Lucid Dream Induction An Empirical Evaluation ROBERT F. PRICE and DAVID B. COHEN INTRODUCTION Don Juan's praxis of dreaming was an exercise that consisted of finding one's hands in a dream . . . by simply dreaming that one lifted one's hands to the level of the eyes. (Castaneda, 1974, p. 18) 6 With these words, anthropologist Castaneda describes a technique for developing the art of dreaming. By focusing attention on the objects of one's dreams, according to the Yaqui shaman Don Juan, one can learn to "awaken" within the dream, thereby transcending the limited world of the senses. Similar accounts of attaining "waking" consciousness within the dream state and exerting willful control over dream events are sprinkled throughout ancient philosophical and religious treatises (Chang, 1977; de Becker, 1968; Evans-Wentz, 1967). These writings describe a state of expanded dream awareness remarkably similar to what we now call "lucid dreaming." Numerous people experience such a state on rare occasions, and a few claim to achieve it almost at will; for most, however, the lucid dream remains elusive (Blackmore, 1982). The recent emergence of lucid dreaming as an object of scientific investigation has been heralded by significant advances in validating and communicating from the state (Hearne, 1978; LaBerge, 1980a). However, these advances have not been paralleled by the development of proven strategies for eliciting the experience. In order to utilize the lucid dream in psychotherapy, personal development, or research, we must first learn how to induce the state consistently; this is the major task currently facing lucid dream research. ROBERT F. PRICE and DAVID B. COHEN· Department of Psychology, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX 78712-7789. 105 J. Gackenbach et al. (eds.), Conscious Mind, Sleeping Brain © Plenum Press, New York 1988