History of Lucid Dreaming
By the ThinkQuest Team, 1997
Lucid Dreaming has been around for quite a long time, although it is just now becoming a widely discussed topic. The earliest recorded lucid dreams date back to as early as the fifth century, in fact, the record came from a written letter by St. Augustine in 415 A.D. Another well- known record of lucid dreaming came in the eighth century came from Tibetan Buddhists in their Tibetan Book of the Dead. The Buddhists spoke of a form of yoga designed to maintain full waking consciousness while in the dream state. These ancient dream yogis possessed an unequivocal understanding of dreams, which was said to be more advanced than the knowledge we posses today.
In the nineteenth century, after many obscure dream practices took place, such as finding another reality within the dreaming state or trying to conjure spirits from the past through dreaming, people began to look past these practices and accepted dreams as a happening of everyday life. This set off many people into researching the scientific reasons of lucid dreaming.
Marquis d'Hervey de Saint-Denys was the most popular of the scientists to emerge. In 1867, he published his book Dreams and How to Guide Them, in which he documented more than twenty years of his own research into dreams. Marquis described the sequential development of his ability do control his dreams in within this book. First, increasing his dream recall, then becoming aware that he was dreaming. He was a pioneer to the dreaming field, in that he was the first person to demonstrate that it is possible for anyone to learn to dream consciously.
Next, came the man who we owe the term "lucid dreaming." Frederick Van Eeden, a Dutch psychiatrist and dream researcher. Though he was interested in all aspects of dreaming, he found that lucid dreams aroused his interest the most. His first work was created as fiction, so he could freely present his ideas without concern of the public on such delicate matters, this work was entitled The Bride of Dreams. Then, in 1913, he boldly presented a paper on lucid dreaming to the Society for Psychical Research, reporting on 352 of his lucid dreams collected between 1898 and 1912, this paper was entitled A Study of Dreams.
Several others continued to do research on the topic of lucid dreaming, but none became as popular as Stephen LaBerge who continues to do research on the topic of lucid dreaming today. In September of 1977, LaBerge applied to Stanford University, wanting to study lucid dreaming as part of a Ph.D. program in psychophysiology. This was approved, and he began his work on lucid dreams. He soon gained access to the Stanford sleep lab, where he began his research into lucid dreaming with the help of Dr. Lynn Nagel, a researcher who shared the same interest in lucidity as LaBerge. The research, at first, was not successful, but as he went further he found the answers to a few long unanswered questions, such as "How long do lucid dreams last?" and "When do lucid dreams occur?" To him we also owe all of the recent study into lucid dreams, as he sparked the interest of modern researches with the answers to such questions.