An Interview with Dr Keith Hearne

June 13, 2014 - PRLog -- What was it like when you got the first signals from within a lucid dream?

"No one ever saw this except me in the sleep laboratory at Hull University, England On the morning of 4/12/1975.

The previous night I had instructed the male subject who reported having frequent 'lucid' dreams (in which the dreamer becomes fully conscious and has full cognitive faculties whilst still in the dream) to make 7 or 8 left-right eye-movements on becoming lucid.

REM means Rapid Eye Movement sleep, so surely the ocular muscles could be operated deliberately when lucid. I had devised the signalling method in an attempt to circumvent the profound bodily paralysis of REM (dreaming) sleep - which inhibits any physical signalling.

The subject was 'wired up' to a sensitive multi-channel chart recorder. With great anticipation, I had been watching each REM-period during the night. Just before 8 am the subject had been in REM sleep for about half an hour.

There was a long REM burst, nothing unusual, when, suddenly, out of the randomness, the requested, deliberate, sequence of large zig-zag movements appeared in the 2 channels monitoring eye-movements:

On waking, the subject described how he suddenly realised he was dreaming, and consciously made the signals before continuing the lucid dream experience. They were the first ever signals communicated from within a lucid dream.

It was an amazing. I was looking at a communication from a person in another room who was asleep, 'unconscious', dreaming, yet in his own vivid world in which he was perfectly conscious and interacting with others. It was his reality - I was in my reality. A channel of communication had been established between those 2 realities.

The technique opened up a doorway into a whole new area in dream research - the dreamer was able to send out real-time information.

A few months later I was given my own laboratory at Liverpool University, and over 3 years discovered the physiological and psychological phenomena of lucid dreaming, for my PhD.

The discoveries:

- Lucid dreams are true dreams occurring in REM sleep.

- Events happen in real time in the lucid dream.

- Lucidity is consistently preceded by a REM burst.

- Experiments may be conducted in the lucid dream, and results signalled out. (I even conducted the first sleep-lab lucid dream telepathy experiment in my PhD research).

- Many correlational effects were revealed from the copious physiological and questionnaire data.

- I invented the world's first 'dream machine', and discovered the 'light switch effect'.

I sent news of my signalling discovery to 2 well-respected sleep researchers: Professors Allan Rechtschaffen and William Dement. Rechtschaffen sent a most encouraging reply. Several years later, research conducted in the US confirmed my findings.

I am very honoured that April 12th is now being recognised as Lucid Dreaming Day to mark this great research."

Can you tell us about your other work on premonitions?

"I'm fascinated by premonitions. Alongside my main lucid dream work, I had performed many experiments into parapsychology, in the very artificial situation of the laboratory - with mixed results - but then one day I had a 'real life' experience.

I was about to make a familiar, routine, ferry journey across the broad Humber estuary when I 'knew' with complete certainty that something untoward was going to happen on that vessel. I'd never had such a feeling before. I stopped and thought, but decided to go aboard. On the journey it got dark, and later there was a cry of 'Man overboard!' Someone had actually fallen into the water. After a long time of searching, the passenger was dragged on board. Resuscitation was performed.

The event spurred me to investigate real-life premonitions. Later I wrote a book on my extensive research called Visions of the Future.

An analysis of cases identified a sub-group of premonitions that seem to be very accurate, which I termed 'Media announcement type' - say TV, radio, newspaper, items that are seen/heard before the unexpected event. One such case concerned the Flixborough chemical plant disaster in the UK.

These anomalies must be considered in our attempts to make sense of this world in which we find ourselves. Simple explanations are not enough."

What has your research told you about non-lucid dream interpretation?

"I think ordinary dreams can indeed be 'metaphors in motion are a way by which the unconscious can provide useful information to the dreamer.

I would recommend readers to look at The Dream Oracle book by David Melbourne and myself. He came up with the extraordinary technique, which is based on the letters of the alphabet, and provides a new method - greatly facilitating that communication."

What got you interested in imagery and dreams?

"As a child, my teacher said to me: "You know when you daydream, Keith, and see pictures...". I was puzzled by what she was saying, but I realised later that I have no visual imagery (in wakefulness) whatsoever. Other children though, were saying "Yes". I realised at that early age that there are individual differences in people.

The thought stuck in my mind. Later, when an older sister was at College, she brought home books by Freud, Jung, etc. I read them avidly, so that also cemented my interest in dreams.

As an undergraduate at Reading University in England, I developed a 'tracing' technique enabling subjects, in hypnosis, to externalise their internal imagery. I termed the method 'hypno-oneirography'.

The subject sits in front of a large drawing board, in hypnosis, and is instructed to have a vivid hypnotic dream (or even to explore a 'past life'). The dream imagery is stopped on command, then the subject opens their eyes, 'projects' the freeze-framed image onto the board and traces the image. Colours are described, and later painted-in. Sequential stop-starts can reveal scenes from a whole imagery-experience.

A 'scene-change effect' was immediately discovered. It seems that the 'pixels' of the 'before' picture simply get re-arranged into a new scene, by a 'law of least-effort'. These effects occur in nocturnal dreams too."

Is there anything else you would like to share with the lucid dreaming community?

"When anyone is a pioneer in a new field, a few fakes will try to 'jump on the band-wagon', and make claims. So, some people (mostly in America) have completely the wrong idea about the beginning of sleep-lab research into lucid dreaming, and my pioneering role. Lazy journalists have sadly perpetuated that misinformation.

Things change, I'm pleased to say. The 'Net has been good for this - all the information is there, for all to see. Those new, modern writers who demand accuracy in memorialising the history of science are putting the record straight."


About Dr. Keith Hearne

Dr Keith Hearne is a British psychologist and the first person to create scientific proof of lucid dreaming in the laboratory via his ocular-signalling technique, in 1975. More info can be found on his website at http://www.european-college.co.uk/.