Lucidity-Meditation Link

Hunt (1989) warns that lucid dreams are not reducible to only a mental waking up unique to the sleep state. First the “conscious” faculties brought forth are only partial. Second although spontaneously occurring lucid dreams in normal populations are quite realistic relative to nonlucid dreams, in more sophisticated experients, such as long term meditators, bizarreness reasserts in unique ways. According to Hunt, “lucid dreaming is not merely (or even primarily) the intellectual awareness that one is dreaming (‘Am I? Oh well, I guess so. Isn’t that quaint?’)”. The “realism” often spoken of as associated with lucidity is not only of the real to true life type but also “real, clear and somehow present” reminiscent, according to Hunt, of the peak experiences described by Maslow (1962).

The facility for self-reflectiveness, of recognizing self in the midst of a dream says Hunt (1989), is strikingly similar to the development of self-reflective consciousness in “mindfulness” or “insight” meditative traditions such as Zen, Theravada and Tibetan Buddhism. Furthermore, according to Alexander (1987) it is developmentally prior to obtaining the witness set sought in Transcendental Meditation. In especially meditation and lucid dreaming once a detached but receptive attitude has been integrated into the waking or dreaming consciousness strong feelings of exhilaration, freedom and release occur. There is, Hunt explains, “an unusually broad sense of context and perspective, a ‘balance’ of normally contradictory attitudes, and the felt sense of one’s own existence (that special ‘I am’ or ‘being’ experience…).”

Without this heightened sense most of us become consumed by everyday living, untouched by the “awe” of life and the stark inevitability of death. This, explains Hunt, is “the full human context to which on rare occasions we spontaneously ‘wake up’ “. In the same way we remain unaware that we are dreaming, until the moment we turn lucid. Both moments of awareness “can have quite an impact”, Hunt says. But both are also frequently short-lived.

This association of lucid dreaming to the practice of meditation was first identified by Hunt (1989) and has recently been further developed my forthcoming book (Gackenbach & Bosveld, in press). From virtually every level of analysis parallels, and in some cases potential causal agents, can be identified supporting the association of dream lucidity to the practice of meditation and thus on to the experience of pure consciousness. There are also now several studies of meditators and lucid dreamers which reveal important psychological and physiological parallels.

Go to: Psychological Parallels (Next Section)

Prior to considering further stages of consciousness in sleep we must at this point stop for a moment and ask, “What is meditation?” , due to the relationship of lucidity to meditation just delineated. For the past two decades western scientists have been addressing the question of meditation and several models have emerged. Most frequently cited is meditation as a stress reducing mechanism but also often pointed to is meditation as a form of psychotherapy or as enhanced self awareness or a finely held hypnagogic state or a form of self hypnosis. More recent models focus on meditation as an attention training procedure. (For a recent review of the meditation literature see Murphy & Donavan, 1988.)

But these models have not answered the “what is meditation” question. They only describe what it does; that is what the potential products of it’s practice are. All of these “takes” on meditation really miss the essential point. Meditation is a procedure, a technology, a method and as such it is not causal; rather it facilities outcomes, such as stress reduction and consciousness during sleep. These outcomes are a natural part of the biological and psychological systems but the application of the “technology” of meditation increases the likelihood of attaining them.

These perspectives on meditation are reductionistic. Such reductionism to the common denominator is the meat of the scientific method but it can also strike a death toll for complex, holistic procedures designed to work with the entire self system. As Deikman (1982) recently noted:

Ironically, although the power of meditation to affect physiological and psychological functions has been substantiated in many different laboratories, we have paid little attention to what the originators of meditation have said about its intended purpose and the requirements for its appropriate use….Focusing primarily on the experiences and bodily effects of meditation is like collecting oyster shells and discarding the pearls. Such ‘spiritual materialism’ inevitably interferes with the real potential of meditation.

If meditation is somehow more than its component parts or products, what is it? Virtually all systems of meditation contextualize the procedure in some way as part of a spiritual path – a seeking – for union with the higher self – God – nature. Here I will focus on one of these systems because it is not only comprehensive but is the most empirically supported theoretical position. It comes from the founder of the largest meditation group in the west, the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. He conceptualizes meditation as a tool or mental technology, for the development of consciousness. In other words meditation, in this case Transcendental Meditation, is a technique which serves to enliven an individuals experience of the common denominator of being, pure consciousness.

Pure consciousness, according to Alexander, Chandler, and Boyer (in press), is “described as a silent state of inner wakefulness with no object of thought or perception.” Furthermore, they note that “pure consciousness is conditioned not by cultural or intellectual conditions, but by fundamental psychophysiological conditions which are universally available across cultures.”

Alexander et al. offer several descriptions of pure consciousness. For instance:

After about two years, my experience of the transcendent started to become clearer. At that time, I would settle down, it would be very quiet … and then I would transcend, and there would just be a sort of complete silence, void of content. The whole awareness would turn in, and there would be no thought, no activity, and no perception, yet it was somehow comforting. It was just there and I could know when I was in it. There wasn’t a great ‘oh I am experiencing this,’ it was very natural and innocent. But I did not yet identify myself with this silent content free inner-space. It was a self-contained entity that I transcended to and experienced.

Alexander et al. reviewed the empirical correlates of the experience of pure consciousness. Physiological correlates of this “subjective” experience during meditation are numerous but two physiological variables are markers of experiencing pure consciousness according to these authors, breath suspension and EEG coherence surges. These two, these scientists explain, “were the immediate correlates of specific subperiods of reported experience of pure consciousness indicated by button press, and were greater than those occurring during the remainder of TM practice” and during eyes closed rest.

As for behavioral effects they note that “exhaustive meta-analyses of over 100 separate studies indicate that repeated experience of pure consciousness during TM produces significantly greater reductions in trait anxiety, depression, hostility and other symptoms of mental stress than simple or stylized forms of relaxation.” Further “regular experience of pure consciousness during TM is associated with development of personal identity as operationalized by improvement on such measures as self-actualization, self-concept, self-esteem and field independence” including ego development. By way of methodological refinement Alexander et al. point out that “although experience of pure consciousness occurs with far less frequency in the general population, our research (and that of other researchers) indicates that its behavioral correlates are similar even among subjects who have received no exposure to meditation or the concept of pure consciousness.” They conclude, “This enables us to go beyond the prevailing understanding of pure consciousness as an inaccessible, ineffable or “mystical” experience. Rather, we come to realize that the experience of pure consciousness is a natural consequence of unfolding the latent potential of human consciousness to fully know itself, that has profound utility for improving the quality of human life.”

Access to pure consciousness due to the purification of the nervous system in response to the regular practice of meditation is exemplified in the development of the witness, a silently observing part of the self that witnesses all other states of consciousness (waking, sleeping, and dreaming) without trying to change them. Thus if the expression of pure consciousness is the silent witness of the 24 hour cycle of activity/inactivity then it becomes important in tracking lucidity to pure consciousness to connect lucidity to witnessing in sleep.

Physiological parallel’s between lucidity and meditation

Physiological parallel’s between lucidity and meditation also exist. Except that the individual is awake, depth of somatic arousal during meditation has been characterized as equivalent to or deeper than that of light sleep (Kesterson, 1985) but is not the same as light sleep (West, 1980). However, REM sleep shows increases in oxygen consumption and heart rate over stages 1 and 2 NREM and lucid REM is significantly higher on these dimensions than nonlucid REM (LaBerge, Levitan, & Dement, 1986; LaBerge, 1985; 1988). This lucid somatic arousal would seem to argue against the lucid dreaming-meditation parallel. LaBerge (personal communication, June, 1987) has pointed out that the continued somatic arousal after the eye movement signal which he has found could be an artifact of demand characteristics. That is, his subjects are typically told to signal when they know they are dreaming and then to do a predesigned task; active engagement in a dream task with consciousness could keep the system somatically aroused.

A study of ours (Gackenbach, Moorecroft, Alexander & LaBerge, 1987) sheds some light on this apparent discrepancy. We had a long term meditator who during meditation showed physiological signs of transcending correlating with his self reports. This individual claimed that he was conscious of his true state throughout his sleep cycle. That is, he knew he was sleeping and sometimes dreaming during the entire night. He characterized his ability as witnessing sleep which you will recall is a way of describing the experience of pure consciousness. This ability and its stabilization is said to be a result of the regular practice of meditation (Alexander, Boyer & Orme-Johnson, 1985). In the sleep laboratory this meditator was able to signal with prearranged eye movements that he knew he was dreaming/sleeping during REM, Stage 1 and Stage 2 sleep. Interestingly, and in line with the present hypothesis, he showed physiological arousal around the eye movement signal but contrary to the data of LaBerge et al. (1986) he rapidly returned to quiet somatic levels shortly thereafter. With at least this one subject signaling was somatically arousing but his self-reported continued consciousness in sleep was not. This study suggests that as lucid dreaming unfolds to witnessing dreaming somatic arousal decreases and the equation of consciousness in sleep to states desired by the practice of meditation becomes firmer.

Further supporting the meditation-lucidity link is a finding with the Hoffman or H-reflex, an electrically evoked monosynaptic spinal reflex which has been viewed as an indicate of the flexibility of central nervous system response. Brylowski (1986) found greater H-reflex suppression associated with lucid REM sleep than with nonlucid REM sleep. H-reflex suppression is thought to be a key indicate of the presence of the REM state of sleep as one is paralyzed from the neck down. This body paralyses does not occur during any other time of the sleep cycle nor while awake. This finding is conceptually in line with studies by Dillbeck, Orme-Johnson, and Wallace (1981) and Haynes, Hebert, Reber & Orme-Johnson (1976). Dillbeck et al. found greater H-reflex recovery indirectly associated with an advanced form of meditation practice while Haynes et al. note positive correlation’s between H-reflex recovery and clarity of experience of the transcendental state while meditating. Enhanced H-reflex suppression in REM and recovery in waking both indicate a nervous system which is functioning maximally in accord with the needs of the state of the organism.

The EEG work with dream lucidity is unfortunately fairly limited at this point with the bulk having been done by Ogilvie, Hunt and associates (Ogilvie, Hunt, Sawicki & McGowan, 1978; Ogilvie, Hunt, Tyson, Lucescu & Jeakins, 1982; Tyson, Ogilvie & Hunt, 1984; Ogilvie, Vieira & Small, 1988; Hunt & Ogilvie, 1988). In this series of studies they sought to demonstrate the lucidity-meditation connection by examining alpha waves in lucid and nonlucid REM. Reviews of the EEG and meditation literature have fairly consistently pointed to the association of alpha with meditation (West, 1980; Taneli & Krahne, 1987; Wallace, 1986). The Ogilvie and Hunt group found, consistent with the meditation literature, variations in alpha as a function of stage of lucidity. Specifically, they found increased alpha in prelucid REM periods and early in lucidity and have likened this to the access phases of waking meditation. Similarly, West (1980) and Taneli and Krahne (1987) have summarized the EEG and meditation literature for power measures and note changes as a function of stage of meditation. Both reviewers agree that at the beginning and at the end of meditation increases in alpha are observed. Later theta occurs, often intermixed with alpha, and at the “transcending” or “samadhi” phase bursts of beta occur.

West (1980) has pointed out that a more sophisticated examination of EEG changes in meditation should include the investigation of EEG coherence (COH). The relationship of this variable to meditation has been most extensively investigated in the Transcendental Meditation research literature (for a review see Orme-Johnson, Wallace, Dillbeck, Alexander & Ball, in press; Wallace, 1986) and offers a unique potential for identifying EEG associations to types of consciousness during sleep.

In a review of the coherence literature, French and Beaumont (1984) concluded that TM has been shown to increase COH especially in the alpha and theta bands relative to eyes closed, resting conditions. This work has been carried further to examine the relationship of COH to specific meditation experiences. Farrow and Herbert (1982) reported that experiences of “transcending” during TM were associated with alpha, theta and beta global COH while Orme-Johnson et al (1977) and Orme-Johnson and Haynes (1981) found total alpha EEG coherence related to experiences of transcending during meditation. The bulk of the variance for these findings is from frontal leads.

In a recent paper (Gackenbach, in press) I have argued that in terms of frontal leads, REM is interhemispherically coherent in the theta range relative to NREM, thus making it the state in which meditation like experiences (lucidity) would be most likely to occur. Several investigators have shown that lucidity primarily emerges out of REM (see LaBerge, 1988, for a review). Furthermore, Armitage, Hoffman and Moffitt (in press) report that high dream recallers show a greater continuity for a measure conceptually similar to EEG coherence in transition from sleep to waking. Thus individuals who frequently remember their dreams are accessing information from a coherent state of brain functioning by remaining in some sense in that state. One of the most robust findings in both the individual difference (Snyder & Gackenbach, 1988) literature on dream lucidity is the association of high dream recall to lucidity frequency. Lucid dreamers in general are high dream recallers so they should show more COH at the state transition to waking.

But will lucid dreams themselves be higher in COH. In Gackenbach’s (1988) work with self evaluations of the recallability of lucid versus nonlucid dreams the former are continually perceived as significantly easier to remember. Although one might argue that the phasic nature of lucid dreams might be responsible for their increased recallability, Pivik (1978) points out that dreams recalled from phasic versus tonic REM do not differ in recall. Indeed the “tonic” consciousness of the dreams reported by the witnessing TM meditator in the study just reported (Gackenbach et al., 1986) were rated as highly recallable by the subject if phenomenologically quiet (Gackenbach & Morrecroft, 1987).

More directly, in pilot data LaBerge looked at EEG coherence twice. In his dissertation (LaBerge, 1980) he had only central EEG leads and found no COH differences as a function of lucidity. More recently (LaBerge, personal communication, June, 1988) he compared a 5 minute lucid dream during REM to the 15 minutes of REM prior to the onset of dream consciousness in one subject. Looking at interhemispheric EEG coherence measured at the parietal lobes, he found an increase in COH during the lucid phase of REM for the alpha frequency. Although these findings are highly preliminary they are in the direction expected. That he found increased COH from the parietal leads is interesting as the central role of visual-spatial functioning, associated with this area of the brain, has been strongly implicated in our work for both lucid dreamers (Snyder & Gackenbach, 1988) and lucid dreams (Gackenbach, 1988). Further, this was the location of interhemispheric alpha COH reported by O’Connor and Shaw for field independent individuals, a perceptual style characteristic of high dream recallers, lucid dreamers, and meditators.

Clearly on several levels of analyses dream lucidity parallels waking meditation. Although lucidity can and does emerge spontaneously in nonmeditating populations, the average frequency of such experiences is considerably less than that in meditating adults (Gackenbach, Cranson & Alexander, 1986; 1989).

Psychological Parallels

Some of the individual difference variables associated with the practice of meditation have also been found to be true of individuals who frequently dream lucidly while controlling for dream recall frequency. These include field independence (lucidity: Gackenbach, Heilman, Boyt, & LaBerge, 1985; meditation: Pelletier, 1974; Jedrczak, 1984), creativity (lucidity: Gackenbach, Curren, LaBerge, Davidson, & Maxwell, 1983; meditation: Orme-Johnson & Haynes, 1981); lower anxiety (lucidity: Gackenbach et al., 1983; meditation: Alexander, 1982); absorption (lucidity: Gackenbach, Cranson, & Alexander, 1986; meditation: Alexander, 1978; 1982); and private self-consciousness (lucidity: Gackenbach, et al., 1983; meditation, West, 1982). (The meditation findings are reviewed in Alexander, Boyer and Alexander, 1987 while the lucid dreaming findings are reviewed in Snyder and Gackenbach, 1988). A strong finding in both the lucidity (for review see Snyder & Gackenbach, 1988) and meditation (Reed, 1978; Faber, Saayman & Touyz, 1978) literature’s is that both are associated with enhanced dream recall despite decreases in REM time as the result of meditation (Banquet & Sailhan, 1976; Becker & Herter, 1973; Meirsman, 1989).

Finally, and particularly noteworthy, is that the waking practice of meditation is associated with the frequent experiences of lucidity in dreams (Sparrow, 1976b; Reed, 1978; Hunt & McLeod, 1984) even when dream recall differences are controlled (Gackenbach, Cranson, & Alexander, 1986; 1989). Further, reports of consciousness during deep sleep are related to clear experiences of transcending during meditation (reported in Alexander, Boyer & Alexander, 1987) as well as to breath suspension during meditation, the latter is thought to be a key physiological indicate of the experience of “pure” consciousness (Kesterson, 1985).

Introduction
A Continuum of Consciousness in Sleep
Lucidity-Meditation Link
Psychological Parallels
Physiological Parallels
What is Meditation? An Technique to Access Pure Consciousness.

A Continuum of Consciousness in Sleep
J. Gackenbach

I am going to begin my argument that lucid dreaming is but the first stage in post-formal operational development on a descriptive level of analysis. From interviews I (Gackenbach, in press; Gackenbach & Bosveld, in press) have conducted with several long term meditators a sequence of qualities of consciousness in sleep has emerged. An especially clear meditator identified five basic stages in the movement from lucidity to witnessing. These stages are further illuminated by comments from a meditating petroleum engineer and a Sanskrit scholar. The first two practice TM while the third does not. In order to understand these stages one must think of the progression, at least initially, as the dreamer shifts from being an “actor” in the dream to the “observer” of it.

STAGE ONE: Initially in lucid dreaming, the actor is dominant. The only role the observer plays is to recognize, however briefly, that the self is dreaming. Despite this recognition, the feeling is still that the dream is “out there” and that the self is “in here” with clear representation of each. As the dreamer becomes more familiar with lucidity, it may occur to him/her that he/she can manipulate the dream. The clear TM meditator believes that in this form of lucid dreaming one is, “trying to manipulate the dream in some way, so there is a greater degree of wakefulness inside but still one is tied to the figures of the dream. It’s a matter of accent…it’s more that you’re an object in the dream and less so that you are a witness to that dream.”

STAGE TWO: At some point it may occur to the dreamer that what is “out there” is actually “in here”. At this point two paths seem open to the dreamer: The dreamer may either become actively engaged in the dream events all the while recognizing that it is the self as well as the dream ego that is involved; or, shift his/her attention to the “inside” I, allowing the “outside I”–the dream scene–to fade. The meditator comments, “the predominance is on the observer, [whereas] the action, [or] the observation I don’t really much care about…”

The petroleum engineer from Canada remarks that during these preliminary stages one flips easily back and forth between witnessing the dream with a quiet detachment to being lucid in the dream. In the latter case still aware of the dream but also caught up in its activity. A graduate student in Sanskrit, writes, “There is little in lucidity itself that will disrupt the production of dream images and sense effects. But because I know I am dreaming, I can proceed to do things that I would not do in ordinary dreams, and it is these actions or non-actions that disrupt the dreaming process. My interaction with the dream keeps it going normally. If I become passive, by stopping to watch what happens, or just to try to think of something, the activity in the dream environment diminishes or stops altogether.”

STAGE THREE: Lucid dreams in this stage tend to be short. The clear meditator describes it as a thought that arises which you take note of and then let go of. “The action of the dream,” he says, “is not dominant. It does not grip you so that you are identified with it as opposed to the first step in which the focus was more on the active [participation]. In this case it’s just a state of inner awareness that’s really dominant. Awareness is there very strongly. The dream is a little dust flying about so to speak.” This is, he says, analogous to when “I’m just sitting while awake and doing nothing and thoughts pop up, like an involuntary knee jerk. I’m not caught up in that so [consequently] the dreams do not have much significance…I never tried to hold onto them. The state of awareness is more satisfying. Since you don’t get caught up [in the dream] there isn’t much intensity to them.” The Sanskrit scholar explains that the meditator in sleep, “knows that he is not to interact with or be tempted by anything that may happen phenomenally. He is not to desire or anticipate anything.” I should qualify this by saying that the “intellectual” knowing is not the source of the detachment. It is experienced at a deeper almost “reflective” level of experience. The final two stages are, according to the clear meditator, experientially distinct but perhaps not so from the point of view of those who have never “been there”. These last two stages might be said to be dreamless sleep with awareness or as the Sanskrit scholar notes:

When all waking and dream imagery and all mental content are eliminated, there is dreamless sleep. Each night, I, the dreamer, move into dreamless sleep. Here I desire no desire and see no dream. There is only an ocean of objectless consciousness. The inner Self still sees, because the Self is imperishable, but there is nothing distinct from it to see. Likewise there is no second thing from the Self for the Self to smell, taste, speak, hear, think, touch, or discern. The Self is conscious of nothing within or without. This is the home base from which the Self moves out into dream and waking image and thought, the home to which the Self, like a tired bird, returns from waking and dream experience to rest.

STAGE FOUR: In this stage an “inner wakefulness” dominates. “You don’t have dreams or in any case you don’t remember having dreams,” says the meditator. You are absorbed not in dreams, but in the witness. This sort of sleep awareness can be so continuous that one may go for months without recalling a dream and one loses awareness even of the passage of time. The clear meditator differentiates yet one more stage.

STAGE FIVE: Once the dreamer has moved into this transcendental state or pure consciousness, she/he moves into the experience. Now the “dream” will characteristically take symbolic forms not generally found in nonlucid or lucid dreams of an earlier stage: They will be much more abstract and have no sensory aspects to them, no mental images, no emotional feelings, no sense of body or space. There is a quality of unboundedness to them. The professor explains, “One experiences oneself to be a part of a tremendous composite of relationships.” These are not social or conceptual or intellectual relationships, only “a web of relationships. I am aware of the relationship between entities without the entities being there.” He says there is “a sense of motion yet there are no relative things to gage motion by, it’s just expansiveness. There are no objects to measure it. The expansiveness is one of light–like the light of awareness.”

The vocabulary for expressing this kind of experience is limited. When the meditator used the phrase “light of awareness” it was, he says, because “of anything I could refer to in the sensory or mental worlds that word would be it.” But, he explains, it is not like light in a room, it’s “visual but not visual, more like light in an ocean; an intimate experience of the light.” Gillespie (1987) has referred to this as “the fullness of light” and interestingly well known philosopher and metaphysician Eliade (1965) details the role of “the light” in many of todays’ spiritual traditions. He notes, “considered as a whole, the different experiences and appraisals of the interior Light advanced in India and in Indo-Tibetan Buddhism can be integrated into a perfectly consistent system. Experience of the Light signifies primarily a meeting with ultimate reality.” It should be pointed out that control in the state of pure consciousness is a moot point. “The body does not exist,” the clear meditator explains, “There is no awareness of the body, no awareness of anything sensory.”

Savolainen (1989) points out that the smooth sequence taking one from lucidity to witnessing may not be true for everyone. In her experience she had to let go of lucidity and move through nonlucidity before she developed the witness set in sleep. This points out that although there may be a relationship between these states of consciousness in sleep, the exact nature of it may vary considerably from individual to individual. I suspect that the different sequence of Savolainen’s may occur if one becomes too “embedded” or “attached” to lucidity, especially to the active, controlling aspect of self awareness in sleep. Such an attachment would require a “letting go” of that self representation in sleep in order to de-embed to the next higher stage of witnessing. In fact, I wonder if this new generation of accomplished lucid dreamers may not face the same problem.

The development of these capacities of consciousness lies at the root of many meditative traditions. Not surprisingly, some traditions view lucid dreaming as a form of sleeping meditation, a necessary precursor to the development of the witness. Hunt points out that in Tibetan Buddhism once a disciple has “attained a relatively stable dream lucidity, he {or she] may practice confronting fearsome deities or use the opportunity to deepen his [or her] meditative absorption in preparation for ‘lucidity’ during Bardo [death].”

But why, you might ask, should we want to track lucidity to pure consciousness? As Wallace (1986) explains:

Contemporary physiology over the last three hundred years has come to the basic understanding that life and consciousness evolved from matter and energy. The property of consciousness, in particular, is considered by many to be an epiphenomenon of living systems – that is, a property which occurs as a by-product of the functioning of a complex nervous system…In the Vedic perspective on physiology, as brought to light by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the understanding and experience are quite the opposite. Consciousness is not an epiphenomenon; rather consciousness is the primary reality from which matter and life emerge.

In other words, by going to pure consciousness we go to the source of all being, of all experience whether ordinary or extraordinary. But now that I’ve described a potential sequence of stages I am going to back track and examine supportive data. I will start by examing the lucid dreaming-meditation link.

Go to: Lucidity-Meditation Link (Next Section)

Introduction
A Continuum of Consciousness in Sleep
Lucidity-Meditation Link
Psychological Parallels
Physiological Parallels
What is Meditation? An Technique to Access Pure Consciousness

Introduction

For the past five years I have been engaged in research examining the relationship between various forms of consciousness in sleep. In this talk I will argue that the form of consciousness in sleep we have come to identify as lucid dreaming is but a starting point or perhaps only a bridge to what has been called higher states of consciousness. This bridge leads from the formal operational dreams of adults to post-formal operational sleep and dream experiences.

Foulkes (1982) argues that the development of mentation in sleep parallels that during waking so that dreams of young children reflect preoperational thinking whereas those of adults reflect concrete to formal operations. Furthermore, cognitive models of sleep mentation stress the continuity of waking type mentation into sleep (Foulkes, 1985). But adult dreams differ in degrees of self-awareness with its full emergence in lucidity. This is illustrated by a nine point scale culminating in lucidity designed by Moffitt and colleagues (1986). At it’s lowest level on their Self-Reflectiveness Scale the dreamer is not in the dream. This moves to level 3 where the dreamer is completely involved in the dream then at level 5 the dreamer thinks over an idea. At level 7 the dreamer has multiple levels of awareness simultaneously participating and observing. Finally, at level 9 the dreamer consciously reflects on the fact that he is dreaming. However, several scholars, including myself, have argued (Gackenbach, in press) that lucidity is only the beginning and that consciousness in sleep, when it arises as part of the natural growth cycle, is both psychologically and biologically a developmentally advanced form of dreaming.

The concept of post-formal operational functioning is not new among developmental psychologists (Alexander & Langer, in press) but most such theories focus on qualitative advances in adulthood. In other words, typically it is thought that physiological growth stabilizes in late adolescence or early adulthood and significant movement after that point is lateral, infrequently observed and a variation on operational thought (Alexander et al., in press). Many such models postulate the integration of the intellect with the emotions as an advanced developmental state in a maturely functioning adult. However, these models of development keep experience within the capacity to represent, if in an increasing abstract form. A few recent theories move past representation to post-representation. These use consciousness as the focus or driving force for development.

Although most post-formal operational approaches continue to emphasize all of development as a function of the dynamic interaction between biology and environment, Kagan (1984) has recently hinted at the domain of consciousness as a third potentially important domain. When considering a developmental perspective on lucid dreaming the role of consciousness in development becomes paramount. After all lucid dreaming is, at its simplest, the emergence of consciousness in “unconsciousness”. Thus post-formal operational models which focus on the role of consciousness are the most appropriate for our purposes.

Recent theorists in both developmental (Alexander et al., in press) as well as transpersonal psychology (Wilber, 1987) have postulated stages of development beyond the traditional Piagetian endpoint of formal operations which focus on the role of consciousness and especially higher states of consciousness. They see the next major shift in development as post-representational. According to developmental psychologist Charles Alexander such a level of processing would not only fulfill Flavell’s (1970) five criteria for major developmental changes: inevitable, momentous, directional, uniform, and irreversible, but would in additional show other criteria. These include neurophysiological maturation and differentiation from and hierarchical integration with the representational level. Alexander and colleagues (in press) argue that such post-representational stages of development can be empirically verified along more than 20 psychophysiological parameters and numerous psychological variables.

Such post-representational models characterize consciousness in sleep as an illustration of “the Self becoming de-embedded from and hierarchically integrated (“[that is] witnessing”) all previous, representational levels of mind (Alexander et al., in press; p. 33),” including dreaming. In other words, consciousness in sleep, or in this case the lucid dream, is an early manifestation of postformal operational functioning in sleep. During the lucid dream the representational capacity is still dominant even though there seems to be a de-embedding from normal orientation of the dream ego. After all although we know it is a dream, the dreamt representation remains and in fact the awareness of dreaming does not hinder the “felt reality” or “otherness” of the dream experience. Only when the focus of awareness in sleep de-embeds even further. That is, full differentiation yet integration from the representational level results in a true experience of higher states of consciousness and thus the post-representational stage of development.

But what is meant by post-representational stages of development. At its simplest the phenomenal experience of such higher states of consciousness is that the “self” transcends the limits of representing its lived world experience to the source of being or that point of contentless consciousness. Here awareness is turned back on itself and is aware only of itself. This state has been called pure consciousness and Alexander has characterized the major task of the post-representational stages of development as “subject permanence”. Furthermore, just as one needs the mental technology of language to move from pre-representational thought, i.e., sensory-motor, to representational thought, i.e., operational, so too Alexander argues that in order to reliably move from representational to post-representational thought one also needs a mental technology. One technology, but by no means the only, is meditation.

To return again to our concern with sleep, Meirsman (1989) has argued that the effect of meditation on REM sleep is the same as its effect on waking activities, that is an enhancement of both physiological and psychological functioning. The phenomenal experience of an enhanced REM sleep moves one past the self-reflective continuum identified by Moffitt et al. to post-formal operational levels of consciousness as evidenced by awareness of dreaming while dreaming. This psychological and biological enhancement of REM is especially evident with the further de-embedding from lucid dreaming to the sleep consciousness of “witnessing”, where the silent, blissful experience of pure consciousness is experienced.

by Sri Chinmoy

During sleep the soul moves from one plane of consciousness to another. The soul is like a free bird. If the physical consciousness wants to observe what the soul is doing, it has to allow itself to be moulded and guided by the soul’s light. Only then can one expect to be conscious twenty-four hours a day.

If you wish to be more conscious of your experiences during sleep, the best thing to do is to spend more time in meditation. If you spend one hour now, then try to spend an hour and a half, then two hours. If you want to be conscious of your inner experiences during sleep, during dreams, then please try to devote more time to your spiritual life.

Sometimes you do not get very much sleep because you are doing selfless service or some other spiritual activity. Now some of you, when you go for several nights with only two or three hours’ sleep, feel that you will get sick. You fear that you will fall sick and ultimately die because of lack of sleep. But at that point, when death enters into your mind, say to yourself, “Will Guru or will the Supreme allow me to die when I am trying to conquer sleep through my dedication and aspiration?” Immediately the answer will come: “No!” If what you are doing is beyond your capacity, then your inner wisdom will come and tell you, “No, you need more sleep.” But if your inner wisdom is not warning you, the few hours that you are enjoying sleep are more than enough.

How will you recognise your inner wisdom? It is the soul in you that tells you whether you are doing the right thing. You can know whether you are doing the right thing by whether or not you get joy. The soul compels you to meditate and when you meditate you get real joy. Now, you have to know that that inner joy itself is strength and energy. There is no comparison between the energy that you get from sleep and the strength and energy that you get from inner joy. If you sleep for ten hours, you will not get the same strength as from five minutes of inner joy. Very few people have a sound sleep. You may sleep for eight hours, but for only a few minutes perhaps you will have sound sleep. During these ten minutes you can go into the higher world and get real joy. The rest of the time you are in the lower worlds, but it is not registered in your memory.

A few minutes of inner joy can conquer everything. With five minutes of vital joy, emotional joy, ordinary people can go on working for hours. If their vital is encouraged, if somebody has appreciated them on the vital plane, for instance, they can conquer sleep to some extent for two days. If the vital has the capacity to keep you awake, the heart has much more power than the vital and the soul has infinitely more power.

Sri Chinmoy

Excerpt from The Soul’s Journey by Sri Chinmoy.