Does your brain WANT you to become lucid?

“just think: you are your brain.”

Well heres the news-sciencists are now trying to prove the theory that theres actually two things:mind and brain…as separate.I guess its pretty interesting but i know youll ask me for link…again,i dont have any,again watched it on tv(dicovery sci-trek).
I hardly remember what else was on this documentary as there was party goin on and could hardly hear a thing.
Anyways…theres a lots of difficult stuff involved in that research like- magnetism,micro something,physics,and pretty much more complicated words and science fields.
I hope they will show it again one day and id be able to update you whos doing it.

And to your post magic Adam-i guess it was just because you think a lot about dreams during a day and stuff.So you had it in your dream.This explanation was easy…but i wish i knew “how”.

Hi
I like the idea that there is only one thing,the mind.But i won´t argue about that :wink:

“How do you know that you have eyes?”
“I can see them in the mirror”
“How do you know you have hands?”
“I can touch them”

Wierd…
How can you do research on perception if you have to percept while reasearching?

Traumgänger,the non-existent

“How can you do research on perception if you have to percept while reasearching?”

I will have to remember that specifically for future reference, it is a funny (and very true) point. As far comments on “mind” and “brain” being different, I would have to disagree. Perhaps you misinterpreted your information, because there are a lot of theories recently on how conciousness and the brain are different, and how they interact. In general, the idea is that “conciousness” is our brain’s EM (electromagnetic) field, and that when we are paying “attention” to something we are changing our previously constructed neurological pathways on the fly, and when we aren’t paying attention to something, or doing it unconciously, (eg, breathing), our previously constructed neural pathways are already working correctly and we don’t need to “interfere”. I thought that most people already knew about this, because the theory in general sculpts a lot of what I believe about how our brain/mind works. Here is one of the most recent papers on it that I know of: surrey.ac.uk/qe/PDFs/cemi_theory_paper.pdf

I think you’re right Jack. I’ve read somewhere that the brain and mind are seperate. But there’s also a third thing. Your soul/spirit/astral projection is there too. It’s the thing that’s able to leave your body when you have an OBE. It’s actually been detected by scientist. I don’t know if it’s true or not so if you disagree with what I’ve just said go ahead. I don’t have a link to this right now but if you want it just ask and it will only take me a few minutes to find it. I don’t really feel the need to prove anything to anyone right now :smile:

Look at it this way: Your self is defenitely part of your brain, but not all of your brain is your self. It is a huge, wild and wonderful organ, and we may in our lives use many parts of it, but it still largely operates outside our awareness. Lucidity is an attempt to conquer some of that ground, and in doing so we encounter new and strange events. Many people on this board and elsewhere have commented on their lack of control on their own brain, and that just reinforces my idea that the self, the awareness is just a small island in the large and mysterious ocean that is the brain.

I would really like to see some sort of evidence/proof supporting the claim that we have a soul, as you mentioned.

Are you referring to the NDE research of Pim van Lommel? This recent study does not prove your statement, but does not decline it either. Very interesting research and a must read if your interested in these kind of things. The full report (pdf) can be downloaded from the Lancet. (You have to register first, but it’s free) …

I have never heard of any real scientific proof for this actual leaving, so I am very interested in your link. Please provide us with your information sources. :smile:

My mind and me are two different people, i’m just thankful we are friends.

Kaoisa-i guess the soul=mind in those researches.And yes,like someone said-its got to do with magnetic field.Anyways i just remembered they also said that they believe those are different things with mind controling the brain.
all i rem,sorry.
But its breakthrough idea itself.For ages we believed its all in the brain-mind/conciousness/spirit…so on they all jumping in the brain for unknown reason and in unknown ways.Now we think it might be separate.
and it also supports life after death theory a bit i guess

Yeah, its really annoying when things like that happen, I’ve had lots of dreams where I’ve been talking about lucid dreaming and stuff and I haven’t noticed at all… I think my mind is mocking me… :sad:

Hi. I think this is my first post. Yeah it is. Anyway, I just wanted to comment on the whole astral body thing. It is real. It is our consciousness. The brain is just an interface between it and the physical body. I got interested in lucid dreams a while ago, but kind of lost interest when I learned about astral projection. Now I have regained interest because they are related and I want to learn more about this relation. Anyway, have fun.

I’m not sure I our minds have alternate desires from our Sub-C or NC. But I know if an idea is implanted in your mind long enough it becomes Sub-C. And because we can’t control Sub-C some think it is another thought pattern altogether. But I disagree. :content:

You are your mind. Your mind is one, your concious is influenced by your unconcious and likewise. The desires of both may be different but they hold the same hands.

The mind/body controversy lives on! This is certainly not a new debate. It seems we have gone back and forth in history as to whether or not a separate “mind” or “soul” entity exists. I cannot answer that question, but I can comment on what we know about the function of dreams! (I just took a class on the use of dreams in psychotherapy–fun stuff)

I agree with MONKFISH and FWONGO, who noted that our brains operate predominantly outside our awareness, and our brains tend to try to suppress lucidity. If you buy the ideas of Sigmund Freud (sorry, I’m in psychology, can’t seem to get away from Freud for too long…) our mind operates as a sort of system in which our human instincts (id) battle with socially-learned values and morality (superego) for behavioral expression. There are different theories on the actual function of dreams, the most popular being “wish-fulfillment” with the dream serving as a sort of safety valve to allow the unconscious self to (for example) kill someone, kill everyone, have sex with whomever they want, never go to work again, steal something impossible, whatever…without the conscious really “getting” what just happened (This is where all our crazy dream symbolism comes in) Supposedly, our basest desires (according to Freud, wanting to have sex with just about everyone or wanting to kill just about everything) are too SCARY for our conscious selves to handle, so we unconsciously create all these idiosyncratic symbols to represent what we REALLY want to be doing. For example, the “bad guy” that is chasing you could actually be the aggressive side of yourself that is angry at someone else. OR the high school professor you are having sex with (in your DREAM, of course) could represent a cold and distant parent whom you have always wanted to be closer to (in a normal, healthy way).

Anyway, the whole point of this long rambling is to support the notion that our minds probably do try to suppress our lucidity–it thinks it is “protecting” us from seeing some frightening truth. However, we obviously have been able to overcome this barrier… I have to wonder how much our dreamscapes might shift or change somehow (add extra distortions or symbols or something) to compensate for the fact that our level of awareness has grown…just a thought.

Heheheheh :gni: . Anima your last post just shot the hell outta magicadam’s topic. POW :scream: . Heh…any way I think I must agree with you… to some extent. I know humans are weak and I agree our mind tries to suppress certain things. It has to. It is like a saftey mechinism against ourselves. But since we are all different, each person’s subconciousness dicates differently from all the others what is and is not “too stessful for us to handle”. So what may me too much for this guy over hear may be right up this fella’s alley over there. Er…so how does this effect your opion now? :sigh:

Here’s my take on this whole “mind suppresses lucidity” thing.

When you’re asleep, and having a non-ld dream, the logical side of your brain isn’t working. To become lucid part of that “logicality” needs to fire up.

Say you’re strolling around (in a dream) and just happen to see a sign saying “You are dreaming!” If the logic part of your brain is working you will stop to question this or just realise that you are. If it isn’t, well then the dream will carry on and you will get distracted by whatever happens next to you.

I don’t think your mind is trying to suppress anything. I don’t see how a defence mechanism in your brain would want to suppress such a safe (as compared to reality) thing. I could see how any defence mechanisms would make you avoid dangerous people/events in dreams since your brain doesn’t know the difference b/w vivid imagery and reality, but if you can control these events with lucidity I think you’re brain would want to encourage you to gian lucidity so you can overcome any danger in dreams.

I agree cloudsurfer: What’s the use of a defence mechanism? Against what? Freud saw the unconscious as a much more dangerous place than it is. The unconscious doesn’t have ‘dangerous’ thoughts. Not to the thinker.

I don’t think there is surpresssion at all, Freudian, spiritual or otherwise. I think it’s much simpeler: The brain doesn’t question reality. It just doesn’t. Not in waking life, not in dreams. Sure, on a summers evening with a bottle of wine we may steer it in that direction and thus become more aware, which in a dream might make us lucid. But we hardly ever do that.

Now in our dreams our brain does more or less the same as it does in waking state, except now it doesn’t have any input except our own thoughts and fantasies. Why should it all of a sudden start questioning our perception now? And when something weird happens it does what it always does: come up with an explanation, just as in waking life.

And through eons of evolution and through our entire lives, the brain has never had a need to question reality. So this LD fad is basically about developing a skill that has been totally uncalled for throughout human life. So I don’t think it’s active surpression, but rather a lack of developement. Which doesn’t mean we can’t develop it, it just takes a lot of resourcefulness.

Well said monkfish. The explanation is a bit high level, but very true non the the less.

What I’ve been thinking about is the fact that we actually have dreams for a purpose, to go through all our sub-concious thoughts and stuff. But when we have LDs we can make whatever we want happen, so its no longer our sub-concious thats our dream is coming from, so maybe thats why our brain doesn’t want us to LD. Sorry if someones already said this, I didn’t read through the whole thread.

No, I think someone discussed the topic of whether you can lose sleep over an LD or not though… I just forget where.