# Lucid Dreaming > Dream Control >  >  Can you really spend years in dreams?

## anothrguitarist

According to EWLD, the autor asked some subjects to move their eyes in a certain pattern, then wait approx. 10 seconds to move them again. His findings say that the time waiting was close to real time. Does this mean its impossible to have days weeks or years in one dream, or do you just have to have some dream control?

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## Pelirrojo

I was talking about this same exact topic in the "Longest LD with dream control" thread just a little ways down on this page.  

Obviously, it's not possible to spend a "real" day, or even a year in a dream (unless you're in a coma or something maybe, I'm not quite sure how that works).  Those who say they can spend such long time periods in their dreams must be exercising some kind of dream control that makes it seem like they've been in a dream for a lifetime.  Well... that, or they're liars =D  I'd like to believe them though, it's a cool idea and I won't claim it's possible or not until I test it a bit myself.

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## magicrules22311

you can probably  control the time in your dream to some extent, but not for a year...

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## wombing

in EWOLD, it also mentions how the 'cinema' quality of certain dreams can account for extreme lengths of time in an actually quite short period.

  for instance, in a movie a character lies down in bed with the moon shining outside his window. the frame cuts out for a millisecond, and then we see him stretching with the miday sun beating through the same window.

  only one second of actual time has passed, but we 'pretend' a whole night did.

  looked at in this light, i can easily see how someone could actually live 'an entire month' in a lucid dream. their dreaming mind just cuts and edits all the important events together.


  incidentally, when i get better at lucids i want to direct homemade movies of my choosing within a single REM period....just over an hour is a long time if one adopts a cinematic method..

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## Just Like You

I've had dreams before, both lucid and not, where I swear I feel like I've been asleep for days, because my dreams were SO long... as in I've passed hours and hours of what felt like "real-life time" in my dream.  Sometimes, I'd even go a whole "day" in my dream (I quote the word "day" because in my dream I felt like I went through an entire day, but really the dream only happened while I was napping or sleeping for a few hours).

I don't know whether it involves a certain amount of dream control or not.  I'm not quite an expert yet  :wink2: , but I think it is possible to have time pass differently...

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## Howie

Some people spend their whole life in a dream!

It is all about how time is perceived in the dream. There are hundreds of variables to that perception. 
There are also hundreds of posts about it too.  ::dreaming::

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## xcrissxcrossx

I had one dream where i kept waking up and waking up that i must have had 10 False Awakenings. It felt like i spent 30 minutes in the dream before i was SURE that i had a true awakening.

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## Ubik

Look at it this way...

_Yesterday I woke up and got ready for work. On my way there I got pulled over by the police because I had a break light out. When I eventually got to work I began my daily work  routine. By lunch time I had managed to get a lot done. I had a ham sandwitch and read the paper for 30 minutes before I went back.
After finishing work I drove back home and cooked dinner. I watched TV for a few hours and went to bed._

It only only takes a number of seconds to read the text yet an entire day is described, I think similar things happen in dreams like one of the previous posters suggested. We fill in the gaps to make dreams appear longer than they actually are.

but who knows for sure. all I believe is that our minds are a lot more powerful than anyone can comprehend.

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## fourspiralarms

I can recall a dream about a year or two ago.   I came home from school and took a nap that lasted about 30-45 minutes.  In that short period,  I lived out day to day what seemed like at least a year.  I could recall day to day memories better than I could in real life (not now,  but after I woke up).  I was so sure i'd been sleeping for a LONG time.. but at that time,  before even knowing this site existed.. i just always assumed that dream time had no relation to waking time.  The only time i've ever felt the absence of time (which is one of the most liberating,  amazing things that I can say i've excperienced) was the time I ate mushrooms.  I don't promote drug use,  but there is  something to be said about the reality we get locked into in our daily lives (which we escape when we dream or open gateways by other means).

as for it being impossible to have weeks or years in your dreams.. I would say that.  Everyone's mind is different and they are capable of different things (especially in dream reality).  interesting about the 'cinema quality' of dreams though.. I never thought of it that way.  A dream within a dream is quite an experience though... moreso confusing though.

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## Canon

Its possible to control your "perception" of time in a dream. As far as ive seen its possible to make a couple seconds feel like an hour. And with a few hours of dreaming...well you get the idea.

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## [Alpha]-0mega-

Time is relative.
Ever had that feeling in class or whereever that it seemed as if it took hours to do something while you actually just spent 45 minutes.

And when you are having fun or playing games it seems as if just 5 minutes passed, but actually 3 hours passed and it's already dark outside?

That can happen in dreams too, all you need to master is this:
I once experienced it, with an ''imaginary girlfriend'' (Don't ask whether it was a dream or reality, what we were doing or anything else, forget details.)
and we were ''cuddling'' (or hugging, I believe cuddling is a term for that as well).
Anyway, after a while of having fun I thought that I slept for way too long and 30 minutes went by, when actually, 1 minute did.

This is REALLY odd and apparently something that doesn't happen that often, but It is possible out of personal experience, to do something that seems to take long, which actually took 0 time at all.

If you can manipulate yourself to do that in your dreams, you might create a similiar effect (or what they say: to try and ''stop time'', might provoke that effect).

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## Taod56a

i think some of are minds wants us to become lucid  becuz  i have a dream that i  was sitting on my bed moving objects with just my mind . then  i felt the dream about to end so made it longer .. but then i woke up , then fell back to sleep this time i seen this guy laying in bed i think he was me so started to say that im dreaming then i woke up in the dream . for a moment i didn't do anything  
into i got fightned  by  the white nosie in my right ear which sound like a radio ,,
im thinking ghost can started talking to me now weird huh  ..... 8)

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## computernerd90

yes, i think you can spend longer time in dreams than in reality. ever wake up, turn on the tv, and it seem like it's playing a bit faster than usual?

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## Gwendolyn

I think there is definatley a time dialation effect that one can experience whilst in a dream. Of course, it won't be in real time....

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## mopey

Think about how your memory works... you can flash several hours or even weeks by in a few seconds when you think back upon an event or era in your life. I find that I do the same thing in dreams... and that makes the dream cover a longer period of time. My "memories" are almost always false.


Anybody else have a "dream memory"?

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## Ubik

> _Originally posted by mopey_
> *
> Anybody else have a "dream memory"?*



Yep. It's hard to become lucid in those dreams because at the moment it's happening you 'know' everything is right. It's only when you wake up that you realize the memory didn't exist.   ::shock::

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## Frosty Chaotix

years in a dream   ::shock::  whoa that sounds awesome.... My dreams are usually short, over-complicated and full of non-sense. But I believe it, there are dreams which seem to be shorter or longer, despite their real duration.  :tongue2:  

I wish i could dream for like.... one dream-week or month. Imagine the possibilities   ::shock::

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## Rainbow Werewolf

I am not sure if those italics are referring to a dream or waking.  But I do notice that most of our day we do not take notice of. We are not totally aware the full day, and so during dreams we are not fully aware of everything that goes on.

I am not sure, but maybe dreams tell a lot more than the details we actually remember. According to time distortion, you can have a full day experience and remember it all, within the space of a few minutes (seconds).

For instance, take this exerpt:

Page 3 From: Time Distortion in Hypnosis: An Experimental and Clinical Investigation
by Linn F., M.D. Cooper

Subsequently, a technique was developed whereby hallucinatory activity could be produced under conditions of time distortion without the use of a metronome. The following report of an experiment will serve to give the reader a general idea of the procedure which, with variations, was used in most of this study. The subject, who was in a moderately deep trance, lay motionless on a couch with her eyes closed throughout.
E. stands for experimenter, S. for subject.

1. E. What would you like to do now?
2. S. I'd like to spend a half hour riding in an automobile.
3. E. Now listen to me carefully. When I give you the starting signal by saying "Now," you're going to spend at least a half hour of your special time riding in an automobile, and it's going to be a nice ride. Here comes the starting signal, "Now."

(Ten seconds later)
4. E. Now make your mind a blank.
(The subject was then waked.)
5. E. Tell me what happened, please.
6. S. (The subject told me how she and her sister, both children at the time, sat on the back seat of the car and counted cows seen along the way. Her sister won the game, counting 45 to her 42. Then they decided to count licenses bearing the letter "C". This was slow, for there was but little traffic. They both saw the same ones, 14 in all. Then they stopped at a roadside stand to buy lemonade from a little girl with pigtails and several missing teeth because they "felt sorry for her".)

7. E. Was it real?
8. S. Yes.
9. E. Were there any omissions?
10. S. No.
11. E. Did you enjoy it?
12. S. Oh, yes!
13. E. How long did it seem?
14. S. A half hour easy.

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> _Originally posted by Ubik_
> *Look at it this way...
> 
> Yesterday I woke up and got ready for work. On my way there I got pulled over by the police because I had a break light out. When I eventually got to work I began my daily work  routine. By lunch time I had managed to get a lot done. I had a ham sandwitch and read the paper for 30 minutes before I went back.
> After finishing work I drove back home and cooked dinner. I watched TV for a few hours and went to bed.
> 
> It only only takes a number of seconds to read the text yet an entire day is described, I think similar things happen in dreams like one of the previous posters suggested. We fill in the gaps to make dreams appear longer than they actually are.
> 
> but who knows for sure. all I believe is that our minds are a lot more powerful than anyone can comprehend.*

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## jakcaz

I tried to slow down a clock in my last LD but it only went faster!!!! Spinning and spinning I just ignored it and went on wtih my dream.  :tongue2:

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## italianmonkey

> _Originally posted by Ubik_
> *
> 
> Yep. It's hard to become lucid in those dreams because at the moment it's happening you 'know' everything is right. It's only when you wake up that you realize the memory didn't exist. **



once in a (normal) dream i had both real and false memories - real until the age I had when i had that dream, and false to cover the years between then and the dream setting

I never thought about what ubik says, but it sounds likely... a strong memory will hide the incoerences that help to catch the dreams.
... this night something like this happened to me, I catched badly a dream because I started with wrong memories, and this led me to a false awakening 
(I thought I had to wake up early for a reason that didn't exist and i ended to dream to write the "good part" down instead of actually doing it  ::shakehead2::  )

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## Bu5hman404

I have one dream which certainley felt around a week long, but I think what really happened was I only really "experienced" the last half hour or so, but in that time the dream fabricated the sense of having been there for a long time, and later on my mind filled in the details, simply because I woke myself with the sense of urgency and the feeling that I had been trapped there for so long.

More recently, I was in bed with a rather bad illness, suffering hallucinations and inevitably, bad dreams.   This dream had me trapped in a small square of light in what I knew was an endless corridor.  I woke up feeling like I had been asleep for several days.  I woke up, and asked my mum what day it was (even after waking up I had the lingering feeling that it had been a long time)  I had only been asleep for 3 hours.

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## adamL28

I'd like to think this is possible and I will listen actively to all those who say so.

I've had a similar thing happen, but not to the same extent. My first LD felt like it must have lasted 40 minutes or so, but when I woke up my watch proved that only 10 minutes had passed. It got me thinking   ::D:

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## sand_worm

I have had non-lucid dreams that literally lasted lifetimes. In my dreams, I am usually other people. One in particular, I was a teenage boy who spent a week stranded with a group of kids on a space station. There was a war on, and at the end of the week, each of us, all racially different, were sent back to our individual planets, mine being Earth. I had fallen in love with a Chinese girl during this time, and then spent the rest of my life, until I was an old man, developing a way to reach her. Because of the war, civilians had been banned from space travel, so I had to "reinvent the wheel" and create a space worthy vessel on my own. I studied, earned degrees, had other lovers, and pretty well lived a full life, other than my quest for this woman. I was around 60 when I finally took off in my rickety homemade ship, headed for pluto, where the Chinese had recolonized something like 40-45 years prior. It literally took me 20 years of mind numbing space flight to reach her (this part of the dream was sped up, but was still boring as hell), and when the ship finally landed (in a crash) on Pluto, I was in a barbarian society, as the settlers had reverted to tribalism. I found a book buried in the dirt after being chased by some sort of dinosaur, and it was the journal of the man who brought civilization back to the barbarians, the father of the girl I loved. He had trained these massive elephants to shoot small, almond-shaped ships into space, and many of the elders had gone this way. His daughter had been left behind to rule the planet in his stead. I found her temple, and when I finally found her, she had not aged a day. She remembered me too, and had also been in love with me... but to my poor, 80 year-old dismay, as I had spent my life building a machine to search for her, she had spent her years developing the world's greatest self-pleasuring machine, and informed me coldly that, "Thanks for the inspiration, but I don't need you anymore."

Ouch.

Anyway, that was a particularly long one. I have also turned time down in lucid dreams by spinning down a clock, but it really doens't seem to do a whole lot in my experience.

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## sand_worm

<edit> Double-post removed?

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## sand_worm

Apologies, I double-posted. Strange, the first time it said, "No Post Mode specified."

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## [Alpha]-0mega-

So now you've triple posted =P

Heh, just now I remembered that quite a few times.
I would awaken from my sleep, and see on the clock, for example 6:00 AM (My regular ''get-up'' time).

However ,I didn't feel like getting up yet so I would go back to sleep.
At that time the clock was on something like 6:35 (something like that), and when I went to sleep, I had another lucid dream.. it seemed to last like at least 10 or 20 minutes, but when I woke up.. checked the time..

6:35 AM  ::D: 
So either I got a magical alarm clock, or my dreams lasted longer  :tongue2:

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## invadergarf

The one thing I want to do is make my lucid dreams last longer... I managed once to extend my dream by spinning a few times in one lucid dream and it lasted for a while. I think that if someone can master keeping their dream going, then they'll be able to stay in it for what seems like a long time but really isn't. It's our imagination, you can imagine something in less time than it takes to actually do it.

I just wish my lucid dreams would go for a long time, that would be great. So far most of mine are really short... 

InvaderGarf

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## xinebriated

Im sure its possible to make time feel as if its moving slower. For instance, I have taken LSD on occasion and It slows down my time perception big time, I could listen to a 4 minute song, and by the time its over it feels like I had been listening to the song all night. It just shows that the brain is capable of changing perception, but not real time.

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## juroara

in real time, in the 'real world', I was developing film for my photography class. which had me watching the clock for 8 minutes and keeping track of every 30 seconds.

I was watching the second hand very closely, waiting for it to hit its 30 second mark. After about three minutes..something strange happened. The second hand slowed down, and got slower. I thought maybe something was wrong with the clock!! There was nothing wrong with it. I got BORED. And in my bordom my perception of time changed. 

and this morning I was too tired to get up...and after what felt like only half an hour...I looked at my clock and three hours had passed....... >_>;

******************************
Ive had similiar experiences to ones already described here. I had three dreams one after the other. but like alpha-omega...only a minute had passed. it was also around the same time, 6:30. maybe someone should expiriment that? how many dreams can you have before the alarm rings?!?

but what makes a dream FEEL longer? you dont have to be lucid to make the dream FEEL longer. you just have to remember everything that happens in the dream, the beginning to end. and remember it WHILE you are dreaming. imagine if at the end of the day you already forgot the first half of it..........your day is going to feel alot shorter!

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## Inverting_world_lines

I don't know about dream memories, but the longest lasting dream (in dream time that is, not sleeping) I've ever had brought together events 2 years apart.  

First, I was hunting classmates first person shooter style in a wal-mart, taking cover behind stacks of boxes, aisles, etc.  Then someone shot me in the forehead.  Instead of dying, I just went to the hospital for two years, which is of course totally illogical.  In what was sort of like a slideshow, my mind just made up two years in a hospital bed.  I couldn't extract memories, but I was under the impression that 2 years had elapsed. And after those two years, I had supposedly healed, but I don't remember what went on in the dream after that.

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## ZNOFZ

Many drugs can make minutes seem like hours.  Why cant this happen in a dream?  I think it logical to belive that one could make a dream feel like two weeks with enough mental practice, its just that in our lives we dont have time for that much mental dedication.

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## Awhislyle

Although lots of the posts about how things happen in a condensed form(like in movies) happens in dreams, I don't really think that applies to this subject. Seeing as how this is the lucid dreaming dream control area. Its true, I have had experiences like those described in this thread where i lived a few days in the dream in a few hours of dreaming, becasue everything was condensed and there was no down time. But as for lucid dreams, I have never had this happen, sure something is always happening, but there arent huge leaps in time either. In truly lucid dreams, that condensing doesnt really happen unless you dont have control over what is happening, or you want it to happen.

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## Unicorn

The perception of Time is subjective depending on your emotional state. If you're having the best time of your life, time often moves quickly, while how many time you beg for it to move faster when you feel depressed. Also, in real life, i sometimes feel as if there's a pause in time, a feeling that i'm really _in the moment_ and something special is happening.

Anyway, if such altered perceptions of time can exist in real life, it would be logical they can be exponentially stretched in dreams.

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## doublex

A time perception experiment that has been conducted:

Experiment #1 Place someone into an empty room and leave them there for a set amount of time.  Then ask them how long they were in there.  The majority of cases will have perceived time to have gone slowly, so will guess a time greater than the length they were in there.

Experiment #2 Allow someone to watch a segment of a film, and ask them after how long it took.  They will have perceived time to have gone slowly, so estimate they were in there for a short amount of time.

All seems pretty trivial.....

Then  conduct experiment #1 (with a different person), but instead ask them how long it took the day after they were in the room.  They will guess they were in there for a _shorter_ time than they actually were.

Then conduct experiment #2 (with a different person of course),  but as them the day after how long it took, they will guess they were in there for _longer_ than they actually were.

It seems from this then that when looking back on an event, the perceived length depends on the number of events that took place in that time, but when an event is happening if it is interesting, it will appear to pass quicker (time flies when you're having fun).

From this it seems then, if you want your lucid dreams whilst dreaming to seem like they last as long time as possible, you just sit there in a blank room doing only what is necesarry to stay lucid. Twiddle your thumbs or something.  This will also make you unique - I would bet no lucid dreamer has ever set out to have as boring LD as possible.

Or alternatively try do as much stuff as possible that you are going to remember when you wake up, which in retrospect will make it seem like your LD lasted a long time.

I'm not sure if this will offer any useful information with regards to LD but theres no harm in trying it.

-doublex

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## higgins534

> _Originally posted by mopey_
> *Anybody else have a "dream memory"?*



I have had moments in waking life where I have thought something had happened but it was just a dream. In fact lately most of my dreams have been 'real' and there hasn't really been any 'fantasy' elements. Anyway in these 'real' dream I have a normal day that I would be having tomorrow (the day when I wake up) and I have an 'alternate' day. Things happen that are very realistic and they sometiems happen very similar the actual day.

Anyway on the topic I have a friend (they are in their 30's) who had a dream that spanned (well it seemed to span to her) about 6 years. She dreamt getting married, having kids, but then woke up when her first child went to school for their first day and she got all upset (mothers...hmph) and woke up. Anyway she says it was a dream that seemed like her life except an alternate reality. She said she married a met she has never met and her kids were similar to her won but they looked a bit different, according to her dream husband's genetics instead of her real-life husband's genetics. Anyway she reckons this helped her decide that she should break-up indefinately with her husband. It was really a learning experience for her and was the caralyst that caused her to change so many things in her life. She is alot happier now after making these changes.

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## Jlick

I've never had a lucid dream, but  i've done acid a couple times. Point being, a 12-hour acid trip feels like so much longer then 12 hours. I had an OOBE one time where I fell into something that I can only compare to a black hole . I was in it for an eternity.  So what I'm saying...if anything is possible in a dream I'm sure you can get to a point where time is not a factor.

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## MKBurn15

Tom Cruise was in an LD for a hundred years. THough technically, it wasn't an LD if he didn't KNOW that he was dreaming, so nevermind.

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## joolerm3ister

hmm... interesting topic. i never thought about it before i read this... anyway, mostly, my lds are just a few hours (or at least, i get the impression its just  a few hours). ive tried extending it to last to reach a next day but i always wake up when i try to force something like that... so i made a habit of not forcing the issue and just take the experience as it is, and not control it as much as possible. IMHO, i think lds are more meaningful that way ^_^

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