5-HTP: A Lucid Dreaming Supplement

In a previous blog post I relayed that I would be experimenting with several different supplements that are touted as being helpful for the struggling lucid dreamer in that they assist in establishing a proper brain environment for the likely occurrence of a lucid dream (read that post here).

The first supplement I have worked with is 5-HTP or 5-hydroxy-tryptophan. While many claims have been made about 5-HTP and its effects on the human body, its effectiveness as an anti-depressant seems to be the most substantiated. Although, there does seem to be some evidence that it assists in the treatment of Fibromyalgia, anxiety, mild sleep disorders and weight loss. The web is full of information regarding the typical mainstream uses of 5-HTP, so I will not delve into the matter further here. What I do wish to discuss in a little more detail is the use of 5-HTP as a lucid dreaming supplement (LDS).

Apparently, one of the most common side effects noted by those who ingest 5-HTP is increased dream vividness and bizarreness. This is not totally surprising, however, since 5-HTP is a precursor to serotonin and research has correlated increased serotonin levels with dream vividness. How does dream vividness and bizarreness help to establish dream lucidity? Well … rather indirectly. It is thought that if the dream is bizarre enough, the dreamer might be lead to question the reality of his/her experiences and realize that a dream is in progress, thereby gaining lucidity.

A more direct effect of taking 5-HTP for the lucid dreamer may very well be an increased amount of REM period during the latter hours of sleep, thereby increasing the amount of possible dream time that one can work with. It is believed that this increased REM period is the result of REM suppression during the early stages of sleep due to increased serotonin levels in the brain (as a result of taking 5-HTP prior to the onset of sleep) thereby resulting in a REM rebound effect. It is also believed that the increase in serotonin levels caused by 5-HTP help facilitate lucidity by heightening rational thought and self-awareness during REM sleep.

So, did 5-HTP assist me in becoming lucid at any point during my two week experimentation? The answer is a resounding “NO.” I took 100 mg of 5-HTP before retiring to bed every day for two weeks and experienced none of the effects discussed above. I did not experience any increase in dream vividness, bizarreness or REM rebound, not to mention lucidity. This is not to say that 5-HTP is ineffective as a lucid dream supplement. It may be that 5-HTP works better when combined with other lucid dreaming supplements. It may also be that my trial period was too short to bring about the desired effect or it may simply be that my physiology prevents 5-HTP from working its magic. Regardless, I will assuredly repeat my experiments with this supplement again in the future. But for now, it is on to the next supplement.

 

Lucid Dreaming Supplements (LDS) – A Preface

 

Lucid dreaming was something I did as a child long before I ever knew what lucid dreaming was. I was not particularly adept at the technique of becoming lucid, however.  It was typically the case that a nightmare would trigger lucidity and I would use that lucidity to wake myself from the dream. Thus, dream lucidness during childhood was a brief occurrence, lasting just long enough to scream myself back to wakefulness (only to find myself terrorized by sleep paralysis).

Later, after I had learned of lucid dreaming, I was lucky enough to have a few fully lucid encounters within the dream realm. Since I knew what was occurring, I was much more willing to spend some time exploring this inner world.  Unfortunately, the occurrences of lucidity during dreaming have been relatively few. Furthermore, as my interest in the subject of lucid dreaming has increased over the years, my ability to induce a lucid dream has decreased. As a result, I now find myself to be an unemployed oneironaut. While I have read a great deal of the literature regarding lucid dream induction techniques, none of the techniques have been successful for me (one technique that I have not adequately investigated [my bad!] involves a special wrist watch to prompt for a reality check. You can read my blog post about it here).

While my rather abysmal record of lucid dream events has left me rather discouraged, I have recently become aware of a growing segment of the lucid dreaming community advocating the use of dietary supplements to enhance the likelihood of lucid dreams (note: I did not say cause a lucid dream).  This has given me the hope I might be able to achieve my goals with a little dietary assistance.  There are quite a few supplements being touted as helpful in promoting an environment conducive to lucid dreaming. In the coming months, I will discuss a few of these and relay whether they have or have not been helpful to me in my quest for the elusive lucid dream.

 



Entrain Your Brain To Lucid Dream

Lucid dreaming is conscious dreamwork. It is the conscious awareness that one is dreaming while in a dream and the directing/exploration of that dream. I would lucid dream quite frequently as a child, although I had no idea what I was doing. It was not until much later that I became informed about lucid dreams and actively sought to cultivate them. Unfortunately, by this time lucid dreaming was something that rarely (and I mean RARELY) occurred. Even after reading many fine books on the techniques of lucid dream induction, I found myself unable to induce lucidity in the dream state with any large degree of success. Today, I am lucky if I have one lucid dream within a year’s time.

Unsatisfied with the rate of lucidity I have so far achieved, I constantly look for new ways to induce a lucid dream. Recently, I discovered a new technique (well , new to me anyway) for inducing a lucid dream. It is a very passive technique and requires only that you relax while listening to a recording of a sound file containing binaural beats. Binaural beats are “sounds” that are ‘heard” in the brain as a result of listening to two minutely different sounds in each ear (headphones are necessary when listening to binaural beats). It has been fairly well established that one’s brainwaves tend to become entrained or synchronized to the frequency of the binaural beats that is being produced by the two similar sounds. Since binaural beats can be produced to mimic the entire spectrum of human brainwave activity, binaural beats can be used to entrain the brain to operate at any of the four (or 5, see postscript below) levels of brainwave activity – namely, beta (active brain), alpha (resting brain), theta (dreaming brain), delta (dreamless sleeping brain).

Many claims have been made as to what can be achieved through the application of binaural beats and their scientific usefulness is hotly debated.  Personally, I tend to see some validity in the claims that binaural beats can be used to enter a state of calm or meditative state, since binaural beats can be produced that mimic a calm or meditative mind (i.e., a mind in the alpha range ≈ 8-12 Hz). When it comes to lucid dreams, however, I am a little less certain. Most binaural beats designed for lucid dreaming that I have encountered are formed with beats that range from roughly 2Hz to 12 Hz, which mimic brainwaves that occur during dreamless sleep (delta), times of dreaming (theta) and restful contemplation (alpha). I am less clear as to how such binaural beats can induce a lucid dream, since they simply entrain a brain to enter states that it already does naturally. If one does not naturally become lucid when he/she enters such states, such as when falling to sleep and upon awakening, how is causing the brain to enter these states through binaural beats going to elicit a lucid response. While I have my doubts about the effectiveness of binaural beats to induce a lucid dream, I have been working with them for nearly three days now. So far, there have been no lucid dreams.

Postscript

Some research into lucid dreams have suggested that lucidity in dreams occurs when a dreaming brain (theta range ≈ 4-7 Hz) is accompanied by a synchronization of the majority of the brain at the uppermost beta level(≈ 40 Hz) and higher, sometimes called the gamma level. With this in mind I will be creating my own binaural beats recording starting at a low alpha frequency and then dropping down into the theta range. After several minutes of theta (dreaming) I will catapult the frequency to gamma in the attempt to become lucid (I wonder if it is possible to create dual binaural beats so that a brain can be entrained to theta and gamma frequencies simultaneously?) Anyway, if you are interested in lucid dreaming, you may want to experiment with some binaural beats. I am a hard nut to crack. Your success may vary.

Will The Real Truth Please Stand Up.

A few days ago I had a brief discussion with Kalvin. The conversation was short and not very meaningful UNTIL I questioned myself as to whether Kalvin was a real entity or a delusion. Was I conversing with an entity or was I making the whole conversation up in my head? Kalvin got a little irritated that I continued to question his/her existence and instantly demonstrated to me how easy it would be for me to accept his/her existence. In that moment I oscillated between holding Kalvin to be a reality and doubt. This then set off a series of meditations on the nature of reality, belief, truth, knowledge, and reality manipulation. What appears below is some of my thoughts regarding the aforementioned topics. They are recorded here primarily for my own benefit… to establish a foundation for future explorations into my developing models of reality and their practical applications. If anyone gains some benefit from what follows, so much the better.

t=subjective truth/belief

T=objective truth/the real

K= True Knowledge


All human knowledge is subjective truth or belief (t). Such knowledge should be considered as truth claims based upon personal experience and thought. Only when a truth claim or belief (t) corresponds to an objective truth that exists independently of an individual’s thoughts (T) can such a claim or belief be considered True Knowledge. This model assumes that objective truth (T) exists and can be known. Question: By what mechanism can one gauge whether or not one’s subjective truths or beliefs (t) correspond to objective truth (T) and are thus True Knowledge (K)? Tentative answer: We are stuck with our own thoughts and experiences. We have no way of getting outside of ourselves, so we have no means by which to acquire True Knowledge (K) of objective truth (T). This does not deny the reality of objective truth (T), it merely indicates our inability to know that we posses True Knowledge (K).

If the above is correct, then we only have access to subjective truth (t) that is, for any number of reasons, erroneously elevated to True Knowledge (K). If all human knowledge is subjective truth (t), then no truth claim (t) is any truer than another (though it may be more advantageous to adhere to a particular truth claim over another). Ignoring the implications of this position on a large scale (forms of relativism), I would like to consider the impact of this position upon the individual. Knowing that one’s truths are subjective (t) is not the same as accepting them to be without reason or justification. They are bolstered by one’s experiences and thoughts. A person has a huge repertoire of experiences and thoughts to draw upon. Theoretically, such thoughts and experiences could be intentionally utilized to create beliefs or truths (t) that supersede those to which one already adheres. This is similar to the notion of paradigm shifting espoused by some Chaos magicians. I personally feel that paradigm shifting, if at all truly possible (I still question its possibility), is much more difficult and involved than what I am suggesting here.

Road Trip Meditation

I have found that many books on meditation, especially those designed for beginners, advise the reader to set aside a certain portion of the day to meditate and to meditate at this prescribed time every day. Working one’s meditations in this fashion is helpful in that it provides a structured schedule for meditation. All too often daily life can be very demanding of one’s attention. Without a schedule, or by practicing willy-nilly, one may find that the day (or days!) passes without having turned to one’s zafu.

Despite its advantages, scheduled meditation has its drawbacks as well. Firstly, it limits one’s meditation to the time set specifically aside for practice. If one’s mediation session lasts an hour, one misses out on 23 hours of potentially available cultivation time. Secondly, one may become so accustomed to one’s meditation schedule that one comes to feel that meditation can only be done during the prescribed time.

While a meditation schedule can be helpful, especially for the beginner, I would suggest that as one becomes accustomed to meditation that one allows one’s meditations to permeate the day. In my case, I have more-or-less abandoned any form of scheduled practice. My mind has become so attuned to seeking out meditation that I meditate at every available opportunity. I meditate before going to sleep, taking a shower, while waiting in the doctor’s office, during TV commercials, etc. In other words, I seek out meditation whenever and wherever possible. Keep in mind that meditation is a mental exercise. One does not need to be burning incense or be sitting in the lotus posture to be engaged in effective meditation. If you engage meditation in this way, your day will (more-or-less) be filled with the cultivation of your mind and no one will suspect that you are doing anything out of the ordinary.

Recently, I have incorporated the act of driving into my meditations. Usually, one is advised to avoid meditating while operating a motor vehicle. This, I believe, is sound advice if one’s mediation takes one’s thoughts and awareness away from the task of driving. My method of driving meditation does quite the opposite, however. I limit my thoughts and awareness exclusively to the task of driving. Of course, I do not always succeed. My mind often slips and I am mentally a thousand miles away from my Toyota Highlander. If anything, my mediation has shown me how mentally absent I generally am when I get behind the wheel (I do not mean to suggest that I am an unsafe driver, which I am not. While my awareness remains centered upon the task of driving, my thoughts tend to wander. I suspect most people share in this).

My driving meditation is simple, yet difficult to perform. The task is to train the mind so that no thought unrelated to the task of driving will arise. When an errant thought does arise it is, once noted, expunged from the mind. To aid myself in this meditation I fill my mind with “driving thoughts” in order to help block stray thoughts from entering my mind. I now do this mediation whenever I am driving and am alone in the vehicle.

A typical “driving meditation” might read something like –

My speed is 30 MPH… I am approaching a stop sign so I need to slow down….stepping on break…slowing…stopped…nothing to the right or left…stepping on the gas… accelerating…no one behind me… people crossing the street ahead…(errant thought)… it is becoming difficult to see because of the rain that is starting….turning on windshield wipers…(errant thought)…there is a red light ahead…slowing down… stopped…waiting for the green light…waiting for the green light…waiting for the green light… (errant thought)…etc.

*I believe this mediation is safe to undertake while driving. In fact, it may enhance one’s safety since it forces one to keep one’s thoughts on the task at hand – namely, driving. However, these are my personal opinions. Should anyone choose to meditate while driving, they do so at their own risk. I take no responsibility for any ill effects caused by meditating in the fashion described above.

Enlightenment: Static or Dynamic?

Taylor Ellwood has given his thoughts and critique of enlightenment here. I have posted my comments to his post below because there seems to be some problem with his blog. I can get his posts in my Google reader, but when I follow the link back to his blog page to comment I get an “Error 404” page (this is occurring only for September posts). I tried leaving my comments on his YouTube page but I am longwinded and it will not accept the totality of what I have written.


Tylor,
I would be interested in hearing from you as to how you arrived at your understanding of enlightenment. I have some familiarity with Buddhism and have never heard of enlightenment described as you have done. As I understand it, Buddhists generally see the enlightened mind of a Buddha as consisting of two unique components, namely – liberating wisdom and compassion. This mind is not static, as you say, but is an active mind where wisdom is dynamically expressed through compassionate action. Stories of the historical Buddha’s life after his enlightenment clearly illustrate this. According to tradition, the Buddha did not rest in a “static primal goop”, but rather engaged living beings in a way (e.g., as a teacher) that fostered the birth of wisdom in other mind streams. In fact, if I am not mistaken, tradition maintains that a Buddha must teach in order to qualify as a Buddha. A Buddha that is not actively engaged in helping others along the Buddhist path is NO Buddha. It seems to me that your concept of a “static” enlightenment has much to do with an erroneous understanding of the Buddhist doctrine of no-self (anatma). The anatma doctrine does not deny the existence of individual persons. Persons are counted among existing things (dharmas) in the early Abhidharma literature. Typically, a “person” is a term used to refer to a particular grouping of the five heaps (skandhas) that make up an individual – namely, form, feeling, perceptions, will and consciousness. What the anatma doctrine refutes is an all-pervading, eternal and unchanging atman (self) among the impermanent components of existence (dharmas).

The Reincarnation Game

The idea of reincarnation, that living beings transmigrate from one life to another in a cycle of birth, death and rebirth, has been advanced by many diverse religious and philosophical traditions down through the ages. For many of these traditions the process of reincarnation is viewed negatively, as something to be either eradicated or transcended.

Personally, I have never been able to adopt the idea that living beings reincarnate. Moreover, I have not been able to adopt the belief that any type of existence whatsoever awaits those who relinquish their corporeal existence. Nevertheless, if reincarnation was in indeed a reality, I would certainly view it as something positive. The chance to experience life again, even though it be rife with suffering, would, to my mind, be preferable to the nothingness that I suspect awaits me at the end of my journey.

Recently, I decided to play a little game with myself and imagine that reincarnation was indeed a reality. I then asked myself if there was anything in my life that might be a mental or emotional carryover from a previous life. Below is what I came up with:

1) I have always had an extreme aversion to having things touch the anterior portion of my neck. While it is extremely uncomfortable to wear a tie, I can manage it for a short time. Turtleneck sweaters I can absolutely not endure. A simple touch of my throat area will generally cause me to cower. My wife has always joked that I must have been either hung or strangled in a previous life. Hmmmm, maybe I had.

2) Occasionally, perhaps three or four times a year at most, I will have an experience that is difficult to qualify. It is strictly a physical experience without any accompanying conceptuality. The sensation is localized within the upper chest and face, principally in the inner chest, mouth, throat and nasal areas. It is neither a pleasant nor unpleasant sensation. It lasts but a few seconds and then dissipates. I have not been able to ascertain a catalyst for the experience, but it seems to arise during moments of relative passivity - lying in bed, watching television, riding in a car. I have, with some concentrated effort, been able to induce this experience once or twice in my lifetime by merely thinking about it. I have come to think of this sensation as a memory of some type of kinesthetic experience from early childhood, perhaps a feeding experience during infancy. Perhaps this “memory” stems from an experience prior to my birth.

3) When I was very young I had a recurring dream. This particular dream would occur infrequently, maybe four or five times a year. When I stopped having the dream is not known, but I suspect that it had ceased to invade my sleep by my teens. The dream would commence with me and my family (not necessarily my real family) in our house’s living room just moments before sunset. We would all be engaged in some action that we knew would need to be ceased upon the setting of the sun, because if any noise was made after sunset, the horrible monster-man would come up from the cellar and drag the noise-making culprit down into the basement where he would toss him/her into the furnace. Needless to say, I was the one who invariably made some incredibly small sound and wound up tossed head first into the furnace. Now, I have always wondered about this dream. Why did I have it and why did it replay itself repeatedly throughout my youth? I have always just assumed that it was a common nightmare where a child’s fear of the basement was transformed into a Bogeyman dream. However, when I played my little reincarnation game, this dream was the first thing to enter my thoughts. It reminded me of the story of Anne Frank and how she and the others with her were discovered hiding in an upstairs attic and sent to a concentration camp. Now, I am in no way suggesting that I was Anne or any of the others who were hiding with her. But the linking of my dream to the story of Anne Frank got me thinking. Could this dream, with its theme of abduction and death by furnace, have been an intrusion of a past life memory into my dreams? Might I have been a Holocaust victim? It is interesting to speculate.

4) Recently, during certain moments of death contemplation, I will have the “feeling” that I have experienced a Bardo-type state before. I have no rational explanation for this.

5) When my youngest daughter was no more than two years old I asked her where she lived before she was born. She stated, without hesitation, “Japan.” Needless to say, I found her reply fascinating. I wondered where she picked up that word and how she knew that it was a place. Kids learn the darndest things. Or maybe she remembered it! Incidentally, she was born with a Mongolian spot on her tushy, which is especially prevalent among children of East Asian descent. (OK, technically this is not something in my life that suggests I may have lived before, but it does have some relevance to my discussion of reincarnation. Besides, my daughter will get a kick out of her cameo in my blog…except the part where I mention her tukhus [from the Yiddish תּחת tokhes, meaning butt]. )

So, what have I taken away from all of this? I’m not sure. It was an interesting exercise, but I’m not sure if it had any value other than being a mental workout. What about you…do you subscribe to the notion of reincarnation? If so, tell me about your past life(s). If not, what anomalous things in your life might be indications of a past life? Play the reincarnation game and leave your comments.

A God Without Moral Worth

How do we perceive the minds of others?

According to Harvard psychologists, humans typically see the minds of others along two distinct and independent dimensions – namely, agency and experience. Here, agency refers to “an individual’s ability for self-control, morality, and planning," while experience refers to an individual’s ability “to feel sensations such as hunger, fear, and pain.” According to these psychologists, certain types of judgments concerning “the other” arise and are played out depending upon the type and degree of the dimension attributed to another’s mind. A mind that has experience, for example, is judged to have moral worth and by extension certain inalienable rights, chief among these is the right to life.

Kurt Gray, one of the members of the research team writes,

 If you see a man in a persistent vegetative state as having feelings, it feels wrong to pull the plug on him,  whereas if he is just a lump of firing neurons, we have less compunction at freeing up his hospital bed.

A mind that has agency is considered suitable to be judged for the choices it makes.

Kurt Gray states,

When we perceive agency in another, we believe they have the capacity to recognize right from wrong and can punish them accordingly….

While the research respondents attributed a high degree of both agency and experience to the minds of “normal” adult human beings, these same respondents attributed to certain minds a lack of either agency or experience (If this is utterly unclear, just follow the link above. The original article is much clearer). For example, a fetus or infant might have experience but no or little agency. For the research respondents, God is a being that has agency (capable of moral action) but no experience. As Kurt Gray states, “We find it hard to envision God sharing any of our feelings or desires.”

Now, the notion that God has agency but no experience got me thinking. If a mind that is in possession of experience is deemed to have moral worth and God lacks experience, then god lacks moral worth. What, if any, are the implications of holding this view? How might one’s interactions with such a God be shaped by holding such a view and how might these interactions differ from those that exist between oneself and a God that has experience or moral worth? I certainly don’t have any answers. What do you think?