Lucid Dreaming: The Key to Awakening from the Matrix

Image: Inception (2010)

My recent post What’s Common to String Theory, Cognitive Neuroscience and Buddhism? described how we live in an illusory universe where all we see and know is false, the result of a conspiracy between our mind, brain and the physical reality we live in. We are caught in three traps - the psychological, the perceptual, and the physical matrix — and live out our lives blissfully unaware of our predicament. It turns out that there is a fourth trap that ensnares us in illusion, the states of waking, dream and deep sleep that we alternate through every day that I shall call the physiological matrix.

phys·i·o·log·i·cal [ˌfizēəˈläjək(ə)l] ADJECTIVE - relating to the branch of biology that deals with the normal functions of living organisms and their parts:

Our alternating between these states of wakefulness, dream and deep sleep is driven by physiological changes in our bodies — shifts in our biorhythms and body chemistry — as anyone who has taken melatonin to regulate their sleep cycle knows. The dream state is particularly interesting because we mistake it for being real when it clearly isn’t. Except when we learn to dream lucidly. But before we go there, let’s explore the dream state in a little more detail.

The Dream State While we might think that our minds and brains sleep to rest and rejuvenate, the mind is highly active when it dreams. Anyone who has had vivid dreams knows how real the make-believe world of the dream can be, with the mind and brain creating both space and time, and populating it with objects, people and chimera with emotions and personalities. However, we do not know we are dreaming and if a voice in our dream were to say it is all an illusion and the waking state is reality, we would either react dismissively or wonder, futilely, what they are speaking of. Our body chemistry shuts off our senses, inactivates our muscles and immerses us in a hyper-realistic visual and emotional landscape. When we dream, we do not question its reality. We are well and truly trapped in the physiological matrix. It’s only upon waking up and having a different frame of reference are we able to see the dream state for what it is. However, as I mentioned earlier, that there is a way for us to see the unreality of the dream while we are still dreaming — lucid dreaming.

Lucid Dreaming In lucid dreaming, you wake up within the dream and become aware that you are dreaming. Many people have this innate ability as children but lose it as they grow older. As adults, we can rediscover the magic of lucid dreams through sheer practice*, nootropic supplements and a lot of luck. In my case, it was entirely luck that led to a spontaneous lucid dream back in 2013.

The dream started off like any other, in that I was not aware I was dreaming. In the dream, I was in an aircraft taking off from a valley set amidst mountains covered with thick, impenetrable tropical forests. The sky was ominous and heavy with dark, low clouds. The setting sun shone from below the clouds near the horizon, casting a golden glow on the scene. The plane lifted off and climbed to a couple of hundred feet, only to dip and start plummeting towards the ground. “Oh no, we are going to crash” I thought, staring out the window as the ground below got closer and closer. Suddenly, I realized that everything was moving in slow motion.

An aspiring lucid dreamer is supposed to train their mind to watch for anything out of the ordinary while dreaming. This then cues them to wake up within the dream and continue dreaming, but lucidly. I’d never comprehended how one might achieve this, but now here I was, seeing everything move in slow motion and having an Aha! moment “I am dreaming!!!”

I was now fully awake within my dream, and in control of it. The plane touched down like a feather. I chose to fly out through the roof of the plane, passing through it with ease. I floated up in the air, exhilarated. I decided to explore the giant mountain looming in front of me and flew up its slopes. At about 4,000 feet up, I decided to manifest a tropical village in a jungle setting, complete with quaint little straw huts and a stream flowing through it. I played around like a child in this idyllic setting, flying and swooping around the village. After a while, tiring of sustaining the lucid dream, I decided to wake up…and the dream ended.

Anyone can learn to lucid dream with the practice of relaxation and mindfulness traditions like Yoga Nidra (see my post Unpacking Yoga Nidra, Google CEO Sundar Pichai’s Chosen Method of Relaxation) and Tibetan Dream Yoga. The ultimate goal of the latter is to become aware within the dream and observe the dream world to be maya or illusory, thereby developing the ability to view the external world of our waking state in the same way. In other words, while lucid dreaming helps free you from the physiological matrix of the dream state, it is also the key to waking up from the ultimate matrix of all, the everyday world we live in.

The Waking State We unquestioningly accept the waking world around us as our only reality, but what if this is another clever trick of our biochemistry? Even if we can see through the psychological and perceptual tricks that our mind and brain play on us through the cultivation of deep mindfulness and awareness, the physical world is real, isn’t it? If you think I am going to spill the secret of bullet time so that you can freeze gunfire in midair like Neo in The Matrix, I hate to disappoint you. You will still get run over by speeding cars if you step in front of them or get gored by that bison you carelessly hold out a treat to in Yellowstone National Park. However. The same heightened Awareness you’ve developed as a lucid dreamer will enable you to perceive your waking world in an entirely new light. Your perceptions and creativity are heightened. You can freeze your kneejerk emotions and reactions in midair, lean forward intently to examine them, and then let them drop to the floor in a clatter of hail. Like Neo. More interestingly, you are able to view the passage of time without being caught up in time. This is what Eckhart Tolle calls The Power of Now in his 1997 bestseller. And if you go by the experiences of Tibetan dream yoga adepts or tech industry psychonauts back from an Ayahuasca retreat, all it requires is a physiological shift of awareness to bring to view hidden dimensions of your psyche (or reality, depending on how you care to categorize it). Tibetan tradition promises the following rewards for assiduous practitioners, both in the dream and the waking states:

• Receive initiations, empowerments and transmissions**

• Visit different places, planes and lokas (worlds)

• Communicate with a yidam (an enlightened being)

• Meet with other sentient beings**

• Fly and shape shift into other creatures

I’ll let you decide how much objective reality you want to accord to the above claims, but the promise of visiting other lokas — real or imagined — while remaining Covid-safe and carbon neutral for the year sounds terrific. What’s more, the 26-dimensional multi-verse predicted by String Theory is beginning to sound awfully plausible. What is a loka but one of many universes floating around in the metaverse? So, don’t put it off any longer. Start your practice of lucid dreaming and break out of The Matrix, now.

*Per this National Institute of Health (nih.gov) publication, you can work on your lucid dreaming chops with the help of virtual reality: Virtual reality training of lucid dreaming

** If talk of empowerments and encountering sentient beings sounds like something out of Lord of the Rings, read my posts Beyond the Rational Mind: Healing from Asthma and Eczema with Ayahuasca and Tom’s Tale of Healing from Abuse, Anger and Addiction with Psychedelics. The human psyche is a far stranger place than we know or acknowledge. Whether we explore it by meditation, lucid dreaming or psychedelics is up to us.