Awoken is a free app for Android (sorry, not for Apple users yet) that helps people achieve lucid dreaming. It was designed to "combine proven techniques with experimental enhancements made possible by the presence of smartphones." 

As has been discussed elsewhere on this web site, lucid dreaming is a state of consciousness that allows a person to be fully in control of themselves and act volitionally during dreams - basically, you know you're dreaming while you're dreaming. It has been scientifically proven that while only a few people naturally experience lucid dreaming on a regular basis, with certain training techniques and help from external queues, people who do not lucid dream can 'learn' to achieve lucid dreaming.

One of the methods used to induce lucid dreaming is to contact the sleeper through the use of sound queues during REM sleep to let them know they are dreaming. Before the sleeper goes to sleep, it is agreed that a certain sound will notify them that they are dreaming. The sleeper is then given the audio queue from an external source while they sleep, which makes the dreamer aware that they are dreaming and thus causes a lucid dreaming state to occur. 

Awoken seeks to take these techniques and provide them to regular folks who happen to own a smartphone. When you open Awoken, you are given the tools to make this happen. You can select any sound on your smartphone and set it as the reminder. This is known as the "Totem Sound" in the app. I would suggest making the sound different from any other notification sound on your phone so you know exactly what it's for, and that it isn't used for anything else. You also choose how loud you wish the sound to be played. 

Once you have chosen your audio queue, you then tell the app how many times during the day you wish to hear the Totem Sound. This is the 'training' part of the experience - you program the app to notify you with the Totem Sound several times during the day. When you hear the sound, stop what you're doing for a few seconds and check your surroundings. Does everything appear normal? Ask yourself, "Am I dreaming?" and become extra-aware for a few moments. 

You then tell Awoken how many times you wish to hear your Totem Sound during the night. These are called "Dream Clues" and it is the same as the Totem Sound except it's at night and you're sleeping when you hear it. If you are dreaming when you hear the Dream Clue, hopefully you do the same thing as when you're awake: ask yourself, "Am I dreaming?" and check your immediate environment for anything that appears unusual. If you discover yourself dreaming, then it worked! Use your imagination and have fun!!!

My experience with the app has been mixed. At first it seemed to have issues with the chosen sound. It sounded as if not one - but two - sounds were happening. This may have been due to the app giving the daytime prompts at the same time as other notifications on my phone (on the hour for example). While this persisted for a few weeks and was annoying, it seemed to clear up after an update. 

It also seemed to notify me with my chosen sound more often than I had set it for in the app during the day. This got to be a nuisance and I ended up dialing it back a bit. Again, the issue seemed to stop after an update. 

If you don't have a sleeping partner, no worries at all using Awoken. But if you do, another thing users may want to be aware of is that if your sleeping partner is a light sleeper, they may hear your Dream Clues even if you don't. You may be able to resolve this by tweaking the loudness of your Dream Clues. 

You can also temporarily "pause" the app at any time which stops all notifications. It also provides a way for you to keep a dream journal. While I have not used the dream journal myself, it looks like a great tool for someone who wants to use it. 

While I agree with the basic premise on which the app is built, I have not been able to achieve a lucid state while dreaming as a result of using the app. This may be due to the Dream Clues not happening during REM sleep, or it might be other factors I'm not aware of. But I have not stopped trying and I'm still using the app to this day. I will report back here if I can achieve lucid dreaming, or if anything else develops through the use of the Awoken app. 

In the late 1990’s and early 2000’s I was a big fan of the “For Dummies” books on technology. You know the ones: “Windows for Dummies”, “HTML for Dummies”, “Java Programming for Dummies”, etc., etc.  They were easy and fun to read and packed with so much practical and useful information that by the end of a book, I was able to navigate the chosen technology well and create full-blown projects with it. I didn’t have mastery of the subject, but I was well on my way to it if I chose to pursue the subject further.

Reading A Field Guide to Lucid Dreaming gave me the same sorts of feelings. The authors are very interesting and sometimes quite humorous in their presentation. The information they communicate is extremely useful and practical for anyone looking to cultivate awareness of, and awareness in, their dream life. There were practical methods, techniques, and advice on just about every page of this book.

Scattered throughout the book are many blocks of asides containing dreams and experiences the authors and others have had that directly relate to the subject matter of each chapter. Reading them infused me with wonder over the multitude of possibilities that dreaming presents us and also triggered memories of long-lost dream experiences of my own, which was pretty darn exciting. Sometimes it’s hard enough remembering dreams from the night before; imagine the thrill of remembering dreams from years ago!

 To give you an idea of the sorts of activities they present, these are the main 3 principles given out in the first part of the book:

1. One must develop a burning desire to be lucid. A strong intention is the key.
2. Develop a “healthy suspicion” of reality. Perform 5-10 “reality checks” throughout the day at regular intervals. This will train your consciousness to automatically pose the question, “Am I in a dream right now?". Eventually you will ask yourself that while inside a dream and the answer will be a resounding: Yes!!
3. Keep a dream journal. Write in it every day. “There is no way around this fact,” they write on page 69, “if you want to become lucid in your dreams, you need to record your nighttime adventures.”

The book is full of nuggets like these. I followed through on these 3 and noticed a difference in the quality of my dreams within 2 days. It was remarkable.

For the authors, lucid dreaming is all about self-discovery, self-healing, and self-actualization. Dreams are always meant to tell you something about yourself, whether it’s to show you the way forward in your life, or to discover something new about yourself, or to face some demons that have been hiding out in the basement for far too many years. This is the theme that is present throughout the entire book.

One of the things I found myself disagreeing with early in my reading was their persistent thesis that 100% of everything that happens in dreams happens in your mind. That is, every object, every character, every landscape is created by you at some level and, in fact, it is you. It’s a part of you. It’s all a part of your “subconscious”, they say. The authors make no effort to discriminate what is real vs. what is hallucination. They seem perfectly content swimming in a pool of their self-created illusions, so long as it’s enjoyable and fantastic in some way.

Here at SubtleRealm.org we are intent on separating fact from fiction in our dreams. We’re learning to look past the fantasies and illusions created by our minds and to observe the reality of the “subtle realm” directly and for what it is. Dreams are a hodgepodge of real subtle realm objects, beings, and settings together with objects, beings, and landscapes of our own fabrication. By mastering our minds and our consciousness, we refine our discrimination and increase our awareness of the real.

At the end of the last chapter, they begin to approach the characteristics of the boundary-line between lucid dreaming and out-of-body experiences, such as the “vibration” noises and opening your eyes to find yourself floating over your bed staring down at your sleeping body. They also briefly discuss the ability to pass into the sleep state with full consciousness and awareness. I have a strong feeling that this could be the beginning of their insights into the reality of a subtle world outside of their own minds.

Hello Subtle Realm readers,

This article could not be overlooked here at Subtle Realm. This is a big development in the area of dreams and sleep science. For years, scientists have been able to influence dreams using external means, but results have been spotty due to the inability of the subjects to recall their dreams (either accurately or at all) upon waking. And no experiments have involved the subjects communicating back to the experimenters while dreaming - in real time - until now.  

Here we have an article describing recent scientific experiments in which scientists have been able to successfully communicate in real time with people who are asleep. Here is what the experiment entailed in brief: 

A group of 36 people were selected. Participants were divided into three groups: (1) experienced lucid dreamers, (2) healthy people with no experience who were trained to lucid dream, and (3) a narcoleptic patient who reported frequent lucid dreaming. The scientists constructed a system of communication using taps, flashing lights, and/or sounds as external stimuli. The sleepers used a pre-arranged set of signals using unique eye movements and facial muscle contractions to report answers to the questions asked after the stimuli were administered. 

The experimenters waited until the sleepers were in REM sleep because lucid dreaming is strongly associated with the REM state. The sleepers were able to signal with eye movements or facial contractions when they were having a lucid dream, and that's when the experimenters began to interact with them. 

When the external cue was given (a flash of light for example), the sleeper was told in a soft voice to obtain complete lucidity in the moment and direct their attention to the voice, and then the voice immediately asked a question of the sleeper. The sleeping subject was to answer using the eye movements or muscle contractions which produce measurable electrical signals and were thus recorded by sensors attached to the subject. The questions asked were not given to the sleeper prior to going to sleep, and so neither the questions nor the answers became repetitive.

Here is a brief summary of the results. The dreamer reached REM sleep and conveyed he was dreaming lucidly using the pre-arranged signals. The experimenters verbally asked the question: "8 minus 6". Answer: "2". The question was repeated, the same answer given. In real time. Upon awakening (immediately after the question/answer exchange was recorded) the dreamer recounted his lucid dream fairly accurately to the experimenters. He recalled much of the verbal instructions verbatim, though there were some distortions in his post-dream interpretation. 

For information on what controls were used and other questions about how the experiment was conducted, please read the article in its entirety.

Is the passing of this small bit of information (the answer to the math problem: 'two') during an experiment between a sleeping subject and a wakeful scientist a big deal? While the amount of information may be small, it is monumental in the arena of sleep science, and in science in general! 

There has been a convention of thought around the condition of the human being during sleep - that we are closed off to anything but strong stimuli and are incapable of rational thought while our bodies remain inert for recharging. In light of how we are perceived when we wake up from sleep (grogginess), our difficulty remembering our dreams clearly, and our lack of knowledge regarding lucid dreaming, this is entirely expected. But in at least one mode of consciousness (lucidly dreaming REM sleep) this has been scientifically disproven as a result of these experiments. Humans have long known that consciousness remains active during sleep, but now that we have the results of this experiment, our understanding should be far more broad. Our attitudes toward sleep should change, especially since (on average) we spend about 37 percent of our lives asleep. 

The experiment showed that people still think and use their logical minds when their bodies are asleep. They were able to take in information not previously known to them, think about/process it, and give an answer to a problem that involved the information - all while asleep. This establishes that, at least while lucid dreaming, our consciousness is still active much like it is while awake. 

The fact that the subjects sometimes could not remember, or would remember a distorted version of the events that transpired during the experiment shows a limitation of consciousness that can be avoided if the communication with the sleeper is in real-time. This has long been a hindrance to studying sleep and sleep experiences scientifically. 

The implications of this research are vast! The creative nature of consciousness while dreaming is well known.

There have been many instances of artists who have admitted that a piece of art came to them in a dream. Inventors have come forward with similar stories. Could the next technological game-changer come from a lucid dreamer? Could artists be nudged into giving the world musical and visual masterpieces? Could we help lessen the pain caused by abuse? Could a scientist be gently guided to a discovery that would solve the energy crisis? Could we at last learn about the nature of consciousness itself?