Lucid Dreaming as a Meditative State: Some Evidence from Long-Term Meditators in Relation to the CognitivePsychological Bases of Transpersonal Phenomena*
H. Hunt
November 19, 2020 DOI: 10.4324/9781315224701-20 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper |
|---|---|
| Topics | Dreaming Lucid dreaming |
| Key points | Argues that meditative states and lucid dreams are an advanced symbolic capacity, not regression. Proposes that lucidity is a form of meditation and that dream bizarreness reflects imaginal-presentational intelligence. Cites evidence that witnessing dreams in Transcendental Meditation are less bizarre and emotional than other dreams. |
Abstract
Both Jungian and transpersonal traditions regard meditative and related states as a positive unfolding of an advanced symbolic capacity, with their ostensibly “primitive” features actually being part of an abstractly based reorganization of experience rather than confirming the more traditional psychiatric assumptions of “primitivity” or “regression”. An important feature of long-term mindfulness meditation, which will be needed to understand our findings with the lucid dreams of long-term meditators, is the "effulgence" of geometric mandala and luminosity effects, felt as being full of noetic significance. However, it is the interrelation of bizarreness, lucidity, and meditation which is crucial to any view that lucidity is a form of meditation and that archetypal categories of dream bizarreness reflect the more active aspect of the imaginal-presentational intelligence involved in that development. Gackenbach and Moorecraft show that “witnessing” dreams in Transcendental Meditation can be considerably less bizarre and emotional than non-lucid and lucid dreams in the same subject.
Comparable studies
Other theoretical and historical papers on lucid dreaming, most cited first.
| Study | Year | Design | Participants |
|---|---|---|---|
| Varieties of Lucid Dreaming Experience | 2000 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| The Neurobiology of Consciousness: Lucid Dreaming Wakes Up | 2009 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| What I make up when I wake up: anti-experience views and narrative fabrication of dreams | 2013 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| New perspectives for the study of lucid dreaming: From brain stimulation to philosophical theories of self-consciousness | 2010 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| Lucid dreaming: Evidence and methodology | 2000 | Theoretical or philosophical paper |
Citations in the library
Cited by 6
- Lucid dreaming incidence: A quality effects meta-analysis of 50 years of research Consciousness and Cognition June 20, 2016
- Dream characteristics in a Brazilian sample: an online survey focusing on lucid dreaming Frontiers in Human Neuroscience 2013
- The Dream of God: How Do Religion and Science See Lucid Dreaming and Other Conscious States During Sleep? Frontiers in Psychology 2020
- Predictive coding, multisensory integration, and attentional control: A multicomponent framework for lucid dreaming. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences November 1, 2022
- Cognitive Neuroscience of Conscious Dreaming: Investigating Methodological Approaches to Detect Dream Lucidity in Sleep Studies Neurology and Neurobiology November 24, 2022
and 1 more in the library