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False awakening and lucidity

How often have you woken in the night, looked at a digital clock, but it has appeared blurred or doesn’t make sense? Have you ever reached out to turn on the light - or any electrical appliance - to discover that it doesn’t function properly, or not at all? Have you got vague memories of getting up in the middle of the night, trying to open the door, finding that it won’t open and going back to bed? Would you believe it, if you were told that you were probably Dreaming?

A false awakening is a convincing illusion of having woken when, in fact, you are still in Dreaming sleep, so the imagery - although seemingly real - is artificial.

There is the same degree of conscious awareness in the phenomenon as in a Lucid Dream - all one’s ‘critical’ faculties are present and the subject can think very clearly. However, what is lacking is the realisation of being in a dream, because the dream is recreating scenery that is familiar to the dreamer - say, the bedroom.

The accuracy of the imagery to that of the real scene can be quite amazing - until something gives the secret away.

False awakenings sometimes follow lucid Dreams, or they can occur separately. Intending lucid dreamers need to be aware of this fascinating situation, so to illustrate, here is such a case from our files:

I seemed to wake up from an interesting, vivid Lucid Dream. My mind was perfectly alert and I looked around the bedroom. It was morning and the room was fairly light. I got up and walked around for a while. Then I went to the window and looked out. Incredibly, the road outside was not the road it should have been! The surprise woke me and I found myself snuggled in bed.

Some individuals report that they experience multiple false-awakenings - which can leave them rather puzzled:

Several times I have known that I was Dreaming when it was time to get up for work. I have tried to wake myself up, but only succeeded in Dreaming that I have woken. This could happen four or five times in a row before I actually woke up properly. I’ll know it’s still a dream usually because the carpet or bed-sheets are a different colour, or that something else in the room - say, furniture, is not correct.

It is not unheard of for some unfortunate souls to apparently wake up in the morning, wash, eat breakfast and then wake to find themselves still in bed. They get up again, wash, eat breakfast, and leave for work. Caught in the rush-hour traffic, and while thumping the steering wheel, impatiently, they wake up again to find themselves still in bed. And so it can go on almost ad infinitum.

The false-awakening is more common, however, when dreamers perceive themselves as waking up at home in their own beds, then probably turn over and - in their dream minds - go back to sleep. Sometimes this occurrence can be accompanied by an atmosphere of eager expectation, stress or even apprehension, and these feelings can remain with the subject for some time after waking.

Celia Green, in her analysis of lucid Dreaming, identified two varieties of false awakening. In Type 1, the person seems to have woken from a dream and reflects on things normally.

In Type 2, the individual seems to have woken, but there is a somewhat oppressive atmosphere:

I thought I was awake. It was still night and my room very dark. Although it seemed to me that I was awake, I felt curiously disinclined to move. The atmosphere seemed charged, to be in a ’strained’ condition. I had a sense of invisible, intangible powers at work, which caused this feeling of aerial stress. I became expectant. Certainly, something was about to happen.

Fox,O, Astral Projection, University Books, New York, page 48.

So how can we recognise false awakenings when they happen to us? As described earlier, electrical appliances will not function properly - if at all - during a false-awakening. As with the Lucid Dream, Dr Hearne was the first person in the world to discover this and other anomalies, and has devised a test whereby the dreamer can assess their validity. …

(Continued In Lucid Dreams Part 2…)

by : David F. Melbourne

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