Thread: Dreams as real as waking life?

My dreams seem as real as waking life too. But my dreams are mostly in places I know I never been to making it easyier to tell which is which. Usally continuus dreams happen in one night, and then when you wake up you mind tries and find connections to make it seem like a long dream, despite the gaps. I guess this could occur in more than one night but I haven't had any experiance in that...

This doesn't really address your question, but its interesting what you think of as real. I think of my dreams as being "real" in the sense that they seem real. The emotions I have, the people I interact with, and just the overall experience. When I wake up, my memory of what had "happened" seems like a normal memory of just about anything else like going to the grocery store or talking with friends. I find this completely fascinating since they are by no means "real" in the accepted context of what is real. It has led me to question what constitutes a "real" experience.

But more towards your dreams, have you ever had a lucid dream where everything is normal like waking life?

I have had lots of dreams like that. They are never like the real world, mostly consisting of fantasy type stuff like breathing under water, flying, or finding secret underworlds. But I have visited the same place in different dreams before, and even had a similar dream, and I knew what was going to happen.

Dream continuity? Not too common, but it still occurs. Part of the reason why you dream of such realistic things is because, duh, you live in a realistic world. The majority of dreams do not contain rainbow frogs and talking broomsticks, but instead they contain real people and real places with slightly odd scenarios. I'd also bet that the longer you've lived in the same place (town), the more familiar and realistic your dreams are (I move a lot, and as a consequence dream places end up as an unrecogizeable mesh when together, but when separated into components, the places closely resemble places I've lived).

Cool, you have dream continuity too, I wonder if it generally comes with good recall, anyway, I have it too, tough... there is that traveling I do alot in dreams so never got to know anyone good enough lol

I definitely wouldn't say I can relate to continuity for specific objects, but it's not because it seams so real, it's that I just don't question reality in my dreams. I'm too attached to the plots of all of them I just go with the flow and I don't ever stop to think about it. even if I want to.

Are you lucid in your dream world? If not you've got one hell of a dreamsign, a whole world that you are familiar with as a dream world.

Originally Posted by Abra

The majority of dreams do not contain rainbow frogs and talking broomsticks, but instead they contain real people and real places with slightly odd scenarios.

Tonight's lucid: white nothing with floating structures made of alien seaweed.
Not the majority, true, but total weirdness does happen. Still, I sometimes revisit dream-places as well.

While my dreams aren't usually super detailed like real life, my mind's annoyingly good at tying dreams into my waking life and seriously confusing me.

Example: There was a website I'd been logging onto to post videos of my dreams, topics and discussion, it also had a very specific layout, easily recognisable to me. It took me weeks to realise that, "Shit, how am I posting videos of my dreams? You can't do that-but, I've been going on that website for ages. I don't get it, I love that website...oh."
My mind totally bypassed the rationalisation and I was "logging into the site" every day for a while. I was seriously gutted when I realised. I also have recurring dream locations.

Originally Posted by iarpo

Example: There was a website I'd been logging onto to post videos of my dreams, topics and discussion, it also had a very specific layout, easily recognisable to me. It took me weeks to realise that, "Shit, how am I posting videos of my dreams? You can't do that-but, I've been going on that website for ages. I don't get it, I love that website...oh."
My mind totally bypassed the rationalisation and I was "logging into the site" every day for a while. I was seriously gutted when I realised. I also have recurring dream locations.

I once had a dream that seemed to last a few months where i had a baby son and i had a job and everything, then i woke up and it had only been 8 hours. upon realisation that it had been a dream and my "son" was a fabrication i was devisted. i missed him for months after the dream. Very strange.