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Robert Waggoner
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Robert Waggoner (1958-) is president-elect of the International Association for the Study of Dreams (IASD). He is a graduate of Drake University with a degree in psychology. Over a thirty year span of experimentation with lucid dreaming (in which he claims to have logged over 1,000 lucid dreams), Waggoner believes he has encountered the inner self or inner ego theorized by Carl Jung through a counter-intuitive technique of ignoring the dream figures and relating to the apparent awareness behind the dream materializations. In numerous instances, he and other experienced lucid dreamers have found this awareness to be responsive, creative, intelligent-much like the Hidden Observer in deep hypnosis, discussed by Ernest Hilgard, Ph.D. in his book, Divided Consciousness: Multiple Controls in Human Thought and Action.(1) Though the field of psychology has traditionally alluded to various features of the dream realm such as the pleasure principle and wish fulfillment theories of Freud, Waggoner proposes lucid dreamers have commonly discovered that the expectation effect (in which the lucid dreamers experiences what he or she expects to experience) explains the wish fulfilling aspect of the dream environment more cogently. Similarly, Carl Jung's theory of a collective unconscious has been investigated by experienced lucid dreamers who intentionally seek out unexpected and unknown information. Their experience appears to show that some type of inner awareness carries a larger body of knowledge than the consciously aware lucid dreamer. Borrowing from Jean Piaget's stages of cognitive development in children, Waggoner proposes that there are five developmentalstages for lucid dreamers, beginning with pleasure seeking and culminating with the experience of a non-dual awareness, suggested by some Buddhist traditions.(2) He concludes that while aware in the dream state, one has both a psychological tool and a platform from which to begin to understand the principles of dreaming as well as the larger picture of man's psyche. Featured in the 2008-2009 PBS series DREAMTIME. Waggoner is coeditor, with Lucy Gillis, of The Lucid Dream Exchange and editor of LucidAdvice.com. Bibliography *Waggoner, Robert (2008). Lucid Dreaming Gateway to the Inner Self See Also
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