Lucid Dreaming as an Exploration of Human Consciousness

I had a lucid dream once, when I was 10. In the dream, I was walking through my house. There were a bunch of pink balloons. Naturally, I grabbed one, and that’s when the laws of physics took a vacation. My feet lifted off the ground. I was flying. And then I thought to myself: Hey, wait a minute, man. This is a dream. Once you realize you’re in a dream? Oh, it’s game on. You’re the gamemaster, the architect, the novelist. It’s amazing stuff. (So amazing, in fact, that there exists a whole subculture of people who “train” to become lucid dreamers.) I could fly, I could eat cotton-candy-flavored spaghetti, I could call up Eric Kandel and chat with him about the neurobiology of leprechauns.

But here’s the real kicker: Who was “I” in that moment? Was it the same me who’s writing this? Or was it some version of me, a hologram of my waking self? Or was it something different, something in between?

Lucid dreaming, the state of being aware that you are dreaming while still inside the dream, could help explain consciousness from a fresh perspective. EEG and fMRI studies show that while we’re lucid dreaming and busy doing air acrobatics in our heads, the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex — the part of the brain responsible for self-awareness and executive function — is all of a sudden wide awake. Meanwhile, other parts of the brain are getting a good night’s rest. Lucid dreaming is a hybrid state where the brain exhibits both waking-like and dream-like activity simultaneously.

From a philosophical angle, lucid dreaming poses a riddle. If I can reason and reflect while dreaming, does my conscious self exist separately from the physical world? In waking life, our awareness is shaped by sensory input and interaction with reality. But in a lucid dream, the world is self-generated—it’s crafted entirely by the mind. If consciousness can exist independently of external stimuli, does that suggest it’s more of an internal construct than a response to what’s actually going on?

And, to go even further down the rabbit hole, this all raises a question that makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up: Is waking life fundamentally different from a dream, or are both just manifestations of the brain’s ability to construct reality? I’ll let you ruminate on that one.