Is Lucid Dreamless Sleep Really Lucid?

Abstract

Recently, the construct ‘lucid dreamless sleep’ has been proposed to explain the state of ‘clear light’ described by Tibetan Buddhist traditions, a special state of consciousness during deep sleep in which we’re told to be able to recognise the nature or essence of our mind (Padmasambhava & Gyatrul 2008; Ponlop 2006; Wangyal 1998). To explain the sort of awareness experienced during this state, some authors have appealed to the sort of lucidity acquired during lucid dreaming and suggested a link between both phenomena (Thompson 2014, 2015; Windt 2015a; Windt et al. 2016). Whilst these authors appeal to a non-conceptually mediated form of lucidity, which doesn’t consist of reflective awareness and propositional thought, the question as to whether the state of clear light should be considered a lucid state similar to lucid dreaming still arises. I argue that the concept ‘lucidity’ used to describe this sort of state is imprecise and that two theoretical notions of lucidity should be distinguished. The first one, which I call the technical notion, requires the recognition of the hallucinatory character of my current experience. The second, the broader notion, involves the seeming recognition of being directly acquainted with the phenomenal character of my experience. I spell out these two notions of lucidity and argue that only the latter could apply to the state of clear light sleep.

Exploration of contentless awareness during sleep: An online survey.

“…As in the case with meditation practitioners, future studies should focus on examining whether certain lucid dreaming techniques, such as those aiding toward the attainment of “void-like” dreams, can induce this sort of state of objectless awareness. Moreover, it should be further examined whether lucidity is indeed required for experiencing objectless sleep awareness, and if so, whether this should be akin to the sort of lucidity described in lucid dreams (Alcaraz-Sánchez, 2024). As pointed out in “Are the Strong Markers Pointing at Instances of Objectless Sleep Awareness?”., we should consider to what extent the sort of experiences described in “void” or “imageless lucid” dreams are instances of dreaming or something else.…”