Is it immoral for an SDer to cause nightmares?

**ZeTh345** · 09-30-2019 12:41 PM

Assuming SD is possible, is it immoral/wrong for an SDer to intentionally cause people to have nightmares?

I don't believe in the existence of objective morality, ultimately it all seems subjective. Though I'm not looking to get into a deep philosophical discussion on morality, would prefer to focus on how people feel personally on this specific issue.

From my perspective the answer would depend on factors like the motivation to cause nightmares, consent, intensity of the nightmares, and lasting negative effects for the victim.

So someone who just wanted to do it for the lulz, with no concern for consent, who crafted the most terrible nightmares imaginable including things like false awakenings, the dark side of religious themes, warping perception of time to draw out the torture for thousands+ years, and causing severe trauma resulting in permanent unforseen significant changes in the victim, could easily be seen as immoral.

But what if consent were given, what if there were positive motivations, etc?

As an example, what if the dreamer was attempting to prove to themself that SD works via a secret email verification, attempting to increase chances of success by increasing dream recall in the victim, by blasting the email at them during a relatively brief and minor terror and jump scaring the victim awake with instructions to send a log of the dream to that email?

Or for another example, I myself was awoken and began lucid dreaming as a direct result of trauma caused by a year long persistent childhood nightmare. In hindsight, it was both a curse and a blessing which I'm ultimately grateful for, with long lasting pros and cons. If I could choose between going back in time and preventing the nightmares, or going back and crafting the nightmares, giving a sort of retroactive consent on behalf of my former self, I'd probably craft the nightmares despite how traumatic they were at the time.

I've heard that other skilled natural LDers were also awoken by childhood nightmares, though I'm not sure how true this is. Maybe I'll start a thread on that topic. While I'd be willing to subject my childhood self to such a thing thanks to the pseudo-consent and knowing the long term repercussions, I wouldn't want to put anyone else through the same thing, due to the consent issue and not knowing how the victim would be affected.

That's some of my own thoughts. I'm curious to hear what other people think about this. If you could choose to go through traumatic childhood nightmares in exchange for eventually overcoming those nightmares and achieving things like nigh 100% lucidity rate and godlike levels of dream control, would you want to have such an experience? Would you want to experience your own personal heavens if it meant first crawling your way up through your own personal hells?

**PrisonPlanet** · 10-13-2019 11:07 PM

I believe there was previous topic on site (forgot terminology..perhaps nightstalker?). I'd view (creating nightmare) as a curse. Or possibly spell..incantation? Anyway there's intent to harm. Also some believe if you cast spell it can come back to you many fold. Like you achieve something extraordinary..get ready for extraordinary consequences. As far as gift being justified. (or only targeting bad people) like t.v. show, Dexter..I'm not sure, opinions vary.

**Sivason** · 10-14-2019 04:47 AM

I think if they did not consent, then it is akin to rape.
I would go through my childhood nightmares just for the insight it would give. If it would increase my skills all the better.

**Caradon** · 10-26-2019 01:19 PM

If you have the ability to go into a persons dream. Is it immoral to do so and do fucked up things to said person? If you need to ask that makes me wonder if you are some kind of sociopath that has no empathy towards others and no sense of right or wrong.

It's like asking if it's immoral to do fucked up shit to people in waking life too, even if you are sure there is no law against it and you won't go to jail.

**PrisonPlanet** · 11-01-2019 03:48 AM

Well If childhood nightmares are caused by something real (like rape or physical abuse) NO ONE wishes to indulge in fantasy..since there's no actual prize awaiting. With that said I doubt hosts intentions were malicious perhaps just not completely thought out.

**acillis** · 01-13-2020 03:16 AM

hmm dont some people deserve it? i wouldnt like to cause a nightmare for someone who didnt deserve it. but only to those that did.

**Psionik** · 01-21-2020 09:10 AM

If such thing is possible then I would find it immoral. But it is most probably not possible.

**Sensei** · 01-22-2020 05:44 AM

Originally Posted by acillis

hmm dont some people deserve it? i wouldnt like to cause a nightmare for someone who didnt deserve it. but only to those that did.

Ah, you get to be the judge and executioner of that then. Sounds pretty immoral. Especially if you go to a place where you have all the power and they don't a and pushing that power over them. That's close to the idea of bullying, tho probably worse. I think SD is probably not possible, but if I were you I would think about this in a non sd setting.

**acillis** · 01-29-2020 03:51 AM

judge and executioner? i like the sound of that! there's a ton of people out there that will never taste the fury of justice. they will avoid it and escape it. thinking there actions were not taken notice of or even cared about. im sure you Wouldnt care if kiddy touchers or child murders were getting messed with in there sleep.
or people who just kill people for the sheer joy of it.

**Sensei** · 01-30-2020 07:40 AM

Originally Posted by acillis

judge and executioner? i like the sound of that! there's a ton of people out there that will never taste the fury of justice. they will avoid it and escape it. thinking there actions were not taken notice of or even cared about. im sure you Wouldnt care if kiddy touchers or child murders were getting messed with in there sleep.
or people who just kill people for the sheer joy of it.

I can think of very few situations where you could be sure that they were guilty, but they don't go to jail. If that extremely rare situation were to present itself, then maybe. But it sounds more like you just using your best judgement to terrorize people for your own fun. Sounds evil to me.

**Sivason** · 02-06-2020 04:47 AM

I do not know if the rules would be the same as for Kundalini/energy based magic. In the case of being able to affect reality with your personal energy a huge danger exists in directing it to harm or seduce another person. The energy is always attached to you even when it is out in the world causing the effect. It is never not your energy. At some point unconsciously you will gather it back to you. If you have programmed it with intense feelings of harm, hate and ill wishes it will still be imprinted with that when it returns to you. Using Kundalini for evil is a powerful way to ruin your own life. Say you are angry your sister got raped. You may focus that the man's parts rot. Who wants to get hit with that when it returns to you, even if it only cause a stomach ulcer. Instead you would program it with the thought of justice and leave it up to a higher force to do something with the energy. It returns to you someday as "justice." that is a good thing.
That speech will seem totally unrelated to the causing nightmares question. The point is simply that if such abilities exist to effect another's dream, it likely has some similar law of nature involved, so that the practitioner sending nightmares will be destroying his own life/psyche.

**Sensei** · 02-07-2020 07:13 AM

Originally Posted by sivason

I do not know if the rules would be the same as for Kundalini/energy based magic. In the case of being able to affect reality with your personal energy a huge danger exists in directing it to harm or seduce another person. The energy is always attached to you even when it is out in the world causing the effect. It is never not your energy. At some point unconsciously you will gather it back to you. If you have programmed it with intense feelings of harm, hate and ill wishes it will still be imprinted with that when it returns to you. Using Kundalini for evil is a powerful way to ruin your own life. Say you are angry your sister got raped. You may focus that the man's parts rot. Who wants to get hit with that when it returns to you, even if it only cause a stomach ulcer. Instead you would program it with the thought of justice and leave it up to a higher force to do something with the energy. It returns to you someday as "justice." that is a good thing.
That speech will seem totally unrelated to the causing nightmares question. The point is simply that if such abilities exist to effect another's dream, it likely has some similar law of nature involved, so that the practitioner sending nightmares will be destroying his own life/psyche.

Even without Kundalini, there is an idea out there that I think is very similar. You know that another human is human like you, so you cannot treat a human like less than human without thinking less of yourself as well. This goes from treating someone like a sex object and having meaningless sex all the time to torturing someone for your own amusement, it will come back to you.

Obviously, many spiritual and religious things talk about this, i'll talk about the one that I agree with, though I think that a lot of them might be a good picture of a different thing in a different angle.

Not the most well articulated I have made something, but it is something biblical as well, reaping and sewing. With the three rules: You reap what you sew, more than you sew, and later than you sew. This doesn't work in the world because there are many things that stop this (consider the idea of Proverbs vs Ecclesiastes, if you know the bible). You make work your whole life and have all your wealth given to your enemy, or you may love someone and have them destroy you, but one place that this is impossible to fake, is in your mind, the place where you really live. It seems to be short and long as well, and it always comes back more. Short sighted, we see something like me choosing not to do as much of my school for my senior year because it was boring and I didn't have that much and I had enough credits to graduate already. Then when I get to college, I don't have the discipline to do the easy classes, and ended up spending loads of money on this.

Spoiler for A Little Intense:

Dang it, take it down a dark path, thanks sensei.

**shadowofwind** · 02-10-2020 11:26 PM

I think it is generally pretty hard for one individual to psychically affect another individual unless there's some kind of relationship between them with interest on both sides.

I there is always at least some degree of projection and denial on both sides, and that it is not at all easy to tell who is doing what.

I think that it is possible to actually wrong someone, we aren't perfectly protected by our own karma. Our relationships are real in that sense.

I agree that one's own bad energy recoiling on oneself is a real thing. Maybe that's most of the story of my life. I'm skeptical of the idea that the energy I put out has my identity in it though, that its ever 'mine' in some substantive sense. Yes you can feel my identity through it, but that's because the things I am doing, psychically or otherwise, are related to me. Its like if someone is spraying a hose at you, it is clear who is doing it. But the molecules of the water aren't magically imbued with their identity.

I see two things that work for long term karmic justice. One is that you can't get away from yourself, and you can't change yourself without coming to some kind of honest reckoning about what you've done. Another is that Providence doesn't forget without forgetting more than you might want it to. It knows what is connected to what - it isn't limited by time and memory.

That said, I'm skeptical about the idea of justice as a real absolute. I think that wrong can't always be altogether undone through atonement, and things can't always be worked out in a way that's ultimately fair to everyone. I think that justice is more of an aspiration, like justice in a human system of law. I also think that justice is less important than freedom, even though both are very important. I have no doubt that I'm halfway wrong about this, that I don't completely understand. But I also think that I understand as much or more than those who preach the 'truth' of perfect karmic justice. I think they're making that up, or appealing to an authority that makes it up for them.