[INDOLOGY] Lucid dreaming in Sanskrit?

[Nagaraj Paturi]

http://www.atpweb.org/jtparchive/trps-24-92-02-193.pdf


THE HISTORY OF LUCID DREAMING

For most of us such lucid dreamsare rare and beyond our abilityto induce.
Is there any way of cultivatingour abilityto awaken in our dreams at will?
A variety of contemplative traditions and dream explorerssay yes. In the
fourth century,the classicalyoga sutrasof *Patanjali recommended
"witnessing the process of dreaming or dreamless sleep" (Shearer, 1989).*
Four centuries later Tibetan Buddhistsdevised a sophisticateddream yoga. In
the 12thcentury the Sufi mystic Ibn El-Arabi, a religious and
philosophicalgenius known to the Arab world as "the greatest master,"
claimed that "aperson must control his thoughts in a dream. The training of
this alertness ... will produce great benefits for the individual, Everyone
should apply himself to the attainment of this ability of such great value"
(Shah, 1971). More recently a number of explorers and spiritual masters
such as Sri Aurobindo (1970) and Rudolf Steiner (1947) also reported
success with lucid dreaming.

For decades  Western researchers dismissed such reports as impossible.
However, in the 1970s, in a breakthrough in the history of dream research,
two investigators provided experimental proof of lucid dreaming. Working
independently and quite unknown to each other, Alan Worsley in Britain and
Stephen LaBerge in California both learned to dream lucidly (Laberge,
1985). Then, while being monitored electrophysiologically in a sleep
laboratory, they signaled by means of eye movements that they were
dreaming, and knew it. Their electroencephalograms showed the
characteristic patterns of REM (rapid eye movement) sleep, during which
dreaming typically occurs, validating their reports. For the first time in
history someone had brought back a message from the world of dreams while
still dreaming. Dream research has never been the same since.
Interestingly, for some time LaBerge was unable to get his reports
published because reviewers simply refused to believe that lucid dreaming
was possible.

Since then, with the aid of eye movement signaling and electrophysiological
measures, much progress has been made, such as in studies of the frequency
and duration of lucid dreams, their physiological effects on brain and
body, the psychological characteristics of those who have them, the means
for inducing them more reliably, and their potential for healing and
transpersonal exploration.


SHEARER, P. (transl.) (1989). Effortless being: The Yoga Sutras of
Patanjali, London: Unwin.

On Sat, Sep 9, 2017 at 12:37 AM, Martin Gansten via INDOLOGY <
indology at list.indology.info> wrote:

> In recent years there has been a surge of popular books on the topic of
> cultivating one's ability to experience lucid dreams -- that is, dreams in
> which the dreamer is aware that he/she is dreaming and is able to a greater
> or lesser extent to influence the unfolding of dream events; extreme
> clarity and wealth of detail are other commonly reported features. Some of
> these books expound (with varying degrees of knowledge, or so it seems to a
> non-Tibetologist like myself) on the connection between lucid dreaming and
> Tibetan 'dream yoga'. But what about Sanskrit sources? Are there any works
> in Sanskrit -- Buddhist or otherwise -- dealing with such states of mind
> and/or practices? I know of works on svapnaśāstra in the sense of
> oneiromancy, but that is all.
>
> Martin Gansten
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> INDOLOGY mailing list
> INDOLOGY at list.indology.info
> indology-owner at list.indology.info (messages to the list's managing
> committee)
> http://listinfo.indology.info (where you can change your list options or
> unsubscribe)




-- 
Nagaraj Paturi

Hyderabad, Telangana, INDIA.


BoS, MIT School of Vedic Sciences, Pune, Maharashtra

BoS, Chinmaya Vishwavidyapeeth, Veliyanad, Kerala

Former Senior Professor of Cultural Studies

FLAME School of Communication and FLAME School of  Liberal Education,

(Pune, Maharashtra, INDIA )


-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://list.indology.info/pipermail/indology/attachments/20170909/1582e540/attachment.htm>