Thread: Finding out the real time in dreams?

Originally Posted by ShockWave

All of what Puffin said is correct. However, some people have the ability to say they're going to wake up at a certain time, and they do wake up at that time, because their body is used to how fast time passes. Therefore, it may be possible to approximate the time while you're in a dream, if you have the ability to do that. Don't quote me on this though because I don't know much about it.

ShockWave.

Actually, I can do that. It's a good thing too, since most alarms don't wake me up
And Puffin, usually the way I WILD glance at the clock which is projected onto my wall in front of me so i don't even have to get up, look at a paper that says what I want to do in that LD, and close my eyes and WILD in a few seconds. I don't put any thought into these things so I can just fall asleep easily but watching the patterns on my eyelids is what keeps me conscious. The problem is even though I can count while I do it I find that when I try to even repeat a mantra while I'm doing this it makes it more like regular WILD length instead of around DEILD length, which although I'm getting better at regular WILDs I'm better at my little WILD/DEILD thing that I do.

I guess some time I can try looking at the time and purposely waking myself up and seeing if the time is about right but I still have quite a few things I would rather do. If this thread isn't completely dead by the time I do this I'll most likely post the results.

a quote from "exploring the world of lucid dreaming" of Stephen Laberge:

"I knew that earlier studies had demonstrated that the direction of dreamers’ physical eye movements during REM was sometimes exactly the same as the direction that they reported looking in their dreams"

...

"One of the earliest experiments conducted by my research team tested the traditional notion that the experience of dream time is somehow different from time in the waking world. We approached the problem of dream time by asking subjects to make an eye movement signal in their lucid dreams, estimate a ten-second interval (by counting one thousand and one, one thousand and two, etc. ), and then make another eye movement signal. In all cases, we found time estimates made in lucid dreams were within a few seconds of estimates made in the waking state and likewise quite close to the actual time between signals. From this we have concluded that in lucid dreams, estimated dream time is very nearly equal to clock time; that is, it takes just as long to do something in a dream as it does to actually do it."

i think that answers your question