You're in your room. It's ill-lit - dark even - and it's too dark for your liking. You're at the light switch, but the lights just won't turn on, and you immediately fall apart.

But you don't panic for fear of what's physically possible and able to be there, but for what's in your mind that could be there, because you have repeated this too many times and you know that you are dreaming.

It is completely possible to consciously realise that you are dreaming. This resulting consciousness could be controllable, uncontrollable, could last hours, or even only seconds. But lucid dreaming is scientifically proven to exist.

Scientists from the Max Plank Institute of Psychiatry in Munich, the Charite hospital Berlin, and the Max Plank Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig presented the evidence on the possibility of lucid dreamers to dream while conscious. 

The dreamers were placed in a magnetic resonance scanner and asked to become aware of their lucid state and report this state to the researchers by form of eye movements. They were then asked to dream that they were clenching their right fist first, and then the left one after 10 seconds.

The research results showed lucid dreaming is not only authentic, but also that the coincidence of brain activity measured when dreaming and when conscious shows that dream content can be measured.

Lucid dreamers have been known to frequently experience signs - recurring abnormalities within dreams - that alert them to the fact that they are dreaming. Signs such as irregular movement of time, usually on a clock, and difficulty in adjustment in light levels are just a few examples.

So next time the lights don't turn on, just consider that maybe, just maybe, you could be dreaming.