That's so 2014<p>Please also regard the methodological problems that are posed by the study <a href="http://neurocritic.blogspot.nl/2014/05/does-gamma-tacs-really-induce-lucid.html" rel="nofollow">http://neurocritic.blogspot.nl/2014/05/does-gamma-tacs-reall...</a> and that they only used 3 subjects. Furthermore they are not willing to share their data with other scientists.
However, support comes from another group: <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1053810013001098?via%3Dihub" rel="nofollow">http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1053810013...</a>
Recently I found a way to induce lucid dreams nearly 50% of the time I try.
I start by closing my eyes and looking at the blackness. Usually there is something else there, like a field of dots. I will the field of dots to uniformly move or become a tunnel. After a while more objects form, I try to control them in some way, or just observe them. Eventually this turns into a lucid dream or a deep meditative state where I am aware of my body but time passes faster.<p>It does not work when I cant get any images to form because I am not tired or distracted.
It also requires a fair amount of attention to redirect yourself to 'keep looking'. Its easy to drift off and do normal sleep.
Maybe my experience is different than others, but when I dream lucidly it is fun but my dreams lose a lot of spontaneity and richness because I realize I am in control of everything in the dream.<p>I suspect this is because the conscious mind is slow and single threaded compared to the unconscious mind which is faster and multithreaded. In a dream where the mind is in control of both the experiencing 'self' and all aspects of the environment, this difference causes a real loss in fidelity.<p>Thus, I don't understand the obsession with lucid dreaming and I really don't understand why people would want to do it every time they dream.
For people who don't dream lucidly, what are your dreams like? Do you experience them in third person? Is it like being on rails? My wife often tells me that, in her dreams, she's still herself but also not herself. Is it like a compulsion, where you know what's happening but you're not in control of yourself?
To reliably lucid dream, become more lucid (mindful, through careful observation of sense perceptions) in waking life.<p>Also, get a watch or app with hourly beep and do a reality check. Mine is 3 things: (1) close eyes (2) pinch nose and try to breathe through it (3) check out my hands.<p>All 3 of these are weird in dreams & reliably indicate that I am dreaming.
I feel like control over dreaming is a much better direction of AR development. In dreams you can pretty much come up with any type of action and all the sensations are exactly like they are in real life, pleasure, pain etc...