Tool: Lucid-Dreaming skills/tool

Most of the time, I get to see in the dreams the design solutions, brand insights, brief morphing into possible design outputs, even saw layout options, and a logo changing its color schemes. I promptly got up the next morning and go to the office, used an office computer to translate my dreamed design solutions into a tangible form so that I can show it to the client and eventually to the world!!!

But you know the tragedy, you cannot just be saying to the client. Hey, do you know that what I am selling is what I saw in my dream a few nights ago!!! It doesn’t work like that, So I make a proper presentation with facts and figures and parallel case studies and created a compelling narrative around my (powered by dream) design solutions! So that clients won’t think that he/she is buying my dreams instead of buying solid design solutions!!! Ha Ha Ha

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No, it’s not cheating!

It’s a skill called ‘Lucid-Dreaming.’

It’s a state wherein a dreamer, while dreaming, knows he/she is dreaming. Its slightly like imagination (one can imagine a specific subject), but it is more profound than imagination. It’s a state where your idea-imagination is not stoped by logical thinking. Henceforth you will enter into a logically non-hindered and surrealistic realm, the abode of fresh thinking!

In a nutshell, Lucid-Dreaming is a kind of creative activity, it’s a tool to see the unique possibilities. (it’s truly working in my life, so I believe it!)

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Even some of the great scientists, artists, writers, philosophers, musicians, thinkers are naturally accessed this state of ‘Lucid-Dreaming’ and received their best knowledge form this realm!

For example,

1) Srinivasa Ramanujan: 1887-1920 was one of India’s greatest mathematical geniuses. According to Ramanujan, inspiration, and insight for his work often came to him in his lucid dreams

‘A Hindu goddess ‘Namakkal’ would appear and bestow mathematical formulae that he would verify after waking. More often, he manages to see such dreams repeatedly, which aided for his mathematical discoveries.

Ramanujan describes one of his lucid dreams instance: “While asleep, I had an awesome experience. There was a red screen formed by flowing blood as it were. I was observing it. Suddenly a hand began to write on the screen. I became all attention. That hand wrote several results in elliptic integrals. They stuck to my mind. As soon as I woke up, I committed them to write” (Source: Ramanujan, the Man and the Mathematician, S. R. Ranganathan, 1967)

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2) Nikola Tesla: a well-known scientist and innovator. He held marvelous mental qualities: an intense sense of hearing, and his visualization was so vivid, as to simulate reality. Nikola’s ability to visualize empowered him to conduct realistic “dream experiments” (in other words, called “Lucid- dreaming”), while he was wide awake in the lab.

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3) Salvador Dali: The renowned surrealist painter, Salvador Dali, knew that ” lucid dreams” were long before they were scientifically established and become part of the general people’s vocabulary. He used dream incubation methods to pre-program his dreams and produced many dream-inspired works—for example; a dream generated painting idea, ‘the Flight of a Bee Around a Pomegranate a Second Before Awakening.’

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Advantages of Lucid-Dreaming skills:

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1 In the Lucid-Dreaming stage, our logical mind is shutdown. Hence, we can think of most unusual possibilities (logic mind hinders unusual ideas)

2 Lucid-Dreaming helps to see unlimited permutation and combinations, and out of the box solutions.

3 Lucid-Dreaming aids to see design solutions faster

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Tips for developing Lucid-Dreaming skills/tool

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1 Repeat to yourself, just before going to bed, a sentence that ‘tonight, I am aware of my dreams’

2 Setting an alarm to wake you up from the sleep 5 hours into the sleep. Then remain in bed, but try not to fall into a deep sleep.

3 Throughout the day, ask yourself – am I dreaming right now? And you try to make your hand pass through a solid wall. In the real-world wall remain solid, but in the dream world, your hand quickly pass through. Ha Ha Ha – ‘Inception’ movie remember!?!

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In conclusion, as Innovators and Design-thinkers, we are hindered by ‘logic’ (which stops us seeing unique solutions) in our waking hours. Whereas in sleeping hours, we are totally unconscious of things and subjects. Only if we are able to master the ‘Lucid-Dreaming,’ we could enter into a limitless possibilities (Dali Zone) realm, where you aren’t hindered by ‘Logic,’ hence possibilities of unique solutions!