# Lucid Dreaming > Dream Control >  >  Longest Lucid Dream Possible?

## TheSatyricon

I've been reading a bunch of articles on LDs on the internet and I find that some articles say that Robert Monroe had a LD that lasted 100 years! I think he's just making that up for fame etc. etc. I find that most of the people on the forum have dreams that last from 10 to 30 minutes (and I'm assuming that's dream perception time and not real life time during the rest). Steve Pavlina of the Personal Development Blog/forums claimed to have an LD that lasted 2 weeks! Judging from experience do you think this is possible? Personally mine usually last a few seconds, and only on one occasion from about 15 minutes... :Eek:

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## KingYoshi

I've had LDs that lasted 1 hour+, real time. They felt like they lasted much longer dream time. I've definately never felt like my dreams lasted weeks or months, lol. Many have felt like they lasted several hours with the longest few feeling like they lasted in the area of 6 or 7 hours...maybe. Its pretty hard to accurately estimate.

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## Hijo de la Luna

I have had one dream that it took 3 years & I had another where the dream was time elapsed through days. I am not saying I was asleep like sleeping beauty in that the dream lasted that long in consensus reality but when I woke up I was sad first of all. The memory of dream that lasted three years was like experiencing a movie in fast forward like in the movie by Adam Sandler called Click but w/o no pauses. It was very emotional. I experienced all the emotional pain resulting from my choices. The latter was like stop motion animation that had to have spanned only a year or so. I was more objective and mental. Not very emotional although the content of the dream was very emotional. It was like watching a dry TV sitcom.

Time is relative. If it wasn't it would be the same time everywhere but its not. Be easy about this. Time is a man made tool to help us organize events mentally & give them meaning.

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## AURON

Maybe it _felt_ like it was that amount of time.  Personally I don't think they can last that long.

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## Hijo de la Luna

Nice Avatar! Bowser is awesome! =0) Right, in consensus reality I am not saying in they took that long. However, at least in the first dream I experienced felt EXXXTREMELY long. I was worn out when I woke up. In consensus reality I have no idea how long those dreams lasted.

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## AURON

> Nice Avatar! Bowser is awesome! =0) Right, in consensus reality I am not saying in they took that long. However, at least in the first dream I experienced felt EXXXTREMELY long. I was worn out when I woke up. In consensus reality I have no idea how long those dreams lasted.



A friend of mine suggested it :p  But yeah...that statement was basically for the OP.  I've had Lucids that seemed to last for long amounts of time...sometimes I'll try to wake up early _just_ so I remember them. Normally they're DILDs, so I have no clue on how long they lasted.  If it's a WILD, then I have a better estimate.  Most of mine go on for about 30 minutes max.

 I also had a non lucid where I saw people aging and dying before my very eyes.  Everything was moving around me so fast...but I wasn't.

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## KingYoshi

Yeah, for me its very difficult to estimate how long I've been in a dream. Unless its a WILD, but most of the time I don't pay too much attention to the time anyway  :tongue2: .

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## danny04274

Well, since dreaming takes place during REM sleep, and the longest time we REM sleep is 60 - 90 min. I think thats how long our longest dream are. Dream can certainly feel a lot longer, though.

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## nina

> Well, since dreaming takes place during REM sleep, and the longest time we REM sleep is 60 - 90 min. I think thats how long our longest dream are. Dream can certainly feel a lot longer, though.



You do not need to be in REM to dream.

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## infisek

Interesting sometimes I have dreams which are "short" or atlest it feels like 5min dream but in rl it take 40min  and as mentioned above I have dreams which are "long" as well its very hard to say how much time you actually spend in dream,but I think that my top is ~20min.   100years dream? impossible

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## suntok123

I've read it somewhere too, that Robert Monroe reported that he experienced 100 years OOBE lucid dream. Who knows if it is true or not? Maybe it felt like...100 years, but only occurred hours in real life.

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## monkeyking

Sounds like some people are confused about the sense that 'longest' is meant in the original post question.  It is near impossible to ascertain how long during your sleep you were actually dreaming.  You may dream for 6 seconds in a span of 2 hours, but your dream could feel like it lasted the whole sleep period.  Since time doesn't flow as the same speed as it does during waking life, it's hard to correlate exact time by how long a dream "felt".  Similarly, a dream that contains multiple days of activity can pass in what feels like hours or even minutes. 

 The question then is, How long can a dream last in waking time? ( If one could definitively identify the moment a sleeping individual began and ended a dream then they could use a stopwatch to record the duration, and that would be the waking time duration of the dream, regardless of how many eons seemed to pass in the dream world)

Or you are asking how long can one remain lucid in dream world time.  I believe most would agree that the answer to that question is simply a matter of perception.

I'm sure to someone who is only capable of attaining lucidity in very short, sporadic bursts would hear that someone was lucid for a century and cry foul, just as someone running a mile in nine minutes would have to see proof of someone running it in four.  Unfortunately you just have to take a dreamer at his or her word.

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## monkeyking

Also,(and this is just my opinion) there are a great many things about this ability that even those proficient at Ld'ing may cough *bushit* into their hands upon hearing, but to them I say:

 There really is nothing to gain from lying about how good you are at dreaming, while disbelief will only keep your ability from blossoming to its' fullest potential.   Therefore believe every impossible thing you read, because wouldn't it be great if it were true that (at least in dreams) NOTHING is impossible?

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## suntok123

^ Nice post right there moneyking!

I agree about the last part, just believe on every impossible things you see or read about dreams, especially if they are good and awesome things. Just like Robert Monroe's unbelievable experience. I think it would be awesome to feel being in a dream for 100 years. Almost...NOTHING is impossible in dreams.

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## ClearView

I've only had one lucid dream, which was a DILD. I had control until I woke up, but I did lose the remnants of the memory of the dream towards the end, but while I was aware of everything I would estimate it was around 10-15 minutes. I used to that you need REM sleep to be lucid/dream, but I guess I am incorrect. I have seen people have 1+ hour LD's, so I don't doubt that you can't have long ones. Sometimes I have dreams that feel like they took the entire night. However, I don't mind because they are usually pretty action packed.

-CV

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## Sam1r

Hey,
To be honest,it's hard to calculate time during Lucid Dreaming...
For some it might feel like hours,while it's only a few minutes...
But in my opinion, I think I dream can maximum last one hour...
Hope it helped,
Sam

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## MasterMind

> You do not need to be in REM to dream.



This information is the best that I've ever heard :O 
Really motivated me  :smiley:  Thanks!

But when do you dream then?
Is dreams just vivd thoughts ?  :wink2:

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## nina

LaBerge did experiments and found that time within a lucid dream was comparable to real time. So I don't think it's a correct assumption to say that a dream just "feels" longer for every case. If I say I had a lucid dream for 2 hours...it is because I looked at the clock during a brief awakening and then immediately entered a lucid dream upon going back to sleep. When I wake from the lucid dream I check the clock and often times a few hours have passed. Honestly I'm getting a bit sick of hearing people argue that a lucid dream can only last a specific amount of minutes max due to REM period and that anyone who claims otherwise is lying (not in this thread but in similar threads). You do not always need to be in REM to dream, so that argument doesn't really hold up. Plus Laberge has documented cases of LDs lasting longer than max REM period in the lab.

Now, being asleep for 4 hours and saying you had a lucid dream for 4 hours is entirely possible...you see...this does not violate the laws of space/time. Being asleep for a few hours and saying you were lucid for a hundred years...this is obviously not plausible and must be the result of altered perception of dream time. I once wanted to experience something like this and while I was lucid I decided that I would stay there for as long as I could and extend the dream time. It felt like I was there for a period of a few weeks, until I was approached by a DC and instructed to wake up for my own good. I would never go around claiming to have had a lucid dream that actually lasted weeks though. I was only asleep for a few hours...so unless lucid dreamers travel back in time upon waking up...no one is having hundred year long dreams.

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## Puffin

I really doubt you can have a lucid dream that lasts 100 years, dreamtime-wise. You end up losing awareness at some point.
The longest I've had is only a few minutes long.

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## monkeyking

Laberge did much research on lucidity.  Unfortunately I cannot find the study on dream/real time synchronicity.  Dream CAN be synchronus or semi synchronus in time span with waking life.  This does not make it a universal fact.  I don't know about one hundred years, but I do know I slept for one full minute exactly some years ago and had a lucid dream that felt like I was travelling the universe for a very, very long time.  I may not have seen multiple sunrises, but the concept in the LD was that I was travelling for eons.  In a dream conceptualizition is crucial.  

Remember, what is possible in dreams is subject to the observer.  So statements like "let's get this straight...this IS this and that IS that!"  Or "I'm sick of people saying things I don't agree with!"  are attempts to objectify something that is wholly based on the observer.

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## nina

You seem to have missed my point, and I lack the motivation to attempt to clarify. 

LaBerge's experiment is easy to find with a short google search.

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## BigFan

> Laberge did much research on lucidity.  Unfortunately I cannot find the study on dream/real time synchronicity.  Dream CAN be synchronus or semi synchronus in time span with waking life.  This does not make it a universal fact.  I don't know about one hundred years, but I do know I slept for one full minute exactly some years ago and had a lucid dream that felt like I was travelling the universe for a very, very long time.  I may not have seen multiple sunrises, but the concept in the LD was that I was travelling for eons.  In a dream conceptualizition is crucial.  
> 
> Remember, what is possible in dreams is subject to the observer.  So statements like "let's get this straight...this IS this and that IS that!"  Or "I'm sick of people saying things I don't agree with!"  are attempts to objectify something that is wholly based on the observer.



It's in his book ETWOLD. He gets his volunteers to signal from the dream world, count 10 seconds and signal again. He found that they match up pretty closely and reasoned that dream time= real time or pretty close to it. One thing that most people miss about this is perception of time. LaBerge gave a good example of this. If you watch a theatre play where they put off the light at midnight and turn them off at 7. In actual time, it was only 5-10 seconds or so but it's taken as 7hr have passed. It's called time dilation if I'm not mistaken. What this means is that you could have a dream that seems to last centuries while it only lasted 30min or so which I think was the case with Robert Monroe's dream. As Aquanina mentioned, you can also dream in Non-REM  :smiley:

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## monkeyking

Maybe I did take you out of context.  Didn't mean to upset you, just chiming in.  It seems you may have taken something I said a bit personally.  While directed at something you may have said, it wasn't meant as an attack on you.  Besides, I think we mostly agree on this subject so...

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## nina

> It's in his book ETWOLD. He gets his volunteers to signal from the dream world, count 10 seconds and signal again. He found that they match up pretty closely and reasoned that dream time= real time or pretty close to it. One thing that most people miss about this is perception of time. LaBerge gave a good example of this. If you watch a theatre play where they put off the light at midnight and turn them off at 7. In actual time, it was only 5-10 seconds or so but it's taken as 7hr have passed. It's called time dilation if I'm not mistaken. What this means is that you could have a dream that seems to last centuries while it only lasted 30min or so which I think was the case with Robert Monroe's dream. As Aquanina mentioned, you can also dream in Non-REM



Yep that's the experiment I was referencing. I'm glad you mentioned time dilation...because that is something I (and anyone who has done certain psychedelic substances) am very familiar with. But that's a whooole other can of worms so I won't get into that here.  





> Maybe I did take you out of context.  Didn't mean to upset you, just chiming in.  It seems you may have taken something I said a bit personally.  While directed at something you may have said, it wasn't meant as an attack on you.  Besides, I think we mostly agree on this subject so...



No worries  :tongue2:  Didn't mean it to seem like I took anything you said personally. Yah we are pretty much in agreement anyways.  :wink2:

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## hgld1234

Dream time is subjective. If someone wants to, they can speed up dream time (or slow real time) to make it seem like months or years. Most of my dreams last a few hours in dream-time. Sometimes days. One of my lucids felt like it had been about a week  :smiley: .

Real time can also be slightly subjective, too. However, it is very annoying that a video game that is played for an hour feels like a few minutes, and a English lesson for an hour feels like a few days. As Jls puts it (in Everybody In Love), ‘Every minute lasts an hour/Every hour lasts a day/Every day lasts forever…’.

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## SKYEzinger

reality is subjective as is time so theoretically everything is possible

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## Loonybin Resident

Word

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## Halfbaker

At any rate dreams often exhibit truncated time. Take for example one dream in which I was waiting for an elevator in a really, really tall tower,I expected it to take a minute or two, but it arrived instantly, I just felt it had been minutes. Being in a half lucid state I kinda said to myself, "hey, that was kinda short". It's a bit like a television show where every 30 min show covers a few days, you skip the boring parts.

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## Pinkmoon

I've not had many lucid dreams yet,  but in my second lucid dream I was so happy to get to do what I wanted (look at the stars) I lost all sense of weight, sight in a short description, and time.  I have no idea how long I was there.  But with my one lone lucid and many none lucid dreams I've had were I have no idea how long I was there.  Yes I believe its possible to have a lucid dream last that long.  Especially if time is something you practice manipulating in dreams.

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## fautzo

Whenever I have a ld, I always get on the ball immediately and look for all dream signs I can, I have found many constant ones that I use quite often, So generally my lucids feel like they last like an hour, even though I'm not sure how long they reallyy lastes, because the perception of time in a dream is off.

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## DreamWizard

Mine last an hour when i have them. The real problem is entering a lucid dream. Most of my WILDs and WBTB leave me in void of nothingness that i have to try to change. But when i enter one it lasts long enough for me to do a bunch of things. Like have mom teach me how to fly through walls and tell dad he is a dream character and see the expression on his face, then flying around and exploreing.

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## dakotahnok

*You will never get one answer on this subject. 

I think that a dream can only last about 60 min. But with false memories and a bad perception of time it can feel like maybe an hour and a Half. Anything more I think is un real.*

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## KingYoshi

> You will never get one answer on this subject. 
> 
> I think that a dream can only last about 60 min. But with false memories and a bad perception of time it can feel like maybe an hour and a Half. Anything more I think is un real.



Hmm, interesting. You have never felt like the dream lasted more than an hour and a half?

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## WhatIsX

> Maybe it _felt_ like it was that amount of time.  Personally I don't think they can last that long.



 of course it didn't last that long... no one's claiming that. People are claiming their dreams felt like they went on for years and it's just not very plausible.

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## dakotahnok

*





 Originally Posted by KingYoshi


Hmm, interesting. You have never felt like the dream lasted more than an hour and a half?



I have had a dream that lasted about two days. But with the dream skipping it only felt about 30-45 minutes. 

Please don't think that I'm calling anyone a liar. I'm just saying that I have never experienced it so it is hard for me to believe.*

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## Marm

I don't have a concept of time in my dreams. I just do random stuff and have fun.

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## WarBenifit156

Once my dream characters set a timer that said I was going to wake up in 17:00 minutes, kinda creeped me out.

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## KingYoshi

> I have had a dream that lasted about two days. But with the dream skipping it only felt about 30-45 minutes. 
> 
> Please don't think that I'm calling anyone a liar. I'm just saying that I have never experienced it so it is hard for me to believe.



Oh, not at all  :tongue2: . I just thought it was interesting that you haven't felt like the dream lasted longer. A lot of my dreams feel like they last a lot longer than they actually do. Of course, our perceptions of time during dreams could be very different. I think from dreamer to dreamer, the perception of dream time can vary greatly.

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## duke396

I was wondering about this.  So far my LDs seem to last around 30 minutes or so in dream time.  I'm hoping to increase that somehow because I think I'm causing them to end early by letting my mind become idle.

I'm sure it's all about perception.  Why would a dream's length have to be limited in any way by how long you're asleep?  The brain can process so many things at one time it's not unreasonable to me to think you could get some pretty crazy time dilation effects under the right circumstances.

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## Soulnote

My lucids feel like 10 minutes at most, but I don't really know the exact answer.

How can I make my lucids last longer anyway? I have perfect clarity and stability in them...

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## KingYoshi

First off, once you get into the lucid dream, don't rush things. Take your time and expect the dream to last forever. Any time it becomes a bit unstable, stop everything you are doing and allow the dream to settle once again (you can perform some stabilization techniques, but don't over do it). The main key is to never think about the dream ending or the length of the dream in general. I'll find that I have been in a dream for a long time and I'll think, "This dream has lasted a long time, wonder when I'll wake up?" or "Why haven't I woke up?" or "I hope I don't wake up?" and I wake up soon after. You just have to stay involved with the dream and stay as disconnected from waking life as possible. The easiest way to do this is to treat the dream world like it is an alternate reality/universe/etc. You can also try performing a mantra before sleep, "My lucid dream will last a long time, my lucid dream will last a long time..." or something similar.

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## Soulnote

> First off, once you get into the lucid dream, don't rush things. Take your time and expect the dream to last forever. Any time it becomes a bit unstable, stop everything you are doing and allow the dream to settle once again (you can perform some stabilization techniques, but don't over do it). The main key is to never think about the dream ending or the length of the dream in general. I'll find that I have been in a dream for a long time and I'll think, "This dream has lasted a long time, wonder when I'll wake up?" or "Why haven't I woke up?" or "I hope I don't wake up?" and I wake up soon after. You just have to stay involved with the dream and stay as disconnected from waking life as possible. The easiest way to do this is to treat the dream world like it is an alternate reality/universe/etc. You can also try performing a mantra before sleep, "My lucid dream will last a long time, my lucid dream will last a long time..." or something similar.



Thanks but I already do all that, except the mantra

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## KingYoshi

> Thanks but I already do all that, except the mantra



Hmm, so when your dreams end, what usually happens? Are you able to "save the dream" very often once it starts to fade? If not, you may need to practice this a bit. You can always perform a DEILD as well, once the dream starts to fade. This way you can enter right back into a lucid dream upon waking.

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## Soulnote

> Hmm, so when your dreams end, what usually happens? Are you able to "save the dream" very often once it starts to fade? If not, you may need to practice this a bit. You can always perform a DEILD as well, once the dream starts to fade. This way you can enter right back into a lucid dream upon waking.



I don't really remember HOW they end, I can remember WHEN they end. Next time I have a lucid dream i'll be on constant lookout for anything weird, that a good idea?

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## KingYoshi

Yeah, in your next several lucid dreams make a point to remember exactly what happens toward the end of your dreams. Maybe you will find a recurring element that will help identify the reason your lucid dreams aren't lasting longer.

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## I U

I'm practicing hyperbolic meditation to night; being fully lucid and extending dreamtime while shortening consensus interaction. I'll report back on the results. In my longest dream I had lost track of time, it would fade after awhile and I would preform dild, and it started over everytime from the begining like source code. it lasted from wilding at around 10 pm to 9 the next morning. I've had one that seemed like 2 weeks long, there was definitly time shifting involved.

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## Zebulon

Well, the dream-time can last as long as it needs, ranging from minutes to years, though in real-time only lasted a few minutes.

I don't doubt that it felt like 100 years in the dream, but if you think the time in the dream lasted a hundred years, it probably was 100 years, but in real time was only a few minutes.

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## Kitsufire

> I've had LDs that lasted 1 hour+, real time. They felt like they lasted much longer dream time. I've definately never felt like my dreams lasted weeks or months, lol. Many have felt like they lasted several hours with the longest few feeling like they lasted in the area of 6 or 7 hours...maybe. Its pretty hard to accurately estimate.



Wow well I came here to look for tips on how to lengthen my dreams and since you obviously are good at that and do guides could i get advice?... ^^

I know about the rub your hands touch things tricks and the spinning but the spinning has yet to work for me, it either causes false awakenings or wakes me up :/

I know I have one weakness that may be causing quick awakenings, when i know im lucid I rush,  I rush to do things because I know from experience that my dreams are short, so i guess its like a vicious circle because I believe my rushing attitude may now be the cause of the dream brevity in the first place....
Basically what do you do to lengthen your dreams? Does spinning work for you? or are the dreams just naturally long  (lucky guy :3)

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## lucidadic

> LaBerge did experiments and found that time within a lucid dream was comparable to real time. So I don't think it's a correct assumption to say that a dream just "feels" longer for every case. If I say I had a lucid dream for 2 hours...it is because I looked at the clock during a brief awakening and then immediately entered a lucid dream upon going back to sleep. When I wake from the lucid dream I check the clock and often times a few hours have passed. Honestly I'm getting a bit sick of hearing people argue that a lucid dream can only last a specific amount of minutes max due to REM period and that anyone who claims otherwise is lying (not in this thread but in similar threads). You do not always need to be in REM to dream, so that argument doesn't really hold up. Plus Laberge has documented cases of LDs lasting longer than max REM period in the lab.
> 
> Now, being asleep for 4 hours and saying you had a lucid dream for 4 hours is entirely possible...you see...this does not violate the laws of space/time. Being asleep for a few hours and saying you were lucid for a hundred years...this is obviously not plausible and must be the result of altered perception of dream time. I once wanted to experience something like this and while I was lucid I decided that I would stay there for as long as I could and extend the dream time. It felt like I was there for a period of a few weeks, until I was approached by a DC and instructed to wake up for my own good. I would never go around claiming to have had a lucid dream that actually lasted weeks though. I was only asleep for a few hours...so unless lucid dreamers travel back in time upon waking up...no one is having hundred year long dreams.



While hundred year dreams is most likely false, it could be possible if the dreamer had an altered perception of time, or trained to be able to stay in a dream longer right? The human mind is much more powerful than people usually realize. Saying something about the human mind is impossible is quite uneducated as there is so much we don't even know about the human mind. Ever hear of fight or flight responses? You might think super strength is impossible, but clearly it's not in some cases. A regular dream that long, is relatively easy with parts missing or sped up, but a 100 year lucid dream is highly, highly improbable. Like puffin said, how do you maintain awareness. And another thing question I have, is if you are LDing for 100 years, wouldn't you need to sleep?

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## KingYoshi

> Wow well I came here to look for tips on how to lengthen my dreams and since you obviously are good at that and do guides could i get advice?... ^^
> 
> I know about the rub your hands touch things tricks and the spinning but the spinning has yet to work for me, it either causes false awakenings or wakes me up :/
> 
> I know I have one weakness that may be causing quick awakenings, when i know im lucid I rush,  I rush to do things because I know from experience that my dreams are short, so i guess its like a vicious circle because I believe my rushing attitude may now be the cause of the dream brevity in the first place....
> Basically what do you do to lengthen your dreams? Does spinning work for you? or are the dreams just naturally long  (lucky guy :3)



I rarely spin because it causes quite a few problems with me. I know some dreamers who spin regularly and it works perfect for them. If it doesn't seem to help you, don't do it. Sometimes I will spin at the end of a dream (if I feel myself waking up), but generally I just perform a DEILD. Rushing is most likely your main problem along with thinking your dream will be short. If you think it will be short, it will be. If you think you are going to wake up soon, you will. You need to keep all of these negative thoughts out of your head during the dream state. A thought directly affects you within a dream, unlike real life. Its really just mind practice.

First off, I stabilize or makes sure my dream is stable. I perform several reality checks to firmly plant the, "I am dreaming thought." I make sure I apply all senses to the dream state. Basically, I perform a quick ADA session upon becoming lucid. This allows me to become fully immersed within the dream. From there, keep your emotions in check (by learning your emotional limit), and expect the dream to last. 

I also strongly encourage practicing DEILD. You will be able to get right back into a lucid dream if happen to screw up and think too much about waking up (and it causes such a thing to happen). DEILD is very easy for chaining lucid dreams. If you feel yourself waking up, simply prepare to lay completely still with your eyes closed. Stay calm/relaxed during this process and you will jump right back into the dream state upon waking. Once you get the hang of DEILD, you will worry less and less about waking up because you know you can get right back into the dream state. This, in turn, lengthens your lucid experiences.

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## yuppie11975

I've only has one lucid so far, and it lasted about ten seconds ;P
I'm hoping my next one will be at least a minute!

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