The advent of a slightly better understanding of the condition of
lucid dreaming and its close corollary of NDE or near death
experience has now opened up the door for technical assistance in the
form of hardware and support software.
The reality of lucid dreaming is beyond doubt, so it becomes possible
to do things that may make some sense.
As mentioned, it is not that easy, but the tool shown here allows the
mind to possibly be trained a lot easier than has been the
experience.
The interesting question is the relationship between lucid dreaming
and formal meditation itself.
I am most interested in discovering the capacity to discover fresh
information that would not be otherwise be acquired. How do we query
this unusual state of our minds? My own one experience showed me
alternative forms of a well known genus that could exist and a shift
in the spectrum that was pleasing but odd. Other information was
also gathered through observation that provided a confirmation of
reality.
In the event this technology is a good beginning and perhaps it will
lead to significant success. And with any new science, we may get
some pleasant surprises.
Real life
Inception: Two 'mad scientists' create sleep mask that lets people
CONTROL their dreams
By SNEJANA
FARBEROV
PUBLISHED: 17:42
GMT, 20 May 2012
In a twist straight
out of the movie Inception, a duo of developers from Brooklyn, New
York, have built a sleeping mask designed to allow people to have
lucid dreams that they can control.
While it may look like
a standard sleeping mask, Remee has been billed as a special REM
(Rapid Eye Movement) enhancing device that is supposed to help steer
the sleeper into lucid dreaming by making the brain aware that it is
dreaming.
The goal of the
product is to allow people to have the dreams of their choice, from
driving a race car to flying to having lunch with Abraham Lincoln.
In the hit movie
Inception, directed by Christoper Nolan and starring Leonardo
DiCaprio, a team of corporate spies enter a man's dream to plant an
idea into his subconscious. It is set in a world where technology
exists to enter the human mind through dream invasion,
Nolan was said to have
come up with the idea ten years ago.
The futuristic
invention is the brainchild of Duncan Frazier and Steve McGuigan,
both aged 30, who have started a company named Bitbanger Labs.
The two friends put up
their project on the crowd funding website Kickstarter with
the goal of raising $35,000. By this week, more than 6,550 people
pledged $572,891 to fund Remee.
The inside of the
sleeping mask features a series of six red LED lights that are too
faint to wake the sleeper up, but visible enough for the brain to
register them.
The lights can be
programed to produce a sequence designed by the user.
Sleep stages are
divided into two main categories: non-REM and REM. People go back and
forth between these stages throughout the night, with REM stages,
where most dreaming occurs, lasting the longest towards morning.
Remee apparently
notices these longer REM stages and ‘enters’ the dream via the
flashing lights. The device will wait for four to five hours for the
sleeper to get into the heavy REM stages before the red lights turn
on.
The idea is simple:
you are playing a perfect round of golf in a dream, and you see a
pattern of red lights flashing in the distance.
Because the pattern is
in a particular sequence, it would signal to you that you are
dreaming, not unlike the totem object in Inception.
Once you realize you
are in a dream, you can then decide what happens next, whether it be
a quick trip to Antarctica or time travel.
Rather than
encumbering the mask with buttons and controls, its inventors set up
a website called sleepwithremee.com where users can adjust the
setups, such as when to start the light sequence and when to repeat
it. The intensity of the lights can also be changed.
Control: Users can
adjust the settings on their sleeping mask through a website
He also added that LED
lights are not known to cause seizures.
McGuigan said
that he uses his Remee several times a week, but he admitted that
reaching a state of lucidity can be 'hard' and does not happen every
time.
The two inventors
began working on the mask last February after reading studies
focusing on lucid dreams that were conducted at Stanford University
in the 1980s.
That is also when the
first models of 'dream machines' were created.
Homemade: The
inventors worked on Remee for a year and built the first prototypes
themselves at home
However, he said that
the early devices were bulky and expensive, some coming with a price
tag of $1,000. One of the models was even available though the
Skymall catalog handed out on planes, McGuigan said.
Frazier and McGuigan
built the first prototype of Remee at home before taking their design
to a manufacturer.
The Remee sleeping
mask is light and works on tiny 3V coin cell batteries that last for
several months since the devices uses up power only when the lights
are blinking.
Selection: The Remee
is available in five colors (pictured) and costs $95 each
With the funding for
the project now in place, people can pre-order the masks. They are
available in five color options and are priced at $95 each.
Mr McGuigan said
that so far, they have received 7,000 orders, many of them coming
from Australia, Italy and Spain.
When Remee was first
presented on Kickstarter, customers could also order the masks with
customized designs of their choosing, but McGuigan said
that this option is no longer available.
Spaced out: Early on,
the sleeping mask was available in customized designs featuring
images from the Hubble telescope
McGuigan graduated
from Lock Haven University with a degree in computer science.
Frazier studied film
at Arizona State University, although McGuigan said that
their technical skills overlap.
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