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Lucid Dreaming and Causative Factors

© Lauri Jean Crowe

There are many theories on lucid dreaming, but once commonly accepted definition of what a lucid dream is which dates back to the work of Celia Green’s work with the Institution of Pschophysical Research in the late 1960’s. Quite simply:

• A lucid dream is one in which the dreamer becomes aware that he or she is dreaming while in the midst of the dream process.

A dream I had last week, briefly recounted without all details, illustrates this: I was in a bedroom in my grandmother’s home upstairs. A woman kept bothering me every night I was there by floating above me in a mass of seaweed and muck and seeking to smother me in the bed. Although I had repeatedly told the other people sleeping in the home about this woman, no one believed me and I was forced to sleep upstairs alone. In the dream, I was afraid to go to sleep and just before exhausting my last ability to stay awake, the door to the stairway closed and I knew I would be completely alone. The woman appeared above me and I was being smothered in seaweed, muck and water which was somehow attached to this decaying woman whose face still appeared very much alive despite the condition of her body which looked as if it had been drowned and water logged. I kept trying to scream. Due to the emotional terror I was experiencing I became lucid in the dream. I also recognized that there were details which certainly could not be happening to me, such as the floating dead woman as well as various factors about the room and my grandmother’s house which were inconsistent with reality. These factors precipitated my being aware that I was dreaming while still in the dream and I was able to scream, thereby waking myself. I was still screaming when I awoke and the nightmarish terror did not leave me for a while even though I had become lucid and was fully aware I had dreamt the situation.

Emotional stress which occurs in a dream is one of the primary catalyst factors recognized by unsophisticated dream subjects who say they have experienced lucid dreams although there are several factors which seem to stimulate the initiation of lucidity within the dreamers psyche. Many of these overlap; among them are:

• A state of emotional stress in the dream such as fright, terror or pain
• Recognition of incongruity and things out of sync with waking reality

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