Memory and Reason in Lucid Dreams: A Personal Observation

Abstract

There is a need to pursue the question of whether the lucid dreamer has the same ability to reason and the same access to memory that he or she has when awake, which is implied when lucid dreaming is spoken of as “waking consciousness occurring during the dream.” Tart (Altered States of Consciousness, 1969, p. 116) observed that Frederik van Eeden “possessed all of his normal intellectual faculties” when dreaming lucidly. Tart again (“From Spontaneous Event to Lucidity: A Review of Attempts to Consciously Control Nocturnal Dreaming”, in Handbook of Dreams: Research. Theories and Applications, edited by B.B. Wolman, 1979, p. 255) says that the consciousness of the lucid dreamer has the clarity, the lucidity of his waking state. His consciousness is “practically identical to his waking state. Then Stephen LaBerge in his Psychology Today article on lucid dreams (January, 1981) wrote that the lucid dreamer “can reason clearly, remember freely.”