Levels of Lucidity

The level of awareness and level of control don’t seem to correspond for me… Last night, I became lucid within a dream and decided to try to put my hand through a wall as I’ve read of loads of other lucid dreamers who just walk through walls/mirrors etc with no problem - but I couldn’t put so much as a finger into the wall. I thought to myself, “this isn’t a real wall, it’s just an illusion that I’ve created” but I still couldn’t do it. [I then decided to go to another spot in the room and decided that the wall there would be made of a more flexible material (you know, like on an armchair or sofa, where you can at least push a finger into it slightly even though you can’t push through it) and, starting by doing this, I managed eventually to push a few fingers through it.]

The thing is, I was aware that the wall wasn’t real and that I should be able to put my hand through it but I still couldn’t do it. Does that mean part of my brain was lucid but another part was too used to RL situations and couldn’t quite believe that I could do that?

Yes I think so. The mind still makes too much associations with waking life, so it’s pretty hard to convince the mind otherwise. But the more experience you gain, the more flexible your mind will become, and the more easier it will be to overcome these mental blockages. Just keep practicing
A few days ago I had the same problem: I tried to unscrew my arm in a LD, but I only felt pain, just as I would have felt it irl. Nevertheless, I was fully convinced of the illusionary nature of my arm. But this didn’t help.

I find the “Levels of Lucidity” topic very interesting. In my opinion, it is subdivided in three themes : lucidity, vividness and control.

The definition of lucidity, according to Laberge, is knowing you’re dreaming. So you can be :
=>doubting you’re dreaming
=>knowing you’re dreaming
=>knowing you’re dreaming and more or less conscious of what it implies ( harmlessness of situations, quantity of possibilities, unreality of dream characters, etc. )

Yet, is vividness of dreams correlated to lucidity ? My very first LD were vivid a lot, though I was just knowing I was dreaming. On the other hand, checking reality very often increase vividness.

Third point : I’m not sure that lucidity and control go together. You can know you’re in a dream, know that it implies you can fly through a wall, and not be able to go through it yet.

My impression is that vividness is a pure characteristic of consciousness, but lucidity and control depend of real life beliefs.
Discrimination between dream and reality is a learned skill ( children before six cannot do that). Now lucidity levels are based on this distinction ( what is a dream, what is reality, what is possible in each case ).
Difficulties in controlling our dreams depends of our real life habits and beliefs concerning matter, time, space, integrity of our bodies and ego, etc. All these notions are learned too.

I’m very interested in knowing your opinion about all that.
Two questions more :
Do you know a mean of increasing vividness ? And do you hear about methods which allow a better control of the dream ?

Hey, that topic is just what I was looking for! And I was asking stupid questions at “Lucidity Intro”… But I hoped there is a common classification… While in Dm7’s scale I am at the average level, I have also had, according to mystic’s classification, tacit, post-lucid, semi-lucid, proto-lucid dreams… I don’t mention non-lucid dreams. But this scale is more likely an enumeration of sorts of non-lucidity. It just what I needed… I can even say, it is not full yet. If I spoke English, I could even give my own classification… Well, I’ll try, and I hope that the first to read it will be a mod and he will be just in time to delete this stuff before any one tries to download it…
I will only speak about non-lucid dreams, because I am just more familiar with them… So, my first category is Classic normal dream, where you feel and behave as if everything were real. I divide it into some subcategories, because they have different ways of transforming into lucid, if they ever have any:
=> Realistic dream. The main hero is you in familiar environment. There can be something strange in the situation and in your own behavior, but you pay no attention to this thing and to the fact that objects, for example, change their form or disappear.
=> Fantastic dream. You realize you can do something impossible in real life, usually fly, sometimes it is breathing under water or making objects move. You find a materialistic or magical explanation to this fact or seek no explanations and just have fun.
=> Parallel dream. I don’t want to say it really takes place in a parallel reality. It is just a dream where you are not quite you and their world is not quite your world. In such dream you can be, for example, a famous scientist, or a spaceport worker on Mars, or a refugee in some kind of post-apocalyptic world.
Next type of dream is Dual dream. I call it this way because it combines two or more views of the dream reality.
=> Movie dream. You observe a story and think it is a movie (though you never see the screen ). Sometimes it is a “sequel” or “remake” of an existing film, sometimes an original story. You are the audience, the director and the hero in turn. People seem to have lots of control in such dreams. You can decide, what turn the plot will take next, and repeat the scenes you liked. You can watch your hero in the moments of fun or fight and take his place in the moments of fear of pleasure. Zero awareness, nevertheless.
=> Book dream. The same stuff, but including written or pronounced text, or, maybe, comics. Can have several views, too, for example, you are a writer, whose books are immediately transformed into a cartoon, where you are one of the heroes.
=> Computer game dream. It preserves the duality of computer game, where you are Duke Nukem and Vasya Pupkin at one at the same time. You may remember that your enemies can kill your alter ego, but not yourself. Or you may try to remember what key you must press to use the weapon you are holding in your hands.
Here the kingdom of tacit and semi-lucid dreams begins. I’d like to mention separately such categories:
=> Voluntary awakening. You realize you are dreaming, but use this fact only to wake yourself. It can be endogenous, exogenous and pseudo-exogenous. Endogenous awakening must be rather usual for nightmares. I don’t know anything about it, because I never have nightmares… Exogenous forced awakening must be quite rare, but I think it can happen sometimes that you hear something coming from real life and wake up to see what it is or just because you understand it’s time to get up. But I only had pseudo-exogenous awakenings, when I think I hear somebody trying to wake me up, though they are only a part of the dream.
=> Programmed dream. You intend to do something in a dream, and you do it, but don’t realize the fact of dreaming itself. There can be several types of such dreams. Fearless dreams must be usual for people practicing other methods of dream control than lucid dreaming, senoi system for example (sorry probable misspelling). You remember that nothing can harm you, but don’t think why and don’t understand other things. For example, you don’t understand fully that you cannot really harm anyone while you are here and that you can think out any fantastic way to defeat your enemies. The other type is Dream with programmed action. For example, you remember you must look at your hands in your dream. If you don’t recognize it as a dream next moment, you will just continue your dream, and it will be not lucid, but programmed.
=> Dream related dream. I would divide them into three subcategories: Dream about dreams, Dream about lucid dreams, and Dream about becoming lucid. I’m not sure it is clear, but I’ll try to explain… You can have a classic or dual dream, where the hero has a non-lucid dream or just dreams are mentioned. You can have a dream, where not just dreams, but lucid dreams are discussed. The third category is a dream where you kind of realize you are dreaming, but it is not real lucidity, but only a part of the plot. It can be transformed into real awareness, but can be stay a lonely spark of lucidity in the middle of the story.
Then there must be several types of dreams, which can be called lucid, but not quite suit definitions. For example, dreams with full awareness but lack of control, vividness or stability… Or the thing whispa wrote about… But, I don’t know about you, but my spell-checker seems to be tired , so enough by now. Bye!

When I think of levels of lucidity, I think X-Y-Z axis , that are marked “realism” ,“control” and “awareness”

PS Wow, you know of Vasya Pupkin ! he’s my hero

I don’t understand why you need “control” as a parameter to determine the level of lucidity… They’re both related yes but you can’t say a certain level of lucidity (low-medium-high) brings about a certain degree of control. Even during a ND you can have more control than during a LD.
Well… that’s ofcourse IMHO

Well, control is more related to the “quality” of lucidity
What is the difference between high lucidity and super high lucidity?

IMHO it’s the ability to exercise easy and precise control…

I had a dream where I could easily shift gravity, rotate dreamworld around me and affect massive structures with a simple thought… Such degree of control is very unusual for me…

That’s why there’s a “control” axis…

I can live with that

Great topic. I would say that dreams could be classified by type and by level, e.g. you could have a low or high level protolucid dream. Or maybe that’s a bit to complicated .

Could this be made a sticky topic perhaps, as it is potentially very popular?

That’s probably what I called “vividness”, “control” and “lucidity”.

I like Ilana’s dream content classification too, but it seems it could be the beginning of a never-ending classification.
For instance, “movie dreams”, “book dreams” and “video game dreams” are three sub-classes of what could be called “media dreams” : the dream events are told though a medium, and thus the effect of any strange event is cancelled.

In pre-lucidity levels, the dreamer Christian Bouchet used to classify his normal dreams in :
=> Flight dreams
=> OBE or death related dreams
=> dream related dreams : (where we dream we relate a dream, or write it down, etc.)
=> Dreams of dreams : (where we dream we are dreaming)
=> Dreams with false awakenings

He notices the “parallel dreams” too (seems to be what Ilana called “dual dreams”) : when you wake up, you generally remember just one, but there are two or three levels of dream indeed, with parallel stories, going together.

This content classification is not very far from Ilana’s.

Hi Ev !
If you come back on this topic, I just have a problem for you.

This night I got a dream where I wondered if I dreamt or not. I didn’t remember to do a RC, but I watched around me carefully to find any clue. Everything was very detailled and real. I didn’t make anything else for a minute, just waiting and looking around, and staying in doubt. That’s all.

Thus,
=> vividity/realism was high.
=> control was probably low

and in your X-Y-Z space
=> awareness was high
but in mine
=> lucidity was low

What is missing ? My definition appears to be uncomplete, since I cannot take in account the good quality of awareness. But in your definition, it seems that we are missing the low lucidity level (I didn’t fully realize I was dreaming ), unless we suppose that it is part of “control”… which is quite curious.
Another thing : mystic cleverly notes that a normal dream can be controlled. I think it refutes the “control axis”.

Every remarks are welcome, of course !

People, can anyone say what “awareness” means? Is it a level of consciousness or level of assurance?

I would say :

• you are conscious when you can remember what happend. I suppose it’s a not so bad definition, cause if you are unconscious, you can’t. Moreover, a higher level of consciousness is when you exactly are in what you do. For instance, you’re not answering to a friend while eating, while smoking a cigarette, while thinking “I wonder why I have these awful stomach aches…” Of course, if you’re doing that, it can happen you don’t remember at all what you were eating… so we find the unconsciousness definition again.
• awareness is consciousness plus attention. When aware, you are conscious and paying attention to what surrounds you.
  I’m I right ?

Basilus West, imo that kind of dream is either special or normal.
X-Y-Z axis can be applied to already lucid dream, where you know it’s a dream…

There’s a special kind of dream , I call it “False evening” or something…
Basically is very much like FA , exept it takes place before you fall asleep. Dream starts when you fall asleep (like you go to sleep at 9, in a dream you are awake at 9.05), so you dont notice the jump…
Very weird, kinda like you go on about your usual business, and then go to bed and wake up…

So far I had only 3 such dreams, last one was about me not being able to fall asleep and wandering through my house for 3+ hours dreamtime… I was very aware and wanted to fall asleep to have a lucid dream…
Finally I found a couple of people so weird that I realized it was a dream…

Then even weirder thing happened, as whole dreamscape kinda moved aside and I had a chain of false awakenings, resulting in a lucid dream… after lucid dream faded I had another couple of FAs…

Does it mean, that “Someone is aware he is dreaming” and “Someone is aware” are different things and both of them (plus being aware of control) are needed to call a dream lucid?

By definition, if you are aware of dreaming, it’s a lucid dream. No need of control or vividness, indeed.
About “awareness”, I meant that :

• I was not sure if I was dreaming or not : so, I was not aware that I was dreaming ;
• I was conscious and payed a lot of attention to the surroundings ( that’s what I called to be aware ).
  It would mean that “Someone is aware he is dreaming” and “Someone is aware” are different things. But did I make a mistranslation with the term “aware” ?

whats the lvl of lucidity where you keep losing visuals?

It seems that losing visuals is related to too much wake consciousness in your dream. It often happens when you just reach lucidity, or when you are awakening. But I’m not sure…

I’ve another idea about levels of lucidity : don’t you feel that higher lucidity levels are related to the upwards direction ? I’ll take an example to make this clearer : it was in a ND. My lucidity level has increased by steps, until I reached full lucidity :

Did you notice something like that, like your level of lucidity increases when you are going upwards ?

I assume this connection between height and lucidity can exist for many people, but it is not just for every one. Though most of my LDs start in my apartment, and, as it is situated on the sixth level, I must have been rather high… And once I became lucid while going upstairs. But, at the same time, in my first LDs I twice became lucid while going out of a building, having descended from the second floor, so this rule seems to not work with me.

Well, no one is going to kick me out with this classification, or add something themselves, so I’m continuing with low-lucid dreams. Only several subcategories, I don’t want to spend anyone’s time and traffic.
=> Chaotic lucid dreams. They are just halfway from hypnagogic sequences to real wake-induced lucid dreams; combine very high level of awareness with low level of stability, control, and vividness. The subject of most of them is flying in some dark spaces filled with strange objects.
=> Calm awareness dreams. They represent a subcategory of tacit lucidity on common scale and programmed dreams in my classification; include explicit awareness of being dreaming without paying much attention to this fact. You may think, for example, that scratches, received here, in the dream, will leave no scars in real life. But you are too involved in the plot to reject its line.
=> Locked lucid dreams. They are highly realistic dreams with very low control.
=> Illusory lucid dreams. The opposite situation: high control and low realism, everything looks like wreaths of mist you can do anything with.
=> Lucid dreams with distorted idea of reality. You are aware of being dreaming and having control on the situation, but when you think about your waking life, you imagine it somehow wrongly. This sort of dreams has several specific subcategories:

1. Pseudo-sleepwalking lucid dreams. Their feature is fear of possible influence on movements of the dreamer’s real life body and someone noticing it. This fear can be justified (for example, if you just breathe too rapidly) or absurd (if you think you can be seen hanging in the air somewhere under the ceiling), with a wide range of intermediate situations. Such dreams often end with forced awakening, but they must be distinguished from voluntary awakening dreams, because full or partial awareness comes here much earlier then the awakening itself.
2. Pseudo-OBE. This thing can be rather usual for some people’s wake-induced lucid dreams. In fact, I don’t know much about OBE, to tell the truth, I don’t believe in them, but even if they are possible, you don’t necessary have an OBE every time you dream about your bedroom.
3. Lucid dreams inside non-lucid dreams. I never had them, but read about such things in these forums. You fall asleep in a dream, see a dream of next level and are aware that it is a dream, but think that the events happened before falling asleep were real.
4. False memory dream. You think you can remember things, which happened to you before, in real life, though they never happened, neither in real life nor in this dream. There are also non-lucid dreams of this type.