Thread: time in dreaming

is one second in a lucid dream equal to once second in real life? or can you experience a day in lucid dreams in only an hour of sleeping?

no the time isnt same.

I once read a rumor bout some buddhist or monk or something who had a .. was it 80(?) year lucid dream in one night, where he lived another life had kids n such. someone better clarify me on this one, its a while since i read it.

Originally Posted by Snooze

no the time isnt same.

I once read a rumor bout some buddhist or monk or something who had a .. was it 80(?) year lucid dream in one night, where he lived another life had kids n such. someone better clarify me on this one, its a while since i read it.

I read one bloke had hundreds of years in just one night

Actually, I'm pretty sure the time IS the same. One of the first experiments done with lucid dreaming involved the eye movements of lucid dreamers. Apparently, sleep paralysis does not paralyze the extraocular muscles, meaning that if you look left in your dream, your eyes will move left. The test subject was able to induce a lucid dream, and as soon as he became lucid he was instructed to look left, count to one-onethousand, look right, repeat, etc. His eye movements were timed by an assistant, and it was found that we do in fact dream in real time. I think this whole 'time dilation' thing is fantasy. You can do whatever you want during the lucid dream, but you can't make your brain speed up and record more time passing than actually does.

but umm, what about this one, the gnome
on my only lucid dream

i was doing jump tricks in slooooowwww motion, so umm, i actually controlled time?

Slow motion, yes, not slow TIME. Big difference. You could slow down your motion and do a dropkick or whatever, BUT if it seems to you in your dream that your slow kick took five seconds to execute, you would have been doing it for five real-time seconds.

Some possibilities with time dilation:

1)Bullshit
2)Scene changes give the illusion of extended time
3)Appropriate temporal memory gives the direct illusion of a long span of time occurring
4)Overclocked brain subjectively experiences more moments in an objective period of time than it does while awake.
5)You slip into a magical time vortex where anything is possible.

First three are very likely, fourth (I think) is very realistically possible (but to what extent?), and fifth... go ahead, guess.

For those who absolutely claim to have experienced every moment of days or longer periods of time in a single night, then we have to consider #4. People already ramp their brains to higher and lower levels of activity all day long and subjectively experience varying speeds of time. My classic example: Does an hour spent lazing at the beach feel anything as long as an hour spent struggling against a killer exam? Your brain is operating faster and making more reference checks against reality with that exam than it does staring a beach ball buried in the sand. When people are in near-death situations, they say their lives flash before their eyes - and regardless, see and react to their situation in what feels like extreme slow motion, because it really is that slow for them.

So while dreaming, the same thing has to be possible. These are extreme examples, and just like a person in waking life in an average situation can count a minute's worth of seconds and usually stay very accurate, so will an average person in an average lucid environment default to that average temporality. But unbound from the sensory pace of objective reality, I have good confidence that a lucid dreamer with enough intent and influence could induce themselves to experience their dream world at a far faster or slower pace than their time asleep might suggest. I can't even begin to guess at the limits of this, whether there's a neurological stopping point to how far you can stretch time or an objective time limit of how long you can pull it off or even a point at which you start temporarily or permanently damaging your own brain... but I do think it's possible.

Magical time vortexes, though, not so much.

Also: How to stop time!

Originally Posted by Spamtek

Some possibilities with time dilation:

1)Bull****
2)Scene changes give the illusion of extended time
3)Appropriate temporal memory gives the direct illusion of a long span of time occurring
4)Overclocked brain subjectively experiences more moments in an objective period of time than it does while awake.
5)You slip into a magical time vortex where anything is possible.

I'm not sure I understand #3... do you mean that when you start dreaming, you basically create a "backstory" to the dream, with memories to go with it? I could see that being the case, the dream may not last too long, but it seems to last a long time because you have these "memories" from earlier in the dream.

Really, who's to say that's not the case in real life? Maybe you just popped into existence a few minutes ago with years worth of memories created at the same time.

I really doubt that #4 could make dreams last months... even if we assume a Buddhist crazy-skilled dreamer could manage to have a lucid dream lasting 8 real hours (i.e. all night) to get a dream lasting a month by #4, he'd still have to speed up his brain by 90x. Let alone dreams that last years... If we were capable of using our brains that much more effectively, don't you think we'd do it more often?

Originally Posted by Me

Bull****

Weird... why does the quote censor while the post doesn't? Or is my BS censored in the original post for you? It's not censored for me.

Originally Posted by Bear

I'm not sure I understand #3... do you mean that when you start dreaming, you basically create a "backstory" to the dream, with memories to go with it? I could see that being the case, the dream may not last too long, but it seems to last a long time because you have these "memories" from earlier in the dream.

With #2 I meant: Scene changes from day to night > "Wow, I must have spent an entire day in here, it's night already!"
With #3 I meant: No scene changes at all > "Wow, I must have spent an entire day in here! Don't know why, but sure feels that way."

Originally Posted by Bear

Really, who's to say that's not the case in real life? Maybe you just popped into existence a few minutes ago with years worth of memories created at the same time.

The classic question.

Originally Posted by Bear

I really doubt that #4 could make dreams last months... even if we assume a Buddhist crazy-skilled dreamer could manage to have a lucid dream lasting 8 real hours (i.e. all night) to get a dream lasting a month by #4, he'd still have to speed up his brain by 90x. Let alone dreams that last years... If we were capable of using our brains that much more effectively, don't you think we'd do it more often?

I think in waking life it's far more difficult to enable and sustain such a state just because things are objectively happening to you at a certain rate that you can't escape. In dreaming not only is your reaction to your sensory information variable, but the sensory information itself is variable. It may be that an alternate way to dilate time in your dreams is not to overclock the speed at which you perceive your environment (like you can do in RL) but to actually ramp up or down the rate at which you actually create new sensory situations for yourself to deal with.

Originally Posted by John_23

I've heard 7 years too, but if this is the case, why do people keep tattoos all their lives? If all of their component atoms are replaced why are the new ones coloured artificialy like the old ones?

Seems like there's a very thorough answer to this in an old issue of NewScientist which I have a subscription to, but I can't remember my account information (got it as a gift) to log in and see it. Tattoos do fade over time, though; it may be that they're simply not a substance the body can assimilate and carry out of the body, and when original containing cells wear out and get replaced, the inks spill out into other cells (potentially below the surface) and in between them, creating a faded-out, blotchy mess. I know personally that I have a chunk of pencil graphite in the palm of my right hand that has stayed exactly where it is for at least 8 years, no fading or spreading or anything. In that case I don't think it's sinked into cell membranes, it's just a large particle that stays where it is because cells replace themselves gradually and maintain the same basic shape of my hand around the injury area despite an eventual total replacement of the cells therein.

Yeah. It's just like scars. They stay too. Total regeneration isn't one of our traits, eaven though we change atoms. Oh and also it's quite exciting to die and not knowing it. This is what I don't understand. If you add a robotic arm to yourself you're still you. Then you slowly add chips to your brain untill the brain dissapears or almost dissapears. When do you stop being you? It's the same as switching the atoms, what is that makes you you. Is there such a thing as me? If there isn't, then howcome that I am me right know and am aware of it... Help MEH!
The only logical explanations I have:
1. There is a soul or some eternal conciousness. Yes I don't like it and don't really believe it without sufficient proof.
2. The conciousness that is me only exists as long as my brain isn't altered by adding or taking away atoms. So basically a "me" dies every ___ nano/mili/mikro/whatever seconds and is replaced by another "me".

Anyone comments or ideas I should know about?

No, there's no censoring, I just censored it myself when I pulled the quote =)

Originally Posted by Spamtek

I think in waking life it's far more difficult to enable and sustain such a state just because things are objectively happening to you at a certain rate that you can't escape. In dreaming not only is your reaction to your sensory information variable, but the sensory information itself is variable. It may be that an alternate way to dilate time in your dreams is not to overclock the speed at which you perceive your environment (like you can do in RL) but to actually ramp up or down the rate at which you actually create new sensory situations for yourself to deal with.

I see what you're saying, but I still don't think we have too much "latent" brain power hanging around... Things are happening at a set rate, but if we had more brain power, we'd be able to analyze things more as they happen, and I think we probably would. And when we think abstract thoughts, that's independent of sensory information, but there's still a limit on how fast we can think there... at least for me... uh oh, am I just dumb? =)

I hadn't really thought about controlling the sensory input though, and so maybe you can "overclock the speed at which you perceive your environment" with an equal decrease in sensory information. Double the speed of time, but half the amount of information in the dream. If you don't have as much stuff coming at you as in real life, then you would be able to speed up time without necessarily speeding up your brain. For another computer analogy, decrease your graphics settings to increase performance =)