More recent research has enabled the dream to be studied 'from within' and has come up with some remarkable findings. The work centres on the 'lucid dream' - a somewhat rare type in most people - which is where you become fully aware (while asleep and dreaming) that you are in fact in a dream. It is like suddenly becoming conscious, but realising that you are in a completely 'fake' dream world.
     An early allusion to lucid dreaming was perhaps made by Aristotle, in his work On Dreams :
     'Often when one is asleep, there is something in consciousness which declares that what then presents itself is but a dream'.
     However, up to only few decades ago there was very little literature indeed regarding the topic. One interesting publication (Les reves et les moyens de les diriger) from France in 1867, was that by the Marquis Hervey de St Denys - a French aristocrat and oriental scholar. He was a prolific dreamer of 'dreams in which I was conscious of my true situation'. At one time he had such a dream each night.
     St Denys kept meticulous notes and made numerous coloured illustrations of his dreams. He found that dreams represent underlying thoughts and that images are based on previous perceptions.
     He also believed that ideas flow along associative pathways. He gave an example of a dream concerning a bull-fight where a fighter was mortally wounded. He next found himself in Normandy, where he once saw an angry bull. Among the now peaceful scenery, though, lay the body of the toreador.
     St Denys conducted many experiments where a servant introduced external stimulation into his dreams - a perfume, a noise, and so on. He reported that certain illnesses seemed to be preceded by specific dreams e.g. headaches followed dreams of climbing mountains. He also noted that some drugs, such as morphine, produced stereotyped images.
     One of St Denys' more elaborate experiments further tested his theory of association in dreams. For two weeks, while holidaying in Vivarais, he used a specific scent and discontinued its use on his return. Some months later, a servant - who habitually entered his bedroom at an early hour - sprinkled some of the same scent on his pillow. The morning was randomly chosen by the servant. St Denys had a vivid dream of being at Vivarais.
     We can't be sure now of the scientific rigour of the enterprising experiences of St Denys, but his detailed findings need to be taken into account in any assessment of our knowledge of dreams.
     The term 'lucid' dream was introduced by Dr Frederik van Eeden, at a meeting of the Society for Psychical Research in London, in 1913. He had kept records of some 250 lucid dreams and presented his observations and ideas on the topic. To illustrate the high level of consciousness in the lucid dream, and some of the strange features, van Eeden related the following case :
     'I dreamt that I stood at a table before a window. On the table were different objects. I was perfectly well aware that I was dreaming and I considered what sorts of experiments I could make. I began by trying to break glass, by beating it with a stone. Yet it would not break. Then I took a fine claret glass from the table and struck it with my fist, with all my might, at the same time reflecting how dangerous it would be to do this in waking life ; yet the glass remained whole. But lo ! when I looked at it again after some time, it was broken. It broke all right, but a little too late, like an actor who misses his cue. This gave me as very curious impression of being in a fake world cleverly imitated, but with small failures.'
     In addition to possessing the astounding knowledge that you are conscious yet in a dream environment, another amazing factor is that you can actually control what happens - by mere thought. Essentially, what you think then happens - so the dream can be steered to particular situations, or specific people can be encountered (See part 4).
     Lucidity is normally initiated when you observe something that is blatantly incongruous within the dream scenery - perhaps seeing someone you know to be dead.
     Sleep laboratory research into lucid dreams was pioneered by Dr Keith Hearne at Hull university in England. Hearne, after having learned about lucid dreams from Celia Green's seminal book Lucid Dreams, reasoned that it should be possible to communicate to the world of wakefulness in some way. A great problem, though, was that the body is paralysed during REM sleep so that no physical movements are possible.
     However, Hearne one day remembered that the eye musculature is not inhibited - after all, the state is called rapid-eye-movement sleep. On a hunch, he wired up a volunteer subject, who reported having fairly frequent lucid dreams, in the sleep laboratory with the instructions that on becoming 'lucid' immediately to make a sequence of 8 extreme left-right eye signals.
     On the morning of 12th April 1975 at about 8am, while the subject was in indubitable stage REM (dreaming) sleep, a series of left-right eye-movements was observed in the polygraphic record. On waking, the subject described how, in the dream, he had been walking about in the university when he suddenly became lucid, recalled the instructions to signal, and signalled with his eyes.
     Hearne has stated how "It was like getting the first ever signals from another solar system. The very chart-record showed that the subject was in a completely different state from wakefulness (i.e. 'asleep', 'unconscious', and 'dreaming'), yet he was absolutely conscious and aware of his situation. It was amazing, philosophically. Here was a person in a total reality, which we call a dream, conveying information to what to him was a dream world, which was my waking reality".
     Hearne made the signalling discovery in the sleep laboratory of Hull university and then established a sleep-laboratory at Liverpool university. He informed American researchers at Chicago and Stanford of his discovery. At Liverpool, he completed the world's first PhD research into lucid dreams (submitted May, 1978).
     Hearne found that although subjects dreamed they were pressing a micro-switch at the same time as making eye signals, because of the general bodily paralysis, no signals were produced on that polygraphic trace.
     In his extensive research, Hearne established the basic characteristics of lucid dreams : they were genuine dreams occurring in REM sleep (some had proposed that they were not dreams but a form of hypnopompic imagery, experienced on waking in the night) ; their duration was measurable ; signalled information showed that the dreams operated in real time (i.e. they were not 'over in a flash').
     He discovered the 'pre-lucid REM burst' - a flurry of eye movement activity that invariably appears in the chart record before lucidity happens. Its presence indicates that lucidity occurs when cortical stimulation (parallelled by the REM bursts) reaches a critical point.
     Also, of course, the signalling technique established, for the first time, a channel of communication from the dream to the waking world. Even telepathy tests were conducted with subjects in the lucid state.
    Later work by Stephen La Berge, at Stanford university in America confirmed Hearne's original findings.
    Hearne also discovered an important consistent phenomenon in dreams - the 'light switch effect. He asked a group of eight geographically distanced lucid dreamers - who did not know each other, and had no communication between one another - to report back on tasks given to them to perform in the lucid dream state. None of the subjects could switch on a light in the dram scenery.
     The dream-producing process manoeuvred the dream so that the light would not suddenly come on - the light-switches had 'disappeared', or the bulbs only 'glowed dimly', or were 'fused'.
      The effect is interesting because it demonstrates that there are natural, physiologically determined limitations within the dream producing process. Whatever the current level of 'brightness' in a dream, if - using dream control techniques - the dreamer attempts to increase that level rapidly, the system cannot cope and so has to deceive the dreamer.
     Hearne warns that there are probably many other such limitations in the dream constructive system - so we must be cautious about applying meanings to some dream elements which are fundamentally not amenable to interpretation. Hearne's research is documented in detail in his book The Dream Machine (1990).
     A modern approach to dream interpretation is that developed by the authors. Hearne & Melbourne have devised a system that is pragmatic and an updated version of the Roman methodology, which gets away from the simplistic and unsatisfactory 'dream dictionary' method. The new technique is described in their book Dream interpretation - the secret (Blandford Press, London, 1997).
     Firstly, much necessary written background information is collected by the dreamer filling in the MHQ or Melbourne / Hearne Questionnaire, about both the dream and the dreamer. The dream's various elements are extracted and the dreamer lists any personal associations to each of those elements.
     From then on the procedure is best carried out by someone else, who can look at the material objectively. The lists of associations are cross referenced and, by a flow chart procedure, consistencies are noted. The dream report is also inspected carefully for verbal puns, anagrams, ambiguous words and phrases and so on. Eventually, the overall metaphor of the message-bearing dream is revealed.

 HOME