A Gestalt approach to Lucid Dreaming has yet to make a breakthrough in mainstream psychology or even among those who practice the ancient and brilliant art of Lucid Dreaming nightly.  The Gestalt therapy developed by Fritz Perls is an innovative approach to psychology and can be an innovative approach to all things that revolve around the human imagination, especially the subconscious.  Lucid Dreaming is a kind of “conscious awake” while still perfectly asleep and if seen as a therapy, could greatly enhance the quality of life of everyone.

The challenge seems to be in educating people to Lucid Dream.  Everyone can learn to read and write, but can they all learn to Lucid Dream?  Yes.  Learning to harness and control Lucid Dreaming is like learning to read and write or anything for that matter, it takes practice.

Visualization is an excellent way to enhance learning and has been a tool used throughout ancient history by the Egyptians, Greeks, Romans and was preserved for some 1,300 years in the Church.  When paper was a commodity and hard drives inexistent, visualization was an essential part of a scholarly life and culture.  Lucid Dreaming is a relatively new concept for western culture and an excellent tool for bettering our already highly developed society.  Perhaps Gestalt visualization can help more people to learn Lucid Dreaming, and open this area to further research.

The visualization mentioned in this text was developed by the author and refers to the popular comic book hero Sandman by Neil Gaiman.  The Sandman is a mythical being that was first narrated under the title Ole Luk Oie by the childrens story author Hans Christian Anderson during a trip at sea to entertain two young children of a noble family.

Translators of Anderson’s works called the mythical character Sandman because he blows sand into children’s eyes to make them sleep.  The Greeks already had a Dream God by the name of Oneiros (son of Hypnos the God of slumber), who was later translated into Latin as Morpheus the God of Dreams.  It is no coincidence that Gaiman calls his comic book hero Sandman “Morpheus” from time to time, the character is suppose to be the God of Dreams.  The Gestalt visualization below “A Vision Beyond Vision” was created to help people who enjoy using their imaginations to achieve a state of Lucid Dreaming faster and more efficiently.

Gestalt researchers have yet to publish any famous works on this subject, but this visualization was developed using Gestalt techniques and can easily be applied by simply closing ones eyes in a safe and tranquil place with no disturbances, then relaxing deeply and using the imagination.  Possible recommended soundtracks include Carmina Burana by Carl Orff, The Crow with Brandon Lee and Ziggy Stardust by David Bowie, any good New Age music is also highly recommended by the author. 

A Vision Beyond Vision...
 
I am dreaming… I realize that now… But the time has come to finally awaken from the comforting folds of Morpheus’ cloak.  The Mists must recede and the Waking must once again take hold of my conscious mind.  First I begin to feel the physical world around me, my body…  I feel the surface below me, the touch and warmth of the covers that hold me…  And I feel the position of my very body itself.  These sensations take hold of me and one by one the elements of the waking invade my dreamworld.  Soon the sounds are replaced by the waking, and finally the realm of images succumb to the waking as well…  And I realize, that once again I have left the dreamworld.  Now, I must know… Am I dreaming?  I will look at something, look away and look back, the thing does not change… then certainly, I must be awake…  But then, if I am awake, what was I dreaming just now?  What was the dream?  I can feel the dream…  I can hear it now…  And the images of the dreamworld come rushing into my mind and accelerate my soul…  I know what I was dreaming of, and the images are coming so quickly now…  I can clearly see everything that happened in my mind…  I am finishing the dream sequence in my mind now, and the desire to write what I have recovered begins to overtake me.  I need to write this down!  I want so desperately to write this down now… I open my eyes and find my Dream Journal, and I begin to write down as much as I can possibly remember…   Everything then begins to flow through my hands in a beautiful and artistic manner.  My dreams begin to make sense to me…  I make an interpretation now of what all that means and I understand…  My interpretations follow the information in an orderly fashion…  Soon I have ideas, and projects in my mind’s eye that also need to be written down.  I have time for that too, and I do write them down…  I write everything else that comes throughout the day, when ever I have a chance.  And I this happens every single morning, day after day…  Until one day, I become Lucid while still Dreaming…   I begin Lucid Dreaming every night, and my nocturnal reality becomes a limitless place of possibilities…  Morpheus has granted me this power...  I am a Lucid Dreamer.

According to Oneirologists (dream researchers) a dream is a cognitive experience that occurs during REM (Rapid Eye Movement) sleep.  Ever notice in Matrix when Morpheus asks Neo “Have your ever had a dream Neo, that you were so sure was real?  What if you were unable to wake from that dream?  How would you know the difference between the dream world, and the real world?”

How about the famous phrase from Cypher “Buckle your seatbelt Dorothy, cause Kansas, is goin’ bye bye.”  A dream is as real to the human brain as is a heavy rain on some idle Tuesday.

Just think about it for a millisecond.  When you see a fancy looking billboard sign on the freeway how long does it take to experience?  In reality about a millisecond.

The time it takes for light to travel from the sun to the billboard, bounce and travel to your ocular globe, touch the retina, generate new information, take the synaptic pathways to the cerebral cortex and after much ado, finally make it to the higher cognitive functions along with other information such as sound, taste, touch and smell, filtered together through memories and then “experienced.”  In the past, we must admit, but nevertheless, experienced. 

So a dream is an “experience” independent from the senses.  Psychology is the study of dreams in the department of humanities and although ridiculed among scientists and medical doctors, psychology does help a lot of people cope with our way of life in western societies.

Psychology comes from the Greek Psyché (soul) and Logos (word or thought).  The study of the words or thoughts of the human soul.  Psychology is the study of the language of our soul.  Soul?  Isn’t that a little esoteric?  I mean words of the soul?  Come on! This is the 21st century man!  We believe in hard facts, and nobody has ever been able to prove that we have a soul!

But that isn’t really how Psychologists mean the word.  Psychologists mean it more like “mind” rather than soul.  But then?  What is the mind?  Grey matter in the Brain?  There is no scientific evidence of humans actually possessing a mind!  We possess a BRAIN that does a mechanical service for the central nervous system and keeps us alive!  Logical, Yes?  Yes, very logical.

But there are places in the brain that do different things and can be designated as the areas responsible for what we call our mind.  Psychology works as a very nice theoretical structure for understanding and achieving practical solutions to social problems in our society.

Practically speaking, and we are a practical society without the shadow of a doubt, studying our dream world is the best solution for our problems as a whole.  If ever we learn to culturally; just put the dream world in AS high a priority AS our daily lives, crime would eventually become a thing of the past and society would eventually be constantly in search for answers to questions that in the long run are far more interesting to society as a whole rather than us as individuals.

“Buckle your seatbelt Dorothy, cause Kansas, is goin’ bye bye” – Cypher

About the Author: Mário Lopez studied the History of Western Thought at the University of São Paulo, Brazil between Jan. 2000 and Dec. 20th, 2003. Mário has lived in Brazil since July of 1996 and been a Lucid Dreamer since the age of 5, he currently writes articles for Eductional sites as a day job. As a pass-time, Mário Lopez teaches the Afro-Brazilian Martial Art of Capoeira to financially challenged children. Mário lives his dreams and encourages his students to search their own dreams for a cultural identity among the underdeveloped poverty stricken neighborhoods of an already overcrowded and Superpopulated São Paulo Metropolis, that is becoming more and more violent by the day.