I opened my eyes and sat up in bed. My head was heavy with sleep, but something felt off. A soft, yellow glow filled the room—not from a lamp, but from the walls themselves. It was hazy, unfocused, as if the light had no true source.
That was strange. I never slept with the light on.
I turned to check the time. The clock—normally a solid anchor of reality—had melted into a warped, unreadable mess. My pulse quickened. Something wasn’t right.
Instinct kicked in. I performed a reality check, pressing a finger into the palm of my opposite hand. If it passed through, I was dreaming. If not, this was real life.
For a moment, nothing happened. Relief started to wash over me—until a hazy blue aura shimmered around my finger. A second later, it sank straight through my palm.
My heart pounded. I had done it—I was in a lucid dream! But before I knew it, the dream world started crumbling. I fought to stabilize the dream, taking deep breaths and calming myself down—but it was too late.
Everything went black.
I woke up again.
I sat up in bed, breath unsteady, scanning my surroundings. This time, the strange light was gone. The room was normal. I performed another reality check, but my finger met solid skin. No blue haze. No dream. This was real life.
—
The idea of sitting up in bed twice—without ever lying back down—was absurd. This phenomenon, known as a false awakening, occurs when you believe you've woken up, only to realize you're still dreaming. It was during this experience, at 12 years old, that I induced my first lucid dream. I had diligently practiced reality checks, mindfulness throughout the day, and various induction techniques. And the moment that I had my first lucid dream, I found myself truly questioning the nature of the mind and its mysterious capabilities.
Every night, we fabricate entire realities. We step into them fully, convinced they are real, only to wake up and let them slip away. Every single night. Isn’t that a scary thought? That our brains are capable of entering a state in which they are completely tricked into thinking a fantasy world is real? The moment our prefrontal cortex powers down, we stop questioning, stop doubting, and simply accept—even the impossible—as truth.
It’s a terrifying thought.
And yet, it’s beautiful.
The notion of sleep itself is fascinating. It’s such a normal part of life that it isn’t often questioned. Yet if you look at it a little more abstractly, it becomes somewhat strange. We’ve evolved to require a state in which we become completely still, unresponsive, and temporarily lose awareness of the world around us. From a natural selection standpoint, it’s bizarre that we’ve evolved to spend hours each night in a state of such vulnerability.
Sleep is often thought of as a time when we fully shut down our bodies. The paralysis we experience during sleep and the concurrent loss of consciousness is naturally what leads us to that conclusion. One could even draw a parallel between sleep and death.
But sleep is far from inactive. Our brain continues firing and processing, and during REM sleep, it operates at nearly the same level as when we’re awake. And it’s not just the brain—our body’s sensory system, though dulled, remains engaged. A loud noise, a sudden touch, or sunlight creeping through the window can wake us up in an instant.
Lucid dreams serve as proof of how active we are during sleep. With practice, we can train our awareness to become conscious within dreams—breaking into a world our body naturally fights to keep separate from waking reality.
What truly amazes me is the groundbreaking work done by researchers at the lab I previously interned at, where they established two-way communication between the sleeping and the awake. Essentially, participants, while dreaming, used pre-determined eye movements to signal their awareness and respond to questions within a dream. Once they became lucid, they would move their eyes left to right in a specific pattern to confirm they were in a dream. Then, when asked simple math problems like 8 - 6, they answered with a series of eye movements—Left Right Left Right—signifying the number 2.
In the image above, the phrase “I recognized this as a signal from the outside…” sent chills down my spine. It felt like witnessing the first form of contact with an alien world. Lucid dreamers are like astronauts, venturing into an uncharted frontier—not to explore distant planets, but to navigate the subconscious. Yet, unlike space, this world isn’t external—it exists entirely within us. We are, in essence, sending people deep into their own subconscious projections, hoping to unravel the mysteries of our own cognition.
I believe this research can be pushed even further. By refining our communication techniques, we could create more structured experiments, allowing us to interact with the dreaming brain in real-time and gain deeper insights into this physiological state.
Due to my inclination toward research, you may have noticed that I tend to view sleep and dreams through a scientific lens. But this view, while valuable, can be limiting. Lucid dreams are not just a tool for research—they can hold deep personal significance as well.
For one, lucid dreaming gives you complete freedom. You can do anything you imagine, experiencing the pure joy of limitless possibility.
But beyond that, lucid dreams can serve as a source of creative inspiration. Often, dreams present surreal, vivid scenes that feel just out of reach upon waking—fragments of ideas that could be brought to life. Just this morning, I dreamt of a beautiful library, one with green carpet floors, luxurious wooden railings, massive windows, and staircases that twisted and intertwined in mysterious ways. A vague description is all I can offer you, simply because of the fleeting nature of a dream—that’s all I remember. But what if I had been lucid? What if I could have fully explored this fantastical library that my brain had generated, experienced it consciously, committed it to memory, and later recreated it through drawing or writing when I woke up?
This is the closest image I could find to capture what I saw. Yet, even though my memory is fading, I know it doesn’t come close to what I truly experienced. And just like that, a beautiful creation of my mind slipped through the cracks, lost to time.
I can’t help but think of how our dreams function like our brain’s own generative AI models. Except these models are not just trained on text—they’re trained on our memories, thoughts, and experiences. We can translate our thoughts through text and feed them into a model - after all, text is a tangible, physical thing. But our brain’s dream engine doesn’t need an interface. It’s trained on our thoughts, experiences, and memories themselves, as entities of their own, with no translation required. Now we could discuss what exactly a thought or memory is physically, but we can leave that for another entry.
Lucid dreaming isn't just an escape; it’s a way to bridge the gap between imagination and reality, between the subconscious and the conscious. The more we learn to navigate that space, the more we might discover—not just about dreams, but about ourselves.
Beyond personal exploration, lucid dreaming offers something even more profound. It provides a unique lens through which we can better understand not just our own minds, but the nature of consciousness itself. A bold claim, I know. But I believe they hold immense potential as a research tool for exploring awareness. What fascinates me most is the moment of lucidity, the transition from unconscious dreaming to conscious recognition.
We still know so little about consciousness and how it works. While lucid dreaming won’t give us all the answers, perhaps something crucial happens in that instant of transition that can offer insight. What exactly changes in the brain at that moment? Is the shift between unconscious and conscious awareness in a dream any different from the transitions we experience when falling asleep, waking up, or even undergoing anesthesia? I mean, we’re able to control this transition, which makes it different. But does that control create a physiological difference in how the brain shifts states?
I hope I’ve at least sparked some curiosity about the depth and mystery of lucid dreaming. There’s still so much left to explore—this is just one of many questions I find myself thinking about. Stay tuned for more.
Amazing topic Neil. very informative yet easy to read post and captivating. I especially liked the para with AI models and dreams. very thought provoking.
Neil, I want to add a caveat to potential practitioners that lucid dreaming can be dangerous. In guided meditation and breathing exercises, each dreamer is paired with a sitter who provides safety, and an experienced person is available. Anything which is powerful carries an element of danger. In particular, if sleep paralysis is circumvented, harm could occur to the sleeper or others. Yet Coleridge's Xanadu shows why one might choose to do it.