Lucid Dreaming Machines

The following is excerpted from Dreaming Wide Awake by David Jay Brown, printed with permission from the publisher Inner Traditions International.

If only we could crawl inside our dreams and live there.
Meg Howrey, The Cranes Dance

The first lucid-dream machine was created in 1983 by English psychologist Keith Hearne, and there have been numerous attempts to create similar devices since then. Soon we’ll have transcranial brain stimulators that induce lucidity during sleep whenever we like, as well as devices that allow us to record our dreams and communicate between worlds. But these technologies are not here yet, so let’s start out with the simplest of devices.

The Benefits of Using a Sleeping Mask

There are many benefits to wearing a sleep mask that covers one’s eyes and blocks out light, whether sleeping or traveling on a shamanic journey. The mask minimizes any visual disturbances that might interfere with sleep, helps calm the mind, and allows one to better observe hypnogogic or psychedelic imagery. The two best eye masks that I have used with great success are called Mindfold and Glo to Sleep.

The Mindfold mask was designed by visionary artist Alex Grey. It allows one to comfortably experience complete and absolute darkness, even with open eyes. It is sold for relaxation and sensory-deprivation purposes, in addition to sleep support, and many people use it to better observe closed-eye visuals during shamanic journeys. The Glo to Sleep is a sleep therapy mask designed by Sound Oasis. Like the Mindfold, it also allows you to fully open your eyes in darkness (although the seal is not as precisely designed as the Mindfold). Inside each eye cup of the mask are four ascending vertical strips that you can charge by holding under an electric light for thirty seconds; the strips then glow in the dark. You fit the mask around your head before going to sleep. With open eyes, the four glowing strips are slightly above one’s center of vision, so you have to raise your eyes to look at them. When I do this in the dark, while lying on my back, I almost immediately feel sleepy, which in turn allows me to easily enter into hypnogogic visions. With either mask it is also beneficial, upon awakening in the morning, to lie for a while with the sleep mask on so as to recall your dreams, as light appears to dissolve the details of dream memories.

A sensory-deprivation tank, which basically operates on a similar principle as a sleep mask but in this case completely blocks out all external sensory input, can also be quite helpful for inducing lucid dreaming and out-of-body experiences. I’ll be discussing these isolation or floatation tanks in chapter 9. Meanwhile, let’s see how the electronic technologies have evolved.

Lucid-Dream Machines

Understanding that external stimuli can sometimes be incorporated into dreams, researchers Stephen LaBerge and Keith Hearne both developed electronic technologies to help induce lucid dreaming. In his book The Dream Machine, Hearne writes, “My idea was that if a standard signal could be incorporated into an ordinary dream, at such a level that waking would not occur, then it might be recognized by the dreamer as a ‘cue’ for lucidity.”1 Subsequently, Hearne developed a device that delivered mild electric shocks to the wrists of people sleeping in his laboratory, and this produced good results—half of his twelve subjects reported becoming lucid in their dreams from the point the shocks were perceived to waking, which was around a minute later.

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