Friday, July 12, 2019

Lucid Dream Meaning From A Scientific Perspective

By Catherine Thomas


While most people are more familiar with the spiritual implications of lucidly being able to control dreams, there might actually some scientific explanations for the phenomenon as well. Now, the lucid dream meaning according to Hindu and Buddhist beliefs revolve around the concept of enlightenment. In some sense, the scientific world also has a similar core belief about this phenomenon, but it is backed up by some research.

When one would ask a Buddhist or a Hindu about the dreamworld, they would most likely say that it is a spiritual plane of illusions where the soul walks when the body rests. In this plane, one is actually on autopilot and is like watching a movie, not aware that he or she is actually inside a dream. Those who are self aware in the waking world are actually those who have the ability to know that they are in a dream and can thus control all the surroundings.

Now, this belief states that when one is self aware of the dreamworld, then he or she is also aware that the physical world is also an illusion where the soils rest. If one knows how to extract the truth from the dreamworld, then he or she also knows how to seek the truths from the physical realm. One can actually say that these people have an innate, profound wisdom to them.

Now, this is somehow linked to some scientific research stating that people who can lucidly control their dreams have a different cognitive ability compared to most people. One of the most notable studies comes from the duo of Patrick Bourke and Hannah Shaw from University of Lincoln. Their hypothesis would be that lucid dreamers have a higher cognitive ability for out of the box thinking.

In order to test this theory, they studied sixty eight students from ages eighteen to twenty five. They all recorded their experiences with their dreamworld journeys in which they were then asked to solved some puzzles that were rather complex. The hypothesis was that the lucid dreamers could handle these complex puzzles better than those who do not control their dreams very often or those that cannot at all.

When the results came out, it did show that those who often experience this phenomenon solved more puzzles by twenty five percent compared to those who cannot. The conclusion is that those who have this ability are actually born more creative and more complex when it comes to solving hard problems. Since creativity is found more in children, it is no surprise that children experience it more often.

Furthermore, the duo states that the people with this ability can take a look at a very complex problem and make it very simple by offering simple solutions, hence they could solve the puzzles. This is something that most people cannot really do. That is why lucid dreamers are known to be very out of the box people in general.

Now, tying this back to the spiritual point of view, one can actually see similarities. Spiritual beliefs would say that these people are self aware and actively seek out the truth while science would say that they are complex problem solvers. Both actually seek the truth and have the ability to do so through creativity.




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