Are Lucid Dreams Universal? Two Unequivocal Cases of Lucid Dreaming Among Han Chinese University Students in Beijing, 1985

Abstract

As one of us recently argued (Dentan, in press a, b), many phenomena in nonWestern societies resemble lucid dreaming, but the ethnographic literature includes relatively few specific cases of such phenomena which are unambiguously both lucid and dreams. Much of the ethnographic material comes from societies with elaborated “culture pattern dreams,” highly desired ASCs often involving a degree of conscious control (e.g., Harner, 1973: Noll, 1983). Accounts of lucidity in such culture pattern dreams may stem from informants recasting non—lucid ASCs into stereotyped local narrative formats whose conventions mimic lucidity. Conversely, bearing dream accounts in such formats may predispose listeners to lucid dreaming (see, e.g., Devereux, 1957).