Lucid dreams occupy a key position in the range of hallucinatory experiences which we have been studying at the Institute of Psychophysical Research.

When the Institute was founded in 1961 there were tantalising hints of a wide range of paradoxical phenomena, including lucid dreams and out-of-the-body experiences, which appeared to have important implications for the study of normal perception. Our first attempts at clarification, however, took place in an atmosphere of great uncertainty. A few people had published accounts of their own lucid dreams, but no one had yet recognised this class of phenomena or attempted to define the characteristics which the lucid dreams of different people had in common. With regard to out-of-the-body experiences a number of cases had been reported, but these had been viewed mainly as providing support for spiritualistic theories and beliefs, or as providing possible evidence for the occurrence of extrasensory perception.