The Mystery

Human brain effects of DMT assessed via EEG-fMRI - This placebo-controlled multimodal [functional MRI-electroencephalography (fMRI-EEG)] human neuroimaging study offers the most comprehensive view of the acute brain action of psychedelics to date. It assessed N,N-Dimethyltryptamine (DMT), a psychedelic that generates immersive altered conscious experience with no diminishment of wakefulness. Global hyperconnectivity, collapsed hierarchical organization and reduced intranetwork integrity, was observed (fMRI) that correlated with decreased alpha power and increased entropy (EEG). Regions with the densest expression of serotonin 2A receptors as determined via independent positron emission tomography (PET) data, were most affected by DMT, and overlapped with regions related to evolved cognitive functions such as language and semantic processing. These results support the notion that psychedelics impact a principal axis of brain organization, and relatedly, the quality of human conscious e...

The newest findings in physics can be important without affecting anyone’s daily life. But there has been some recent speculation that goes to the very heart of human existence. The speculation revolves around the proposition that the universe might have a memory. There is talk about very technical things like gravitational memory and black hole memory that seem far removed from daily life. Human interest enters, however, when you think about the possibility that we live in a conscious universe. Memory, after all, is part of being conscious. But both are invisible and impossible to measure. You might think that cosmic memory is 'dark', meaning that it is out of sight but hugely powerful, nevertheless. The discovery of so-called dark matter and dark energy caused the standard model of the universe to implode. The very existence of stars and galaxies might depend on dark matter and energy, yet both are invisible and impossible to measure directly—they are both knowable by what th...

Robert Waggoner is President-Elect of the International Association for the Study of Dreams (IASD) and a summa cum laude graduate of Drake University with a degree in Psychology. He has co-edited the quarterly journal, 'Lucid Dreaming Experience', and authored a remarkable book titled 'Lucid Dreaming: Gateway to the Inner Self'. Why are you interested in lucid dreaming? What do you use it for? Lucid dreaming was like my own, personal 'magic kingdom'. Flying through the sky, playing with dream figures, creating adventures - it felt fascinating to do this while aware in the dream state. Lucid dreaming became a free ticket to a kind of Hogwarts School of Wizardry. As I learned the principles of how to move and manipulate the dream state, my adventures really took off. Over the years, I began investigating lucid dreaming's potential deeply. Through experimentation, I realized lucid dreaming could be used to get 'unknown' information; apparently from the ...

Every night around the world, hundreds of thousands of people try to induce a lucid dream. Some succeed. Many fail. But either way, the quest continues to experience that extraordinary Zen-like moment of suddenly realizing, “This is a dream!” Why do lucid dreamers persist in this quest? What value do they find in lucid dreaming? A 2012 survey of lucid dreamers by researcher Melanie Schaedlich suggests that present day lucid dreamers see several practical applications to lucid dreaming, but tend to use this special state to have fun. Her research abstract reports the following: “Our survey included 301 lucid dreamers who filled out an online questionnaire. The most frequent application (81.4%) was having fun, followed by changing a bad dream or nightmare into a pleasant one (63.8%), solving problems (29.9%), getting creative ideas or insights (27.6%) and practicing skills [to improve them in one’s waking life](21.3%).” For more experienced lucid dreamers, however, lucid dreaming seems a...

Waggoner and McCready broaden the approach to lucidity way beyond simply achieving it. They present lucidity not as the result of techniques or the ability to fly when you want to in a dream. Rather, they raise with the reader an inquiry into of the awareness of consciousness and its role in 'waking' and 'dreaming' reality. As a longtime meditator, I realized I can go through this doorway to get to lucidity and that truly, dreaming is about playing with the web of consciousness and its interrelatedness with all that is! Waggoner writes that through his practice of lucid dreaming, he discovered a 'consistent framework of rules and principles beneath lucid dreaming events' and that this 'hidden framework suggested that dreaming and the unconscious actually followed rules and had structure'. Dreaming is not just 'random firing of neurons'. In fact, he explores the idea that there is an intelligent awareness that exists behind our dreams and that thi...

Lucid dreaming refers to realizing within a dream that you are dreaming. It is an ancient spiritual technique (used in Buddhist dream yoga, Taoism, Sufism, and numerous native wisdom traditions). However, the scientific evidence for lucid dreaming emerged in 1980, which makes lucid dreaming a fascinating subject, since this ancient spiritual technique has achieved scientific acceptance and investigation. In the video link below, Robert Waggoner examines the experiments which provided evidence for lucid dreaming, along with the more ancient view of lucid dreaming as a pathway to accelerated spiritual growth. He also examines the use of lucid dreaming by modern day psychotherapists to resolve recurring nightmares in people with PTSD, along with lucid dreaming's potential use in areas such as accessing inner creativity, exploring the unconscious, and spiritual practice. In 1975, Robert Waggoner taught himself a simple technique to lucid dream or become consciously aware of dreaming, w...

Quantum effects in physics have been used by new agers and others to argue for all kinds of silly things concerning consciousness and human behavior, but it has to be said that at least these folks have tried to come to grips with philosophical issues of this science. Quantum information theory in particular, which sees the basic constituents of physical reality as bits of information, carries huge philosophical implications for psychology because the Mind is essentially an information processing system. Yet I can find no mainstream psychology reviews of quantum information theory at all. Even a cursory understanding of this new science suggests that the mind simply cannot be understood in terms of the old mechanical materialist dogmas that holds so many psychologists in thrall and unable to see facts that present themselves before their very eyes. We need to, as the philosopher Daniel Dennett (himself enthralled by mechanical materialism and speaking about religion rather than his fav...