Oculus Rift & Vivid Dreams

Whoa! Glad to see that this thread has been active while I've been away. Still haven't been doing too much with the Rift as of yet so unfortunately I don't have too much to add to the discussion...

I did hear this fascinating Radiolab story about Robert Stickgold using Tetris and Alpine Racer II to study people's dreams.
http://www.radiolab.org/people/robert-stickgold/

Not sure which episode I was listening to exactly but they're probably both worth a listen. ;)

Speaking of dreams and lucid dreams, I've had an idea for a while now for a "lucid dream trainer" game.

Essentially, it would be a game you play with fast-paced story and all sorts of little oddities, basically meant to emulate dreams as closely as possible. Lots of scene changes, unreadable text, malfunctioning electronics, etc, etc. The idea being that you play this game for say, a half-hour or an hour or so a day, and you train yourself to spot all the things wrong with the picture - what's wrong about your environment, why did that thing just change, why are you doing x or y activity, all that stuff.

Even though you're conscious and it's much easier to notice these things while you're awake, I think that it could teach you to watch out for that stuff while sleeping and that it can be a very effective lucid dreaming tool.

I just wish I could make it...

Games are already like dreams, all you would really need to do is to make an app that runs in the background and periodically notify the gamer, regardless of what game they're playing, to do a dream check, this should have the effect of training dream awareness. That's my theory.

If anyone here is interested in achieving a lucid dream then here is an experiment you may want to give a try.

1. While lying down and going to bed at your at your normal time set your alarm to awaken after 5 hours.

2. After the alarm goes off get out of bed but stay relaxed by not doing anything to cause excess stimulation. (no caffeine, no exercise, etc.)

3. Stay up for 30-60 minutes. During this time wear your Rift. Choose something peaceful yet make sure it is something very busy so there is so much going on that your mind is overwhelmed and can't keep track of everything going on around you. Avoid games and such that give a specific task, rather stick to a demo that has you doing nothing except moving around. You want to pay attention to your entire surroundings without focusing on anything rather than focus in one area like a game would require.

4. Go back to bed and go to sleep for at least 3 more hours while maintaining the intention of noticing anything unusual that happens while dreaming!

Perform this routine for every other day. If you do it everyday you becomes accustomed to the odd sleep schedule and it ruins its effectiveness.


If enough of you try it then I can almost guarantee some of you will experience intense lucid dreams or out-of-body experiences. It is a variation of a technique I have used since 1989 to achieve hundreds of lucid dreams and OBE's. (without the Rift of course LOL)

Give a try and see what happens!

Would it work well if I sat in front of a dream machine, binaural beat or ganzfeld for that 60 min?
What about a movie or tv show episode? Or leary's turn on, tune in, drop out video?
Or don juan's cross-eyed walking?

@ nihilian,

I would stick to trying it with the rift. If you haven't received it yet and can't wait then just stay relaxed while awake. (maybe do some relaxing reading)

"360FOV" wrote:
@ nihilian,

I would stick to trying it with the rift. If you haven't received it yet and can't wait then just stay relaxed while awake. (maybe do some relaxing reading)

Man this method works really well, I tried 3-4 times and have already gotten 2 very intense experiences, 1 was the most intense lucid dream I've had so far, the other I'm not sure what it was, might have been a failed OBE.

Thanks!!

Sounds like you are having great success. You must be doing it right!

One more tip I would suggest is to pay close attention after you lay back down. Often you will think you have woke up but in truth the experience seems so real that you have not woke up at all and you are still asleep. Sometimes you experience sleep paralysis where your body can't move but you seem fully awake. If this happens you can move by intending it with your thought instead of using your muscles.

Congratulations, you must be a natural since it worked for you so quickly :-)

Thanks, I've been following the advice in Stephen LaBerge's book for a year now, but only having very sporadic LDs, this seemed to have been the breakthrough I've been waiting for!
I had one of the weirdest dreams in that even after I was certain I'd been dreaming, I couldn't wake up or become lucid.
I thought I might have been stuck in reality, which is actually a dream that is impossible to wake from. So I panicked and ran, while attempting to become lucid. Then it all faded to black and I saw arrays of colored dots spinning around me, that's when I got lucid. It was fantastic. Thanks again for the tips!

If you take an hour off after playing with the rift, or playing any game, there is much lower chance that it will show up in your dreams, or be what might be perceived as the cause of the dreams.

One thing that science noted is that we seem to process and go through scenarios ahead of time and if we have a thing to work out that is on our minds, as we go to sleep, it stays with us. Never go to sleep directly after playing a violent game. do something else for about an hour and allow the mind to re-center, re-adjust, then go to sleep. That is their conclusion and it seems to work as a mundane analysis.

slipping toward the other side of the equation a bit, we find that when 'puttin on the rift', we are adopting a hypnotic physical position, which is echoed in the visual and body stimulus area of things.

We are entering the hind-brain area of base function learning in the same way and areas we activated as very young children. which is partially why we end up in the nausea and headache range. We are activating, utilizing and working in areas of our cranial wiring that have not been messed with in a very long time. So long ago, that they are below what we call the conscious and ego threshold. Autonomous function.

When you add in the hypnotic position of eyes straight ahead with what is a largely unfocused position for the eye's focusing and alignment parameters, you find yourself back in the proto-self stage on/in some important ways.

You are in the hypnotic state, in some ways, so there is a trace (and maybe fully blown after some relaxation considerations) of that in the equation and then the hindbrain re-learn open access state. You are back in the baby carriage again, trying to build a visual (signal and signal/shape recognition) system, a physical (act/feedback) system and a consciousness system. Basically, you are screwing around in your deepest functions, physically, and spiritually, if you will... in a way, and level/intensity that you have not done, since you were a newborn.

The trick is to figure out what to do with it. Knowing this sort of thing is crucial, to me, as one should be aware of what the situation is, so they can go into it with enough foreknowledge to make the correct considerations, or any form of consideration about what is going on. As in: Be aware. Good if you are aware and can deal with it and do something with it, possibly bad if you go into it unawares. A 'make of it what you will' kind of thing, but I think it is best to go into it knowing what the potentials are.