Can lucid dreaming make psi information more accessible?
Imagine competing in a precognitive dream contest, where participants have to post their dream reports on a time and date stamped discussion board, nine hours before the random selection of a target image. The target pool of 131 images includes a wide range of paintings, photos and images. You fall asleep, intending to dream about the future target image.
Your first dream strikes you as strange. It ends with you lucidly aware, seeing the first part of the dream reduced to a magazine cover as an impressionistic painting, which spirals into the darkness, as the artist‘s name, Vermeer, enters your lucid awareness.
After you and all the contestants post their dreams for everyone to see, the contest submissions close.
The next morning the contest organizer has a visitor randomly select a number between 001 and 131. The visitor randomly selects number 124, which connects to the painting, The Geographer, by Vermeer.
Just such an event happened to lucid dreamer, Ed Kellogg at the 11th annual PsiberDreaming Conference sponsored by the International Association for the Study of Dreams (IASD). At the end of his first dream of that night, he became lucid as he saw the dream scene transformed into to a magazine cover, and then noted an artist‘s name, Vermeer, as the image spiraled into the darkness.
Although he wrote down three dreams, he gave this first dream his highest ranking for containing the precognitive dream target imagery. Below, you can read his first dream, posted for all contestants to see before the random selection of the target image. The bolding indicates elements that he believes might exist in the future target:
“I find myself indoors, standing behind a dark brown piano, in a small drawing room, dull muted colors, 19th century style. I have on a black t-shirt with a graphic [probably the Hogwarts coat of arms that I wore to bed in WPR]. A social occasion – a few people there but I only see one man, a slim man 30 or so with neatly combed blonde hair wearing a white t-shirt with symbol or comic logo, standing on the other side of the piano in the middle of the room. I recognize him, but I feel surprised to see him, as I haven’t seen him in years. He used to own a comic shop, in Medford, which closed down years ago. We knew each other slightly. I ask him if he still owns the business and how it goes, and he says O.K.
“As the dream ends, I become sub-lucid as the dreamscape disappears into a sort of black void, and I see the scene in the room transformed into an impressionistic painting on the cover of a rectangular magazine, which recedes into the distance in a sort of spiral movement. The word Vermeer pops into my head, and I have the impression that the painting has something to do with him.”
Comment: My top dream pick for the target, the first dream I can recall right after the incubation, with the scene reduced to a painting on a (9X12 proportion) rectangular magazine, a very odd ending for a dream, and I had specified in my incubation to make the target picture obvious.
Besides correctly identifying the artist by name, Ed highlighted in his dream report many elements of the target image: indoors….in a small drawing room, dull muted colors, 19th century style…. I only see one man, a slim man 30 or so with neatly combed blonde hair wearing a white t-shirt with symbol or comic logo.
Touching upon so many elements of the target image and mentioning the name of the artist made it easy for the judges (myself and Cynthia Pearson) to award first place to Ed. When you consider that Ed has no awareness of the pool of images (e.g., photographs, drawings, paintings) or the art period (e.g. modern, renaissance, colonial, western, Dutch masters, etc.), then you can see how vast a pool exists.
The second place winner, Maria Isabel Pita, another experienced lucid dreamer and LDE contributor, titled one of her dreams, ‘Maps‘ which seems very close to the painting‘s actual name, The Geographer, and the painting does indeed include maps. Along with the title and numerous mentions of thematic elements in the actual target image painting, her dream, although not lucid, made a strong second place showing.
What seems especially interesting for lucid dreamers occurs in the lucid part of Ed‘s dream, when he obtains the name of the artist while lucidly aware. Did lucidity‘s higher level of awareness allow the artist name, Vermeer, to ‘pop’ into his head? Or did lucidity give this dream special clarity, such that he could pre-select it as most likely connected to the target image? Does lucid awareness in dreams increase the likelihood of psi?
After the contest, I asked Ed what he meant by ‘sub-lucid‘ in his dream report. He stated that while he had become lucid, and consciously realized that what he saw likely represented the target image he had intended to tune into, as the lucid part of the dream seemed quite short, around 10 seconds, he did not have time to act on his awareness, and so technically had to characterize the end of this dream as ‘sub-lucid’.
Later, reflecting on his success, Ed posted:
‘I feel pleased that I not only clearly tuned in to the target picture as I had intended to do, but that I also did quite well with respect to the second level of psi, of differentiating beforehand which dream(s) predominantly tuned into the target, and which elements of all the dreams related to the target, before the target went up.’
Interestingly, Ed had specifically intended that he would perceive and understand the target image in his dream the same way that he would when he first saw it displayed on his computer after its posting. His intention worked quite well, in fact perhaps too well. Because of a glitch in posting the image, the lower part of the painting did not display.
So rather than having roughly square proportions, as the actual painting does, it displayed as an oblong rectangle in similar proportions Ed had reported for the magazine cover in his dream. As a result the beautiful oriental carpet of the painting almost does not appear at all in the image as displayed, and this and other objects in that hidden portion, perhaps not coincidentally, did not appear in his dream either.
So it appears that lucid dreaming can make precognitive information more accessible, particularly when the lucid dreamer intends it, through incubation or strong desire.
In the realm of dreaming awareness, contest examples like this suggest linear time and space may pose no barrier to clear, lucid intent. Moreover, lucid awareness in this realm may expose the actual foundation upon which surface consciousness rests.
