The Lucid Dream Exchange


A Chat with Dr. Amit Goswami

By Lucy Gillis
(Responses © Amit Goswami)

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Amit Goswami, Ph.D. earned his doctorate degree in theoretical nuclear physics from Calcutta University in 1964. Author of numerous books including The Self Aware Universe: How Consciousness Creates the Material World, The Physics of the Soul, The Visionary Window: A Quantum Physicist’s Guide to Enlightenment, and Quantum Doctor, he has also appeared in the sleeper hit “What the Bleep Do We Know?”. For a while he was the resident quantum physicist at the Institute of Noetic Sciences.

I was fortunate to meet Dr. Goswami at the “What the Bleep” conference held in Vancouver, BC this past August. During our conversation I discovered that he is no stranger to lucid dreaming. He graciously agreed to do an interview for The Lucid Dream Exchange, and has also proposed an experiment for LDE readers that he describes at the end of our chat.

Lucy: Hello, Dr. Goswami and thank you for taking the time for this interview. During our conversation at the “What the Bleep” conference in Vancouver, you mentioned that you had your first lucid dream around a time when you were struggling with a particular equation. Would you describe the dream? What made you realize that you were dreaming? Did you intend to have a dream (lucid or otherwise) to help with solving the equation or did it occur spontaneously?

Dr. Goswami: This was a long time ago in the nineteen sixties but the memory is still quite vivid.  It was about mathematical equations, so the subject is a bit technical.  You probably know about superconductivity.  I was trying to find a way of applying some aspects of superconductivity to solve problems of the structure of atomic nuclei. 

In the dream, I found myself thinking equations, writing them down on what seemed to be a blackboard.  But then I realized I was dreaming, something about the board was not quite right.  Whatever I was thinking, whatever change in the equation I was making in my mind, it was simultaneously appearing on the board.  It was a delightful way of thinking of equations because I could see them without actually having to make notes.  Upon properly waking, it took me only a few minutes work to recapture the equation.

Lucy: I have read that your book The Physics of the Soul, was inspired by dream. Would you describe this dream and the circumstances leading up to it?  Was it a lucid dream? Do you think you would have written this book eventually anyway, without the impulse from the dream?

Dr. Goswami: I don't know if it was a lucid dream proper because I woke up as the dream was becoming lucid.  I recall that I was hearing a voice, and the voice was more and more becoming like an admonition.  Then I heard it clearly, "Tibetan Book of the Dead is correct, it is your job to prove it," as I woke up.

I don't know if I would have taken the subject of soul and reincarnation seriously enough without this dream.  The truth is, in SAU (The Self Aware Universe), I had the correct picture of the relationship of consciousness and matter, but I still did not understand the relationship of mind and brain.  I was holding on to the illusion that mind is brain.  The dream inspired me to find the truth - that mind is a different beast altogether, that mind processed meaning, and the brain made representations of mental meaning.

Lucy:You have been described as a proponent of “monistic idealism” and it’s interpretation regarding quantum physics. Could you briefly explain this and explain how dreaming (and in particular lucid dreaming) fits into this model?

Dr. Goswami: Monistic idealism holds that consciousness is the ground of all being.  To a quantum physicist, this means that matter, mind, etc. all must be quantum possibilities of consciousness.  They become actual events of our experience only when consciousness makes a choice by recognizing one of the possibilities.

When we dream, the physical stimuli are the brain noise much like Rorschach (ink blots); the mind makes a meaningful picture out of the Rorschach.  So the meaning of all the symbols we see in the dream is the meaning I attribute to it.  Therefore, in some real sense, all the characters are me.  So the mental ego is quite distributed, and has little control in shaping the dream.

This changes in a lucid dream in which we are aware that we are dreaming within the dream.  So the dream ego is boosted by the waking ego in some sense enabling us to guide our dream in certain intended directions.  So using this vehicle of the lucid dream we can study the equipotency of our waking and dream lives.  Now who but Australian aborigines would believe that our dream life is as potent as our waking life?

Lucy:There are many lucid dreamers who are interested in healing via the lucid dream state and several claim to have observed positive results from their efforts. In your recent book, Quantum Doctor, you discuss how the mind can cause and cure health issues. You mention the “bliss body” and “creative sleep”. Would you explain that for us? Does “creative sleep” involve lucid dreaming? Or is it something else?

Dr. Goswami: I think that lucid dreams have great potency for precipitating creativity; therefore, certainly, they can be used for creative healing.

The bliss body is our undivided consciousness, consciousness is one with its possibilities, no separation, no experience.  So the bliss body is beyond both waking and dreaming.  In deep sleep, we are in the bliss body; yet when we awake we remain the same, showing that the ego-conditioning is still controlling what possibilities we process while we are in blissful inseparateness with our whole being.  So creative sleep is sleep in which our ego-control gives way and quantum-consciousness, you can call it God, can process new possibilities, possibilities of which creative experiences are made of.  When we have such sleep, we wake up highly creative, bubbling with creativity.

This is quite different from lucid dreaming, but maybe we can call it "lucid sleep".

Lucy: Dr. LaBerge had experiments performed in the lucid dream state that indicated that the lucid dreaming mind could affect (even if minimally) the physical sleeping body, and there were also indications that lucid dreaming a particular task (according to activity monitored in the brain) was more like actually doing the task than just imagining doing it. How does this information fit in with “quantum healing” if it does at all?

Dr. Goswami: Quantum healing consists of quantum leaping and healing the diseased structure of the mind.  This healing, then, heals the vital energy blocks, which finally, heals the physiology of organs.  It is anybody's guess if the creative shift of mental perspective does or does not percolate to the body physiology during a lucid dream.  It is certainly possible, theoretically speaking.  We need data.  Very good question.

Lucy:Have you had a particular lucid dream that stands out from the others? Perhaps one that made an impact on you?

Dr. Goswami: Yes, and this is where I could use some of your participants' getting involved.   The theory we have says that all the symbols in my dream really represent "me".  They are me.  In my dream, I knew this because I was privy to the inside experience of my characters, not only what they were saying to me, the image with which I explicitly identified in the dream.    And I was aware that I was dreaming, so it was a lucid dream.  It was very much like the mystical realization in waking awareness that we are all one. 

So I invite all of you out there to try to guide your next lucid dreams to experience your identity with all of your dream characters.  Happy dreaming!  Thanks.

Lucy:Thank you for talking with us at LDE!

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The Thoughts of Your Dream Characters

Dr. Amit Goswami, quantum physicist, author, and “What the Bleep Do We Know?” celebrity has a question/experiment for readers of The Lucid Dream Exchange:

Have any of you, while in a lucid dream, found that you knew all the thoughts of your dream characters, “from the inside”? In other words, have you ever, in a lucid dream, been able to “hear” or “just know” what other characters in your dream are thinking?

If you haven’t, why not give it a try in one of your next lucid dreams? Program yourself (using whatever dream incubation method works best for you) to be able to “hear” your dream character’s thoughts, or somehow get inside his/her head and know what he/she is thinking.

What thoughts did you hear? Were they coherent? Did they sound like your own? Did they sound/feel very “not-your-own”?

If you already have an experience of this sort, or when you try the experiment, please send a description to LDE and we will pass it on to Dr. Goswami.

Good Luck!

Here is a sample lucid dream experience of hearing  a dream character’s thoughts:

Lucy Gillis
October 8 2005
Hearing Another’s Thoughts

I become lucid while trying to open a fold-out chair in my bedroom. It flops open and becomes a small red mattress. I stare at it for a moment, knowing that a deck chair can't turn into a mattress. Suddenly I realize I'm dreaming!

I want to go outside, hopefully into a sunny scene. Instead of attempting to fly through the walls of the house, as I usually do, I decide to just go through the door in the “ordinary” way - perhaps it will keep the dream more stable. I sing about what I want to do, also in an attempt to maintain a stable scene. I go outside onto the front lawn. I notice that there are several people around - strange, as usually I’m alone when I find myself lucid in "this place" (the front lawn is a frequent lucid dream scene).

Nearby, there are two men in black facing each other. They look greasy, dirty, and I assume they are criminals. Beyond them is a couple that were "my parents" from the previous non-lucid part of the dream. A small white dog, Terrier mix, comes scampering up to me, and as I stroke it's back, it complains to me that it doesn't like living with the two men, they are not nice to him. I pet the dog once more and then tell it to go to the couple (“my parents”) “just over there”, and that they will look after him well. The dog scampers happily away to the couple.

I then continue walking across the lawn, when I suddenly stop and think to myself "I have a task to do!" I try to recall some of the tasks I wanted to perform when lucid, then I remember I wanted to see if I could hear the thoughts of other dream characters, as Amit Goswami had suggested.

Instantly all I see is darkness, and I feel like I’m looking at the back of my eyelids. No longer on the lawn, I feel myself in bed, open my eyes, and fumble around for the button on my clock to press, so it will light up and I can see the time. It isn't working, or maybe my eyes are just blurry. I reach for a pen and sheet of paper and begin to write down the dream, feeling a bit disappointed that it ended before I could attempt Goswami’s suggeston.

As I begin to write, I suddenly stop short - realizing that I DID hear the thoughts of a character. The little dog didn't SPEAK, I could hear it's thoughts! Then I wake for real, knowing that the previous fumbling with the clock and writing the dream was a false awakening, but feeling pleased that I had my “Eureka!” moment while still asleep.


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