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Liber XXXIII · Theosophy

Liber XXXIII · Theosophy · Chapter II: Astral Projection & Dreams

Lucid Dreaming: History, Tibetan Dream Yoga and the Science

Lucid dreaming explained: Aristotle and Augustine, Tibetan dream yoga, Hervey de Saint-Denys, van Eeden's coinage, occult dream work and modern sleep science.

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Lucid dreaming is the experience of knowing that one is dreaming while the dream is still going on, often with some ability to steer what happens next. Descriptions reach back to Aristotle and Augustine, Tibetan Buddhists cultivated it as a spiritual discipline, and the modern name was coined by the Dutch writer Frederik van Eeden in 1913. Since the late 1970s sleep laboratories have confirmed that lucid dreams occur during REM sleep, turning an old contemplative and occult practice into a subject of experimental psychology.

Lucid Dreams in Ancient and Medieval Thought§

The oldest clear Western description comes from Aristotle. In his short treatise On Dreams, part of the collection known as the Parva Naturalia (fourth century BCE), he observes that while asleep a person may sometimes be aware that what appears is only a dream. Aristotle used the observation as part of a naturalistic account of dreaming: images arise from the residual motions of perception, and judgement is usually, but not always, suspended in sleep.

Christian writers gave the same experience a theological use. In a letter of 415 CE to Evodius of Uzalis, Augustine of Hippo recounts the dreams of a Carthaginian physician named Gennadius, who doubted that the soul survived the body. A young man appeared to him in a dream and asked whether he knew that he was asleep and that his eyes were closed; if he could see without bodily eyes now, the visitor argued, he might do so after death. Augustine presented the story as evidence for the soul's independence of the senses.

Medieval scholastic commentators on Aristotle occasionally mentioned the dreamer's awareness of dreaming, but in the West dream interpretation, prophetic dreams and visionary journeys attracted far more attention than the dreamer's own state of mind.

Tibetan Dream Yoga and Eastern Traditions§

The most systematic religious use of lucid dreaming developed in Tibet. Dream yoga (milam) is one of the Six Yogas of Naropa, a group of tantric practices attributed to the Indian adept Naropa (c. 1016–1100) and his teacher Tilopa, and transmitted to Tibet through Marpa and Milarepa into the Kagyu lineages. Comparable teachings exist in the Nyingma school and in the Bön religion, whose dream practices have been presented to Western readers by Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche.

In these systems the goal is not entertainment or wish fulfilment. The practitioner learns to recognise the dream as a dream, then to transform and multiply dream images, and finally to see that waking appearances share the same empty, dreamlike nature. Dream yoga is closely tied to the teachings on the bardo, the intermediate state between death and rebirth: one who can recognise the dream as mind's projection is thought better prepared to recognise the visions after death. It belongs within the wider framework described in our guide to Tibetan Buddhism and Vajrayana, and is traditionally taught by a qualified teacher alongside preliminary practices.

Indian philosophy offered a different but related map. The Mandukya Upanishad distinguishes waking, dreaming and deep sleep, with a fourth state (turiya) that underlies all three. Later yogic and Vedantic teachers developed the idea of a witnessing awareness that persists through sleep, an idea modern writers have often compared, sometimes too quickly, with lucid dreaming. Readers can follow the background in the Vedas and Upanishads.

Hervey de Saint-Denys and Frederik van Eeden§

The modern Western study of lucid dreams began with a French sinologist, Marie-Jean-Léon Lecoq, later Marquis d'Hervey de Saint-Denys (1822–1892). Having kept a dream diary from the age of thirteen, he published anonymously in 1867 Les Rêves et les moyens de les diriger (Dreams and How to Guide Them). The book argued that with practice a dreamer can become aware of dreaming and deliberately influence the dream, and it described experiments such as associating a particular perfume or piece of music with a memory and having it presented during sleep. Freud cited it but admitted he had never been able to obtain a copy.

The Dutch psychiatrist and novelist Frederik van Eeden (1860–1932) supplied the name. In "A Study of Dreams", read to the Society for Psychical Research and published in its Proceedings in 1913, he classified dreams into types and called one of them "lucid dreams", in which the dreamer has full memory of waking life and can act voluntarily. He reported keeping records of several hundred such dreams over more than a decade. Van Eeden's paper appeared in a journal devoted to telepathy, apparitions and survival, a reminder that early lucid dream research grew up beside psychical research rather than academic psychology.

The English writer Mary Arnold-Forster's Studies in Dreams (1921) added a further careful first-person record, including her technique of reminding herself before sleep that frightening dreams were only dreams.

Lucid Dreaming in Occultism and Astral Travel§

In the occult revival of the early twentieth century, the lucid dream became a doorway to what Theosophists and ceremonial magicians called the astral plane. The English occultist Oliver Fox (the pen name of Hugh Callaway) described "dreams of knowledge" in which noticing an incongruity, such as a misplaced paving stone, made him realise he was dreaming. From that state he claimed to pass into full out-of-body travel, which he described in Astral Projection (c. 1939). His account became a standard text for later projectors, as discussed in our guide to astral projection and dreams.

P. D. Ouspensky, before his association with Gurdjieff, experimented with what he called "half-dream states", trying to observe the formation of dream images while keeping a thread of waking attention; he wrote about the experiments in A New Model of the Universe (1931). His interest connects lucidity with the Fourth Way theme of waking up from ordinary sleep (see P. D. Ouspensky). Later writers in the New Age movement, including Carlos Castaneda in The Art of Dreaming (1993), presented dream control as a sorcerer's discipline; most scholars regard Castaneda's books as fiction presented as ethnography.

Occult writers typically distinguish the lucid dream from astral travel, which they hold visits a real, shared plane; sleep researchers generally treat both as varieties of vivid, self-aware dreaming.

The Laboratory Proof: Hearne and LaBerge§

For much of the twentieth century many psychologists doubted that lucid dreams were real sleep experiences rather than brief awakenings remembered as dreams. The Oxford researcher Celia Green collected and classified reports in Lucid Dreams (1968), and she suggested that lucidity probably occurred in REM sleep, but proof required a way for a dreamer to communicate from inside the dream.

The solution exploited a feature of REM sleep: most voluntary muscles are paralysed, but the eyes still move. In April 1975, at the University of Hull, the psychologist Keith Hearne recorded the experienced lucid dreamer Alan Worsley making a pre-agreed sequence of left–right eye movements while polygraph readings showed him to be in REM sleep. Hearne's work was reported in his doctoral thesis and was not widely published at first. At Stanford, Stephen LaBerge independently achieved the same result with himself and other subjects around 1980, publishing the findings in the early 1980s and in his popular book Lucid Dreaming (1985). LaBerge went on to found the Lucidity Institute and to develop induction methods and light-cue devices.

Techniques, Research and Cautions§

Modern accounts describe a small set of induction methods. Dream journals improve recall; "reality testing" builds the habit of asking during the day whether one is dreaming; LaBerge's MILD (mnemonic induction of lucid dreams) uses an intention formed on waking in the night; and "wake back to bed" schedules a brief awakening before returning to sleep, when REM periods are longer. Sensory cues delivered during REM sleep, a modern version of Hervey de Saint-Denys's perfumes, have also been tested.

Research since 2000 has found increased activity in frontal and parietal regions during lucid dreams compared with ordinary REM dreams, consistent with the return of self-reflective thought. A 2021 study involving several laboratories reported two-way communication with lucid dreamers, who answered simple questions with eye signals or facial movements. Meta-analytic surveys suggest that a little over half of people have had at least one lucid dream, while perhaps a fifth report them monthly or more.

Lucid dreaming is generally considered safe for healthy sleepers, and it has been explored as a treatment for recurring nightmares. Researchers caution, however, that techniques built on deliberate awakenings can fragment sleep, that attempts may bring on episodes of sleep paralysis, and that people with a history of psychosis or dissociation may be better served by consulting a clinician before practising methods that blur the line between dream and waking.

Frequently asked questions§

Who coined the term "lucid dream"?§

The Dutch psychiatrist and writer Frederik van Eeden used the term in his paper "A Study of Dreams", published in the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research in 1913. The experience itself had been described much earlier, by Aristotle, Augustine and Hervey de Saint-Denys among others.

Is lucid dreaming the same as astral projection?§

Not necessarily. Occultists such as Oliver Fox treated the lucid dream as a starting point for leaving the body and visiting the astral plane, and many practitioners still distinguish the two. Sleep scientists generally interpret both as forms of vivid, self-aware dreaming arising in REM sleep.

What is Tibetan dream yoga?§

Dream yoga is one of the Six Yogas of Naropa and is also practised in the Nyingma and Bön traditions. The practitioner learns to recognise dreams while dreaming, to transform dream images and to see waking experience as dreamlike, as preparation for recognising the intermediate state after death.

Has lucid dreaming been proven scientifically?§

Yes, in the sense that lucidity during REM sleep has been verified. Keith Hearne in 1975 and Stephen LaBerge around 1980 recorded dreamers sending pre-arranged eye-movement signals while instruments confirmed they were asleep, and later studies have replicated and extended these results.

Sources and further reading§