Lucidity Continuum

If you’ve had more than one lucid dream you’ve probably come to realize that not all lucid dreams are equal. In each Lucid dream things like your ability to think clearly, remember past events, your feeling of embodiment, the reality tone or vividness of your dream, the emotional content of your dream, the ability to control the dream and your sense of self can vary greatly. 

With this fact in mind Ed Kellogg published a paper that discusses this lucidity spectrum and the different levels of lucidity that a dreamer may encounter. He put forward that there were two main factors to determine the level of lucidity of a dreamer. The first is the level of clarity or thought that a dreamer experiences and the second is the level of control a dreamer has during his or her dream.

Ed Kellogg measured the level of a person's thoughts and perception by looking at the obvious degree to which a dreamer was aware of the various assumptions that usually go unquestioned during the day and for most people during the night.

One such assumption is that objects that we perceive exist independently of us. Which, while many people believe this to be true it would none the less likely be an innacurate assumption to carry over into the dream world.

To Ed it wasn’t about seeing the dream world in an accurate manner. To him what was important was a person's ability to recognize these assumptions during a dream.

So what are the different levels of lucidity according to Ed Kellogg

First there is the obvious non-lucidity or ordinary dreams. You go through your dream acting largely on emotion, with little thought or analysis involved, more or less just jumping from one assumption to the next without taking any time to really contemplate the assumptions you are making, regardless of how absurd they may be.

The next level he considers a kind of Pre-Lucid state. You begin to notice the oddities that occur during the dream but you don’t really understand their implications and will oftentimes misidentify these odd occurrences in an attempt to rationalize what it is you are experiencing.

A level up from this is Sub-Lucid. This level is characterized by a realization that you are dreaming but with an unquestioning adherence to whichever dream story you find yourself in. Basically you’ll recognize you are dreaming but if in your dream you were about to, say, have dinner with your family, you will continue to have dinner with them without ever thinking to go off script from the normal dream narrative.

Following this is a state of lucidity considered to be Semi-Lucid. Much like the previous level you at this point realize you are dreaming and for the most part still adhere to whatever dream narrative you find yourself in. The notable difference is that your realization of you being in a dream now allows you to make more unique and varied choices based on this knowledge. For example if you happened to find yourself fighting a giant cthulhu mecha cyborg, you may decide to increase your own size to match his in order to better fight him, knowing that you are in a dream and so therefore this is possible. Simply put, this level is the point where you are able to use your dream control to aid you but have not yet realized that being in a dream means that you do not have to actually fight giant mecha cthulhu.

Following along the lucidity spectrum next we finally hit a point that is considered to be ordinary lucidity. While you may still follow the dream script at this point it no longer becomes a matter of requirement and rather becomes the outcome of an aware deliberate choice.

After ordinary lucidity comes full lucidity which is the same as the prior only with a higher degree of dream control and an increased ability to recall memories from your waking life. It is worth noting that this level should be accompanied by a more in depth ability to question the assumptions that you are or have been making during the dream.

For many this level is the pinnacle of what they aim to achieve in their lucid dreaming practice, but according to Ed Kellog there is a level which is considered to be far superior to this level.

This level he named Super-Lucid. To Ed this was seemingly the true pinnacle of lucid dreaming. He describes it as a state in which you have full awareness of yourself as a combination of the more superficial aspect of the mind which deals with labeling, the intrinsic feelings and emotions you have that ascribe meaning to the things you experience and beneath those the creativity and underlying phenomena that structures pure experience. To Ed this level is characterized by an awareness and harmony of these three aspects during the dream. Now if I’m being honest I don't fully understand the state in which Ed is talking about here and may not be doing him justice in my description of it. If you want to read about it in his own words I will link the paper in which he discusses it in the description below.

Ed Kellogg also found it worth mentioning in his paper an additional state of dreaming he calls power dreaming. A state in which you have a high degree of dream control but yet you do not realize you are dreaming. All I’ll say about this here is that while this state could be interesting and fun it is not a form of lucid dreaming. 

Now it is important to note that these levels are not a required progression for lucid dreamers nor are they the final word on the various experiences you may encounter on your lucid dreaming journey. Many dreamers will find themselves entering a dream fully lucid right off and may even end up dropping to a lower level mid dream. These same dreamers may then experience the reverse during a different night's dream. There are any number of combinations that a dreamer may experience during his or her dreams.

But that aside you should also remember that this is not the final word on the states of lucidity. Compare these levels to your own experiences, use them as a tool to better understand your dreaming and your potential but at the same time do not forget that we are pioneering a vastly unknown territory and that it is up to you to discover what is true about the strange world of our dreams that we explore every night.