Lucid Dreaming and Religious Fear
The Forbidden Side of Dreaming. We all dream. So, is becoming aware that you are dreaming natural, normal, and beneficial, or is it dangerous?
INTRODUCTION
Over the last several years, I’ve developed this strange fascination with dreaming. But where I am treading, is it safe? It depends on who you ask and what their cultural lens happens to be.
CONTRASTING VIEWPOINTS
Fundamentalist Christianity would say it is of the occult, Native Americans would see it as a spiritual quest, spiritualists would see it as an opportunity to reach out to contact otherworldy inhabitants, psychotherapists would see it as a way to understand your mind, Wicca would see it as a source of magick, and Aborigines would see dreaming as the more true world as the 3D world as the illusion. Charismatic Christians might see dreaming as part of their spirituality, and the writing down of dreams to encourage spiritual visions. Christianity would say that any religion that acknowledges the paranormal realm is deceived and under control of the devil. Since everyone dreams, or should dream, and dreaming is part of the paranormal realm, that seems illogical.
BIBLICAL REFERENCES
In the Christian Bible, the Saviour was announced in a dream, important information was given to a king in a dream about his kingdom and the kingdoms that would reign after him. Jacob, who was later named Israel, dreamed of a ladder to heaven with angels ascending and descending on it. Joseph, Jacob’s son, had a dream that really upset his brothers when he shared it with them, and he later had a dream that foretold a famine.
Yet, in spite of the references to dreaming in the Bible, it’s easy to receive off-the-wall responses and responses of outright fear and dismay when attempting to discuss dream experiences with Christian friends. Some of these responses involve fear when admitting you have heard a foreign word in a dream. "Oh! That’s demonic!" was the response. My forehead wrinkled up with puzzlement. After all, I did nothing to encourage it. I heard what I heard. People see in dreams, right? Why isn’t it okay to hear in dreams?
FEAR OF THE UNKNOWN
Dream experiences involve what we consider as the unknown. Maybe it’s the unknown because we don’t choose to focus on it, given our cultural bias, and it wouldn’t be so much the unknown if we had a culture that wanted to understand it. It seems that throughout periods in history, whatever the Church didn’t understand or feared was evil, became a source of persecution. Why should we have to be afraid of the subsconscious content of our own minds? Or, on the other hand, is the subconscious mind something dark, something to be afraid of?
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Post CommentNicole Sparks
On February 20, 2007 at 6:40 pm
I also have a fascination with dreams. I don’t buy into the “evilness” that Christianity pins on dreams either, maybe part of the fear they have is that many times, great insights come out in your dreams. Things connect in your subconscious mind in a way that just doesn’t happen when you are distracted by the bustle of everyday life. Anyways, nice article.
Lucid-Dreamer
On July 17, 2007 at 10:38 am
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Starting Out
On July 24, 2007 at 3:26 pm
I’m a Christian – like, my faith is the main thing in my life. No, I’m not a fundamentalist (unless you deign believing that the Bible is inspired by God and totally, even historically, accurate “fundamentalism”). No, I don’t hate people different than myself. But I’m also a man of science, and even so, I see no conflict between lucid dreaming, my faith, and scientific truth. My belief is that the brain dreams for a variety of reasons. God designed us to dream when we’re asleep, and sometimes He speaks to us through dreams. Sometimes, though, our dreams are just productions of our unconscious mind. Or, to put it another way, the brain is working normally, but without any external feedback, it “wanders” at times. Why not take advantage of these times if you can by spending some conscious time during your sleep, without external distractions? I mean, it’s not a free pass to do whatever you want – I think sin is still sin in a dream (Jesus said we sin first in our mind, even if no action follows). That’s my view, anyway. Hopefully I’ll be able to actually do it, now that I’m starting into this whole realm. I’ve only had a couple of semi-lucid experiences, totally by accident, but I’m pretty tired of wasting a third of my day sleeping with nothing to show for it but a messed up head of hair.
J>D>
On January 11, 2008 at 9:20 pm
I too am one that has had very lucid dreams…I have fallen asleep and only been asleep for 2 hours and awoke from lucid dreaming, so realistic, it seemed as though the dream was tangible. Ever since a little girl, I always loved when bedtime came, just so I could dream. I would at those times get a good night of sleep, but now as an adult, the dreams sometimes scare me. To only sleep a couple of hours and remember a dream like a story-book being told, scene for scene, as if it were reality. I believe in God, and as well the darker side, and to tell the difference of a good dream or bad is sometimes confusing to me. Dreams are the sub-conscious mind conversing with the waking mind.
person
On March 14, 2008 at 12:33 pm
I’ve only had one lucid dream, and that was completely by accident, when I was about 5 years old. The only problem is that it was a kind of nightmare, and I didn’t know how to get out, even though I was aware about it being a dream… I was thinking of starting to learn LD, but have been having second thoughts: what if I *somehow* reach a point where I start mixing it up with reality?
I’ve started keeping a dream journal, however, and it was quite weird when, in the first night, I fell asleep telling myself “I’m gonna wake up after dreaming” – and actually woke up! I couldn’t believe I actually had power over my own sleeping schedule like that.
Ryan Hurd
On April 1, 2008 at 12:22 pm
This is one of the most balanced short articles on lucid dreaming that I’ve seen on the web – great questions!
When I researched the history of lucid dreams, I found that the Christian West really turned away from dreams in the Middle Ages, despite the fact that early church history is steeped in dreams and visions. In particular, the warnings from Thomas Acquinas really changed the cultural landscape – he suggested that people could not differentiate dreams from God versus dreams from the devil. Notice that dreams from God were still possible then according to the Church….
but you really hit the main issue about lucid dreaming – which is how to find the courage/trust to step into the unknown. the ability of the dreamer to deal with the unknown is the simgle greatest indicator of how well he or she can navigate the wooly world of lucid dreaming.
Malachi
On May 23, 2008 at 3:30 am
I feel I have not came across this site Gambling for answers (yet I have, heart and soul…unfortunately). You’ve written my view on dreaming, briefly – yet I’ve dabbled in the subconscious world a tad-bit more…for different reasons; yet, I now have (and have had) the same concerns as are written in your article.
What have you found? Dangerous or not? Dark or light? Evil? Agape? What is the difference? Delve deeper. For me. For us.
My dis/ability to tell the real from th’occult, reality from dream, biblical/spiritual from esoteric/gnostic/scriptual has become a symbolic journey through paranoid examinations and obsessive explications – during which my transition between waking and sleeping has become a guess; my mind has become lost between sea-creature plants and androgynous beings amongst oceanic roll-lulling-crashing and car-hum-drum-engine-numbing motions, to projected screens of film-non-realities, and waking/breathing, bookcase abnormalities.
To dream or not dream,
that is the Damned Question.
Whether ’tis nobler of
the mind
to sleep…
And Dream?
bible_trekky
On October 27, 2008 at 11:31 pm
Good article and interesting comments as well.
Malachi…I couldn’t understand what you were really saying but it sounded kinda scarey. Sounds like you may have dabbed into some funky stuff. Hopefully it’s not like that for all.
I’ve been a dreamer my entire life. I’ve have only a couple of semi-lucid dreams that I can think of and they were not fun. One was where I was frozen and couldn’t wake myself out of the dream and it felt like something demonic was pulling me outta my bed. I say semi lucid because I knew enough to bable off a scripture that I didn’t even know in my waking life and it released me. Crazy thing is when I woke up, my arm and a small portion of my body was hanging off the bed…SPOOKY!
I once had an out-of-body experience as well. Someone really close to me died of an anuerism and I couldn’t help but think over and over again what they must have been feeling before they died. One night, while either falling off or I had already fallen to sleep, I felt my Spirit/Soul leaving my body hovering above my bed near the ceiling. I got really scared as I had no control and tried to move to nudge my husband so he could wake me up but once again I was frozen however, everything came back but I woke up pretty scared.
A few months ago my husband had a heart attack, stroke, lost function of his kidneys, went blind, lost his memory and his blood pressure was 253/154 which was the initial cause of all his preceeding ailments.
My husband said he woke up, sitting in his room and a voice told him he was dead. He said he immediately knew it was God and asked how he had died. God told him he had died of a heart attack long before we even knew he’d had one. My husband then tells God that he needs to take care of me (the loving wife, LOL!) and God tells him that he will take care of me. My husband said a peace came over him and he was okay with passing on but then woke up in the hospital.
Moral of the story…Death is not what we’ve been told by people who have never died.
As for the lucid dreaming, I’ve had them but have never really focused on them. I have been praying and asking God to reveal himself to me in this way if it’s in his will. I’ll see what happens.
Oh yeah, My husband had a miraculous recovery and is doing fine! Praise His Holy Name!
I Think Therefore
On December 12, 2008 at 2:11 am
For those of you really interested in this subject, I have a video in two parts on YouTube. It is an introduction to lucid dreaming and astral projection for Christians, but it should be interesting to anyone who found this article interesting. The video contains not just information on Biblical dreams, but discusses LUCID dreams in the Bible and early church and also explains some of the origins of the (positively UN-Biblical) Christian fear of lucid dreaming. You can find the first part of the video at this URL:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pP3NzPeXHkU&feature=channel_page
Truth_Seeker
On December 13, 2008 at 12:07 am
After delving into lucid dreaming I have come to a temporary conclusion that there are dangerous aspects to it. For example, twice I awoke to hear voices that weren’t there and once I awoke feeling a crack to the back of my neck like someone had given me a karate chop. Although it didn’t ‘really’ happen you couldn’t have fooled me any better. In a lucid-dreaming state you can feel objects, ‘actually’ feel them. You can also induce an out-of-body experience. Such experiences truly blow your mind.
I don’t know whether it is occult or not but it certainly doesn’t seem perfectly safe to me, either. Neither is crossing the street. Why it is possible and what can truly be achieved by inducing this state? I decided to cool it after becoming somewhat disturbed and it wasn’t difficult at all. Hard to start up again, though. One must be able to truly relax with no fear. It is extremely life-changing, but I find I can neither ignore it nor fully embrace it at this time.
Edgar Cayce, a fervent Christian, would induce a hypnagogic state to answer questions about the future and to diagnose illnesses. The treatments he would prescribe in this state actually helped to heal others of terrible afflictions.
His idea of ‘Oneness’ is certainly an appealing hypothesis of universal truth and God.(An idea that I find easy comfort with.) This view on religion, I believe, was also shared by C.S. Lewis.
Pondering this, I remember what Christ said about how a divided house cannot stand. Evil can not do good, and good cannot do evil. How then can it be truly an occult thing to hypnotize…lucid dream…or explore the sub-conscious. Truthfully, ’sub-conscious’ is just a term we use to describe something that we possibly can’t and surely don’t fully understand. The term certainly doesn’t well describe the 90 percent (+ or -) part of our brains that we don’t use. God gave it to us so it must be something we’re intended to have.
In my opinion, dreams might possibly be the entire basis of religion.(Though I personally doubt the totality of this idea). Overcoming fear is a part of life. That doesn’t mean that we should jump off a cliff just to confront our fear of dying. We are explorers by nature. But, from my experiences,(not just with lucid dreaming) I think caution/patience is certainly in order.
kari
On February 12, 2010 at 6:22 pm
I’ve had experiences with lucid dreaming as well, some very ugly and some very interesting. I am christian but I’m also very open minded. And I agree dreams are not “evil” but I do believe they can be “used for evil”.
Like everything in this world, God gave us our bodies/minds and we do have “sin” in us and the devil always tempting us. We have “free will” to choose between evil and good. For the most part we are fooled to believe “evil is good” in most cases.
For example “sex” is sometimes done in a sinful way. Their are beliefs in some satanic cults that women should give them selves to at least one man in exchange for money or something valuable (a way of showing love). Not many people know this is done in satanic cults and recognize it as “prostitution”. While the media makes it seem normal by calling it promiscuous or one night stands (fooled). Where as Christians view sex as a way of expressing love to your loved one(husband/wife), becoming “one” and of course reproduction.
So dreaming like you mentioned in the bible was used for good and is also a normal phase our brain goes into while sleeping. Some people try and call out the dead while lucid dreaming. I would consider this “evil” even if they are unaware of this. Because like you said lucid dreaming is a very spiritual experience. And demons are considered spiritual beings. In the bible it states the dead don’t come back. But demons take formation of your dead loved ones in order to fool you and possibly manipulate you. So calling out to the dead while lucid dreaming or if your doing some form of wicca or occult practice, calling out knowingly to the spirits would be considered “evil”. Because your trying to connect your spirit with something unworldly that wants to use you for evil purposes by making you think your using them. Why do they want to use us? Well obviously they our powerless to roam the world they way we do and cause harm.
I actually had a friend that was lucid dreaming (non christian) and he told me he went to into sleep paralysis and instead of trying to get out of it, he just allowed it to continue. He notice a dark shadow figure coming towards him. It started to grab his spirit and pull it out of his body. He was frightened and tried to awake. But it was very difficult and basically had to fight of this dark shadow trying to take his spirit away. And this person is not spiritual at all but some how he knew what was going on.
Anyway I can go on and on about experiences I’ve herd and had personally and stories about people who did witch craft in their awaken life in contact with evil spirits (that are now Christians). Its a very complex world. What we know is we have an “awaken physical world” and we have the “spiritual world” in one and we have exits and entrances to both. What we do with them is up to us. It could be harmless or dangerous.
kari
On February 12, 2010 at 6:30 pm
I would just like to mention, that you should trust your heart and instincts. Whats your “first thought”? Does it feel wrong? evil? do you feel doomed? Then it is “wrong”. You will find that people will try to convince you its not because like I said now a days we are made to believe “evil is good” just look at the crap on the media and you will see what I mean. So trust your first instinct and follow it! Don’t be manipulated or brain washed.
My friend felt scared, he felt evil presence and doomed for his spirit. While in this dream. And he isn’t even a spiritual person. But he knows he enough to know what is ‘good’ and what is ‘evil’. Just keep that in mind next time you lucid dream.
Jacob
On April 18, 2010 at 9:20 pm
My “instinct” tells me that there is no god or no devil. It seems to me that these apparitions in your dreams are just sub-conscious fears or guilts manifesting themselves. Lucid dreams are exactly what they are, lucid dreams. Dreams in which you retain a form of consciousness enabling you to control your actions in your dreams. Although you can control your own actions, it is still a dream so your mind will allow sub-conscious fears and thoughts to manifest. So enjoy yourself and quit letting ancient superstition control your life.
Even from a religious stand point I don’t see why it is considered to be such an odious thing. God is concerned with your motives and your heart. So if you do believe in God, just ask yourself why you want to do it and make sure that your motives are pure. If you are doing it to achieve “spiritual enlightenment” as opposed to using prayer and the reading of your religion’s scripture, then it might be something to worry about. But again, I personally don’t believe in a god or devil or anything of the sort, so I say if you feel that you will enjoy lucid dreaming then by all means, go enjoy yourself.
Take care of each other everyone and thank you for your time.
evysummer
On September 16, 2010 at 4:05 pm
Hi my name is Evy! I have been having lucid dreams for years where I can not move or speak!!! Last was the worst one cause there was more 2 the dream then normal! In addition to not being able 2 move, I felt like I was being crushed and pressure all over my body and my heart was racing. I at one point was falling into darkness and I was hot! When I woke up it took awhile for me to move my body again. Slowly I was able 2 wiggle my fingers and toes!!! I believe in god and I believe in the devil. I pray every night and last night I felt very close to god and my beliefs! I feel that because I was so in tune with my faith that it made vulnerable! I feel that evil was trying 2 test me! Has anyone out there experinced something like this?????
evy
On September 16, 2010 at 4:35 pm
Hi my name is Evy! I have been having lucid dreams for years where I can not move or speak!!! Last was the worst one cause there was more 2 the dream then normal! In addition to not being able 2 move, I felt like I was being crushed and pressure all over my body and my heart was racing. I at one point was falling into darkness and I was hot! When I woke up it took awhile for me to move my body again. Slowly I was able 2 wiggle my fingers and toes!!! I believe in god and I believe in the devil. I pray every night and last night I felt very close to god and my beliefs! I feel that because I was so in tune with my faith that it made vulnerable! I feel that evil was trying 2 test me! Has anyone out there experinced something like this?????
Omar
On February 15, 2011 at 4:44 pm
Hello, I have had these type of dreams but I had no idea there was a scientific explanation for them. I have been doing some research about dreams and cam a across the LD experience and found pretty interesting and it opened my mind to a broader concept of our mind, I understand now what the movie inception is referring to.last night I had a dream with in a dream in the first one I found myself scared and wanted to wake up and clearly saw how I was trying to have my wife wake me up and after she did I began to explain to her what I had just experienced I even brought up the movie inception. I had another dream later on in which everything seemed so real but I found out I was dreaming and got so exited that I wanted to try to things I would not be able to do when awake and thought of flying but for some reason I could not go forward I was only going back and kept getting tangled in some lines I also thought of changing thing around and changed the color of the roof tops to a beautiful blue. I am christian and like many of you I want to do the things that are pleasing to God, but dreaming is a God given ability and is also a promise Joel 2:28. What I do want to gain from my experiences is to grow spiritually and learn more from Him.