The Ultimate Virtual

Reality
Part 1: What Is Lucid Dreaming?
by Ken Tobias

(The New Times, Nov. 2000)

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The Ultimate Virtual Reality:
Lucid Dreaming
Ken Tobias
“Our truest life is when we are in dreams awake.”
– Henry David Thoreau
Our civilization has a penchant for escapism.
Whether it’s TV, reading, movies, sports, thrill-rides,
drugs, sex or alcohol, many people find some way to
escape the daily grind.
One emerging domain that holds gripping
promise as a means of escape (sans hangover) is vir-
tual reality (VR). VR tech allows us to take a break
from our everyday world by neatly providing an al-
ternate one. The goal of VR is to supply information
to our physical senses from sources other than the
outside environment. For example, hi-tech goggles
give our eyes and ears a visual and audio landscape,
while “data gloves” provide the sensation of touch
and the ability to interact in the virtual realm. When
these elements work in concert—stimulating our
senses with preprogrammed information—we expe-
rience an alternate environment, a landscape gener-
ated by computer rather than the physical world.
VR tech is progressing slowly though. Computers
may be becoming faster and more powerful at an
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alarming rate, but they’re still a long way from pos-
sessing the speed, subtlety, and fluidity to even at-
tempt to stand in for our ingenious biological
senses. Nevertheless, there’s excitement about this
emerging technology which will someday allow us to
realistically explore completely nonphysical environ-
ments. Though VR is still in its infancy, the potential
applications are already creating a powerful sense of
anticipation as we wait for it to come into its own.
Except there’s no need to wait. For those who de-
sire it, the ultimate VR experience is not only here
now, but is readily available. In fact, you already have
the state-of-the-art hardware required for the expe-
rience: the human brain. And the technique that pro-
duces the ultimate VR experience is called lucid
dreaming.
Lucid dreaming is the experience of being phys-
ically asleep and dreaming while at the same time
you’re mentally alert and conscious. You’re awake
within your dream. At first glance, it may seem these
two states—awake and dreaming—must be mutu-
ally exclusive. They’re not. In fact, the concurrent ex-
perience of dreaming while conscious generates an
utterly awe-inspiring VR experience, one that tech-
nology can only “dream” of rivaling.
Many of us have experienced being aware that
we’re dreaming to varying degrees. But for our pur-
poses, lucid dreaming refers specifically to being
completely awake and aware (as you presumably are
right now) while dreaming. Although partial lucidity
is fairly common, complete clarity while dreaming
occurs only rarely when not deliberately invoked.
While lucid dreaming, you have the extraordinary
opportunity to explore an infinite realm, a world
comprised of pure consciousness and imagination,
yet one that feels as utterly solid and authentic as
the world you’re experiencing right now. While
you’re enjoying this virtual universe, you can avail
yourself of the accompanying benefits available
through lucid dreaming, which range from extreme
recreation through spiritual insight. And did I men-
tion that it’s free? The only equipment required to
lucid dream is a sense of curiosity, a willingness to
learn some simple techniques, and the intent to suc-
ceed.
One of the most remarkable discoveries awaiting
you as a lucid dreamer is the inconceivable physical-
ity of the dream environment. Although dreams are
commonly referred to as “indistinct,” “amorphous,”
and “intangible,” one dose of lucid dreaming is all it
takes to banish those misconceptions. To the lucid
dreamer, the environment completely satisfies the
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requirements of an actual physical landscape. In the
dream world glass shatters, paper tears, and water
pours, just as they do back home. I’ll never forget an
early lucid dream where I was walking along the
bank of a lake and spotted a gum wrapper on the
ground. Completely aware that I was dreaming the
whole experience, I picked up the gum wrapper, felt
it between my fingers, then tore it to small pieces
and watched them flutter to the ground. My percep-
tion of that simple act was so completely genuine
that, while I was astounded with the utter authentic-
ity of the virtual scene, I was simultaneously bored—
just as if I had performed the same commonplace
actions here in the physical world. The virtual expe-
rience was so wholly convincing that it achieved the
mundane!
Granted, you may be looking for more excite-
ment than tearing paper. The point is that the dream
world feels absolutely real. We’ll wait a long time be-
fore technology offers anything remotely resem-
bling the completely believable environment of the
dream state. And although it certainly feels like phys-
ical reality, the dream world is not subject to any
physical laws. Like our imagination, the world of
dreams is malleable and magical. Objects and land-
scapes can be created from nothing. You can pass
through “solid” objects as if they weren’t there. You
can be anyone, go anywhere, and do anything at any
time. And—in what remains one of the greatest
benefits of doing away with physics—you can fly!
This opportunity is reason enough to embark on lu-
cid dream adventures. Where else can you experi-
ence the pure, consummate, completely realistic
sensation of gliding, diving, and soaring through
air—or water, or outer space—in complete safety
and with no need for an airplane, hang-glider, jet-
pack, or device of any kind?
Beyond flight itself, the opportunity for recrea-
tion of all kinds is a rock-solid reason to go lucid
dreaming. While others wait for the world of tech-
nology to offer their latest, greatest VR experience—
which will inevitably be awkward, unintuitive, and
programmed with someone else’s idea of a good
time—you have the chance right now to experience
a truly flawless alter-reality that responds directly to
your personal requests, desires, and imagination.
What are your fantasies? Would you like to visit
other galaxies? Join Joan of Arc on her adventures?
Fly through the core of the earth? Make love with the
partner of your dreams? Maybe you’d like to invent
whole worlds, using your imagination as the master
blueprint. If you can imagine it, you can realistically
experience it. Lucid dreaming is a potent and readily
accessible vacation from the limitations of life in a
physical body.
Beyond recreation, there are other powerful rea-
sons to wake up in your dreams. It’s commonly un-
derstood that our dreams are a window to the inner
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working of our minds. Both Freud and Jung, two il-
lustrious forefathers of modern psychology, placed
major emphasis on dreams, maintaining they offer
insight into the deeper mechanisms of the mind.
They held that paying attention to the symbols and
narratives that unfold each night while dreaming can
yield a deeper understanding of who we are. With
that understanding, we’re better prepared to em-
bark on healing ourselves psychologically.
With the awareness that our dreams are an elab-
orate stage, rich with symbolism unique to each in-
dividual, and populated by a cast comprised of myr-
iad parts of ourselves, we add lucidity. While lucid,
you can intentionally set foot on that stage; you can
engage the characters and symbols of your own
mind, taking a deliberate part in the nightly drama.
There is no limit to what you can learn by purpose-
fully engaging the subconscious mind. Lucid dream-
ing offers the singular and potent experience of be-
ing able to consciously and directly interact with the
characters, images, and symbols of your own psyche.
And the potential of lucid dreaming goes even
further. For those of us who believe the physical con-
stitutes only a small segment—a reflection—of a
greater, subtler yet more profound reality, lucid
dreaming’s most important relevance might be
found in the realm of spirituality. If there is “another
side,” a realm less dense than our own, populated by
entities not of the flesh but of the spirit, it remains
largely hidden from most of us. Our five physical
senses are not fine enough to perceive such subtle
energies. If we want to explore astral realms, it would
be convenient to temporarily shed our physical ar-
mor and become an entity composed of nothing
more solid than mind. Lucid dreaming is the key to
those travels. With your physical body home safe in
bed, you’re fitted with the perfect tool to explore
other realms—your pure consciousness. Many of us
are interested in establishing a stronger connection
to our guides and higher selves. What better way to
foster that interaction than by shedding the coarse
physical body and meeting the spiritual realm half-
way, by voyaging, as they do, clothed in conscious-
ness alone. Remember, “When in Rome...!”
Learning how to achieve lucidity is easy and dealt
with expertly in numerous books. (Refer to the end
of this article for sources that thoroughly detail the
simple techniques involved.) And no matter what ex-
ercises you practice, remember the most important
single variable to support your lucidity: the single
most important variable is your confident intent to
succeed. Dreams are remarkably responsive to our
expectations, so remember this most basic strategy:
if you expect to achieve lucidity, you will.
• • • Garfield, Patricia. Creative Dreaming. New York: Touchstone,
Lucid dreaming is the experience of utter free-
dom. The boundaries of your experience are solely
the limits of your imagination. With complete
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mindfulness and appreciation of what you’re per-
ceiving, you can explore an infinite universe that
manifests as solid and tangible as our Mother Earth.
You can take these experiences back with you into
physical reality and remember them for all time.
And at the very core of the lucid dream experi-
ence is the possibility of a profound revelation. Every
night as we dream, we are being fooled, lulled by our
senses into accepting a dream world for the physical
one. Nightly, we enter an ethereal universe, yet we
embrace it as physical. But we have the opportunity
to wake up in that world, time and again, to experi-
ence the dramatic realization that the world we just
took for physical is actually a vision, a dream world.
Eventually, one can’t help but pause and think:
“Hmm… I keep waking up from that world. I wonder
what of waking up from this one?”
• • •
To reach the author, email kentobias@amidreaming.com.
Resources:
LaBerge, Stephen, Rheingold, Howard. Exploring the World
of Lucid Dreaming. New York: Ballantine Books, 1991.
LaBerge, Stephen. Lucid Dreaming. New York: Ballantine
Books, 1990.
1995.
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by contacting kentobias@amidreaming.com. Last updated 11/04/2017.