In the world of your dreams, you can build an entire world, an entire universe, an entire society governed by your every whim. While lucid dreaming you are a god in your own mind, free to create or destroy at will. You can train yourself to recognize when you are dreaming, but sometimes a little technological help can speed you towards the path of becoming an old testament god. [Will] over at revolt lab built a set of lucid dreaming goggles so he could take control of his own dreams.
To induce a lucid dream, [Will] took a pair of safety goggles and attached red LEDs to shine into his closed eyes. A simple circuit was constructed out of an ATtiny85 that blinks the LEDs two hours after being turned on. The idea is these LEDs will be noticed by the user during REM sleep and they will realize they’re still sleeping. After that, it’s basically Inception.
It is possible to induce lucid dreaming through psychological and not technological hacks; just asking yourself, ‘am I dreaming’ throughout the day may be enough to make a holodeck in your mind while you’re sleeping. You can check out a video of [Will] wearing his goggles after the break.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R6x0mFyoJZo&w=470]
I’ve been working on a similar project, called the Hypna Go Go. The hardware is similar to Will’s, but I think my firmware is worth a look, because it uses virtually no battery power during idle (it uses the AVR’s power-down sleep mode). The current draw is so low that I didn’t bother to add a slider power switch, which is convenient. Those coin cell batteries can get expensive!
Did he come up with this idea after reading Autopilot?
They have made and sold these in the back of scout magazines and from Sharper Image/Skymall since before I was born(I’m 28). Theoretically you can do it with a 556, some resistors/caps, a battery, and a pair of LEDs.
555’s where my first thought.
I remember seeing these in the back of magazines as a kid. I always wondered if it worked. 🙂
honestly it really does work.
Lucid dreaming is neat. The sad thing is that the few occasions I succeeded, I got too excited of the realization and woke up.
I do relaxation meditation and over the course of the last twenty years I have pretty much perfected controlling my dreams. within ten minutes ( i have a stop watch that will beep at this point) i can summn up any locale in the world even if I have never been there. I like this build, simple t the point and inexpensive. now add in some binaural sounds.
Also interesting (an oldie): http://makezine.com/10/brainwave/
– I tried this also a few years ago, but tied a micro to a heart rate monitor watch so it could watch for heart rate changes that usually go along with REM sleep, and then flash some LED’s mounted in swim goggles (swimming goggles were a little less in the way when sleeping). Cool project, I might have to take another run at this 🙂
I took the red pill. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_pill_and_blue_pill
Mine has a motion detector that is sensitive enough to pick up the heartbeat and can thus easily detect rapid eye movements. It is connected to my laptop which plays an audio track when it detects that I am dreaming. I post the raw logs along with a printout of the most interesting minute to LSDBase every other day. I am currently teaching myself to blink in Morse Code patterns in hope that I can transcribe directly from the dream world one day.
Hmm, might have to check this out. I’ve been an active lucid dreamer in the past, but at times I’ve found myself becoming more and more concerned that I’m dreaming during waking hours, since the dream-state can be so realistic.
Yep it can get really confusing.
I went through a long period of lucid dreaming and eventually cut back because of the dangers and confusion.
After spending so much time lucid dreaming, experiencing things that seem just as real as the waking world, I found that when slightly odd things happened in the waking world, I started to doubt whether I was awake or asleep. Throw in a few beers and the brain just isn’t sharp enough to tell the difference.
We’re all just bits in a huge simulation.
(ala Simulacron 3 by Daniel Galouye)
Tried this a number of years ago but not for lucid dreaming but to deal with insomnia and it helped, I used some safety glasses and LEDs wired to LPT port on an old computer running software called BrainScan2 , neat stuff. You can do quite a bit with this type of setup with the right frequencies.
http://www.hackcanada.com/homegrown/wetware/brainwave/index.html
Lucid dreaming is EASY, no equipment required!
When awake, get in the habit of doing double-takes at written things a few times a day. For instance, after you see a street sign, look away and then look back. When it reads the same, tell yourself, “OK so I’m awake.” In your dreams, nothing is fixed, so words won’t be there or will be different when you look back. That’s a “dream sign.” When you’ve made yourself aware that you’re dreaming, the key is to go with it and not stall out and wake up. The first few times you’re likely to stall and wake up, but once you’re in the habit of doing double-takes on written things, that realization that you’re dreaming will happen naturally.
Additionally, you might get in the habit of waking up after a multiple of 90 minutes to interrupt a dream. If you avoid moving or looking around, you’ll be able to remember a lot– ask yourself what you were just doing, and try remembering details because some will be STRANGE. Maybe make a note of it. Those are dream signs too, and being aware of them in your waking consciousness will make you aware of them when you’re dreaming.
Happy dreaming!
What nonsense, I can easily dream static things, in fact there are things I re-dream, sometimes after years.
And if I really had the idea in my head that a sign has to be static for a dream it would most probably be that.
No, it actually works for little things. I’ll look at my watch in a dream, look again a second time and it’s always way different. So, of course you can have static things in a dream, but this technique works really well.
Also, if you feel like you’re going to wake up start twirling, arms out, like a kid. Seems to help.
I have used this method with some success. I have a small double sided card I carry with me with the phrase “Reality is what you make of it” printed on both sides. I will look at it and flip it a few times as a reality check. This has worked for me to realize I’m dreaming and turn it into a lucid dream, YMMV.
I don’t get it. I never heard about lucid dreaming but according to what I read on wikipedia, it sounds like my usual experience when dreaming. Out of body levitation is rare but it happened to me some times. I sincerely don’t remember if I’m aware that I’m dreaming during sleep, is this fundamental for a lucid dream?
I always have full control over my dreams that usually go around a certain theme. My latest dreams are about some kind of transformers robots, except I’m inside one controlling it to fight other evil robots. Because I’m in control of the dream I always find a way to overcome obstacles put in the dream. For example, lately I’ve been rewinding a lot parts in my dreams that I don’t like. Is this lucid dreaming? Please let me know because now I’m curious..
Even in your regular dreams, you’ll find that you magically backstep or just skip the part you don’t like.
If you’re lucid in your dream then your mind should be quite similar to how it is during the waking day. You should be able to talk to yourself as usual and think, even beyond what’s going on in the dream.
As the author noted, a good habit to get into is to ask yourself throughout the day (just in your head0, “am i dreaming?”, looking twice at a watch/clock/cellphone at the same time is useful since in dreams the display of that device will often have changed on the second look, giving you a hint that you’re asleep.
An easy way to trigger lucid dreaming without drugs of technology is to set your alarm for 1 hour before you’d normally wake up. Once the alarm goes off, tell yourself that it was set to trigger a lucid dream and then go back to sleep. This action of waking up just before you’re meant to and then going back to sleep is notorious for triggering lucid dreams.
If you want to add a bit of pizzazz to your dreams, start taking a B6 vitamin.
I start and stop with lucid dreaming. I find that anymore than 2 weeks of daily lucid dreaming just tires me out too much.
Cool I’m going to try that out. There is an android app called Lucid Dreaming that detects when you are in the REM sleep then plays a soft sound to let you know you are dreaming.
Connect it to something that can monitoring eyemovement behind closed eyes(REM), or brainwaves. Maybe make a DIY MRI:)
Yeah that would work.
Maybe detect eye movement through the lid using the positional difference between red and infrared light..
if sleep is like charging a battery,
what happens when we use our mind as a (true) U.P.S. ???
like if we took this effect (tried it) and apply it in some deeper and more trance-like way???
would we die?
become supercharged and thus telepathic?
or just crazy?
they say (i think) normal dreaming all happens in a matter of seconds in real life
(hours of dreams fitting into 1 second of real time)
if we are dreaming and thus
“outside the relm of time”,
could we do things that normally rely on time???
555’s & 556’s can only pulse at one, continuous rate by themselves. The point of these meditation, lucid dream, brain machines, etc. is to go through an automated series of changing pulse rates to gradually change the user’s brain frequencies. That’s why the ATTiny series of micro controllers is ideal. Our CEREBROHM Mind Goggles (available soon from Sherpa Of Science) use the smallest in the series, ATTiny25, to help the user perceive times and places he/she has never experienced!