Thread: Can you really spend years in dreams?

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

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

InvaderGarf

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A time perception experiment that has been conducted:

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

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

All seems pretty trivial.....

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

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

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

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

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

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

-doublex

Originally posted by mopey
Anybody else have a "dream memory"?

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

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

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

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

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