Fading light and sluggish flight: A two-dimensional model of consciousness in lucid dreams

Abstract

In the interest of correlating subjective dream experience with emergent models for dreaming consciousness, the following hypothesis is considered: A variety of anomalies occurring in lucid dreaming suggest that there are two distinct modes of awareness available in the lucid state--focused and objectifying awareness (FOA), and relational immersive awareness (RIA)—and that these distinct modes impact the phenomenology of the lucid experience in clearly observable ways. While this hypothesis may raise questions about neural processes and large-scale networks, this paper focuses principally on the phenomenological features of these two modes of awareness.