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?
BENEFITS OF LUCID DREAMING VS. THE RISKS
Benefits of lucid dreaming (that’s dreaming while you are aware that you are dreaming) can include a greater connection to yourself and spirit, a greater intuition, a greater creativity, and most of all, a sense of amazement, once you develop this sense, at a distinct feeling of life outside the physical body, which cuts down on fear of death tremendously.
Religions depend on scaring you about what will happen after death, and so, logically, if you aren’t scared any more, they lose their power – a benefit for you, not for them. Risks of lucid dreaming involve having strange experiences in a yet largely unknown realm, and feeling them to be real as far as your five senses goes, yet, knowing they are not real in the 3D world.
These experiences can be both awesome and frightening. Some frightening experiences can involve something attacking you or chasing you. Religious people might be quick to chock it up to demons. It is true that having a difficult time in 3D life may attract negative things to you, that could manifest more in the dream world.
WHAT I REMEMBER MOST
What I remember most about lucid dreaming is flying through lush valleys, flying above the world, flying up through electric lines and up past rainbows and clouds. I remember flying past trees and touching the leaves to make sure they were real. I remember climbing up colored stairs, but at the bottom before I began, touching the grass to make sure it was real. I remember flying through a desert holding hands with two others, feeling the wind blow my clothing. I remember being out in the rain in a dream and feeling the rain splatter on me. These experiences have given me a sense of awe and freedom.
CONCLUSION
I’ve had both negative and positive experiences in the realm of lucid dreaming. My conclusion is that I regard dreaming with a mixture of awe, curiosity, and caution, and until I have more information, will suspend making a decision. Each culture seems to have their own spin on it. Are they all right? Are a few right? Or are none right? How is one to know except to dream and to make up their own mind?
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User Comments
Nicole 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.
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