# Lucid Dreaming > Dream Control >  >  Created a persistent dream realm

## DreamLord1

I've recently read through Hyu's DJ for inspiration, and i decided to try his persistent realms technique.

I'm a bit of a doctor who fan, so most of the names for the places in my dreams come from the series, especially from the 11th doctor. So, the realm i created is one where there are many alien civilizations and a highly advanced human civilization, all intergalactic and technologically advanced. There is a form of magic, and those who practice it are known by a creature related to the element they've mastered. In the realm, I'm the Admiral of the 13th fleet of the IAW (Intergalactic Alliance of Worlds), and also a pheonix (Mastered fire). I live on the capital of the alliance, Arcadia, the 5th planet of a binary star system in one of the whirlpool galaxy's globular clusters. In orbit around the planet, the view is something like this:


The central city of Arcadia, Trenzalore, is in the middle of one of its large mountain ranges. It is built on a series of terraces and rock platforms connected by bridges. passing around, through, and under Trenzalore is a system of waterfalls and rivers that make it seem quite beautiful. The city is lit by bio luminescent trees and plants, and there are numerous gardens. The architecture is organically inspired, something like 

At sunrise, looking across the Mountain range:


(The large red planet is the 6th planet, with a highly irregular orbit that takes it quite near Arcadia. The blue object is one of Arcadia's two moons. The blue light is from the youngest of the 2 stars in the system.)

An Alliance Landing ship in the battle of Aractus (part of an ongoing war).
It's design is a smaller version of the cruiser from which it is deployed.


The flagship of the 13th fleet, the _Cerberus_, is similar to this:


The IAW has been engaged in an intergalactic war since before i first entered the realm. The war is being fought against Atraxi, an alien civilization similar in form to these things:



They are very advanced, and originate from their oceanic homeworld Aractus. The battle of aractus was a failed alliance invasion of aractus, in which a huge portion of the invading force was destroyed in a surprise attack from oribiting atraxi railgun batteries. It took place approximately 10 years before the time in which i entered the realm. Since then, the war has reached a bloody stalemate, in which thousands die each day as the atraxi slowly but surely chip their way towards Arcadia. The realm centers around the continued effort to defeat the atraxi, but the realm is very rich in possibilities, and i will certainly enjoy it after the war's end.

Finally, here is the picture on which my personal fighter, the _Raven_, is based on:


If anybody else has succeeded in creating a dream realm, post a description here.

----------


## Melatonin

Man I'm very impressed. I thought I was a pretty solid lucid dreamer until I read this. Kind of off topic... but you do use psychedelics? If so, do you feel they have helped you have the ability to create this reality? This really is awesome. Maybe one day I can meet you in this world.

----------


## DreamLord1

No, i don't use psychedelics. I have an incredibly vivid imagination though, and a photographic memory. I'd love to meet you too.

----------


## Mzzkc

Don't you feel persistent realms have the potential to restrict your growth?

Genuinely curious; not a troll question.

----------


## LLucido

Could you post a link to this technique you're mentioning ? I pretty much mastered achieving LDs, and would like to try something like that  :smiley:

----------


## Sageous

> Don't you feel persistent realms have the potential to restrict your growth?
> 
> Genuinely curious; not a troll question.



That's a good question...

----------


## Sensei

That is awesome. How often do you go there? How many times have you been there? I would love it if you would post some of the beginning dreams in your DJ! 

Hyu's journal was what kept me in LDing. I have my own LDing realm called "Zodra", it was handed down to me by my "dream dad" and I have spent a lot of time there. Planning on leaving it after I learn more about it.





> Could you post a link to this technique you're mentioning ? I pretty much mastered achieving LDs, and would like to try something like that



What does 'pretty much mastered achieving LDs' look like?

----------


## LLucido

> That is awesome. How often do you go there? How many times have you been there? I would love it if you would post some of the beginning dreams in your DJ! 
> 
> Hyu's journal was what kept me in LDing. I have my own LDing realm called "Zodra", it was handed down to me by my "dream dad" and I have spent a lot of time there. Planning on leaving it after I learn more about it.
> 
> 
> 
> What does 'pretty much mastered achieving LDs' look like?



It takes much more writing to say specifically how i do it, but i found i can very easily achieve ld every night ( if i have normal sleep and don't feel very stressed ). I have no idea about wilding and such, but my simple technique gives me almost guaranteed LDs, without any effort like dream journal or waking up with alarms and such. I also don't do RCs anymore ( 1-2 a day max ). I didn't wrote about it becouse it started working for me not very long ago, plus it's not super innovative, and it may work only for people who already achieve LDs easily. If people will be interested i'll post about it.

----------


## sisyphus

> Don't you feel persistent realms have the potential to restrict your growth?
> 
> Genuinely curious; not a troll question.



What specifically do you mean by _growth_?

Genuinely uncertain; not a rhetorical question.

----------


## Mzzkc

Growth as in progress, maturation, etc. as it pertains to lucid dreaming.

Think: the opposite of stagnation.

----------


## Kaan

I must admit that I barely buy what some of you guys are claiming.... 
Maybe I know too much things about the dreaming brain's physiology to be enough open mind/credulous for this shit...
No offense..

----------


## Patience108

LLucido - yes it would be nice to hear about your way of getting Lucid ,when your ready  :smiley:

----------


## LLucido

I'll try my best with explaining my newest method, but it may take some space as i believe there's a very thin line between doing it right and doing it wrong, even thought the method is very simple. I actually came up with it very randomly, not so long ago, but first i will say what was my biggest problem with LDing. At the beginning i put a lot of work in to LDs, i started a journal i was doing RCs all day, tried things like reading my dreams before sleep, did mantras and stuff like that. First effects and LDs came fairly quickly. After a while i found out that with this practice my sleeping patterns have changed, and i started to wake up naturally every 1,5 h and i could write down tons of dreams every night. After some more time, all this practice became really tiring to me. I am a light sleeper plus i am very "sound sensitive" ( i need complete silence to fall a sleep, no barking dogs and stuff ). After every night i could write down from 10 to 18 dreams but waking up every 1,5 h, and then writing down dreams for 5-15 minutes got me very woken up, and i needed to put a lot of effort to fall back to sleep. Another bad thing for me was the fact that i became even more aware of every sound around me, and things i didn't notice at all started bothering me. Result was, that i had around 3-4 lds a week, but started getting sleepless nights sometimes, my sleep was very fragile, and all the effort put in lding pretty much killed the fun from it for me ( maybe i'm lazy ). After that i put lding on the side, got spontanious lds from time to time, and that's all. Lately i was thinking a bit more about it and becouse of it i came to my new method:

The only way i always fall a sleep is by thinking/dreaming about some pleasant things. These are kind of thoughts that my mind picks up easily ( it may be something i was handling in real life that day or some complete abstraction ). These thoughts flow through my brain very naturally, and get my imagination really engaged. I get very relaxed by this kind of thinking/dreaming and fall a sleep. These thoughts are very opposite to things like mantras which actually keep you more awake and don't feel natural at all. It's also nothing like thinking about the problems you came by through out the day, that get your emotions really involved and get you more awake instead of more sleepy. Now the whole simple point of my technique is to use this natural, relaxing kind of dreaming before falling a sleep, to thinking about something that involves LDing in some way at least ( for example how great it would be to learn something cool in LD and get this ability to waking life, or what i would talk about with my subconciouss if i could in my LD etc...). It will probably be something completely different for every person every night, becouse this thought can't be FORCED into your mind at all, it has to be something your mind will find very relaxing to think before sleep, and i find very different thoughts relaxing for me every night. For example you can't just start thinking how great it would be to fly in a LD if this thought doesn't get you very relaxed and sleepy that night. Last thing i do, is i repeat this kind of thoughts when i wake up in the middle of the night ( which i always do ), and then i always get LD somewhere between 3 to 5 am. Everything i wrote here may seem very chaotic, but the whole point is that the thought invloving LD have to be very natural and not forced upon you mind when falling a sleep. I don't know if this will work for anyone, but since i started to do it, i get LD every night in which i have normal and comfortable sleep, basically effortlessly.

----------


## Sensei

> It takes much more writing to say specifically how i do it, but i found i can very easily achieve ld every night ( if i have normal sleep and don't feel very stressed ). I have no idea about wilding and such, but my simple technique gives me almost guaranteed LDs, without any effort like dream journal or waking up with alarms and such. I also don't do RCs anymore ( 1-2 a day max ). I didn't wrote about it becouse it started working for me not very long ago, plus it's not super innovative, and it may work only for people who already achieve LDs easily. If people will be interested i'll post about it.



Oh, so not mastered, but gotten to an LD. Almost every night. Big difference. Got it.  :wink2:  





> I must admit that I barely buy what some of you guys are claiming.... 
> Maybe I know too much things about the dreaming brain's physiology to be enough open mind/credulous for this shit...
> No offense..



You have 300 lucids and have no persistent dream characters or worlds? That is a little shocking. 

@mzzkc
For me specifically, I want to use my LDing for fun and practicing waking life skills. So far, the best way to do this is a persistent realm (and time dilation if I can master that too  :tongue2: ), I think growth depends on where you are wanting to grow. If you want to "master dream control" then you must be master of yourself, because you are the dream, that is pretty easy. I want more from a dream

----------


## Kaan

> You have 300 lucids and have no persistent dream characters or worlds? That is a little shocking.



I've been LDing for 30 years and I never Lucid dreamed twice about the same "special" world (excepted the one I know: reality). 
A LD is before all a dream, and Dreams are mainly build in a random way.
Sure we can dream about same places more often than about other places, but.. come on, building a entire wold ... knowing that instability is the number one aspect of dreams, and that the second aspect is that 99% of the dream is build from unconscious mechanisms....
Sorry I don't buy this

----------


## Sensei

> I've been LDing for 30 years and I never Lucid dreamed twice about the same "special" world (excepted the one I know: reality). 
> A LD is before all a dream, and Dreams are mainly build in a random way.
> Sure we can dream about same places more often than about other places, but.. come on, building a entire wold ... knowing that instability is the number one aspect of dreams, and that the second aspect is that 99% of the dream is build from unconscious mechanisms....
> Sorry I don't buy this



You have never once been to the same place in a dream? That seems more unlikely to me than anything. instability isn't the number one aspect of dreams, My dreams are always quite stable. You have been LDing for 30 years and only have 300 Lucid Dreams? the main thing about persistence is that you need to be pretty consistent (about 3/week). 

Dreams are not created by randomness, they are created by schema, which are all but random. Have you read ETWOLD?

----------


## Kaan

I set my LD count to 300 as I could have set it at 500, or more, I really don't care about how many LD I have got through my life, but LD count seams important to you.
Let say that LD is not something I discovered yesterday.
I am not one of these guys who can LD at will, my brain does it jobs: the parts  and functions that are supposed to be turned off during REM sleep ARE generally turned off, so if I want to have a LD, it will be a real fight more me to have it.
All of my dreams are different, and yes, some places are coming more often than others, but generally, it is LIKE random stuffs, situations, stories, characters....
during one dream, characters change from one to another, situations are shifting, and even if the dream seams stable during a short period, if I look at it from the beginning to the end, it changes.
The components of the dream slide/change/transform by homology, that's why a yellow umbrella will turn into a yello "something else that is close to an umbrella", that's also why written stuffs change from a reading to another, like the hour, the digital stuffs, the number of fingers if you count it... and so on.
What I say about how my dream work is not different from how work the dream in general.
simply because this is how the dreaming brain works.

So, it is just my opinion, but I don't buy such a complicated, written like a sci-fi movie, and stable persistent dream.

----------


## Sensei

> I set my LD count to 300 as I could have set it at 500, or more, I really don't care about how many LD I have got through my life, but LD count seams important to you.
> Let say that LD is not something I discovered yesterday.
> I am not one of these guys who can LD at will, my brain does it jobs: the parts  and functions that are supposed to be turned off during REM sleep ARE generally turned off, so if I want to have a LD, it will be a real fight more me to have it.
> All of my dreams are different, and yes, some places are coming more often than others, but generally, it is LIKE random stuffs, situations, stories, characters....
> during one dream, characters change from one to another, situations are shifting, and even if the dream seams stable during a short period, if I look at it from the beginning to the end, it changes.
> The components of the dream slide/change/transform by homology, that's why a yellow umbrella will turn into a yello "something else that is close to an umbrella", that's also why written stuffs change from a reading to another, like the hour, the digital stuffs, the number of fingers if you count it... and so on.
> What I say about how my dream work is not different from how work the dream in general.
> simply because this is how the dreaming brain works.
> 
> So, it is just my opinion, but I don't buy such a complicated, written like a sci-fi movie, and stable persistent dream.



Gotcha, so if I tell you I can read in dreams and it won't be different, but I could read a book with a coherent story, you wouldn't believe me?

LD Count is important to me because I am trying to have LDs. If I don't keep track of number and consistency, then how will I be able to see progress? I am sorry if it seemed like i was looking down on your LD count (300 or 500 is quite a big difference, and people should be happy if they reach that). I think that every person that I have met that has 2 or 3 hundred LDs has noticed some form of persistence in their dreams. Items, characters, or places. Usually items are the easiest.  I have a watch that I wear in my LDs, I just acquired an amulet from a witch I killed, I have a few others as well. 

If your LDs don't have any persistence, then what is the point of getting lucid? You could go and do something amazing, but halfway through fighting a dragon it turns into a squirrel. I wouldn't waste my time LDing if that was the case.

----------


## LLucido

> Oh, so not mastered, but gotten to an LD. Almost every night. Big difference. Got it.



I used the word mastered, becouse i meant that i got to a level i don't see point in improving anymore. When i did a lot of LD practice i had situations in which i had 3 lds in one night, but back then i thought there's no way of getting ld every day without effort, which seem like the best possible scenario for me. Still you have to understand i didn't mean LD as a whole when i said mastered, i am at best, decent at dream control and far from the level i want, and this is the area i want to improve. Also i want to focus on improving the lenght of my dreams, becouse it seems optimal for me, to get a very long one every night then couple of shorter ones. I will be trying out your technique for that on nearest occassions  :wink2:  I also need to make sure i can sustain this effectivness for long period of time  :smiley:

----------


## Kaan

"Gotcha, so if I tell you I can read in dreams and it won't be different, but I could read a book with a coherent story, you wouldn't believe me?"

you right, I won't believe it.

----------


## Sensei

> "Gotcha, so if I tell you I can read in dreams and it won't be different, but I could read a book with a coherent story, you wouldn't believe me?"
> 
> you right, I won't believe it.



So basically you think we are all liars?

----------


## Habba

Ah! Someone mentioned growth! 

Growth can be a real problem at times!! What happens if you come attached to this dream reality have a created?  What if it affects you on a physical level? You want to live in the dream reality? You become too attached that youre not mentally well? You stop growing perhaps?

----------


## sisyphus

I liked the OP's post. I think it was an nice contribution because it demonstrated a culmination of many useful lucid dreaming skills. Namely:
- Reading the dream journal of a fellow lucid dreamer and drawing inspiration from it
- Taking on a long-term, goal-oriented challenge
- Synthesizing elements of popular fiction with one's own imagination to create a unique world
- Finding images to complement the narrative, so as to engage multiple senses in the creative process
- Leveraging archetypal elements to support dream control
- Creating an open-ended conflict in the premise, to allow for randomness, improvisation, and progression to play out in the dreams
- A suspension of disbelief and genuine spirit of play
- An sense of accomplishment without braggadocio
- An invitation for fellow dreamers to share alike

And then the first couple replies were on topic. The rest of the thread made me sad. I spent a long while trying to find the words to articulate my disappointment or to find something constructive out of mess. But maybe it would fall on deaf ears so I gave up.

----------


## Sensei

> I liked the OP's post. I think it was an nice contribution because it demonstrated a culmination of many useful lucid dreaming skills. Namely:
> - Reading the dream journal of a fellow lucid dreamer and drawing inspiration from it
> - Taking on a long-term, goal-oriented challenge
> - Synthesizing elements of popular fiction with one's own imagination to create a unique world
> - Finding images to complement the narrative, so as to engage multiple senses in the creative process
> - Leveraging archetypal elements to support dream control
> - Creating an open-ended conflict in the premise, to allow for randomness, improvisation, and progression to play out in the dreams
> - A suspension of disbelief and genuine spirit of play
> - An sense of accomplishment without braggadocio
> ...



Sorry to disappoint Sisyphus, I shall try to stay more on topic, especially when it is something I enjoy to read and hear about as well. 

 :smiley:

----------


## OpheliaBlue

O_O

----------


## Patience108

DreamLord1 - I would love to hear more about your realm and your creation of it - it is inspirational  ::alien::

----------


## gab

> I've recently read through Hyu's DJ for inspiration, and i decided to try his persistent realms technique.



Haha, Hyu is awesome. I got my first LD after getting super excited from reading his thread http://www.dreamviews.com/general-lu...other-dcs.html

Congrats to creating your realm, sounds awesome!





> ... i found i can very easily achieve ld every night ( if i have normal sleep and don't feel very stressed ). I have no idea about wilding and such, but my simple technique gives me almost guaranteed LDs, ...



That's an awesome accomplishment! Congrats. Sounds pretty mastery to me.





> Oh, so not mastered, but gotten to an LD. Almost every night. Big difference. Got it.



I guess buddhist monks who stay aware and lucid during the whole NREM and REM and in between would call our best "masters" noobs. Or maybe they wouldn't. : winky :





> You have 300 lucids and have no persistent dream characters or worlds? That is a little shocking. 
> You have been LDing for 30 years and only have 300 Lucid Dreams? 
> 
> If your LDs don't have any persistence, then what is the point of getting lucid? I wouldn't waste my time LDing if that was the case.



Perhaps persistance is not that important to others as it is to some. And, uhm, wasting time? I have had over 200 LDs and not a single persistant thing. Am I doomed? Lol, maybe I enjoy randomness and surprises. And when I decide to get persistant, I'll enjoy that too. But till then, not gonna loose any sleep over it : winky :

Haha, we all have different goals, dreams, fun doing different things. How can someone say that if someone else is not doing it his way, he is doing it wrong?

----------


## Sageous

^^ All true, but...





> Perhaps persistance is not that important to others as it is to some. And, uhm, wasting time? I have had over 200 LDs and not a single persistant thing. Am I doomed? Lol, maybe I enjoy randomness and surprises. And when I decide to get persistant, I'll enjoy that too. But till then, not gonna loose any sleep over it.



Yes, persistent realms might night matter to many (though I do experience them, I personally have no use for them), but I think Mzzkc's question way back when was a valid one: is developing a persistent realm -- a place of literal sameness -- in your dreams the best use of your imagination, of your spiritual time in LD's?  I'm not sure.

You may be ahead of the game, Gab, in your preference of randomness and surprise over getting exactly what you expect or consciously design in your dreams.  Persistent realms for me seem to represent where we've already been, what we've already done, and they may simply reflect a certain comfort zone of our self-esteem or interest in learning.

We grow, intellectually, spiritually, and to some degree physically, by facing new challenges, new imagery, new concepts, and new worlds.  To focus all your lucid energy on creating a world based entirely on what you already know and feel, and to then continue to return to that world as though you were its not its God but simply another player, is to risk hampering your intellectual and spiritual growth.  I would even argue that you are diminishing your lucid skills by consistently returning to a world that you expect to be there, because eventually that world will become a sort of reality for you -- something other than a part of your own mind -- and when it does, lucid development stagnates.

So persistent realms can be very cool, especially when you get them to match pictures like those provided in the OP, but there are some valid arguments for questioning their validity, and people who have differing opinions about them (or even whether they truly exist, or aren't just recurring dreams a dreamer might have had anyway; or, worse, and I'm not saying this about anyone here, perhaps just cool waking-life stories attached to some remarkable dream fragments).  

Finally: yes, everyone has differing experience and opinions, but sometimes a little chat about those differences can be helpful, especially on a subject as spotty as persistent realms.  The only way we can learn more about persistent realms, or why we all experience them differently, if at all, is by discussing our experiences and, occasionally, getting into annoying and decidedly irrelevant pissing contests that often fade away, as long as the conversation stays true in general.  To decide that a conversation is a mess simply because people are expressing themselves in a manner that runs counter to what the echo chamber demands is not the most enlightened decision, I think.

Persistent realms in LD's is a fascinating topic, for a lot of reasons. I hope the gods of DV will be willing to let those who disagree with the concept, or at least some of the decidedly wild claims (whether true or not, they can still be pretty out there) that persistent dreamers make, be treated respectfully for disagreeing.

And yeah, Mzzkc's question, "Don't you feel persistent realms have the potential to restrict your growth?" had a real potential for opening up this conversation; it's a shame it went pretty much ignored... maybe if it hadn't, we would have had a much better conversation.

I'm rambling... Here's a quick *tl.dr:* Due to the nature of the subject, opinions about persistent realms in LD's are going to vary quite a bit from dreamer to dreamer, but it might be better for those opinions (and supporting experience or knowledge) to find a little air rather than setting them aside in the name of politely supporting the OP or a practice attributed to one or two very popular members... sometimes pointing out that a person is doing something wrong is the only way to find out you are doing it wrong yourself,,, speaking of that, can we maybe consider Mzzkc's question about whether persistent realms might restrict growth?"

 ::cheers::

----------


## OpheliaBlue

I think the point gab was making was NOT to be condescending toward eachother. This thread had started to get kinda bitchy so we were like "whaaaa?" But as long as everyone is cool and getting along, then it's all good. That's what I love about the On Topic Forums: here we are way more cool and understanding, whereas the Extended Discussion forums are where topics get rude and out of hand. And I for one am extra glad that we all strive to keep that separation.

----------


## sisyphus

> ^^ All true, but...



Thank you Sageous. Firstly, I apologize for getting preachy. I wrote a longer sermon yesterday, but had the sense to reduce it to one sentence. Perhaps zero would have been better, but that milk has been spilled. Here is my opinion. Let me first define persistence, as I understand it and as it pertains to dream control.

Persistence: A storytelling device wherein the narrative spans multiple sessions of interaction, especially such that the narrative is allowed to progress between sessions.

And to be clear, the mechanism of the narrative's progression is the author's imagination, invoking what I above described as "a suspension of disbelief and a spirit of play." I'm not suggesting anything supernatural. Nor, to me, does persistence require a very rigorous fidelity or formalism. It is a storytelling device. A creative tool. One arrow in the quiver of the author. The author always retains license to bend the rules toward a holistic pursuit of an enjoyable experience.

By that definition, I contented that it would not necessarily restrict growth. Quite the contrary, it is a skillful tool for an author to create a larger and more ambitious narrative. Very plainly, it just allows a narrative to be longer in time. The time we have in each dream is limited; that's a consequence of biology. Extending a dream over multiple sessions seems like a natural desire. And persistence is the tool to facilitate that desire. Is it wrong to indulge desire? For me, that argument merges up to any dream control and lucid dreaming in general, so not particular to persistence.

Now, my personal experience. I don't keep a persistent world to the degree of some other contributors. But I do refer to the environment of all my dreams as The Dreaming, and believe, in the spirit of play and suspended disbelief, that it has its own persistence, character, and uniqueness. I think it is interesting when persons or places recur in my dreams and how they seem to evolve. As a pastime, I like to speculate on if there is continuity of those characters, and by what mechanism I might attribute their evolution. Is it randomness? Is it my unconscious? Is it my shifting knowledge and worldview? To me, this exercise is rich in exploration, not stagnation.

Thus, I (respectfully) reject such characterizations as stagnation and sameness. Of course, anything taken to extreme can be pathological, but that is a disclaimer to add to just about anything, so I don't see how it is of particular significance here.

----------


## Mzzkc

I had a nice chat with Samael over PMs regarding the inherent drawbacks and dangers of creating a persistent realm without first gaining an intuitive grasp on practical schema manipulation (both IWL and in dreams).

Some points of note were shortcutting the association process without a solid understanding of it, schema bleeding out of the realm into other dreams, and the cautionary story of the late Walms.

But I guess there's little interest in talking about that here, yeah? =P

----------


## Patience108

Thanks everyone!  :smiley:   I really hope this thread keeps on as I find it very interesting. 

I have no persistent realms turned up yet in LD'S but I love them all! 

I do want to use Ldreaming on my path to awakening simply coz thats with me all the time in life as a wish since i was a child  - to develop and grow as a human being on this planet, to expand my mind in a way thats benificial... That means I am always on the look out for other folk doing that and interested to hear and learn ::alien::

----------


## cooleymd

My belief is if you can dream it you can dream it.
So I believe a persistent place is something I could eventually build, but like Kaan I think dreams are inherently pretty unstable.  I think I would have to work to maintain the place, and also I would need to learn to teleport there.  Mostly in dreams I find myself a victim of circumstance, but also targets of Opportunity.  Usually the dreamscape fights back against lucidity and also against outright control, just like I can't always fly in a dream or can but get stuck in the air, I doubt I could learn to go back to my dream world that is waiting on pause for me.  Teleport in and hit the play button.  I think I would find myself walking down a hall to where I knew I was going and then due to a stray thought found myself somewhere else entirely.  Or If I were to enter the Spartacus Slave market to check out the latest commodities from the north lands with my bag full of gold, only to find that there is an uprising in progress.  I can't believe my dreams would ever start fully behaving or even allow persistent stable control much less stable visuals.  But going to a place I built to see what mischief my subconscious has waiting for me seems doable

as for the 'spiritual part' I don't think living inside your own mind discovering things about yourself is very spiritual.  If your a dream guru who is all knowing, seems to me self-knowledge is the opposite of spiritual, the spiritual part is sharing knowledge gained with others.

I would be more likely to have a real grasp of someones persistent dream world if they made their own crude drawings of it, rather then some uncited (no credit given) work of art that is someone else's and saying yea just like this.  Or I'm so super creative I can make a whole world I just have to get the names from old episodes of Mork and Mindy.  "I'm the shiznit of showing you other peoples ART and citing the principal cities of ORK"

In the end maybe some dreamers limit themselves with our preconceived ideas of the limits of our own dreams.

I intend to first try to go to modified real places, but have never really even remembered to teleport in a dream so I still need more prospective memory.  I'm sure that even If I did remember teleportation was possible It would be more like to hell with porting to the slave market of Capua, look at that chick over there, and as I get closer to her things can morph to my expectation and delight, or morph to my subconsciousness' expectation and horror!

----------


## DreamLord1

not really. its just a side project, really.

----------


## DreamLord1

Thank you for the fantastic response! I've been sort of a lurker for the past 6 months, and i'm amazed i got this kind of feedback from the community! I don't have reliable ld's, but i've always been a natural at dream control. I was actually getting pretty depressed 3 months ago for unrelated reasons, hit a pretty low spot. This response is a real pick me up! I hope that this thread can continue. And for those who were asking, everything was directly inspired from hyu's dream journal. And gab, his dream journal was also what inspired me to start again after abandoning lucid dreaming. Thank you all so much! This means so much to me!

----------


## DreamLord1

So, i have a photographic memory. what that means, is that i can remember things in detail, and those memories are quite stable. As you all know, Kaan thinks the dream world is to unstable to support a realm. The funny thing is, is that the combination of stable "schema sets"(photographic memories) and the continued integration of the dreamer into a coherent, open-ended plot ensures stability. it also means that the realm runs itself. I have know direct control over the plot.

----------


## DreamLord1

*The Battle of Tartarus*

Dream: I wake up to my alarm on tuesday, and my mother is shouting that i'm going to be late to school. On my way their, i realize that the very last thing i remember is falling asleep on saturday. I decide to check my watch, and it's gone batshit insane. It's actually showing the word "Dream". Quickly becoming lucid, i decide to fall backwards to visit Trenzalore once again. I quickly awaken in trenzalore. I am immediately compelled to go to the high council chambers in the citadel, as i'm messaged by the chair of the council that a special meeting of the admiralty has been called. Arriving at the high council chambers, i realize that something extremely important is going on. The chair of the high council informs us that a weaknes has been discovered in the atraxi's defenses. In order to prevent our ships from warp-jumping past the line, the atraxi use warp drives designed to introduce severe space-time distortions in the border, making it impossible to navigate. Ships called wall-breakers can, in fact, break through these "warp walls", but the amount of energy needed grows with the severity of the distortions. The atraxi are channeling 20 percent of their total power output into their "warp walls", making it virtually impossible to break through the border with a wall-breaker ship. However, high command has discovered that an important "crossroads world"--where structures are placed to create warp highways and power conduits, in this case used to support the line-- Tartarus, is extremely close to the border. So close, that if we launch a full out attack on of the border worlds close to it, we will drain enough power from the warp generators to breach the wall and attack tartarus. And if tartarus falls, it becomes near impossible for the atraxi to reestablish the line without first retaking tartarus. It is decide that the 7th fleet will carry out the diversionary attack, while our fleet and the 4th have been assigned to tartarus. I immediately leave to the docks in orbit. Once aboard the cerberus, the fleet organizes into attack formation. Our numbers include 3 hades-class juggernauts, 20 Osiris-class destroyers, and 40 cruisers. We warp jump to just ouside the neutral zone, and patiently monitor the distortions. Finally, the distortions in our sector reduce to traversable levels. Wall-breaker ships are sent forward with 3 destroyers each to secure a beachhead in orbit around tartarus. The rest of the fleet soon follows, and when the cerberus warp-jumps, we find ourselves in the middle of a warzone. A massive atraxi fleet is firing on us. I give the orders for the fighters to be deployed and to protect the cruisers at all costs. The destroyers regroup into strike groups and launch a forward assault into the defending fleet. As hours pass and the battle rages on, it becomes clear that the strike groups are succeeding and the defensive formation is splitting. The Anubis's strike group opens a hole in the defenses, through which 17 cruisers land on tartarus. The fighter squadrons are given the order to attack the atraxi destroyers. Though they are outnumbered 10 to 1, the atraxi use tactics that are already 300 years old to us. We soon start taking out the destroyer's shields. Our destroyers are given the order to start firing full broadside. The atraxi destroyers are torn apart in the maelstrom of artillery fire. The fleet begins to withdraw. All of our cruisers have now landed on tartarus, and it seems that the system is ours. I soon realize that the bridge of the cerberus is getting foggy, and unable to stabilize the dream, i exit and wake up.

----------


## Mzzkc

> So, i have a photographic memory. what that means, is that i can remember things in detail, and those memories are quite stable. As you all know, Kaan thinks the dream world is to unstable to support a realm. The funny thing is, is that the combination of stable "schema sets"(photographic memories) and the continued integration of the dreamer into a coherent, open-ended plot ensures stability. it also means that the realm runs itself. I have know direct control over the plot.



You do know eidetic memory isn't really a thing, yeah?

What you are describing using the term "schema sets" sound more like a general mnemonic device, similar to the chain method but at a broader scale. Effective for the intended application, sure, but not eidetic by any stretch.

After knowing all this, if you're convinced I am wrong (as is the wealth of scientific study on this topic), then do brain science a solid and submit yourself for testing at your local uni.

----------


## DreamLord1

all right. let me explain what i mean by "schema set". I mean that it is a set of interconnected schemas that form the realm itself. For example, one such schema set is trenzalore. I have detailed memories of the various objects i find there, and there all given locations relative to each other, causing them all to link into one 3 dimensional schema for the whole city. And by eidetic memory, i'm saying that i never "learned" this. My mind automatically converts each memory into a schema set, instead of just a bunch of roughly related schemas. And as far as i know, mzzkc, you're right. No true "photographic" memory has been found in a human, but it is definitely possible to unconsciously make linked "schema sets". This is what i mean. For example, you probably know the layout of the area you cover on your daily commute to work. You roughly remember where everything that you've ever paid attention to is. In my case, my mind takes that to the extreme. It religiously links all the information it percieves into one coherent shema set. When i remember my 9th birthday, i first get a very rough sense of who's who and where they are. depending on who i focus on, though, i unconsciously retrieve all schemas related to them that are part of the "9th birthday" schema set, meaning there face suddenly comes into sharp focus and i recall what they were doing. I don't see a picture. I see only one branch of the schema tree at any given time. Whatever i happen to be remebering will be missing details, but i can remeber those details at the cost of being unable to "place" them in the original memory. It's like taking a series of increasingly zoomed-in photos. The smaller the zoom, the greater the portion of the fov that is visible. You can zoom in to find more detail, at the cost of "occluding" the rest of the fov. This is what i mean by photographic memory.

----------


## Mzzkc

I knew what you meant. See the bit above where I postulated you were actually referring to the use of a mnemonic device which utilizes broader linking.

It's important to note mnemonic devices are not necessarily explicitly learned skills. I think that might be where you're getting hung up?

Either way, being in touch with how the brain organizes memory is a good thing. It's useful when you want to start delving deeper with that stuff and begin messing around with path deletion and modification. You've got creation down, it seems. Just be careful not to let connections form between your persistent realm and your normal dreams. Walms (deceased, now Hukif) was a master of this, separating his dreaming realm and his persistent realm(s) entirely. Of course, this tied all his powers, relationships, progress, etc. to the persistent realm. Thus, when he died, he lost everything he'd built up over the years, and had to essentially start from scratch as Hukif.

----------


## DreamLord1

Ok. Glad we agree on that.

Who's Hukif?

----------


## Mzzkc

One of the most prolific and accomplished self-taught Lucid Dreamers I know. Along with Naiya, he helped lay the foundation of what is commonly known as ADA thanks in part to his gravity RC. He also averages 13 LDs a night on a bad day, and created a persistent universe before there was even a "method" to do so. He can modify his personality through dreams, can consistently dilate time, and all that's just the basics.

I'd link you to his DJ, but he had it removed from DV back when they switched to blogs. Around the same time, he started frequent other forums which I cannot mention or link to here because censorship. You could always google "Lucid Dreaming Hukif" to find out more, though. =P

----------


## Kaan

"Walms (deceased, now Hukif) was a master of this, separating his dreaming realm and his persistent realm(s) entirely. Of course, this tied all his powers, relationships, progress, etc. to the persistent realm. Thus, when he died, he lost everything he'd built up over the years, and had to essentially start from scratch as Hukif"

" He also averages 13 LDs a night on a bad day, and created a persistent universe before there was even a "method" to do so. He can modify his personality through dreams, can consistently dilate time, and all that's just the basics."

waaaat?

can't he also fly above the sea irl?

----------


## cooleymd

> waaaat?
> can't he also fly above the sea irl?



Come on Kaan get with the picture obviously he can dilate time and travel thru it in real life, how else could all those Tibetan monks have been lining up for century upon century to learn ADA from him? 

He discovered levitation while trying to teach the Vajrayana to cross their legs in the eight century!

----------


## Kaan

All these permanent alternative realities stuffs make me think about some kind of famous mental illnesses, like schizophrenia, multiple personalities, and so on, or in the best case megalomania with some part of pseudologia fantastica...

And after that, don't ask me why people call you crazy when you're just talking about Lucid Dreaming...

----------


## Mzzkc

If you're feeling incredulous, just look the guy up yourselves. It's not that difficult if you have a basic grasp on how to Internet.

Otherwise, you're coming into this conversation with an uninformed viewpoint and an unwillingness to research the basics. All around, you're just making yourself look like an ass-hat.

Which you aren't? Right? =P

----------


## DawnEye11

13 lucid dreams on a bad day...Did he wake up and go back to sleep that many times to keep a record?

----------


## Kaan

If I have to choose between being incredulous and being credulous, life taught me to go for the first one.
And what I know about the brain and dreams is enough for me to have an opinion.
I don't think sharing my point of view makes me an ass-hat.

does it?

----------


## Mzzkc

It does if you're unwilling to do some basic research in an attempt to consider other viewpoints, while simultaneously throwing out ad hominens as your only argument.

Tell me, who've you read on the topic of neurochemistry as it relates to dreaming?

You're right, that's a bit niche. Maybe just share some insight on the role the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex plays in lucid dreaming? That's an easy one, after all.

If you want to impress, and keep on-topic, regale us with your thoughts on how neural networking impacts dream formation. Still easy, but definitely more telling.

----------


## Sageous

^^ Is there an imogee for throwing down a gauntlet?

----------


## Kaan

> It does if you're unwilling to do some basic research in an attempt to consider other viewpoints, while simultaneously throwing out ad hominens as your only argument.
> 
> Tell me, who've you read on the topic of neurochemistry as it relates to dreaming?
> 
> You're right, that's a bit niche. Maybe just share some insight on the role the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex plays in lucid dreaming? That's an easy one, after all.
> 
> If you want to impress, and keep on-topic, regale us with your thoughts on how neural networking impacts dream formation. Still easy, but definitely more telling.



I don't want to impress, just telling that "what I know" about dreams , LDs, and how the brain works, all of this makes me have some doubt about some of the claims that I can read sometimes, and also that some aspects of this remind me few mental illness aspects.

I don't see the point of explaining in detail what I put in "what I know".
I don't understand where you want to bring me.
what I know about the DLPFC, which book I read, how many DJ I read, and since when I am interested about lucid dreaming, putting all of this in the table is not necessary as I am not pretending to prove anything.

The basic research have been done, but since I consider some stuffs I can read as exaggerations, I don't see the interest of arguing.. this is a simple point of view I feel free to express.
Believers can freely continue to believe, sceptic will have another feeling and maybe will share some of my doubts, and everything is good.

----------


## Sensei

> I don't want to impress, just telling that "what I know" about dreams , LDs, and how the brain works, all of this makes me have some doubt about some of the claims that I can read sometimes, and also that some aspects of this remind me few mental illness aspects.
> 
> I don't see the point of explaining in detail what I put in "what I know".
> I don't understand where you want to bring me.
> what I know about the DLPFC, which book I read, how many DJ I read, and since when I am interested about lucid dreaming, putting all of this in the table is not necessary as I am not pretending to prove anything.
> 
> The basic research have been done, but since I consider some stuffs I can read as exaggerations, I don't see the interest of arguing.. this is a simple point of view I feel free to express.
> Believers can freely continue to believe, sceptic will have another feeling and maybe will share some of my doubts, and everything is good.



Yes, but it gives us an idea of where you are coming from and helps to continue a conversation instead of an argument. Please present some data,  experiences, and research as everyone else has so that we can find out more why you believe that.  :tongue2:

----------


## Kaan

Well, it is more a overall impression / feeling, it's intuitive.
Books go from Laberge's first books, to Hobson's one, + a certain amount of books on LD, OBE, AT, Read during these two last decades, the most recent one may be  thomas Yuschak's one. I also often read  articles about neurology read there and there, DJ's from other forums (french ones), my own experience, books about psychology, (and yes I am aware of the Role of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex on lucid dreaming) ,  self hypnosis, meditation, spirituality,  discussions from the french LD forum where I am moderator, and many other things I guess.

The main argument I rose was about the dream instability, but I can't go inside one's head , you know.
And going further in the discussion would be very hard for me as I would quickly attain my English limits.
It's not like if I was discussing about that in French.

----------


## sisyphus

I think the skeptic's case is solid and needs not further defense until more evidence is provided. The argument that "you can find it on the Internet" doesn't hold water. Sources need to be reliable. Forum posts and dream journal entries are not reliable, in the rigorous sense of the word. They are anecdotal, subjective, self-reported. From the aggregate of many anecdotes or from particularly unusual anecdotes, we can form some hypotheses, but this is only the beginning of the scientific method, not the end. Popularity lends "social proof," which can be very powerful, but is still not scientific. Allusions were made to topics in neuroscience. Okay, interesting. How do they relate to the topic? Can we derive a logical conclusion from them? If not, we are still also willing to entertain some reasoning or speculation between the science, anecdotes, and personal experience. If so, please state those thoughts plainly.

Having said all that, I want to assert that the spirit of skepticism is not to be predisposed to the negative, but rather to delay belief until more evidence is provided in the positive. Anecdotes are not useless. They are data points that open us up to new possible explanations and hypotheses.

Now, the point I want to make is in that realm of reasoning and speculation, but I think it is compelling because it finds a middle ground. For dream control, we engage in an act of storytelling with ourselves. We are creating fiction. By entering the realm of fiction, we put reality behind and instead focus on what is useful for creating interesting content. That invokes memory, schemas, expectation, creative interpretation, and suspension of disbelief. Is persistence and time dilation inside a dream real in a physical sense? I wouldn't try to defend that. But are they useful narrative tools, in the same vein as in works of fiction? Yes.

This act of storytelling can be problematic when trying to communicate it to someone else. It is difficult to succinctly describe the whole fiction of one's imagination. (And if you can do it well, write a book or screenplay). More often, it comes across as bizarre claims. This may simply be a consequence of lack of time or effort or diligence. Might it be delusion? Maybe. Might it be deception? Maybe. This is all in the realm of unreliable sources. It may become a failure of communication while still being a useful tool of dream control.

----------


## cooleymd

> on the topic of neurochemistry as it relates to dreaming?



When I was a graduate student in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology I used to do a bit of neurological development research, but it was all focused in the Hind Brain.  I don't think the rats I was using were doing much dreaming tho.  Step one decapitation, step two dissect out hind brain, step three place in liquid nitrogen.  Of course I'll never know since I didn't even bother to ask them!

Now that I think about it from the looks on their little faces they did seem to be attempting to invoke invulnerability, guess they weren't that good at it tho.

Perhaps some of the brains are still frozen and due to quantum entanglement with a living rat's brain in an alternate universe, that rat is able to create a persistent alternate reality.  I just need an infinite amount of energy and find a way to breach the gap to an alternate reality, find a rat and ask them.  Oh silly me, I could save on the energy by astral projecting there, besides rats only talk in dreams.

----------


## Mzzkc

Kaan, here's the gist of how creating a persistent realm is possible:

Consider first, one of your favorite fictional books which features its own universe. If the book is any good, the author spent a painstaking amount of time building up a self-contained universe. When you read this book, you built up associations, connections within your brain, linking together the various aspects of this universe into a more concrete whole. Perhaps you even had dreams wherein you were in this universe, and the laws of that universe were in effect. In essence, what you experienced could be considered a (watered down) persistent realm. Does having an experience like that make you crazy? I think we can reasonable agree that it does not.

A persistent realm is built in much the same way as the example above, except this time you take the role of the author--the world builder. You lay out the laws of the universe, political landscape, technological advancement, arcane knowledge, etc. As part of this universe, you also create a method of entry, which you can perform within a dream to slip into that universe. That's the key difference between other fictional universes and a persistent realm. The typical fictional universe has no built-in point of entry--whereas persistent realms do. In the end, they're all just fictional places. One's just a bit easier to get to.

I do not see how this is incompatible with any known theories regarding brain function or dreaming. Yes, if the universe is not well formed, then there will be frequent inconsistencies. But a good author accounts for as many details as possible, and obsesses over every detail until they can rattle off every intricacy of the fictional histories they've created. If those pathways and associations are thoroughly reinforced to such a degree, the realm will become that much more consistent whilst dreaming.

sisyphus, I concede the point that all my evidence in relation to Hukif is anecdotal. In full disclosure, I admit to considering him a friend (and rival). Further, much of my knowledge regarding his exploits is no longer public information. Much of it is relegated to various chat logs and Siberia. There do however exist some interesting tidbits still visible to the public eye. If not for the rules on this forum forbidding linking to other LDing forums, I would have provided sources for perusal. As it is, you'll have to take that issue up with staff (glhf).

Edit: cooleymd, check out stuff on SRIs. Also, wat?

----------


## sisyphus

> Kaan, here's the gist of how creating a persistent realm is possible:
> 
> Consider first, one of your favorite fictional books which features it's own universe. If the book is any good, the author spent a painstaking amount of time building up a self-contained universe. When you read this book, you built up associations, connections within your brain, linking together the various aspects of this universe into a more concrete whole. Perhaps you even had dreams wherein you were in this universe, and the laws of that universe were in effect. In essence, what you experienced could be considered a (watered down) persistent realm. Does having an experience like that make you crazy? I think we can reasonable agree that it does not.
> 
> A persistent realm is built in much the same way as the example above, except this time you take the role of the author--the world builder. You lay out the laws of the universe, political landscape, technological advancement, arcane knowledge, etc. As part of this universe, you also create a method of entry, which you can perform within a dream to slip into that universe. That's the key difference between other fictional universes and a persistent realm. Fictional universes have no built-in point of entry--whereas persistent realms do.
> 
> I do not see how this is incompatible with any known theories regarding brain function or dreaming. Yes, if the universe is not well formed, then there will be frequent inconsistencies. But a good author accounts for as many details as possible, and obsesses over every detail until they can rattle off every intricacy of the fictional histories they've created. If those pathways and associations are thoroughly reinforced to such a degree, the realm will become that much more consistent whilst dreaming.
> 
> sisyphus, I concede the point that all my evidence in relation to Hukif is anecdotal. In full disclosure, I admit to considering him a friend (and rival). Further, much of my knowledge regarding his exploits is no longer public information. Much of it is relegated to various chat logs and Siberia. There do however exist some interesting tidbits still visible to the public eye. If not for the rules on this forum forbidding linking to other LDing forums, I would have provided sources for perusal. As it is, you'll have to take that issue up with staff (glhf).



Well stated. What most interested me in your previously replies was "schema bleed." I grasp the idea and its cautionary implications, but wonder if that angle has more to discuss.

----------


## gab

> All around, you're just making yourself look like an ass-hat.



Let's not do this again, k?

----------


## EbbTide000

Check-out post 3 of my thread called:

http://www.dreamviews.com/artists-co...ml#post2172236

----------


## Kaan

ok, lets argue a little bit.

I can imagine how a persistent dream can be built, after all,  FA is a good example of persistent dream as it has good chances to happen in a copy of one's home, and if you add to this the idea of dream incubation, it can easily bring you to what we are talking about.

I could also add some credit to it when I think about certain of my old never forgotten dreams that really feel like they were a kind of parallel life episodes, emotionally and realistically speaking, they were very different from other dreams, even more amazing than LDs, cause I really remember them with that feeling that I went to real places, and sometimes, I went several times in the same "alternative" places.
Some of these places were built from places I know IRL but with differences, like scale and other stuffs that made theme other places, and I was often traveling a lot through those dreams, sometimes several km/miles and sometimes ten times more.

Even If I didn't voluntary build and went to these special places of special dreams, these dreams are the closest things I know  to what we are talking about.

But, even in those very elaborated and stable dreams, there always were concerned about what claude Rifat calls "MHV transformations".

Two simple examples about what MHV are:
I will use two dreams I had, one non lucid, one LD

Non lucid : (few nights ago), I am riding a Harley Davidson motorbike for a while, when I arrive to a pub where some friends of mine are waiting for me, My HD motorbike is not a motorbike anymore but a Harley Davidson Bicycle.

Lucid: (few years ago) I am in a park, and while I was doing something (I don't remember what) , behind me there were some punks around a bench.
I knew that I let a nunchaku near the bench, and when the punks attacked a friend of mine, I decided to take the nunchaku, but when I arrived to the place I let the nunchaku, it had turned into handcuffs 

black-telescopic-nunchaku-with-metal-chain-and-carry-case-256px-256px.jpg
350105_lg.jpg

You understand what a MHV transformation is?
Dreams are build from thoughts, mainly unconscious thoughts, expectation is one of those kinda unconscious thoughts, psychological conflicts, wonders are another kind of unconscious thoughts.
Conscious thoughts can also create and modify some aspect of the dream reality, we can see it more easily when we are lucid, but those thoughts (conscious and unconscious) are bringing other thoughts by homology and shifting/sliding.
One idea brings another one.
A cat can easily become a tiger after few minutes, a closed umbrella can become a stick, a friend can become someone else.

What bother me is that even if you manage to incubate a really complex and detailed sci-fi like alternative dream reality, I don't see by what magical stuff these persistent dreams would avoid such a natural specificity of dreams: MHV transformations.
The activation of the Dorsolateral Pre frontal cortex which is responsible of the Lucidity doesn't change this way the brain has to transform thoughts in hallucinated reality. 
Thoughts sill are thoughts and during dream this sliding process is made very easy.

Since dreams are an endogenous reality, build from conscious and unconscious thoughts, (the source of this virtual reality is inside our brain), contrary to our exogenous reality where stimulus come from a stable objective world, I really dont see how a persistent reality could be stable during all the dream, escaping the MHV Transformation rules.

----------


## DawnEye11

This is why I cant even discuss things with people in dream views sometimes.Continue on with your unnecessary conversation and have fun.

----------


## sisyphus

> ...



I certainly relate to that constantly changing landscape of dreams. Just the other day I had a dream in which, wanting sex, I summoned a "pussy" and a cat appeared. Ha ha, what a perfect pun. It totally broke the narrative I wanted, but it was still delightfully amusing and I woke up laughing. If it entertains me, then all is well, so I welcome these bizarre twists and "fails."

Earlier I suggested the metaphor of being the author of one's dreams. Perhaps though a better metaphor is that you are but one author, collaborating with other authors from your subconscious. It's like trying to communicate with someone who speaks a different language, or who has a very different set of values. (Like a forum thread? I digress). You can't control them completely and that might be a good thing because it leads to a richer story. With experience, you might learn how better to collaborate with them; what words to avoid and what topics they prefer so as to build momentum toward a common goal. As a tool, persistence can be useful because it leverages memory and our experience from the real world, which will connect strongly with some of those authors in our subconscious. But it might run contrary to other aspects of our mind that have a more fluid interpretation of symbolism, language, shape, desire, and fear. In the end, your role as the "head writer" is to appease all these conflicting interests/tools/authors and synthesize them into a good story.

This all made me think of the Yes, And... game from improv comedy. It is an acting exercise where multiple actors contribute to a developing story with spontaneous dialog. The most important thing is that you accept the contributions of others and add to them. (Again, like a forum thread? I digress). You can't go back and edit or critique them. Thus, no one participant has total control. But the end result is a fun, playful exercise that encourages openness and willingness to work with what you have in unexpected circumstances. And finally, while the narrative may swerve far from one's expectations, it is still continuous because each line of dialog builds on the previous, no matter how wacky.

----------


## Sageous

> What bother me is that even if you manage to incubate a really complex and detailed sci-fi like alternative dream reality, I don't see by what magical stuff these persistent dreams would avoid such a natural specificity of dreams: MHV transformations.
> The activation of the Dorsolateral Pre frontal cortex which is responsible of the Lucidity doesn't change this way the brain has to transform thoughts in hallucinated reality. 
> Thoughts sill are thoughts and during dream this sliding process is made very easy.
> 
> Since dreams are an endogenous reality, build from conscious and unconscious thoughts, (the source of this virtual reality is inside our brain), contrary to our exogenous reality where stimulus come from a stable objective world, I really dont see how a persistent reality could be stable during all the dream, escaping the MHV Transformation rules.



I'm going to wax heretical* for a moment, Kaan, to maybe offer an explanation for why persistent realms work:

Persistent realms might _actually be changing_ all the time, whether "suffering" from MHV transformations or simply from the unconscious/dreaming mind filling in details or plot lines with things that the dreamer hadn't expected.  But, in the name of maintaining his persistent realm, the dreamer, upon waking, either forgets those diverting details or remembers them as true additions to what they had intended in the first place.  

The same goes for time dilation: like everything else about the dream time dilation is defined post-dream by memory, and it is very easy to remember yourself living through weeks or even years in one night if your dream was laid out like a movie might be, with the passage of time built into the dream's plot; and yes, an inventive dreamer can easily assemble, _and honestly believe_, an "actual" tick-tock of the dilation by filling in the missing spaces with memories that never happened (just as any Star Wars fan, for instance, could easily give you a 20-year history of the Republic/Empire, with an accurate tick-tock by accessing the "memory" that Lucas created when presenting his overall persistent realm).   

On top of all that, MHV transformations or unconscious additions might not be happening at all.  During the dream, the persistent realm might be a very dull, bare-bones place indeed, but upon waking a dreamer dutifully, even energetically fills in interesting details or bridges gaps in imagery or time, all while completely honestly remembering that those details and bridges were there in the dream in the first place.

In other words, it can be very easy, even exciting, to remember a persistent realm, even if the place you just dreamed about only vaguely resembled your invented realm.  Change in the dream itself can be overlooked, ignored, or properly adjusted by a dreamer upon waking without the dreamer ever realizing she had made any adjustments.

I personally believe that a substantial amount of our dreaming lives, my own included, might never have occurred at all; we are simply _remembering_ that it occurred, and adding details that best fit our expectations (or hopes).  I also believe the opposite -- that there is some truly amazing shit happening to us in dreams (or during sleep in general) that we do not remember at all, and our lives would be much more interesting if we could hang on to those experiences.

Like I said, this may be DV heresy (and I don't want to argue about it), but it could explain your misgivings about persistent realms, and how they might exist -- even if they cannot.

*tl;dr:*Dreams are a unique experience in our lives in that the _only_ way we see them is as memories; we cannot record them as they are happening, but must rely on how we remember them upon waking.  Memory is a fallible tool in the best of cases, but with dreams -- even lucids, though they are much easier to remember -- memory is an extremely weak tool at best.  When remembering dreams, it is very important to avoid adding details or making assumptions about what "really" happened, lest the dreams start picking up details that never occurred during them.  I wonder if a lot of persistent realmers are assembling much of their realms upon waking without ever knowing they were doing so.  I could be wrong, but it is a thought...


*Heretical because: so very few dreamers are willing to accept that they might not remember what happened in exactly the same way that it happened -- sometimes, especially with dreams, memory is an extremely shoddy tool; and yet we LD'ers base everything purely on what we remember, and rarely question the validity of that memory.

----------


## sisyphus

> ...



Very good point about the uncertain connection of real-time perception and after-the-fact memory recall. For a formal presentation, see: Wikipedia: Confabulation.

As always, no insinuation for or against delusion, deception, pathology, verifiability. Just a mental phenomenon that we can all probably relate to. Not "heretical" in my view but I appreciate your clever language and desire to qualify the context of your thoughts.

----------


## EbbTide000

Yeah

Not relevant but ...

Joe Griffin says that the brain turns off long-term memory before we dream and the brain also does a switch-a-roo with the characters we dream about so that we don't wake up with *false memories*. If the brain didn’t do a switch-a-roo, we might wake up, very sure, that we punched-out our boss (false memory). 

Not sure what that has to do with * Persistent Realm's* though? Just saying





> I'm going to wax heretical* for a moment, Kaan, to maybe offer an explanation for why persistent realms work:
> 
> Persistent realms might _actually be changing_ all the time, whether "suffering" from MHV transformations or simply from the unconscious/dreaming mind filling in details or plot lines with things that the dreamer hadn't expected.  But, in the name of maintaining his persistent realm, the dreamer, upon waking, either forgets those diverting details or remembers them as true additions to what they had intended in the first place.  
> 
> The same goes for time dilation: like everything else about the dream time dilation is defined post-dream by memory, and it is very easy to remember yourself living through weeks or even years in one night if your dream was laid out like a movie might be, with the passage of time built into the dream's plot; and yes, an inventive dreamer can easily assemble, _and honestly believe_, an "actual" tick-tock of the dilation by filling in the missing spaces with memories that never happened (just as any Star Wars fan, for instance, could easily give you a 20-year history of the Republic/Empire, with an accurate tick-tock by accessing the "memory" that Lucas created when presenting his overall persistent realm).   
> 
> On top of all that, MHV transformations or unconscious additions might not be happening at all.  During the dream, the persistent realm might be a very dull, bare-bones place indeed, but upon waking a dreamer dutifully, even energetically fills in interesting details or bridges gaps in imagery or time, all while completely honestly remembering that those details and bridges were there in the dream in the first place.
> 
> In other words, it can be very easy, even exciting, to remember a persistent realm, even if the place you just dreamed about only vaguely resembled your invented realm.  Change in the dream itself can be overlooked, ignored, or properly adjusted by a dreamer upon waking without the dreamer ever realizing she had made any adjustments.
> ...










> (…)
> 
> Why do we dream in Metaphor?
> 
> (…)
> 
> If you see someone in a dream they are not themselves. They are standing for someone else.
> 
> (2:22)
> ...







The REAL reason why we evolved to dream

Human Givens*19,253 views

Uploaded on Nov 29, 2008

Joe Griffin explaining the psychology and biology of the expectation fulfilment theory of dreaming.*

Why do we dream in metaphor? What does dreaming do for us? What would happen if we didn't dream in metaphor? What happens in our brains when we dream?

Find more about this theory here:

Why Do We Dream? Theories Of Interpretation, REM Sleep & Fulfilment

♥

https://youtu.be/SMYOquesvg8

♥(9:39) 19,253 views

----------


## sisyphus

> ...



That's an interesting take. Perhaps dreams are purposefully not realistic so that we do not confuse them with reality. This may be an evolutionary adaptation. Perhaps dreams serve some practical function like consolidating memory or resolving conflicting emotions. But there is a risk that these functions may disturb our waking well-being as a side-effect, so evolution has guided these experiences to be obviously bizarre so that they don't have unhelpful consequences in our waking memory.

----------


## cooleymd

> Edit: cooleymd, check out stuff on SRIs. Also, wat?



Mzzkc:
Serotonin Re-uptake Inhibitors?  I never use them, I use 5-HTP the intermediate between Tryptophan and Serotonin.

as for the wat?  I was trying to illustrate absurdity by being absurd, the rats didn't do anything but die and have their genes shot gun cloned in to plasmids.  

as for books I'd be happy to think that many a gifted author came up with ideas from dreams, especially lucid ones, but I think few could write a book with most of their logic centers in their brains turned off.

Sageous:
certainly people will edit some details of dreams, but I think when Lucid and Vivid recall is pretty good, but when someone can quote you sentence after sentence from a DC they are definitely editorializing. 

sisyphus:
"practical function like consolidating memory" certainly, I have also heard and believe in the Threat Simulator view of dreams other main functions, and this is what allows us to take control with expectation, things in the threat simulator tend to behave as we expect them.

EbbTide:
if only this were a dream journal and the competition were still on you'd be 2/3rds of the way to 1pt

----------


## Sensei

Memory in dreams. I think that it is very similar to memory in waking.

In waking, memories are definitely wavy, and people will definitely miss details... but we miss details... not main points. 

In waking, people have a lean towards certain memory patterns. This is why I think that there is no limit to our recall. I lean towards visual and kinetic. So things like conversations kind of disappear a few minutes after waking. I generally write down convos I want to remember directly after waking. Cooley said:




> certainly people will edit some details of dreams, but I think when Lucid and Vivid recall is pretty good, but when someone can quote you sentence after sentence from a DC they are definitely editorializing.



and I think that a lot of times people might "editorialize", but I think that most people will post a very similar convo to waking. Probably 80% of what they heard, things that they miss is probably sentence structure that is not relevant to the convo.

As for me, I think that it is very similar in all senses, but some people remember some things more. As I said I am visual and kinetic, so places and things I see are remembered much easier and in great detail. 

This being said, I think that your level of awareness is going to effect your persistent realm. If you don't have enough awareness to make one that makes sense, then it would probably fall apart. If you are super aware during lucids (which a lot of us are), then you will notice when things mess up and the persistence will be broken. 


*Zödra
*Also, I have to say, I do believe in persistent realms even though my persistent realm is more of a pseudo persistent realm. It was handed down to me by my dreaming Father, a dream character that is persistent. Zödra is a place that is quickly changing because some people know that it is a dream and others don't. I don't always know when I am there unless one of the 5 persistent characters are there. Things changing can easily be explained by another dreamer (not anotherdreamer) being there or if I am in one of the 14 different realities (of which I have only been hyper aware in enough to explore 2 of these). 
The persistence is as follows:
Me (I don't count, but I kind of do)
Old Man
Dad
Sister
Vixen
working on adding a fifth, she has only appeared once, but I am hoping she will become a staple.

Everyone calls it Zödra and everyone considers my dad a hero. He continually helps the people that don't know that it is a dream and I have helped him out quite a few times. I will just realize I am dreaming and he will appear and ask me to help him save Zödra. One time It was actually Jason, him, and my sister there, It was a big deal for all of us to be there because someone was screwing with the timeline and trying to commit genocide. We ended up failing and only switching genocide to mass murder. The same amount of people were killed, but of varying races instead of one. 

The old man taught me how to do some very basic controls and to stabilize. 
My dad taught me how to do scan
Vixen taught me imagination speed
Jason has helped me one on with fighting
Sister has shown me a lot more how to use items as a catalyst for dream control to save mental energy

There are witches plaguing Zödra. They have quite a few abilities and were able to easily handle me when I first started. I had to teleport away in order to live quite a few times. Now I can fight witches like you wouldn't believe even though they are immune to regular attacks. 

I have a watch and a start menu, as well as a few other items to help me out. I even just got an amulet from inside a dead witch. I don't know what it does yet, and it probably doesn't have a use until the dream that I figure it out. That dream and the memory of it from other dreams will solidify the rules of the amulet. 

Zödra is really considered a "dreamland" and doesn't have to follow rules like others since it was handed down. There are some rules though, like not letting people know that they are dreaming. There is a place in Zödra for all the places in the world. Different places have different rules as well. At first I thought that this was all a nuisance because I really wanted a dreamland I could control. I then realized that if I can't control Zödra I won't be able to control a persistent realm. 

There are even places in the world that people fly. They don't know that they are dreaming (I know that I am the only one dreaming), but they all know how to fly. 

This Kaan might make more sense (not that you are dumb, but that you have a different way of thinking than I do in this matter) to you in the ways of how my realm works. It might be easier for you to accept  :smiley:  It is like a dream that some of the characters are always the same in. If something does change, it can easily be explained. The characters haven't changed much though, they act very similar to humans except a lot more mysterious. 

There are a few things that are kind of persistent in Zödra, but it could just be me accidentally bringing in a DC, place, or thing multiple times and could be subject to change. It might just be dream control and not part of Zödra, and this seems to be a normal thing. 

Hope this is more contributory than some of my previous posts.  :tongue2:  I still plan on creating a few persistent realms (I am working on getting all the powers I need for it in Zödra for now) and have one that I am going to start at the end of the year. My plans were actually to spend this whole year preparing for it, and that is why I have a lot of my items.

----------


## cooleymd

> ...I think that a lot of times people might "editorialize", but I think that most people will post a very similar convo to waking. Probably 80% of what they heard, things that they miss is probably sentence structure that is not relevant to the convo.



mostly in my dreams people are talking gibberish, but I don't notice its like techno babble.  Once in a non-lucid dream the words you have been virused appeared all over my work computer, so I apparently called the you've been virused hotline.  It was pretty funny, I recognized the voice of someone from the Server Management Group, saying things like "no we don't have the capabilities of the FBI, we don't spend all day browsing the latest anti-hack websites, we don't have the equipment of CSI..." it was like a recorded message that basically meant we'll replace your hard drive when we get around to it.  I remember it mostly because it was so funny.  The best dialogue from a lucid I also remember because of humor.  Two dream cops appear and one of them says "I'm afraid your going to have to come with us" I thought I'm the dreamer who do they think their kidding so I ripped his head off with my bare hands, I'll never forget the second dream cops response standing right there next to the body of his headless partner "I'm very sorry Sir, but I'm afraid your still going to have to come with me".  After shooting me a couple of times and his retreating in a hail of gunfire, I didn't go with him.  So when DC's are a laugh riot then their convo's are remembered (in my experience)

----------


## Sensei

> mostly in my dreams people are talking gibberish, but I don't notice its like techno babble.  Once in a non-lucid dream the words you have been virused appeared all over my work computer, so I apparently called the you've been virused hotline.  It was pretty funny, I recognized the voice of someone from the Server Management Group, saying things like "no we don't have the capabilities of the FBI, we don't spend all day browsing the latest anti-hack websites, we don't have the equipment of CSI..." it was like a recorded message that basically meant we'll replace your hard drive when we get around to it.  I remember it mostly because it was so funny.  The best dialogue from a lucid I also remember because of humor.  Two dream cops appear and one of them says "I'm afraid your going to have to come with us" I thought I'm the dreamer who do they think their kidding so I ripped his head off with my bare hands, I'll never forget the second dream cops response standing right there next to the body of his headless partner "I'm very sorry Sir, but I'm afraid your still going to have to come with me".  After shooting me a couple of times and his retreating in a hail of gunfire, I didn't go with him.  So when DC's are a laugh riot then their convo's are remembered (in my experience)



This is my favorite thing you have ever written my good sir. I wish I could see or live this dream.

----------


## Samael

I think it's important for all of us to remember that our experiences of dreaming tend to vary wildly from each other. Questioning assumptions is important, because it can lead us to a better understanding of how our dreams work (great news for our lovely hobby), but it's easy to go to the extreme that you see with new forum members sometimes. I've seen reasoning that goes:

_I have not experienced a lucid dream despite trying for some time, 
and
People here claim to experience lucid dreams, 
therefore
Everyone here is a liar._

We're all limited by our own experiences. That's why getting feedback from all sides can be useful. 

Like Mzzkc said, the two of us have been chatting about the nature of what persistent realms would entail, and creating a persistent realm would be all about creating a rigid set of assumptions and consequences. Which brings me to kaan's point:





> What bother me is that even if you manage to incubate a really complex and detailed sci-fi like alternative dream reality, I don't see by what magical stuff these persistent dreams would avoid such a natural specificity of dreams: MHV transformations.



It sounds like your dreams are like mine: by nature, very, _very_ fluid. (As are most people's, I think.) I dream of my hometown, the map has transformed into another world. Last night, I dreamt about a place I lived once, and the perspective of the hardwood floors was literally warping in front of me. My dream locations don't remain consistent; they change as I'm dreaming.

However, not everybody dreams in the same way, so even though I can't keep a map straight in my dreams to save my life, it wouldn't surprise me if other people kept places relatively consistent, especially in lucid and vivid dreams. It's like... I skip past a lot of extraneous detail when I'm reading fiction because I'm mostly paying attention to the interactions between characters... but other people are detail-oriented enough to figure out exactly how the space battles are supposed to work. I wouldn't expect that detail-oriented person's dreams to resemble mine at all.

Let me posit a hypothetical, and you all can tell me if it seems like a situation you might find possible: Mzzkc has stated that persistent realms are essentially a series of complex mnemonic devices. I'd say that wouldn't be dissimilar to a memory palace. Not a technique that's ever appealed much to me, but say that a detail-oriented, somewhat obsessive person set up an incredibly detailed, vivid memory palace and filled it up with mnemonic objects. I'm making three assumptions about our lucid dreamer:
- That they can induce a dream with a specific location at will
- That they are experienced enough to be able to continue to focus throughout the duration of a dream
- That they have vivid enough recall to remember details

This set of assumptions requires a very specific person to exist, but none of this seems outside the realm of possibility to me; it only seems outside of the realm of possibility _for_ me. I don't care enough about the details to make this happen, but for someone whose brain does work this way, why wouldn't it be possible for them to take the next step, as it were, and create something bigger?





> certainly people will edit some details of dreams, but I think when Lucid and Vivid recall is pretty good, but when someone can quote you sentence after sentence from a DC they are definitely editorializing.



Why not ask, if you see it in their dream journal? If you were non-confrontational about it: "Hey, I noticed that you write a lot of dialogue in your dreams. Do you write up the gist of a conversation, or do you remember it word for word?" I'd answer that.

In my DJ, I'm usually editorializing a fair bit just for length. My dreams are a bit wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey in that I'll often dream a scene, and then my brain decides that the scene could be more interesting if we did it _this_ way, so I'll dream the scene again, and then we might go on a random tangent, and then we'll go back to the scene and do it _again_, and if I wrote all this down, I wouldn't ever do anything else. The purpose of my dream journal is to help me remember my dreams, and let me go back and find themes and interesting stories; dialogue quite often lets me sum up a scene in just a few sentences. In the same way, I sometimes don't pursue tangents in my dream journal itself, because I don't find them interesting and it would take _forever_.

At the same time, this:





> So, it is just my opinion, but I don't buy such a complicated, written like a sci-fi movie, and stable persistent dream.



...aside from speaking about persistent dreams, doesn't necessarily speak to my experience. Quite often my dreams do end up written like a sci-fi movie... it's just that by that point, we're on the fourth or fifth "loop," and I've forgotten all the previous ones.  ::lol:: 





> I think the skeptic's case is solid and needs not further defense until more evidence is provided. The argument that "you can find it on the Internet" doesn't hold water. Sources need to be reliable. Forum posts and dream journal entries are not reliable, in the rigorous sense of the word. They are anecdotal, subjective, self-reported. From the aggregate of many anecdotes or from particularly unusual anecdotes, we can form some hypotheses, but this is only the beginning of the scientific method, not the end. Popularity lends "social proof," which can be very powerful, but is still not scientific. Allusions were made to topics in neuroscience. Okay, interesting. How do they relate to the topic? Can we derive a logical conclusion from them? If not, we are still also willing to entertain some reasoning or speculation between the science, anecdotes, and personal experience. If so, please state those thoughts plainly.



Dream journals themselves, as posted on the internet, don't hold up the same way that a peer-reviewed academic study would. That doesn't mean that they don't have a place in a conversation like this. For example, by posting my experiences with lucid dreaming, I'm trying to bring forth one person's perspective on how dreams might work, because until we create the _language_ about how this stuff works (forming the hypothesis), we can't test it through more empirical means.

In short, we're discussing semiotics (meaning, creation of language, creation of meaning).

I also disagree that only quantitative analysis would be useful if we brought more questions about lucid dreaming into academic study. (Note: I am all for more academic study of dreams.) Right now, we don't really have any useful way to empirically measure the content of dreams, but that wouldn't necessarily make it impossible for studies to provide useful insight. Even with a self-reporting element, a large qualitative study of the content of dreams across a diverse group would give us insights as to how dreaming worked. Especially if none of them were on a forum trying to one-up each other.  :wink2: 

This is a semiotic question because until we have the ability to form a hypothesis through language, we are unable to test the result. Qualitative studies provide valuable insight that allows us to move further in our empirical analysis, and vice versa.

_Edit: Damn it, I really need to be writing an essay on queer theory for my class that ends this week. Instead, here's an essay on dreams!_

----------


## sisyphus

Great points by all. I wanted to add, on the topic of dream journals, that I appreciate those dreamers who make an effort to write about their methodology of dreaming and journaling. So, in addition and in support of the individual dream entries, they author a post or more about their purpose, their writing style and what they choose to edit, recurring/persistent elements, a unifying narrative or mythology, interpretations, things like that. I recently re-started adding posts to my DV dream journal after some years' hiatus and there's been a shift in my purpose and style. So I've been thinking about that and how it might be a good exercise to both the writer and the reader.

----------


## EbbTide000

I know 

 :Off topic:   :Off topic:   :Off topic:  

 
*sisyphus* You inspire me 





> Great points by all. 
> 
> I wanted to add, on the topic of dream journals, that I appreciate those dreamers who make an effort to write about their methodology of dreaming and journaling. 
> 
> So,
> 
>  in addition and in support of the individual dream entries, they author a post or more about 
> 
> their purpose, 
> ...



I am 3 people and you are gentle on the infant in me, Thanx. 

My infant infuriates most normal members here and at other places. Dr Robert Van De Castle was gentle like you. And his gentleness gave confidence that encouraged that amazing, amazing infant. That infant isnt me. That infant started off as pure emotion and iliterate. It has come along way but is still emotional and impatient and it's posts appears off-topic, strange and mainly likes to communicate through songs and pictures. 

But somthing tells me you know that.

You made me cry with relief when 
 You * summarised*   what the infant was trying to say in post number #65 of this thread.  

Here is how you replied:





> That's an interesting take. Perhaps dreams are purposefully not realistic so that we do not confuse them with reality. This may be an evolutionary adaptation. Perhaps dreams serve some practical function like consolidating memory or resolving conflicting emotions. But there is a risk that these functions may disturb our waking well-being as a side-effect, so evolution has guided these experiences to be obviously bizarre so that they don't have unhelpful consequences in our waking memory.



The late, Dr Robert Van De Castle did that a lot with me. 

My thread called "What are your thoughts on this" is the last paper he wrote for a prestigious magazine. That paper is the link in my signature. 

 ::loveyou::

----------

