The Lucid Dreamer
Malcolm Godwin
The first time I ever heard about lucid dreaming was an article in The National Enquirer (back when it was still fun to read) and you know how factual that can be. Fortunately, I recovered.
In a lucid dream, the sleeper is conscious of the fact that they are dreaming and furthermore can take steps and maneuver the dream any which way they wish. Godwin uses the dreaming state as an analogy for the state of existence, quoting from a number of "enlightened" people who have all declared at one time or another that the path to enlightenment begins when one realizes that existence is a dream.
There are some hokey spots, though:
"[Heisenberg] believed that this uncertainty arose because of the unavoidable disturbance of the object by the very process of measurement. Since those days, this idea has grown, and consequent experiments suggest that consciousness actually does appear to change the state of matter."
Whoa. Was that a jump? You tell me. Nevertheless, this book is really terrific if you want to understand the nature of dreaming and particularly lucid dreaming better.
