In 1999, the Wachowski brothers released the blockbuster hit, “The Matrix,” which quickly took the world by storm. However, it wasn’t the action and adrenalin-fueled videography which made the movie a global hit; rather, it was the underlying philosophy written within.
The notion that we may be living in a simulated world, powered only by our minds, made society question the very definition of “real.” People quickly jumped online to write about their theories surrounding reality, ranging from how the movie was simply an interesting work of fiction to those dissecting multiple layers of quantum physics as it relates to our understanding of the universe.
One particular subset of the population saw The Matrix as an extension of their daily reality: lucid dreamers. In short, lucid dreaming is the ability to consciously recognize the dream state. That is, a lucid dreamer becomes aware that they are dreaming, a state commonly coined “lucidity.”
The concept of lucid dreaming has likely been around for tens of thousands of years; however, modern history dates its earliest mentions of the topic to around 500 AD, when Tibetan monks regularly practiced the art of dream control as a means to enlightenment.
Today, the concept of lucid dreaming is hotly debated, particularly by those who do not believe in the possibility of dream control. However, countless lucid dreamers have documented their techniques and methods, and the general consensus lies in that lucid dreaming is a real, albeit strange, phenomenon.