Awakening in Dreams | Nicola De Pisapia | TEDxMantova

By inviting us to take note of the illusory nature of the senses neuroscientist and Professor Nicola De Pisapia offers us a method to channel our dreams and live them with lucidly.

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community.

Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx

Let's start with a seemingly
easy question.

Who, here, is convinced
to be dreaming, right now?

Raise your hand, one, two -

not many, thankfully.

(Laughter)

Another question, linked to the first -
even though it doesn't seem so.

Who of you would trust someone

who betrays you every day?

Every day, every night actually,
it fools you into believing false things.

Is there someone
who would trust that person?

No, we all agree on this.

Yet this is what we do:

we trust someone
who deceives us every day.

This is what we all do,
because our mind fools us

every day, every night, when we sleep,
for about an hour and a half.

That is the duration
of the so-called REM phases,

the sleep's dreaming phase.

Which kind of experience is dream?

We all know that, we believe what we see.

If we're having a nightmare,
we are afraid,

because that monster is chasing us,
we believe it is true.

If we have a love affair
with someone, we believe it.

And the experience we are living,
we live it intensely.

Our mind deceives us
in an extremely convincing way,

involving all our senses.

It involves sight, involves hearing,

involves touch, involves emotions.

Our brain and our mind
create for us, when we dream,

some sort of movie,
natural virtual reality.

Some of you may have tried
to use virtual reality, right?

We are immersed in it, we believe in it.
Even more so in a dream.

It is a "natural" technology, so to say,
and it's even more effective.

Yet during the day, when we are awake,

we trust our mind,

which is the same
that betrayed us in the night,

the same that deceived us,

that perhaps inspired us during the night,

but still generating something
that just is not true.

It is fake, it is illusory,
it is a shadow.

This idea that our mind deceives us

has deeply crossed
our entire Western culture

generating two approaches,
two ways of thinking

extremely important for all of us.

We could not be here now

if we had not reconsidered
the deceptive nature of our senses.

One approach is science.

With the scientific method,

science wants to go beyond the limits
of the individual mind,

the deception of our senses,

That's why we use a meter.

If I guess by naked eye,
something is five feet meter long,

I know I can deceive myself,
my mind is not that accurate,

I need to use a tool

to objectively measure that length.

This holds true for everything in science.

We set up models,
but we do not trust them.

We must run experiments,
we must take measures

so that our idea, our fantasy,

is somehow confirmed
by the external reality.

So the scientific method

is totally aware
of how deceptive our mind is.

And it doesn't count
a single scientist's opinion,

because she may have made a mistake,

she might have made experiments,
let's say, only in a certain direction.

Another scientist is needed

who questions, tries to falsify,

what the first scientist stated.

Another discipline
that strongly takes into account

the deceptive nature of our senses

is Western philosophy.

There's also the Eastern one,

but we are more familiar
with the Western one.

Think of Descartes, René Descartes,

a great French philosopher,
one of the fathers of modern thought.

He starts his philosophical study,
his philosophical exploration,

precisely from the fundamental doubt
about the relatability of his senses

and tried to find
a sounder base than his senses,

one that a philosophical system
can later be built upon.

And so he starts saying
"I think therefore I am",

which is well known.

You see, science and philosophy,

and various philosophical approaches
that we do not explore now,

are fully aware of our senses'
deluding nature.

But we, as individuals,

we rarely ask ourselves during the day:

am I dreaming or not?

Instead, we believe
in what our senses, all the time,

make us see, hear, feel, touch.

But I'd like to stress with you now

a particular method we can use

to become more aware

of our senses' deceptive nature.

And this happens just while we dream.

That is, while we are having
a normal dream,

trying to nurture the ability

to wonder if that is a dream or not.

Let's assume I'm chased
by a nightmare's monster;

while I'm running away,
I contemplate the situation

and ask myself: is this a dream or not?

And I turn my face to the monster.

It is an extremely difficult
change of conscience, it is not easy,

but perhaps some of you
will have experienced it.

Some of you may have had a dream

where you felt it was a dream
and maybe you guided it a little bit.

Those are called "pre-lucid dreams".

A lucid dream is an extremely
intense experience,

where we are fully aware
of the fact that we are dreaming.

You see, as a teenager
I had that experience

as I clumsily practiced

meditation techniques during the day

and one night I happened
to have a lucid dream

of this extremely intense type,

which shaped a bit, let's say,

the way I saw, and still see,

consciousness and awareness.

With the first dream then,

immediately reported
on the lucid dreams's book,

was the first in a series
of hundreds and hundreds of lucid dreams

that I had in my life
and still continue to have.

And they have a great
transformative power.

Initially with the first dreams,
you learn a little to play.

One thing I did, for example,

was to get up a few inches off the ground.

So I tried to challenge
the laws of physics

and move from one place to another

of that extremely detailed
dream reality, by sliding.

But then, why stop at that?

So in later dreams I elevated myself more,

and even passed through walls.

I had the chance to fly over a city,

to go from one city to another,

always with extreme realism.

Meeting people generated for us
by our dream world -

we cannot control the people in the dream,

they have a strange
independence of thought;

but we can decide to go to them.

We can transform our body,

because we have a dream body,

which is the same one
of when we are awake,

but if we look at our dream hands

we can transform them, with an effort
of lucidity and awareness,

giving them six or ten fingers,

or the hands of an animal,
to become a wolf.

One can become an eagle,

not only to fly but also
to have the body of an eagle.

It is possible to become a dog,

a woman if you are a man,
or the other way around.

It is possible to be
in two places simultaneously,

being aware of that -
and why not, even three places.

Once it happened to me
to be in three different places,

I was flying in one, walking in another,

and melted with the floor
in the third one.

Not so pleasant but interesting.

And anyway, you're in control.
You can wake up at any time.

So, we said about philosophy.

There are various traces
of our awareness' ability

to move into the world of shadows.

And the best allegory for this idea
is a very famous one

I am sure that many of you
will have heard or studied.

It is the Plato's Cave,

or the Allegory of the Cave,
as it is also known.

It's a story, I recapitulate here,

written by Plato 2,400 years ago
in his Republic,

staged in a cave deep within the Earth.

There are prisoners in chains

who are forced to look
only at the bottom of the cave,

with no chance to move or look back.

That is their world.

Behind them, unbeknownst to them,
there is a huge fire

and between fire and prisoners

there are people passing with objects.

So the prisoners see,
at the bottom of the cave.

a number of moving shadows.

That is their reality,

and they therefore believe
that this is the only reality.

Those shadows are all that is there.

It just so happens, one day,

one of those prisoners
is released from the chains.

He is able to get out
of his limited world.

The first thing he does,
he sees that there is a huge fire

and he sees there are
three-dimensional objects

he had absolutely no idea of before,

And he understands that shadows,

once thought to be
the objects of the world,

are only a projection
of the actual three-dimensional reality.

Then, at a distance, he sees a light,

which is the entrance to the cave
he had lived in until then,

he goes there, he comes out

and sees that the world
is much more complex

and very rich, colorful, full of light

and there is a large fire,
much larger than that of the cave,

which is the sun,
which enlightens everything.

And he can interact with these objects,
he can run, he can touch them.

Awakened as it is - you see,
this is a metaphor for awakening -

but there is another passage,

which is what also happens
in lucid dreaming,

that is, he decides to get back
to the world of shadows.

He returns down inside the cave

where his inmates are still prisoners,

and he wants to tell them

that the reality of the shadows
is not the real reality

but there is a much more complex reality,
much richer, much finer,

much more true, out there.

As you can see, allegories
describe mental processes,

just as dreams.

indeed allegories and dreams overlap,
they have a close connection.

In this allegory of Plato

there is this mental process of awakening,

A hard process,

also because initially
it's hard to wake up,

blinded as we are by light;

but little by little,
we wake up completely.

But then you see,
there's this second passage,

the return to the world of shadows,

the return to sleep,
the return to the illusory condition

where we try to interact
but from an awakened standpoint.

So you see how it is like
to wake up in a dream.

Recent neuroscientific research

has focused on this phenomenon.

It used to be the exclusive
realm of philosophy

or maybe some anecdote
told here and there.

Then it became a mostly
psychological field,

and now even of neuroscience.

So what happens
in a lucidly dreaming brain?

Well, the message is this,

we have a part of the brain
that is critically important,

called the prefrontal cortex,

the one we have behind the forehead.

And you can imagine its role

as a sort of conductor
of all of our mental abilities.

It directs the vision,

which decides when to pay attention,

what we must pay attention to
in our visual range.

So the conductor -

as it doesn’t play an instrument itself

but regulates, let's say, the productions
of all the other instruments.

Thus it is a kind of boss of our mind.

That's when we have normal,
ordinary dreams,

the prefrontal cortex is off,

while the rest of the brain
is normally active

almost as if we were awake.

So it's a very active brain,
but in the prefrontal cortex.

What has been discovered is,
when we have a lucid dream -

a very rare event,
very hard to reproduce in labs,

prefrontal cortex gets activated,

not just as completely
as if we were awake,

but in many substantial parts
it's more active, consumes more oxygen.

It was also found,

those who are most prone to lucid dreaming

or developed this ability
to be conscious in their dreams,

have a thicker prefrontal cortex,

we can measure it with an MRI,

which signals a greater predisposition

to be the conductor,

to have an active conductor in their mind.

Many studies - and many are still ongoing,

is an extremely recent research topic.

The prefrontal cortex
is my favorite research topic,

so I started dealing many years ago

on how the prefrontal cortex
regulates and directs our behavior.

So what can we do, in order to increase

our ability to be aware
while sleeping, in the dream?

Well one technique is that
of asking yourself, even when awake,

if we are dreaming or not.

I mean, all of a sudden,
am I dreaming or not?

Asking the question,
rather than giving the answer,

casting some doubt

on how actually real is what we see.

If it is our projection
or is an objective fact.

Repeating it several times during the day
makes us, say, create a kind of habit.

And it may happen, one of these times
we ask that ourselves,

that we are actually dreaming.

And so I'm talking to someone
in my dream world,

and I stop for a moment, saying,

am I really talking with this person,
am I really watching a TED talk

or is it a dream?

And try to give youself a valid answer.

Doing this several times during the day -

but let me get this straight,
not to escape in a dream world!

Exactly for the opposite purpose:

enhance awareness, lucidity and presence

in what we are experiencing.

By doing so, we can become
experienced lucid dreamers.

And which advantage do we have
in our conscious world?

Think of a situation when you're hit
by a negative event:

for example, you're fired.

Bad, objectively bad.

But how much negative projection we create
around such an objectively bad event?

We began to underestimate ourselves:
why have they fired me?

I didn't deserve that job,

I never showed that I was good at it,
or at that other thing,

I have no more chances left.
What will my family think about me?

All this, you see, is dream-like:

it is a dream dress

we put on real and concrete facts.

Training to lucid dreaming

helps us to tell objective reality
from our projection.

In this way we can live better.

Not to escape in a distant world,

but to be more present in reality.

Thus getting closer

to the freed prisoner of Plato's Cave

and be able to go around,
out in the outside world,

in light of the sun,

or even return to the world of shadows
and not let them to capture us again.

So I say goodbye to you with a wish
for a good awakening in dreams.

(Applause)