Thread: Can We Really Spend Years In A Lucid Dream?

When you add up all the time you will spend in dreams over your lifetime, it's about 5 years...so technically yes it's possible to spend years in lucid dreams.

Induced coma with induced dreams with induced lucidity, anyone?

I hate to, what do you call it, "necro" a thread, but I had one of these "time dilation" dreams this morning, and figured it was worth sharing.

The dream itself was fairly long, lasting over three hours (with no breaks that I know of), but it "felt" like weeks, and, given that I was mildly lucid or better throughout, that was an odd sensation indeed. The plot doesn't matter -- I was trapped in my sleeping body in a hospital bed for weeks, watching doctors, nurses, and my wife fuss over me, worry about me, operate on me, and chat fairly rudely about my condition. I know -- a bit too "Outer Limits" trite for me too, even at the time, but it was what I dreamed. More happened, including my escape (after countless attempts, I finally "woke up" into a new dream) and discovery of the person who put me in there in the first place (during that new dream), but none of that matters.

What does matter is that the dream seemed like it went on for weeks -- upon waking I would have sworn to it as fact, and was even worn out and more than a bit disoriented. But when I sat down and really tried to remember the experience on a day-to-day basis, and flesh out some of the memories, as we can with waking-life real-time memories, and I simply couldn't. The more I thought about it, with the "knowledge" in my head that I had actually "lived" a week in the last three hours, the more I realized that I could not remember any more than a couple hours of actually events. If I had jumped out of bed and announced my weeks-long adventure as real without doing that memory test, I would very likely continue swearing that that much time had actually passed.

Anyway, this seemed like an excellent example of how people can have dreams that "seem" to stretch over a very long time, though they didn't, and memory can possibly trick the dreamer into believing that the impression of time passing actually was time passing...

I haven't spent the time to read this entire thread, but I think Stephen LaBerge has shown that dream time is the same as real-life time. So the only way lucids can last years is if you are actually asleep for years, or if your dream gives you the illusion of spanning years.

I had a dream once, that felt like it lasted for four years. I was a man in the dream, running from the police. I went to several different cities, grew a beard, rented an apartment. Mine was like Sageous's dream in that I could only remember bits, not every single moment.

But, just to play devil's advocate...
If you were to try to recall the past four years of your life, you would remember it the same way - just highlights, not every single moment. How can we objectively know that we are only seeming to live years in a dream by jumping from one important moment to the next and not actually living for years in a dream - literally living every single moment in the dream - but only remembering it the same way we do everything else?

Originally Posted by hermine_hesse

But, just to play devil's advocate...
If you were to try to recall the past four years of your life, you would remember it the same way - just highlights, not every single moment.

Exactly. Comparing my memories from one of these long dreams to my normal memories is spooky. I find I have more memories from one night than I have from the last year of real life. (I have a pretty remarkable memory, too.) It is only after the memory from the dream has faded a bit that it suddenly seems short. When I commit the dream to long term memory, then recall it later, it seems like it only lasted an hour or two, like a movie. It is in those first few moments after waking from the dream, that I know it lasted years.

Right on, Robot Butler.
If I right down my dreams immediately when I wake up, it's not uncommon for me to fill 6 or 7 pages, even skimping on details. If I were to right down the events of my normal day filling it with detail, I would be lucky to take up 2 pages.

...oookay then. Not quite the reactions I expected, but I'll just back off and let the majority rule.

Before I go, though, I ask Robot and Hermine to sit for a moment and carefully try to remember the things you did over the last year (or four years, as it were). Do you really think that an accurate detailing of a long stretch of waking life would be as disjointed as a remembered dream? If you sit back and really think about that, and then still think you can't attach detail to your own memories, then fine, we might be spending years in dreams. But think, and remember, carefully, first. There might be more substance to the passing of your waking days than you think.

Originally Posted by Sageous

...oookay then. Not quite the reactions I expected, but I'll just back off and let the majority rule.

Before I go, though, I ask Robot and Hermine to sit for a moment and carefully try to remember the things you did over the last year (or four years, as it were). Do you really think that an accurate detailing of a long stretch of waking life would be as disjointed as a remembered dream? If you sit back and really think about that, and then still think you can't attach detail to your own memories, then fine, we might be spending years in dreams. But think, and remember, carefully, first. There might be more substance to the passing of your waking days than you think.

like I said, just playing Devil's Advocate a bit...

Originally Posted by Sageous

Anyway, this seemed like an excellent example of how people can have dreams that "seem" to stretch over a very long time, though they didn't, and memory can possibly trick the dreamer into believing that the impression of time passing actually was time passing...

I actually agree with you that this is probably what is going on when we have dreams that seem to last for long periods of time My argument is that I can't be 100% sure that this is always what is happening. And, even though I have been LDing for a long time, I'm still basically a novice in much of skill set, so at this point in my journey, I feel labeling anything as impossible in a dream is just limiting myself. So I guess, my argument was less aimed at you - who is offering a reasonable explanation of what is happening - and more at the thread as whole - there seemed to be a lot of people saying this is feat impossible.

And please don't back off. As someone who is a very experienced LDer and always has great advice, I highly value your opinion and always learn something from reading your threads.

Originally Posted by hermine_hesse

I actually agree with you that this is probably what is going on when we have dreams that seem to last for long periods of time My argument is that I can't be 100% sure that this is always what is happening. And, even though I have been LDing for a long time, I'm still basically a novice in much of skill set, so at this point in my journey, I feel labeling anything as impossible in a dream is just limiting myself. So I guess, my argument was less aimed at you - who is offering a reasonable explanation of what is happening - and more at the thread as whole - there seemed to be a lot of people saying this is feat impossible.

And please don't back off. As someone who is a very experienced LDer and always has great advice, I highly value your opinion and always learn something from reading your threads.

Okay, I'll hang on here a bit then...I was always a sucker for this subject anyway.

I think you are correct when you say that it isn't time yet in the history of LD'ing to positively announce any suspected phenomenon as impossible. We're all just too new at it (hell, even the Tibetans are new at it, historically speaking) to claim to know everything about LD'ing -- which is what you must be able to do in order to establish impossibility of a thing like LD time dilation.

I think that I posted on this thread the fact that, since time doesn't exist (it's a tool for measurement, and completing the "big" equations, but enjoys no actual physical existence beyond our attached perception of its passage), there is certainly a chance that you can change the way you use it in a completely different perceptual world like LD'ing. I think I also said somewhere else that I'm suspect of folks who claim to have spent years in single LD's though, because they're trusting their memory to define those years, which is a very tenuous tool indeed!

Almost everything we use to define ourselves is based on memory, and not on "here & now" experience (especially because "here & now" is even relegated to memory immediately). Indeed, all of our non-lucid dreams are memories, because we don't acknowledge their existence until we're awake. LD's have a slight leg up, because we at least get to add a bit of "here & now" waking consciousness to firm up the memories. But we're still remembering what happened when we wake up, so we're still in thrall to the way our memory recorded a dream. So, if you had a dream full of different events, time changes, and a sensation of the passage of years, your memory will dutifully record all those things in a pattern that makes sense -- and that pattern will likely include the passage of years in its weave. It can't be avoided.

But it can be accounted for: the next time you have a dream that seems to have gone on for years, before you do anything, try to remember the minutiae of your life in that dream; things like your morning routines, where you shopped for food, or the face of your mailman -- things that you wouldn't normally remember in waking life, but if you think about them, they're there. If those minor details are not there when you remember that years-long dream, there's an excellent chance that your dream was simply fantastically complex, but it didn't last as long as your memory told you it did. Also, think for a moment about your environment -- if you were gone for years, your room should seem strange, your family and friends like distant acquaintances and, on the flip-side, you would be mourning the world you just left, because everything and everyone you knew, for years, are now gone; dead.

So I guess my point here is that relying on your memory as the only source for confirmation of a years-long dream may not be the best route to take, because that memory, by design, might trick you. And, more for Robot Butler, there's a whole lot more going on than you immediately think is happening in waking life, no matter how dull that life is. I think you'd find yourself filling many pages with memories of the last year, if you moved past the big stuff and really thought about it.

Originally Posted by LucidDreams17

@Oneironaut so it's possible to basically live in a dream for years and wake up back in reality in the morning like nothing happened?

Unless you can sleep for years and surive without eating or drinking then no , you can get the "feeling" of being in a lucid dream for years i guess .. i had about 8lucid dreams in a row last night they all seemed quite long aswell it was crazy !

No, because you'll die of thirst and if if you stay in one position for prolonged periods you die as well

Originally Posted by Ermac

No, because you'll die of thirst and if if you stay in one position for prolonged periods you die as well

You repeat yourself without adding any further information, not to mention that answer still totally lies beside the point of time dilation. If no time dilation in dreams is possible you're right, but absolutely everyone here knows that.

Originally Posted by lucidisfree:)

Unless you can sleep for years and surive without eating or drinking then no , you can get the "feeling" of being in a lucid dream for years i guess .. i had about 8lucid dreams in a row last night they all seemed quite long aswell it was crazy !

Originally Posted by ermac

No, because you'll die of thirst and if if you stay in one position for prolonged periods you die as well

Do either of you actually know what time dilation is?

i think ones' recall would have to be pretty good to live out a full year in dream and live to remember it all. Alot of times in my dreams I refer to other events or deja vu's that happend before affecting the current timeline of my dream, only to wake up and wonder where the h that memory came from. It feels as though it is a memory from real life and I have to question it and realize it never happened wakefully.

Originally Posted by Aeroproxy

Well if you know AL3ZAY on DV, He Said he had opened up a Time Warp Portal and he opened the door to the portal he had a realtime watch and a dreamtime watch, and he had his dream companion to help him remember that he was dreaming. So in the end he said he spent 60 years in a dream and when he got out he said he was in a biiiiig daze.

Oh my God Yes. --- i see it is just in nature of human mind to seeks the impossibilities instead possibilities --- it is possible to have an LD without false memories, gaps and really long...
sometimes one has to shut mind and really try the impossible

Originally Posted by Aeroproxy

@goodkat How do you know have you tried it? Anything is possible.

Anything is not possible, this saying is stupid...

I can't remember the exact analogy but I believe in the book 'Exploring The World of Lucid Dreaming' (You may have heard of it ) by Stephen LaBerge he described the passage of time in a dream in a very understandable manner. The way he put it was that time occurs much like it does in a movie, where for instance in a movie you are fooled into believing years or months have passed because perhaps some text flashes up on the screen saying '6 Months Later' and you witness a scene change and can clearly identify due to changes in characters and environment that time has certainty passed.

Analogous with the dream world it is still entirely just an illusion unlike reality you don't witness every second of of the time. Instead you skip scenes and just like with the movie you're tricked into believing time has passed because it makes logical sense. Actually saying "tricked" is a bad way to term it because it goes against the idea of awareness, and you would have to be pretty darn aware to have dreams with such longevity, instead it's more like going along with the game. Once again with a movie you play along, you know time really hasn't passed because the scene just occurred a second ago but you play along because the illusion suits the narrative.

Originally Posted by Ctharlhie

Do either of you actually know what time dilation is?

Yeah I also didn't understand if they were trolling, some people in here don't understand that our brain can trick us into perceiving different lengths of time.

Originally Posted by Sageous

Almost everything we use to define ourselves is based on memory, and not on "here & now" experience (especially because "here & now" is even relegated to memory immediately). Indeed, all of our non-lucid dreams are memories, because we don't acknowledge their existence until we're awake. LD's have a slight leg up, because we at least get to add a bit of "here & now" waking consciousness to firm up the memories. But we're still remembering what happened when we wake up, so we're still in thrall to the way our memory recorded a dream. So, if you had a dream full of different events, time changes, and a sensation of the passage of years, your memory will dutifully record all those things in a pattern that makes sense -- and that pattern will likely include the passage of years in its weave. It can't be avoided.

I think this is really important, not to be thought of as nipping the idea about long dreams, but as looking for a way to develop the perception of it.
The brain is very good at confabulating a story from disparate pieces of information - the same cognitive processes that let us make sense of dreams in the first place, and stay unaware of them.
What is time but our instantaneous processing of sensations?
If you think about the things you did yesterday (unless you are actively practicing awareness techniques) you won't remember the fine details and thoughts and sensations of every moment of that day - though you will remember key events and perceive from that the passage of a day.
(How often at the end of the year do people comment on how fast it went - yet we store it based on few key events)

So, while it is very likely this phenomenon is merely a (mis)remembering of the passage of time, I'd say it doesnt matter. If you wake up and think you've spent a long time in that state, and feel you have learned from it, grown from that experience, that is the important thing.

Perhaps there is a way to manipulate such an experience, like in a LD put yourself in an early morning, then after some time jump to the evening, and see if a) you 'remember' what happened in the intervening time, and b) whether it feels like a day passed upon waking.

On a side note, how frustrating to be in a dream for a year and not once think to do a RC?!

Someone on the forum said they summoned a door that when he went through it time would be extremely slowed.

I've read that as well. I've also read of people creating portals, where they expected or said aloud that "1 min will feel like 10" or something along those lines. I'm definetely going to try that in one of my next lucids.