I had a wicked odd experience last night. I think I had a lucid dream, but I’m not really sure as my mental imagery is so minimal. I decided to meditate in that “dream”. When I tried to open my eyes they didn’t open at first, and when they did, I had the feeling of waking up.
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Replying to @NeuroYogacara
1 I'm not expert, but have some experience & a little academic acquaintance w ways sleep & meditation can interact. You may know, what persons like Stephen LaBerge named "lucid" dreaming, a generation prior Transcendental Meditation folks were referring to as "witnessing" dreams.
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Replying to @bodhidave3 @NeuroYogacara
2 TM pointed out that while you don't have to be a meditator to witness dreams, it tends to occur more often if you are. And TM of course draws on Vedanta, which describes a kind of witness as a 4th consciousness process, in addition to wake, dream, and dreamless sleep.
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Replying to @bodhidave3 @NeuroYogacara
3 And both TM and Vedanta speak of the prospect of witnessing (being lucid within) dreamless sleep, too. I've had glimpses of that in having the Buddhist form jhāna sequence occurring during dreamless sleep (including sometimes waking in the middle of the sequence).
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Replying to @bodhidave3 @NeuroYogacara
4 And I've had dreams in which I sat down to meditate, and then became lucid within that meditation-in-a-dream.
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Replying to @bodhidave3 @NeuroYogacara
5 You likely also know that when we're dreaming the body pretty much effects a bodily paralysis, so we don't enact what we dream physically. Such paralysis can carry-over into hypnopompic states, where we're "partly" awake, but may not be able to move.
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Replying to @bodhidave3 @NeuroYogacara
6/6 For myself, a marked benefit of such experiences has been a heightened appreciation for how the waking sense of self and identity is a generated event. That lends support towards "letting go" during meditation, in knowing that our conscious thought process is a "display."
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Replying to @bodhidave3 @NeuroYogacara
"witness as a 4th consciousness process" This concept of witness is seldom mentioned in these discussions yet I feel it is intimately connected to practice. When seated and focused my mind wanders some "witness" notes the wandering mind and brings it back to the practice.
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The University of Wisconsin Madison's Sleep Lab is investigating the relationship between meditation and lucid dreaming. I was recruited to participate in their long-term meditators study in 2018, which entailed several nights of EEG. Hoping those results will be published soon.
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