Thread: Stay in a dream for eternity!

I find this very interesting, having the experience of doing so many fantastical things in a dream, if you were able to stay in a dream for eternity, with those fantastical abilities, would you choose your dream world or real life?

Some note on the possibility of this happening, there is a story of a person being in a dream for 100 years, I would then presume what is so hard about continuing into the dream for ever.

Honestly I wouldn't. I would obviously realize in the dream that it is JUST a dream and not actually happening. Also I wouldn't want to leave the people in the real world. Especially loved ones. I couldn't do that.

I always make a clear distinction between dream and waking world, so of course trading one for the other is just... no, never.

I could have sworn I just saw a very similar thread about staying in ab OBE forever...*RCs*

Personally though, I have a lot of things going on IWL that I would like to see through, and I would not want to leave my loved ones at this time. But if I could make that choice, say, in 80 years, I would probably take it.

My 1st instinct was "YES!", which goes to show my current psychological state in waking life. Things seem so dull. And... of course... there's pain. Physical, mental, emotional pain. But thinking it through... that's what makes the dreaming state so beautiful. I believe they go hand-in-hand and this is but another dreaming dimension without our awareness, I think it goes so much deeper than we all know.
Experiences expand the soul's awareness and knowledge.
I do enjoy staying in bed for hours and hours upon waking (if I can, on weekends, etc) because I enjoy dreaming more than being awake. Hmmm.... I don't know. I'm also in a very confusing state of being in 'real' life, so... I'm biased. I'm obsessed with dreaming. The only other experience in waking life that I've come closest to has been under the influence of the magical Salvia Divinorum. During that time, I understood a reality behind this reality. I guess you can say it may have not been the best thing because nothing seems REAL... I've experienced tons of derealization after that. But now I'm going off on a tangent. I really enjoyed that awareness, and the awareness that I feel during the night-time.

Anyone else feel like... completely KEEN during the night in-between sleep? Like you have such an incredible amount of knowledge?

Death?

Nah. The waking world is far more beautifully complex and intricate than the dream world could ever hope to be. The dream world is just recycled garbage from the waking world, it's just one tiny system focusing on itself rather than participating in the grand play of the universe. It just seems really trippy because people are much more used to remembering their waking lives than their dreams, and the two are radically different. That's my view anyway. Even lucid, staying in the dream forever would amount to absolutely nothing but escapism, and I think just coming up with my own ideas to experience for the rest of eternity would get boring very quickly. Besides, why would you pick just one when you get to enjoy both to the fullest every day?

I don't think that would be a good idea, You can't sleep for ever. For being in a dream in eternity that would probably last a couple minutes in waking life or so. But being in a dream for ever. Why would you want that? :S There's a bunch of things to do in life than just a dream.

Being in a dream forever would eventually get boring. There's only so many activities (such as flying) that would interest someone; in a while things won't seem as fun or exciting. Pardon the awkward analogy, but it's like being at a buffet - you'll sample all the foods you like or want to try, but other things you won't even touch. You could love flying and want to do it over and over again, but like eating a whole bunch of one type of food at a buffet, eventually you will become full.

Also, simply the knowledge that nothing is real would take a lot of the fulfillment out of being omnipotent. None of your actions would matter. The dream would also lose its value because it's no longer that one moment in the night where you can take a break from real life and chill out in a dreamspace: instead, it's happening all the time.

Originally Posted by Puffin

Being in a dream forever would eventually get boring. There's only so many activities (such as flying) that would interest someone; in a while things won't seem as fun or exciting. Pardon the awkward analogy, but it's like being at a buffet - you'll sample all the foods you like or want to try, but other things you won't even touch. You could love flying and want to do it over and over again, but like eating a whole bunch of one type of food at a buffet, eventually you will become full.

Also, simply the knowledge that nothing is real would take a lot of the fulfillment out of being omnipotent. None of your actions would matter. The dream would also lose its value because it's no longer that one moment in the night where you can take a break from real life and chill out in a dreamspace: instead, it's happening all the time.

Except that wouldn't being in an eternal dream make the dream your new reality? Couldn't that reality be explored, to find exciting new things to do that you may have no idea about right now? Isn't confining your dream experience only to what you currently enjoy a bit shortsighted? I think so -- especially because I got tired of flying a very long time ago, and was able to find new things to try during LD's. It doesn't seem unlikely to me that I would be bored -- after all, one of the reasons we all love dreams so much is because of the infinite possibilities they offer, even when they occur during normal sleep, and not just during this eternal coma (or death, as Omnis Dei may be correctly pointing out) that would have to accompany eternal dreaming. Don't underestimate the creative potential of a dreamer, including your own.

Also, omnipotence in dreams is a two-edged sword: You could just as easily create worlds filled with random events and populated with DC's blessed with free will and attitudes. Indeed, you could create worlds where you have no power at all, and must survive or else. Plus, you could move beyond worlds as you currently know them and learn to create new dimensions, new ways to experience the dreaming realm, and to learn and grow. Forever could be a very long time, so it seems there would be plenty of opportunity to practice your dreaming arts to create dreams that will hold your interest.... Then there's that whole dream-sharing thing; perhaps you wouldn't need to be alone in your forever dream!

That said, I've still got plenty to finish in this life, so an eternal dream is not too appealing. This would be so even if that eternity only lasted a few seconds in waking life. This is because eternity by definition means that there is no coming back to waking life, so when I wake I wouldn't remember anything happened (trust me, the logic follows). And, if the eternity matched waking world time? I like to think there'll be someone to keep the feeding tube working, but what if there isn't?

We're already in a dream forever

If it was an everlasting non-lucid dream, that would just be torture. It would be like a horrible delirium that would quickly drive me insane. If I were lucid, that would be more interesting but I still think I'd go insane like that lady in Inception. If I can only get all my REM hours lucid, I'd be pretty damn happy with that balance.

Its all life in the end, your alive in a dream and RL so just enjoy. Even if it seems dull and bad if u look at the positives u'll see they actually outweigh the negatives.

Originally Posted by superchaz

Its all life in the end, your alive in a dream and RL so just enjoy. Even if it seems dull and bad if u look at the positives u'll see they actually outweigh the negatives.

I'd like to pose a question. What is life? I feel that it's relatively same specie of abstraction as dream. Life and Dream intersect one another, but they also have spaces that are not in connetion to one another. There must be more of these spaces than just life and dreams. Some we haven't fopund be what they are, some lack the words in English. Death is one of them. What others could there be?

Just watched waking life for the third time (charm?) and one sentence just came back: ,,Dreaming outside life is dead,,
In my present state it's kind of true. If I'm in lifes dreaming, it's alive. Outside the lifes dreaming it's more shady and uderwolrd like aka dead. Not completely hopeless place thoug, just dead. It's like, in my present state, dreaming intersects life, life doesn't intersect dreaming but death intersects dreaming outside life. I sense and see some big change coming on that way of layers. And I'm ready when that happens.

I don't think it is possible to stay in _a_ dream forever. Even Brahma wakes up after every world. During waking ours you move from dream to dream in lucidity or in sleep. During sleeping dreams you too switch between dreams (/bubbles). But I think that it is possible to stay, experience or practice dreaming whole the time and in some point through the gates of constantm instant, moment etc you can leave the time and eventualy move your being to the dreaming for real. There you can stay for ever. Not in _a_ dream but as dreaming able to travel from a dream to other and host many dreams inside your dreaming.

Difference between dreams and dreaming is that dream is a noun, state, script and a set of posibilities; then again dreaming is something you do and practice. But it's also state, space, playwriters and directors chair and more administrative take of given posibilities and rules.

Just my 1 cent

EDIT: among many things, word stay is a name of a movie

Sorry about flooding this thread but I came about with yet another question: do you think possible to wake in a dream where you have unfamiliar face and name and never to go back to former dream?

gonna go with "no". Dreams are amazing, no doubt about that. But they're there because our brain is processing things we do in Waking Life. ..if there's nothing to process.. .. ..I think the closest description is the "limbo" as portrayed in the film "Inception": a forever dreamworld. They say mankind's imagination is limitless, but our consciousness may not be. What I'm saying is, eventually you'd lose lucidity and be in that dreamworld (Limbo) forever and.. ..it just doesn't seem healthy.

Also, this begs the question what happens to coma patients who die while still in the coma? It's proven that their brains are still active, presumably in dream-state. A series called "Oddisey" I think, I used to watch it as a kid, touches on this subject: the subconscious world of the coma patient Jay. He has adventures and struggles against a power/government etc. When his friends talk to him, they appear in his dreamworld.

Don't think I'd do it. Even though my waking life if kinda dull, if I left now, all the work at school I've done will have been pointless. Rather stick around and look for things that interest me. A dream that lasts forever would be epic as something after death though. If that were to be a SHARED eternal lucid dream, then I would say YES for sure. As a matter of fact, I like to believe that that is the case after death. Either that or nothing at all. And if it's nothing at all, I won't be around to care

Originally Posted by elucid

I find this very interesting, having the experience of doing so many fantastical things in a dream, if you were able to stay in a dream for eternity, with those fantastical abilities, would you choose your dream world or real life?

Some note on the possibility of this happening, there is a story of a person being in a dream for 100 years, I would then presume what is so hard about continuing into the dream for ever.

Ok first off, I apologize for reviving a dead thread but this topic interests me. I believe it may be possible to stay in a dream forever, or at least for a maddeningly long time before waking up. I have personally been in dreams that seemed to last for years but I have been afraid of pushing it too far and attempting to completely sever ties with this place.

Originally Posted by Castles

Honestly I wouldn't. I would obviously realize in the dream that it is JUST a dream and not actually happening. Also I wouldn't want to leave the people in the real world. Especially loved ones. I couldn't do that.

Originally Posted by Hukif

I always make a clear distinction between dream and waking world, so of course trading one for the other is just... no, never.

Whether anywhere is "real" or not, you are able to exist in both the waking reality and the dream reality. When you start to spend way more time in your dreams than you spend awake, who is to say the dream realm is any less "real" than the "real world"? You exist there, you can sense and interact with your environment there. Whatever happens in there DOES happen. It may not carry back over to this realm but while over there it may as well be considered "real".

Lets say in the dream world you conjure up a DC version of a friend of yours from the waking world and slap them in the face. Sure you didn't actually slap your actual friend from this reality. But you DID slap your DC friend from that reality. The experience happened, you can remember the way your hand stung after making contact with their face, and their expression afterwards. The memory of the event is there and you did choose to slap your friend so why pretend like that never happened? What makes memories from the waking world any different from memories from the dream world and why would you consider either place to be more "real" than the other?

Originally Posted by Alyzarin

Nah. The waking world is far more beautifully complex and intricate than the dream world could ever hope to be. The dream world is just recycled garbage from the waking world, it's just one tiny system focusing on itself rather than participating in the grand play of the universe. It just seems really trippy because people are much more used to remembering their waking lives than their dreams, and the two are radically different. That's my view anyway. Even lucid, staying in the dream forever would amount to absolutely nothing but escapism, and I think just coming up with my own ideas to experience for the rest of eternity would get boring very quickly. Besides, why would you pick just one when you get to enjoy both to the fullest every day?

For me, the dream world is often much more vivid, much more beautiful and complex/detailed than the waking world ever is. Many unique experiences have taken place for me in my dreams and have helped to shape who I am today. Especially lately it feels like I have been on the other side much much more than I have been awake. Things have happened and places have been visited which simply do not exist anywhere in the waking world so it is definitely not ALL recycled from the waking world.

Also, as a result of where I spend most of my time I often forget many things from the waking world. I also have memories (usually of past dreams) that for some reason I only tend to remember when dreaming and seem to temporarily leave my thoughts when I am awake.

For me, sometimes the waking world seems more like the dream though this can be hard to explain.

Originally Posted by Mylynes

For me, the dream world is often much more vivid, much more beautiful and complex/detailed than the waking world ever is. Many unique experiences have taken place for me in my dreams and have helped to shape who I am today. Especially lately it feels like I have been on the other side much much more than I have been awake. Things have happened and places have been visited which simply do not exist anywhere in the waking world so it is definitely not ALL recycled from the waking world.

Also, as a result of where I spend most of my time I often forget many things from the waking world. I also have memories (usually of past dreams) that for some reason I only tend to remember when dreaming and seem to temporarily leave my thoughts when I am awake.

For me, sometimes the waking world seems more like the dream though this can be hard to explain.

I actually consider even totally alien dreamscapes as recycled from the waking world. Your brain only works with what it's given. You may not be able to consciously pick apart where things are from, but they all have some meaning. The way you describe the beauty of the dream world also sounds like a sensory critique. I was referring to the way the waking world works, like the laws of physics. I've never encountered something in the dream world that amazes me as much as the workings of the waking world, which are always out there to be discovered further, whereas the dream world must work with the knowledge it has (including subconscious, I'm not saying you can't figure out new things about your mind in your dreams).

Originally Posted by Alyzarin

I actually consider even totally alien dreamscapes as recycled from the waking world. Your brain only works with what it's given. You may not be able to consciously pick apart where things are from, but they all have some meaning. The way you describe the beauty of the dream world also sounds like a sensory critique. I was referring to the way the waking world works, like the laws of physics. I've never encountered something in the dream world that amazes me as much as the workings of the waking world, which are always out there to be discovered further, whereas the dream world must work with the knowledge it has (including subconscious, I'm not saying you can't figure out new things about your mind in your dreams).

I have heard of this before but I don't quite believe it is always completely true. Often times yes the subconscious can add a lot of borrowed stuff from waking life. If play a game nonstop for 50 hours it is likely to influence the subconscious part of my dream but I would still like to give some creative credit to conscious control over dreams as well. Sure the brain works with what it knows and old knowledge plays a part in the creation of new ideas but I believe it is possible to create entirely new things which have never been experienced before. I can make a new word like mrofingobwynexiiiis but then you could argue this word is based on letters which were previously learned and "recycled". Just because I already know the letters does that mean mrofingobwynexiiiis isn't a new word? I could create an entirely unique and new creature never experienced by anyone before but you could argue that this is based on ideas of previous creatures. Personally I think arguing semantics is a bit pointless, but just because old knowledge plays some role in the creation of new ideas do you believe that no new ideas are ever created and are always strictly "recycled" from old ideas? If so then where did the old ideas come from? Is it impossible to experience new things? Or do you believe that completely original and new things can only be experienced in the waking world?

Just a thought but I wonder what the dreams of a man who has been blind his entire life would be like. I doubt many blind from birth ppl would be able to actually see things in their dreams but I wonder if it would be possible for someone like that to see within his dreams and if so then I wonder where those images came from.

Also, when I stabilize my dream it becomes very vivid in many ways. I can see in sort of super hd as if my mind can fill in more "pixels" at a time than my actual eyes can pick up when awake. I can see in all directions at once and much much further than I can when awake. I can also sense the world around me through senses which simply are not available to me when awake. I can take in much more information at 1 time than I can when awake which makes for a more immersive experience. I can even experience dreams from multiple perspectives and multiple "bodies" simultaneously. This didn't happen overnight though, ever since I was 4 years old before I even know what a lucid dream was I have very rarely had dreams in which I was not aware of the fact that I was dreaming.. and that was almost 20 years ago.

After spending much more time in my dreams than while awake, and being used to my senses being heightened and expanded all the time.. waking up is like returning to a boring ugly cage. I can see someone else viewing things differently but for me the waking world sucks ass and the dream world may as well be considered my home. All of my best memories are from dreams while nothing really stands out from my "real" waking life.

Originally Posted by Alyzarin

I've never encountered something in the dream world that amazes me as much as the workings of the waking world, which are always out there to be discovered further, whereas the dream world must work with the knowledge it has (including subconscious, I'm not saying you can't figure out new things about your mind in your dreams).

I totally agree with you.

When amazing things happen in dreams, I would probably just go with the flow, and it didn't occurred to me for a moment how wonderful it was. But if an amazing thing happened to me in real life, just the thought and memory of it could last me for the rest of my life.

It's as though anything that happens in the dream world is all a possibility, anything is possible, literally, so nothing is out of your expectations. But in real life there are many factors to consider, simply just the responses of others is hard to predict.

Though I think that dreams are also real (like a second world, built by our subconscious) I would never want to stay in the dream world for eternity. There are some things, you can't have in a dream, but in waking life (I don't like to call it "real life"). In waking life there are persons I love and I would never want to leave them, there are so many beautiful things, places and memories in the waking world.. so why should I leave it, when I can have both, dreamworld and waking world. My goal is to be able to dream lucid every night without stabilization.. in my own lucid universe in my dream house. So I could live a wonderful life during the day and at night I go to my lucid dreamworld and have fun there.. so I have both.. waking world where everything seems more real and where the persons are, I love.. and dream world where I can have fun and be creative .

I think the dream world is just like the waking world except better. So I don't see why I wouldn't rather stay there for the rest of my life than in waking life. But eternity is a bit long - I might want to die or to know I will die eventually.

Originally Posted by JesterKK

I think the dream world is just like the waking world except better. So I don't see why I wouldn't rather stay there for the rest of my life than in waking life. But eternity is a bit long - I might want to die or to know I will die eventually.

If you're really into this you might as well start meditating on departure. Meditate death and dream and your memories. You'll get to see what is holding you back. You'll get to see what you would be missing and who would be missing you. I recomend to do it with love and care. Maybe in a bottom people really wish that you follow your dreams (innuendo intended). Maybe you end up apreciating yor waking life (and starting to bring dreams there). It could go either way.