams really only exist in our brain? After all, dreams are sometimes so clear that we take them for reality. And sometimes people are able to control the flow of their sleep. For example, the ability to fly - a pipe dream in reality - is embodied in dreams, and a person soars in the sky, performing aerobatics.
Three in a boat
The research of scientists from different countries is devoted to the borderline state; there are Internet portals for consciously sleeping people. The term lucid dreaming (translated from English "lucid dream") reflects the state of the sleeping person, who, realizing that he is dreaming, controls his plot.
Interest in this area has arisen for a long time. "Sometimes, when a person is asleep," wrote the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle, "something in his mind allows him to understand that everything that happens is just a dream." In medieval Europe, the phenomenon of lucid dreaming was also common.
But the reputation of dreams - and they are always subjective and rarely fit into generally accepted ideas - was in different eras akin to the tricks of the dark forces. They talked about this in secret: for example, an open discussion of lucid dreams could become an occasion for a meeting with the Inquisition.
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Recent history has also turned out to be rich in daring researchers. The first method of lucid dream management was tested on himself by Marie-Jean-Léon Lecoq, aka Baron d'Herve de Yuschero, aka Marquis d'Herve de Saint-Denis (1822-1892).
He outlined his findings in the book Dreams and Ways to Control Them. Practical Experiments (1867). As a teenager, he noticed the ability to control the flow of his own dreams and subsequently successfully applied it in reality.
Those who controlled their sleeping brain were capable of controlling dreams. One of them was Frederic Willem van Eden (1860-1932), Dutch novelist and poet and psychiatrist. He coined the term "mindful sleepers."
After him, the aristocrat Mary Arnold-Foster, who was born in 1861, joined the camp of explorers. She, unlike Lecoq and van Eden, turned to the topic of lucid sleep already in adulthood, writing in 1921 the book "Studies on Dreams".
Each of them went to the control of dreams in their own way. All three, figuratively speaking, were in the same boat with the inscription "In a waking dream." They were fluent in the pen and left their own literary heritage.
However, each of the researchers was guided by his own goal. Lecoq made his sleeping self rush down from tall buildings to see if he could dream of his own death. Van Eden kept a diary of dreams, some of which he used as the basis of his psychological stories. Mary Arnold-Forster used dreams to relieve guilt for sending her sons into the heat of World War I.
And they completed their research in different ways. For example, Lecoq came to the conclusion that dreams are formed from patches of our memory. Van Eden became one of the best masters of lyric literature. Mrs. Arnold-Forster has created a guide to the world of dreams.
From the diaries of researchers
Their research was continued by our contemporary, Dr. Stephen LaBerge, founder of the Lucidity Institute, USA. In Lucid Dreaming, he introduced readers to the techniques he had tested at the Stanford University Sleep Research Center.
In his studies, Laberge relied, like his predecessors, on personal experiences. He was the first to try, using his own mnemonic method of entering a lucid dream, to conduct an unusual experiment. There were several attempts, and all were unsuccessful.
“I was lying in bed, waking up for the fourth time that night, and with anxiety I thought about what had happened to me: did I really lose the ability after so many years? And suddenly I found myself flying high above the meadow. With great relief, I instantly realized that this was the lucid dream I was waiting for! Continuing to fly over the meadow, I gave a second signal with my eyes and began to slowly count to ten. When I finished counting, I gave a third signal, marking the end of the experimental task. I was extremely pleased with my success and began to somersault in the air. In a few seconds the dream melted away."
This report reminded medical historians of a report presented in 1913 by van Eden to the Society for Psychical Research. In it, the researcher reported his 312 lucid dreams for the period from 1898 to 1912.
“I dreamed,” writes van Eden, “that I was hovering over a valley covered with bare trees. I knew it was April, and I noticed how distinct and natural each twig looks. Then, continuing to sleep, I noted that my imagination could never create a complex picture in which the appearance of each branch would change exactly in accordance with my movement over the trees."
Mary Arnold-Foster, who did not immediately learn to rise above one and a half to two meters above the ground, also experienced flights "in a dream in reality".
“Only after observing birds and thinking about how they fly, how larks soar over the chalk mountains of Wiltshire, how a kestrel hovers in the air, after observing the movements of the strong wings of a rook and nimble swallows, my flights in my dreams began to remotely resemble the flight of a bird. After long and frequent thinking about flying over tall trees and buildings, I found that it was less and less difficult for me to climb to such a height.
Mary wrote in her diary: "Light hand movements, like swimming, increase the speed of the flight - I either go higher or change direction, especially when flying through narrow places such as a door or window opening." So Mary prepared herself for an attempt to fly over the Atlantic in her sleep.
Plot Creators - Therapists
It is known that dreams in which people fly like birds are remembered for a long time. Which is understandable: After all, the ability to soar without wings is embodied only in dreams, and you want to prolong the feeling of flight.
But there are people who are able to consciously manipulate dreams. In flight, you can hover, dive, hover, slow down or speed up the flight, jump from the top of a skyscraper or board an airplane - while not using a parachute or other devices.
Those who can tell this: when movements are unreal in reality, they experience a feeling of euphoria.
- About half a century ago, scientists who studied the phases of sleep, learned from the movements of the eyeballs to determine the moments when the sleeping people consciously went into a special space. Since then, the study of waking sleep has been recognized as a scientific fact, says Cologne scientist Alfred Vieter, chairman of the German Society for Sleep Research and Sleep Medicine.
However, this does not mean that this direction has become a scientific mainstream. Why?
“Because the study of waking sleep is a borderline area,” explains Ursula Voss, a psychologist in Frankfurt am Main.
However, progress is evident: the study of waking sleep is receiving much more recognition in the scientific community today than before. Ms. Foss herself made an effort to this: in early 2014, she published an article in the journal Nature Neuroscience, in which she described the possibility of inducing daydreaming by acting on sleeping subjects with weak current pulses.
However, the advancement of the idea is stalled for objective reasons. Finding suitable test subjects is still difficult. After all, people who are able to act according to the principle "in a dream in reality" are rare. And not everyone wants others to know about their dreams. Test takers in doubt: should someone be allowed into the innermost territory?
“It's up to the person to decide, of course,” says Ms. Foss. - But, on the other hand, if a sleeping dreamer in reality is able to capture positive emotions from a dream into reality, then this can be considered a positive effect, and our experiment is therapy. This is how we can influence the quality of life.
Research on lucid dreaming can help cure a number of illnesses. For example, relieve obsessive nightmares. Modern scientists come to the conclusion: a sleeping consciousness, freed from the logic of wakefulness, is capable of changing a person's physical state and enriching his perception of reality.
Alexander MELAMED