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ABSTRACT: Despite the fact that lucid dream research and transpersonal psychology have common grounds, overlapping interests and a great potential to contribute to each other, the two fields over the recent decades evolved rather separately. The present article aims to renew the mutual dialogue by introducing the recent advancements of lucid dream research to the transpersonal community, discussing the relevance and providing some common directions for the future. It is argued that lucid dreaming is a transpersonal experience in itself, which can be mapped and explored, and also used as a gateway to facilitate further transpersonal and mystical experiences. Lucid dreaming can be used therapeutically as a tool for transpersonal psychotherapy or as a spiritual practice. Finally, it may help to gain some insights into the nature of consciousness. Combining empirical findings from lucid dream research with transpersonal frameworks might be a fruitful approach to advance the understanding of farther reaches of human dream nature.
KEYWORDS: lucid dream research, lucid dreaming, transpersonal psychology
Transpersonal psychology is concerned with studying transpersonal experiences - the ones in which the sense of identity or self extends beyond the individual or personal to encompass wider aspects of humankind, life, psyche or cosmos (Walsh & Vaughan, 1993). One of such experiences is lucid dreaming - dreaming in which the dreamer becomes aware that he or she is dreaming (LaBerge, 1985). From the onset of lucidity, the habitual dream is transcended and the dreamer starts to perceive the dream as a model of reality and not as the reality in itself. The dreamer can further recognize that he or she is not only the subjective participant in the dream (the "actor" in the dream plot) but also the wider awareness behind the dream which encompasses the whole dream world and is directing the dream itself (the "director"). Thus, lucid dreaming can be considered as an inherently transpersonal state of the mind. Yet, surprisingly, lucid dreaming is a very much overlooked topic within transpersonal psychology. For example, in The Journal of Transpersonal Psychology, the flagship of the transpersonal community, since its inception in 1969 up to the present, there was only a single paper published on lucid dreaming (Walsh & Vaughan, 1992). Lucid dreaming has not been explicitly included in the...