Lucid Dreaming

[Lote-Tree]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucid_dream



A lucid dream is a dream in which the person is aware that he or she is dreaming while the dream is in progress. During lucid dreams, it is often possible to exert conscious control over the dream characters and environment, as well as to perform otherwise physically impossible feats.


I have had dreams in which I was conscious of being in a dream, dreams which I now understand to be "lucid" dreams in which I heard "most beautiful music" and sometimes "most exhilerating" happiness filled my heart. These dreams always made me think about the nature of reality. If reality can be created so wishfully in your dreams without any input from waking consciousness what is the true nature of reality?

Research has found that creative people tend to dream more and they tend to remember their dreams. Creativity and Dreams it seems are quite interconnected.

What say you chaps and chapeses?

Are you a lucid dreamer and what you make of lucid dreaming or dreaming and creativity?

[Bakiryu]

I don't dream or if I do I don't really remember it.

I wonder thought, how do we know we are dreaming right now and death is only the awakening?

[crisaor]

Wish I was. Seldom do I remember my dreams, which makes such ocasion happening particularly nice (other than nightmares, of course).


I wonder thought, how do we know we are dreaming right now and death is only the awakening?
Someone once said: To die, to sleep; To sleep: perchance to dream.

[Lote-Tree]

I don't dream or if I do I don't really remember it. B

We dream every night but we don't remember them. But there are techniques you can practice to make you remember your dreams. And more you remember your dreams the better you get in recalling your dreams and remembering them.



I wonder thought, how do we know we are dreaming right now and death is only the awakening?

There is no difference it seems in what you perceive in your dream reality and the waking reality. So question is what is the true nature of reality?

[Bakiryu]

There is no difference it seems in what you perceive in your dream reality and the waking reality. So question is what is the true nature of reality?

The next thing you'll say is that reality is only the Matrix :alien:




Someone once said: To die, to sleep; To sleep: perchance to dream.

Everyone loves Shakespeare :blush:

[crisaor]

Everyone loves Shakespeare :blush:
I'd have to say yes. You don't like it?

[Bakiryu]

of course. Is one of my favorite quotes.

[crisaor]

of course. Is one of my favorite quotes.
Oh, sorry. Why the blush then?

[Bakiryu]

The Shakespeare obsession. For example, today I had to write an essay about a person in the world I would want to spend a whole day with, It was about Shakespeare. Then my history essay about monuments? Shakespeare.

I love Shakespeare too much :lol:

Why isn't anybody else discussing lucid dreaming anyway?!

[crisaor]

The Shakespeare obsession. For example, today I had to write an essay about a person in the world I would want to spend a whole day with, It was about Shakespeare. Then my history essay about monuments? Shakespeare.
I love Shakespeare too much :lol:
Quite a healthy obsession, if you ask me. :)

[Idril]

I'm a crazy dreamer. It's a bit of a problem actually, I dream all night, I'm often more exhausted when I wake up than when I go to bed. And my dreams are often very complex, emotionally intense dreams. I have a couple of recurring dreams that revolve around houses for some reason. One theme is that I'm in a house I'm not supposed to be in, but one I know. For example, I'll dream that I've snuck into...say, the house I grew up in...while the current owners are out and I'm living there secretly but I always get caught or are in serious danger of being caught when I wake up. The other house theme is that I go into a house that seems very small and run down only to discover all kinds of secret, HUGE rooms with extravagant furniture and electronics and art and it's all mine by some weird trick of fate.

From what I understand, the key to remembering your dreams is waking up at the right...or wrong point in your sleeping cycle. If you remember your dreams, you are waking up at the wrong point. A healthy, well rested sleeper probably won't remember his/her dreams. That's why I remember mine, because I rarely sleep for more than an hour to two at a time. At least that's what my doctor tells me. :rolleyes:

[Bakiryu]

When I used to have dreams they were weird, psychedelic things (think something like an acid trip) or nightmares that woke me up screaming. Sometimes I still wake up in the middle of the night exhausted but i can't remember what I've dreamed. i don't really think i do.

[TheFifthElement]

If reality can be created so wishfully in your dreams without any input from waking consciousness what is the true nature of reality?

I'd disagree with this comment in the respect that when you're lucid dreaming you are conscious. So although you may not have 'waking' consciousness by definition lucid dreaming requires consciousness so the reality you create is a conscious reality.

I have experienced lucid dreaming, but rarely and it usually occurs in times of stress. So in the dream I will be trying to do something like run away, or make a decision, or find something, and my dream will prevent me from doing it. I then realise it's a dream and I break it and wake up. I often remember my dreams, and in quite vivid detail, and interestingly my children do too. I also find that the dreams I remember when I wake up stay with me, and become memories in a sense no different to my waking memories. This often occurs in times of stress, for example in the week running up to exams, when I tend to remember all my dreams, sometimes several in one night.

Dreams give us extraordinary freedom, and also raise questions about the nature of consciousness and reality, as you've alluded to.

P.S. Where do you get your research from?!

[Lote-Tree]

I'd disagree with this comment in the respect that when you're lucid dreaming you are conscious. So although you may not have 'waking' consciousness by definition lucid dreaming requires consciousness so the reality you create is a conscious reality.


I meant that your dream world is already created for you before you realise you are in a dream.



P.S. Where do you get your research from?!
[/quote]

Reading a lot and personal experience :D

[Elly_blue]

I'm a crazy dreamer. It's a bit of a problem actually, I dream all night, I'm often more exhausted when I wake up than when I go to bed. And my dreams are often very complex, emotionally intense dreams.

Me too :) I really want to wake up one morning and NOT remember my dream! It used to bother me, but I've learned to live with it now. The more you think about it, the more it upsets you.

[manolia]

I was lucid dreaming a lot in the past. These "ability" stopped for a few years. I begun to lucid dream again, recently :D It is a very easy and nice way to stop nightmares :D

(i didn't know about the term "lucid dreaming". A user, Sweets America, informed me of the term)

[NikolaiI]

I had a very long lucid dream last night that went on for about 12 hours, that I remembered clearly when I woke up and then just thought of it now...I was somewhere in a mountain or something, and I was walking up it, except maybe I was running? There were tigers all over the mountain. This was sometime before winter, and...I'd been there before, and the other time I was there it was ice all over the ground, but this time there was a lot of grass bent over...it looked like some of it was made by some vehicle. And there were streams, and they were kind of annoying since I didn't want to get wet. Anyway I went up the mountain for a long time and then I passed a couple of houses...and then I started being chased by multiple tigers. I was in a house when it started, and I saw a tiger in the dark, just barely...and there was something luring me forward and for a second I was with someone and yelled at them to go back, and I started running. We got away, although only in that moment of the dream was I not alone... so for a while it was through an apparently very large house, and I was gaining ground because of the turns, but at every turn there was the possibility of slipping up and having to stop for a moment, so I tried to gain as much ground as possible. :] Anyway I ran all the way down the mountain and didn't see any tigers anymore, and I think that was all of the dream. But it was lucid, I guess.

[Bakiryu]

I had a very long lucid dream last night that went on for about 12 hours

You're sleeping for 12 hours?! on a weekday!!! I only got 4!

[NikolaiI]

Haha yes, well at the cost of school, so I need to get up earlier...I feel bad because I was supposed to go yesterday and today but missed both days. Now I just need to get there tomorrow..

[Bakiryu]

I missed Thursday and fell asleep for 17 hours. (No dreams thought)

If you do not remember your dreams how do you know you were indeed dreaming?

[Lote-Tree]

If you do not remember your dreams how do you know you were indeed dreaming?

Sleep Researchers have found that when you are dreaming your eyes go through a Rapid Eye Movement - called REM. It is in this REM sleep that we dream...

[Demian]

I dream in auto-pilot mode-lucid dreams come very rarely. If you are really interested in this you should check out Linkletter's film Waking Life. It's about a very long lucid dream of a teenager. Here's a quote from the movie:

"Shamans have believed for thousands of years that life was wrapped in this dream state-in fact was actually a dream itself. When you died, they thought the dream would continue, but in this dream the dreamer could never again awaken..."

[Bakiryu]

"Shamans have believed for thousands of years that life was wrapped in this dream state-in fact was actually a dream itself. When you died, they thought the dream would continue, but in this dream the dreamer could never again awaken..."


You should check out this thread then and add your opinion to it: http://www.online-literature.com/forums/showthread.php?t=28031

[NikolaiI]

Hahahhaaha that's so funny Baki.

[Bakiryu]

eh, whatevs. My other new thread (it was just as controversial as the prostitution one) got closed.

[NikolaiI]

Well I dunno if you are really dreaming...they say you are like Lote says and the REM sleep. I read about that Osho that Blaze was telling me about, on wikipedia, and he talks about an awareness he had achieved where he was aware during dreams, that it was a psyiological phenomon but he was aware of it...this is what he says about it:


Nature has come to a point where now, unless you take individual responsibility, you cannot grow. More than this nature cannot do. It has done enough. It has given you life, it has given you opportunity; now how to use it, it has left up to you.

Meditation is your freedom, not a biological necessity. You can learn in a certain period of time every day to strengthen meditation, to make it stronger – but carry the flavour of it the whole day.

First, while you are awake – the moment you wake up, immediately catch hold of the thread of remaining alert and conscious, because that is the most precious moment to catch the thread of consciousness. Many times in the day you will forget – but the moment you remember, immediately start being alert. Never repent, because that is a sheer wastage of time. Never repent, "My God, I forgot again!"

In my teachings there is no place for any repentance. Whatever has happened is gone, now there is no need to waste time on it. Catch hold again of the thread of awareness. Slowly, slowly you will be able to be alert the whole day – an undercurrent of awareness in every act, in every movement, in everything that you are doing, or not doing. Something underneath will be continuously flowing.

Even when you go to sleep, leave the thread only at the last moment when you cannot do anything because you are falling asleep. Whatever is the last thing before you fall asleep will be the first thing when you wake up. Try it. Any small experiment will be enough to prove it. Just repeat your own name while you are falling asleep: half awake, half asleep, go on repeating ... Slowly, slowly you will forget repeating, because the sleep will grow more and more and the thread will be lost. It is lost only because you are asleep, but underneath your sleep it continues. That's why in the morning when you wake up and just look around, the first thing you will remember will be [the sound of your name]. You will be surprised: Why? What happened? You slept eight hours, but there has been an undercurrent.

And as things become deeper and clearer, even in sleep you can remember that you are asleep. Sleep becomes almost a physiological thing and your spirit, your being, becomes a flame of awareness, separate from it. It does not disturb your sleep; it simply makes your sleep very light. It is no more the sleep of the old days, when your house was on fire and you went on sleeping – that was almost like a coma, you were so unconscious.

Your sleep will become thin, a very light layer, and your inside will remain alert. Just as it has been alert in the day, it will be even more alert in the night, finally, because you are so silent, so relaxed. The whole nuisance world becomes completely silent.

Patanjali, the first man in the world to write about meditation, says that meditation is almost like dreamless sleep, but with only one difference. In dreamless sleep you are not aware; in samadhi, in the ultimate state of meditation, there is just a little difference – you are aware.[4]


(from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osho)

As well as REM sleep, I seem to remember from psychology that the best nap times are 20 minutes and 2 hours, or possibly an hour and a half, because our sleep patterns go in 90 minute intervals, so we're closest to being awake, and our sleep is lightest every 90 minutes after we begin sleep. 45 minutes is not a good nap because after 45 minutes we are at our deepest. I don't remember why 20 minutes is best, though.

[TheFifthElement]

I missed Thursday and fell asleep for 17 hours. (No dreams thought)

If you do not remember your dreams how do you know you were indeed dreaming?

Tell us what you did yesterday Baki...I bet the post isn't 24 hours long.

If you don't 'remember' everything you did yesterday, did you still do it?

[Bakiryu]

well, since I have almost no long term memory (seriously I can't even remember what I did in the last hour) perhaps I just dreamed it all up and will wake up stranded in a ditch somewhere to find out i just got really drunk and dreamed I was a high school student :D

[TheFifthElement]

well, since I have almost no long term memory (seriously I can't even remember what I did in the last hour) perhaps I just dreamed it all up and will wake up stranded in a ditch somewhere to find out i just got really drunk and dreamed I was a high school student :D

But then how would you know that the ditch wasn't a dream also?

[Bakiryu]

True! Perhaps all human beings are just dreaming particles in an empty universe which is in turn a dream of some greater entity which is being dreamed in its place by a more powerful being and so on in a never-ending philosophical conundrum.

[NikolaiI]

Yep. Well perhaps we are unawakened anyway. You know, all our delusions that make us hate each other and what not. (I do not have those! But I guess some people do.) Anyway when we can awaken, then we see that everyone else is sleeping. And there are others who are awake, too, or else how would anyone wake?

[TheFifthElement]

True! Perhaps all human beings are just dreaming particles in an empty universe which is in turn a dream of some greater entity which is being dreamed in its place by a more powerful being and so on in a never-ending philosophical conundrum.

What a cool vision of the universe :)

[Bakiryu]

Wow, thanks for putting this on your sig. :blush: :blush: :blush: To me it just sounds like the plot of some new indie film.

[TheFifthElement]

Wow, thanks for putting this on your sig. :blush: :blush: :blush: To me it just sounds like the plot of some new indie film.

You're welcome. It has a decidedly poetical feel to it. And what's wrong with indie films (better than a Hollywood 'blockbuster' anyday (they actually have plots!))

[Bakiryu]

I never said they didn't :D i love the indie channel almost as I love anime.

[Lauren81492]

I rarely have lucid dreams, but I love when I do! Unfortunately in dreams you don't really have the intelligence you do during your waking hours. I assume others in the dream are real people and treat them as if they are dreaming with me. Example: "Hey, Mom, we're in a dream!" :rolleyes: Not real intelligent on my part, but I can't blame myself. Last time I had a lucid dream I really savored what it felt like and, I'm not sure if this is true for anyone besides me but I couldn't physically feel anything in the dream. I remember putting my hand against the tree and I didn't feel the rough bark, couldn't feel the air temperature....so there are my thoughts.

[Shurtugal]

this is an interesting one... i normally have dreams, and i'm still grasping the meanign of lucid dreaming. but i love dreaming, if it weren't for one dream, i would never of written my story; a said thing to think about for me. all my dreams are normally of somekind of fantisy, someone fermilar is normally is in there. lots love dreams, sounds stupid, but it's true, i have boyfriends in a lot of them... some being peter pan! those are the best. and my dreams could be made an epic novel, they are so long! it would kill my brother to listen to them!

[subterranean]

A lucid dream is a dream in which the person is aware that he or she is dreaming while the dream is in progress. During lucid dreams, it is often possible to exert conscious control over the dream characters and environment, as well as to perform otherwise physically impossible feats.

Ah, this must be that one time when I dreamed having a french kiss with Thom Yorke years ago. I completely aware that it was me who plotted that scene.

[AtomicCafe1]

Four of my goals in life:
1.) Run a marathon
2.) Go bobsledding
3.) Go in a place where there's no gravity
4.) Learn how to lucid dream(That is, if you can learn)

From what I hear this is one of the most amazing experiences one can have. A person rambling on about the topic I remember saying something like: "just think if you were in your dream, and you were flying, and you were conscious during this time, and it was as real as drinking a glass of milk." I mean how amazing does that sound? Simply put, dreams fascinate me. It's so cool and marvelous that we know so little about the topic, yet our body absolutely needs it. Without REM, we will start to hallucinate while awake. Amazing. And its just so cool, like the other day I was looking at something, and it reminded me of a dream I had about 8 months ago, of which I had no memory of. Amazing. Okay, I'm done now.

[metal134]

I had a rather lucid dream last night, but if I told you what it was about, I'd probably get banned.

[AtomicCafe1]

I had a rather lucid dream last night, but if I told you what it was about, I'd probably get banned.

naughty, naughty!

[Annamariah]

I don't have lucid dreams, but I guess it would be cool to be able to control your dreams.

I remember quite a lot of my dreams (at least in the morning, I usually forget most of them during the day), and I guess that's because I wake up in a wrong time. That means I don't get enough sleep. I mostly sleep like five or six hours per night during the weeks and then take it all back in weekends. Not healthy, but I've got a lot of schoolwork during the week, which prevents me from sleeping properly. For example, before Friday I spent most of the night finishing two translations and a 45 minute presentation about phonetics I and then slept like 3,5 hours before I had to wake up again so I wouldn't be late.

[naomi moon]

Well! I had some lucid dreams too :lol: and I do weak up in the wrong time or I forget the most important events:lol: sometimes I'm afraid of going further :lol:

[pinkmoon]

I had a lucid dream once, it was very nice to experience such thing, what I liked most is that you see the buildings around you with all the details in them, and you wonder, and start thinking:"is all this amazing place just in my head", very nice, it starts when I realize that I am dreaming and then I try to fly:angel:, it works, so I start looking around me and let thing happen easily without being afraid of the consequences, very nice;)

[mmaria]

Lucid dreaming is a beautiful experience. I recommend the book by Steven LaBerge, "Lucid Dreaming". There are many useful advices in it, how to lucid dream, and what to do while lucid in your dream.