lucid dream or other world?
Hello all Ive been lucid dreaming for over 30 years and Im almost convinced that our minds or souls are transported to another world when lucid dreaming. Based on the realism including sight, taste, touch, smell and real coversations with people Ive never met. Also based on questions I ask others in my lucid dreams. Your thoughts on the possibility that they are not dreams but real?
Really good explorations, Longtimelucid!
Longtimelucid,
Your experiences and questions and suppositions are all 100% valid. You are completely correct that science really has no idea what "reality" is. Science attempts to understand what the physical senses perceive. Science is incapable of even elementary understanding of very common experiences like "thought", "emotions", "love", or even "gravity" for that matter (although they have made very primitive measurements of their electrical compliments). Respected scientists have formulated numerous untested theories such as String Theory and Multiple Dimensional Universes. Your theories, Longtimelucid, are just as valid as theirs. You do not have to be able to provide any supporting evidence to have a theory even if posters here criticize you for not doing so.
I have noticed a basic aspect of human nature is to be uncomfortable with the unknown and for people to take some kind of comfort in telling themselves that they "know" certain things. People utilize these ideas to help them to feel more comfortable in a very nebulous and unclear world. So you find people posting here who know nothing about you and yet tell you that you are not experienced enough, or that you should work little longer and come back when you have had the same experiences that they have had. Posters who repeat 10 times in a post that they "didn't say that" are obviously exhibiting defensiveness and insecurity. We should all feel insecure about our observations. None of us know anything, and certainly none of us know anything about the extent of the other's experience or capabilities. All bragging should be taken with a grain of salt and the ad hominem attacks should be ignored.
I have tried your experiment myself and got the same result that you did. In my experiences, dream contacts never know the date or the place and look at me in a puzzled way like they don't even know what the questions mean. I posted an experience of my own in which I collected information about the dream environment that would identify the place, such as house numbers and street signs. Perhaps you could look for these in your future explorations as an alternative to trying to get answers from contacts.
There is no way to know exactly the source, the mechanism or the purpose of lucid dreams. Since the history of life largely exhibits a propensity for evolutionary development, I try to see how lucid dreaming could assist in the evolution of humans. Since it seems to be a power of the mind, I suspect that the mind is evolving the ability to more effectively manipulate its environment. I have also posted experiences of "lucid wakefulness" in which I attempt to manipulate physical experience in the same way I would manipulate a dream experience.
I have also explored the possibility that the mind is simply a transmittter and receiver of information from other dimensions of experience beyond the one percievable to the physical senses. This is a definite possibility although I have not evolved enough to be able to offer any confirmation of this theory.
JJ
It's only in your own head/mind
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Sageous
^^ Actually, there is plenty of proof that dreams are just happening inside your head, including years of brain-scan studies using fMRI machines (devices that allow us to see brain activity as it is happening), psychological studies, and decades of sleep study. As far as science is concerned, it's pretty clear that dreams are indeed manufactured inside your head, and you are not literally visiting other worlds when you dream, lucid or not. In other words, the proof that we dream inside our heads is already in, and has been for years; no belief necessary. But that, I believe, is not the end of the story:
Even with that proof in hand, there is still quite a bit we don't know yet about the true nature of dreaming. Sure, the worlds we visit are created inside our heads, but at the same time might we be making a connection to things beyond the workings of our many neurons alone? Could we be psychically sharing our created worlds with other dreamers, and vise-verse? These are just a couple of potential aspects of dreaming that could exist just fine even with the scientific proof noted, and discovering that they are possible through lucid dreaming would open some amazing doors for all of us, and I for one would be delighted if they could be proven. Belief in wonderful things is a fine stance for an open, inquiring mind, but to take that next step and convert that faith to actual knowledge is a far more powerful tool for that same mind.
So Snoop's question is valid, and sincere, I think: If lucid dreamers can find some sort of proof that they are experiencing worlds beyond the confines of their own skulls, this world would become a much more interesting place!
I have to agree with all my years of Total Dream Control and Experimentation. I can only come to the conclusion it is in your head. Maybe it's another reality, but only in your own mind.
The universe is not so simple :)
:)
Quote:
Originally Posted by
EricinLA
I have to agree with all my years of Total Dream Control and Experimentation. I can only come to the conclusion it is in your head. Maybe it's another reality, but only in your own mind.
< Berlin, 1929. The poet and journalist George Sylvester Viereck has charmed an interview out of an initially reluctant superstar physicist¹. He asks: "How do you account for your discoveries? Through intuition or inspiration?" Albert Einstein replies:
"Both. I sometimes feel I am right, but do not know it. When two expeditions of scientists went to test my theory I was convinced they would confirm my theory. I wasn't surprised when the results confirmed my intuition, but I would have been surprised had I been wrong. I'm enough of an artist to draw freely on my imagination, which I think is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world."
Knowledge versus imagination. Einstein's aphorisms reflects a recurrent theme in human thought. The ancient dichotomy between what we know and what we dream, intuit or sense by instinct is found, in some form, in every field of human intellectual endeavour. It is seen in the contrast between rationalist and mystic interpretations of the world's great religions, between realism and surrealism in the visual arts and between the brutal number-crunching of much experimental physics and the feathery abstractions of superstring and membrane theory.
Was Einstein right? Is imagination more important than knowledge? As our realities become more complex we seem increasingly to prefer imagination, but that preference is culture-dependent.
Yet cult doctrines, born in the fiery freedom of imagination, tend to solidify into the restriction of dogma, leading to the rejection of any information which does not fit. As social psychologists ( and I am) have noted, however, the pattern of growth, stability and attrition seems to be a fundamental one for human groups across many different fields of endeavour.
So is imagination more important than knowledge? It depends on whom you ask, what you ask about, and when."
From Kathleen Taylor , a research scientist in the department of physiology at Oxford University >