Inception movie and real lucid dreaming
Oct 20, 2021
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The movie Inception revolves around a guy, Dom (Leonardo DiCaprio), who is specialized in entering someone else’s dream state to steal or implement an idea. Sounds radical? Movie is an awesome complex high-order storyline, packed with good acting and an epic soundtrack.
Related to lucid dreaming?
I dedicate this review to exploring ways in which this movie, either explicitly or implicitly, attempts to refer to lucid dreaming. Though the term “lucid dreaming” is not mentioned in the movie, it is clear that the director (Christopher Nolen) uses lucid dreaming as a vehicle to convey his brilliant story concept. Somewhat disappointing to me, however: the movie doesn’t go much further than explaining and demonstrating the depth of lucid dreaming other than allowing a few characters to say that they know that they are dreaming. Only two to three scenes of dream control and some semi-Reality Checks. Still, especially for the second part of the movie, I had a great time watching Inception and enjoyed getting a taste of how Christopher gives an exciting twist to the reality of our dreams.
Lie 1: Dream time moves faster than waking time.
In the movie, it is conveyed that we can have dreams that last up to days, weeks, or even years, though we actually only dream about a few hours in waking reality. This is not true. Dream scientists reason that dreams should approximate the time flow of waking reality since dreams function as helpful simulations of the real world in which we rehearse experiences or re-consolidate memories of waking life so that we could more effectively function (and survive) in the world. Our dreaming mind processes experiences as fast as it does when we are awake. Even though those processes are much more creative.
An interesting experiment was conducted by Stephen LaBerge, a renowned lucid dream researcher, who instructed lucid dreamers to count up to 10 while being hooked up to various sophisticated electronic devices while they were lucid dreaming. Dream researchers on the outside (meaning, in waking reality), would observe the counting of those lucid dreamers while they were lucid dreaming (by communicating through specific pre-instructed ocular motions that researchers could recognize). Stephen’s study found that all lucid dreamers counted to 10 as fast and regular as any dream researcher or person in waking reality (meaning, counting in seconds): 10 seconds in our lucid dreams is equal to 10 seconds in waking reality.
Still, according to YoruX some (lucid) dreamers claim to have had dreams that lasted up to years, while in waking life they only lasted up to a few minutes. Interesting. A highly probable explanation lies in the re-interpretation of dreams after we wake up. And is much like movies by which a director changes the way a story is told by changing the flow of time: flash-forwards. Like in a movie, if we dream up one scene in which it is summer and in the next scene there is snowfall, we could mistakenly reason (either while we are dreaming or after we wake up) that 6 months must have passed for summer turn into winter. While actually, only a few seconds have passed. It is the illusion of flash-forwards. Many variations on this theme are possible.
Lie 2: Dreams are made up by different layers of unconsciousness.
We vividly dream only during certain and specific stages of sleep, called REM: Rapid Eye Movement sleep. In this stage, our brain is highly active and is able to generate vivid simulations of waking reality without any external input (though some input from the outside world could be subtly integrated). During REM, our brains show just one kind of brain activity (based on EEG). In REM, we cannot “travel” deeper into more slow-wave brain activity like dreams. We cycle through different stages of sleep throughout the night, after each REM period. But in those non-REM sleep periods, our dreams are far less vivid and far more thought-like. If dream scientists wake up subjects from non-REM dreams, they have far less to no dream recall (highly contrasted by subjects awakened from REM sleep who successfully recall vivid and immersive dreams in more than 80% of the cases).
Lie 3: Dream sharing/entering is possible.
No, of course not. Again, in functional evolutionary terms, it would serve no specific advantage to our survival (yet :-P). Speaking in physiological terms, our brains have no wireless way in which to share REM brain activity and communicate it with someone else. Cases of dream-sharing are likely related to re-interpretations of people’s dreams after they wake up and tell each other about their dreams (in which they unintentionally and unconsciously integrate each other's dream elements to suit their case). Or cases in which people have had a shared and similar waking life experience, and thus dream dreams that are closely related to each other.
More realistically (though still very far beyond the horizon), it is more likely that we would invent devices by which we can extract neuro-psychomotoric signals from a dreaming brain of someone acting and behaving in a (lucid) dream and a project that specific neurological activity onto a moving and behaving human model. We could attempt to make recordings of someone else’s dream. If in the next decade's dream science attracts the right kind of young and bright minds, we could enjoy such dream recording devices maybe even in our lifetime.
Lie 4: A spinning top can tell you whether you are dreaming.
No, not quite. In dreams, our reality is constructed upon our own expectations and learned experiences (plus unconscious processing). Our own psychology and expectations govern the way our (lucid) dreams unfold. In this way, lucid dreamers intentionally use this knowledge to their advantage by applying their expectations to direct their dreams to anything their imagination can conceive. This also means that our dreams are biased and self-confirming. In the case of Dom, his spinning top would serve as no guarantee whether he is dreaming. It depends entirely on his expectation whether the spinning top would keep spinning or would fall. Imagine a case in which Dom is in fact dreaming: a) if he knows he is dreaming, his expectations would make it very likely for the spinning top to keep spinning because it expects it to keep spinning, b) if he thinks he is awake (while in fact, he is dreaming), the spinning top would be very likely to fall, simply because he (either consciously or unconsciously) expects so. So, whether he is dreaming or not does matter for his spinning-top … it is all about his expectations.
In the movie, I understand that the spinning top he used was intended to know whether he was in fact in someone else’s dream, not his own. Still, this technique seems shaky. But hey, it is just a movie, right?
A more grounded and fool-proof technique to check whether you are dreaming right now is making purposeful use of your expectations: in a dream, your expectations affect dream reality in a very direct and visible manner, but in waking reality they (to a certain extend) do not. So if you intentionally apply your expectations to purposefully change reality … you know when you are dreaming when you discover that you succeed. If you don’t succeed in changing reality, you are most probably awake. This approach has a catch though. Dream control is not immediate once you are lucid. Lucid dreamers need to learn how to direct dreams even once they are lucid. It is not like lucidity automatically enables dream control. Theoretically, it does, but practically many novice lucid dreamers struggle to apply dream control. Why? Well, simply because we are not familiar with lucid dreaming … our minds still perceive dream reality as waking reality and don’t expect us to be able to bend and direct reality in that way. So merely intending to change a certain element, in reality, is not a fool-proof method to check whether you are currently dreaming. Many novice lucid dreamers fail to change elements in their first lucid dreams, even though they know it is all just a dream.
Physiologically, dreams differ from waking life in just one other aspect. If you would compare a dreaming brain with a brain that is “awake”, a specific brain area in the prefrontal cortex is quite inactive in the dream state. This is part of the brain that is related to working memory. In dreams, our working memory is quite deficient. In order to check whether we are dreaming right now, we could make use of this physiological fact. By combining the power of our expectations and using it in the context of working memory tasks, we can know with 99% certainty whether we are currently dreaming or not.
A proper Reality Check:
1) Take a look at a sentence of text and read it.
Highly detailed and complex information that involves working memory to hold it.
2) Close your eyes and vividly imagine (visualize) a different sentence. Read it in your mind.
3) Intent that once you open your eyes, that the piece of text has changed according to your newly imagined (“expected”) sentence.
Make use of your expectations that govern dream reality, but not waking reality.
4) Open your eyes and check whether the sentence has changed.
… if it has changed, you are dreaming right now. But it has not. You are not dreaming. If you do these Reality Checks more often, chances are you incorporate the habit and do one in your dreams; resulting into a lucid dream. This is one of the most basic ways to induce lucid dreams.
Lie 5 (suggestive): Lucid dreaming makes you lose touch with reality.
Lucid dreaming teaches one exactly the opposite, to get in touch with reality. Most people are never “in touch with reality” while they are dreaming: they think they are awake while they are actually dreaming. Lucid dreamers are not addicted to sleep, they love being conscious, to be in touch with reality … even while they are asleep. Lucid dreaming teaches you to take responsibility of the reality you create each and every day of your life. As one can become lucid in a dream, one can also become lucid in the waking state. Get to know the ways in which your everyday life expectations govern how your life unfolds. Not by controlling other people or external events, but by controlling one’s own expectations and inner belief systems. Or as Morpheus would say in The Matrix movie, “Free your mind”.
Truth: External signals can enter a dream.
True. In some cases, external signals from waking reality could enter the dream experience. A popular case is one in which the sound of your alarm clock is integrated into your dream when you are slowly waking up. Whether gravity, like in the movie, would also be integrated in someone else’s dream experience is likely. But in any case, not as stable and predictable as Christopher communicates in his Inception movie.
Anyway, Inception is certainly a movie to watch.
Tags: English