If I succeed, I will have a lucid dream – a thrilling state of consciousness somewhere between waking and sleeping in which, unlike conventional dreams, you are aware that you are dreaming and able to control your actions. Once you have figured this out, the dream world is theoretically your oyster, and you can act out your fantasies to your heart’s content.

Journalistic interest notwithstanding, I am pursuing lucid dreaming for entertainment. To some neuroscientists, however, the phenomenon is of profound interest, and they are using lucid dreamers to explore some of the weirder aspects of the brain’s behaviour during the dream state (see “Dream mysteries”). Their results are even shedding light on the way our brains produce our rich and complex conscious experience. Read the rest of this article

Neuroscientist Diane Hennacy Powell, a former Harvard Medical School professor, attempts to logically answer long-standing questions about the possibilities of psychic phenomena, and the relationship between our brain and consciousness, in her book, The ESP Enigma: The Scientific Case for Psychic Phenomena. Extra-sensory abilities can be explained, she says, by applying the theories of Einstein and quantum physics. She also provides empirical data developed over the past few decades from several well-designed and rigorously supervised experiments that reinforce the existence of such phenomena.

Largely ignored by scientific field experts because of a lack of a viable theory to explain the mechanisms, and because the data associated with it defies the traditional model of consciousness, psychic phenomena have developed a stigma and researchers tend to ignore the possibility of existence. However, Dr. Powell concludes that modern physics consistently explains how these abilities can exist and how they work. She points out that Dean Radin’s book, Entangled Minds, contains detailed information about the abundant studies that have shown highly statistically significant evidence for ESP. In fact, she says, there is more evidence for ESP than there is for the use of aspirin to prevent strokes or heart attacks.

Dr. Powell quotes the work of Einstein and Hawking and their theories suggesting the malleability of time, existing totally and simultaneously, and as such, the future already exists. In this regard, time is not limited – it is only limited by how our brains narrowly define our physical reality as a series of recurrent moments.

Predictions aren’t always accurate, Powell explains, because they do not consistently come from a person actually tapping into another time and space, but rather are confused with the constructs of one’s imagination. The question remains as to how one can differentiate between imaginings and actual probable events.

In an interview, Dr. Powell explained what sparked her interest in studying psychic phenomena:

Like most mainstream scientists who develop an interest in psychic abilities, my initial inspiration was an extraordinary experience of them. As a teenager I met a man who could psychically read to me any book that I randomly chose from a bookshelf that contained several hundred books that were not his. While standing across the room with the back of the book facing him, he said word for word what I was reading at the precise time I read it. And he demonstrated this with several books. Coming from a scientific family in which there were scientific answers for everything, I was completely mystified. Even if he had memorized all of the books on the bookshelf and could figure out what page I was on from looking at the binding, I couldn’t explain how he could read at the same pace as I.

I had another experience while on faculty at Harvard Medical School. I had been asked to see a patient who wanted to leave against medical advice. She told me that she was psychic and therefore knew that her tests were going to come back normal. After a brief time, she asked if she could tell me what she was psychically receiving about me. She told me what my husband’s occupation was, that we were in the midst of deciding which of two cities to move to, that we would move to San Diego, how many brothers I had, how many children I would have and their sex, as well as several other very specific things. Everything that she said about my past and current circumstances were correct and over the next few years her predictions proved to be correct as well.

Dr. Powell offers many examples of psychic demonstrations throughout history. One of the more well-known instances, U.S. President Abraham Lincoln had a precognitive dream about his assassination 10 days before it happened. He finally told his wife and a few friends of his dream shortly before the fateful event.

Individuals who are able to more fully utilize psychic skills can do so due to several factors, one of them genetics. Dr. Powell says psychic abilities run in families, possibly because of the existence of a gene. Head traumas also bring them about, because the structure and function of the brain has changed, and those individuals are unable to experience normal functioning of the analytical part of the brain. Also, autistic individuals tend to have more developed perceptual skills.

Psychic abilities are more enhanced, she states, when the sensory organs are muted, such as during sleep or near-death experiences, but she ultimately believes anyone can be psychic.

Dr. Powell’s book: The ESP Enigma: The Scientific Case for Psychic Phenomena

Interview: Time.com: The Science Behind Psychic Phenomena

Interview: Parapsychology Information Portal

While most people find it hard to remember upon awakening what they’ve just dreamed, Mary says it can be done. “The subconscious mind is easily programmed; if you really want to remember your dreams just tell yourself you want that information and it will provide it,” she said.

Mary believes that our dreams are connected to our paths in life, and that it would serve us to look at the messages from our subconscious minds to help us better understand what is going on with important current issues and help us make better informed decisions.

“It’s like there’s a river of knowledge that runs through our body and at night when asleep, we are in that river where we can see things that we shut off in our waking world. At night we tap into the wisdom. People do it in the daytime too… people daydream. Those that do are often very wise people,” she said.

Recording your dreams immediately upon awakening is the key to remembering the important details. Catching the tail end of the dream then working backwards will help with collecting more information and lead you to remembering the earlier scenes. Repeatedly recording them helps turn it into a subsconscious habit and the task becomes easier over time.

Brenda Ferrimani learned about the healing power of dreams when she began to experience a recurring nightmare. What she learned is that all dreams — even nightmares — happen for the purpose of health and wholeness, and stopping to pay attention to them can help people heal and grow, and that they are the root to all of life’s hardships and setbacks, as well as the key to peace and clarity. Now an acclaimed artist who paints her dreams, Brenda realizes that interpreting and understanding her nightmare gave her new perspectives about her unhealthy perceptions, and that she had the power to make the changes necessary to rid herself of the recurrent nightmares.

Interpreting our dreams can be our own best form of therapy because they can carry important indications of what is blocking us from going in a desired direction by helping us to recognize our fears, facing them, then overcoming them to diminish the power they have over us. Some believe that the very act of analyzing one’s own psyche through dreams can bring subconscious desires to life. By eliminating our fears, which are the very blocks that keep us from consciously creating our dreams, can we then begin to achieve heartfelt goals.

Dream interpretation can be difficult because they most often appear as metaphors, but we are our own best analyzer, since no one else can completely understand what is happening in our lives, and books can give only a general guideline for interpretation. Sharing dream themes with others, however, can help them gain knowledge and insight into their own inner workings and build and strengthen important connections with their own circle of family and friends.

Related articles: Listen to Your Dreams

and Some Say Analyzing Dreams Can Help You Heal and Grow