Could dreaming be *dangerous*?

[Gortiag]

Hi all. I've been doing some research, and I've searched the forums and all.. But I didn't find any serious contemplation on this topic. Of course, this doesn't mean there aren't any. Anyways, I've always had the attitude that dreaming is like stepping into another reality.. A reality as real as ours. In just about all shamanic traditions I know of, "dreaming", and being in light or heavy trance is a vital part of the "magicks". Lucid Dreaming seems to be a lot like being in very intense meditation. The comparison would be like entering a meditation and *only* spending attention to what you are meditating upon. This way, the meditation would be your only focus of attention, as in dreams your only focus of attention is your dream. Perhaps this is a part of making Lucid Dreaming, and normal dreaming, so intense? The undivided attention? Well, to get to my point, what if you, perhaps by accident (because you're a newbie with too much potential or whatever), travelled to an actual place on another plane? I've heard stories about people "going away", or simply laying down to sleep and never coming back. So, considering that you *can* travel to actual *real* places in other worlds or planes, couldn't this be dangerous? What if you'd get killed? What if someone, or something, actually got around to killing you? Most people here seem to hold the attitude "Well, it's only a dream, you can't get hurt." But, how can we be so sure? What would have happened to you if your mother had not woken you up in time - before the aliens dragged you out of the window? What would happen if you'd experience a "free fall"-dream and actually hit the ground, while being in the person (not only feeling it, and seeing it from the outside, but being inside, smashing into the pavement?) I've been through too much to disregard stuff like this as "impossible" or "fiction". And I think many of you have, too. Well, regardless of how I feel, what do you think? Please post you comments and thoughts. Could it be *dangerous*?

[Alric]

I don't think you have anything to worry about. I don't see how a lucid dream is any different than a normal dream, atleast in its basic makeup. So it should not be any more dangerous than that. If you think normal dreams are dangerous though, then I am not sure what to say. You can't stop sleeping so theres not much you can do about it.

[Regalecus]

About that dying in a dream myth: I have dreamt of being killed a couple times. And here i am. I have dreamt about falling and hitting the ground And here i am So there's no need to worry about that point at least, as far as my exp teaches me as a side note, how could that rumor have started? its not if someone who dreamed about dying and actually died could have told ppl what was his/her dream about!

[Placebo]

I guess it all depends on how deep dreaming really goes. As Alric said - if you feel that dreaming opens you up to danger, then you're screwed either way You have to dream, its a requirement to live.. Regarding other dimensions, I'm not sure I believe all of that, so I can't comment. I believe certain things are possible, eg. shared dreams and precognition... but not some alternative dangerous dimension where things will swallow you alive As to the 'dying in the dream' thing - I've free fallen into the ground. And I'm perfectly alive. And sane. I think. Mwhajahahahahaah!!!

[Mickeys_Elbow]

Maybe not physically hurt, but like anything in real life, if it is bad enough and sticks with you (maybe you can't distinguish it as a dream or something) it could scar you psychologically. I've never heard of it happening before, but I won't dismiss it because it's unknown to me. After all, there are many things in this world I have never, and will never see, that exist regardless of observation.

[Placebo]

Originally posted by Mickeys_Elbow it could scar you psychologically. Once again, it depends on how deep dreaming really goes. Most dreaming involves internal reworking and reliving of past experience So the only scarring that can happen is from things that already are in your existing realm of understanding and experience Which is why tibetan monks seldom get nightmares

[Gortiag]

Wow, okay.. So I guess then that I should consider dreaming as not dangerous... But *if* it actually turns dangerous at some point, then I'm fu**ed. Makes sense, actually. (^_^)

[Kaniaz]

As will the rest of the world be, if it turns out to be dangerous...but after we've got millions of people on this word, and billions of dreams being dreamt, none have been reported as dangerous, to the best of my knowledge.

[Gortiag]

I guess I'll stop my worrying and just relax and continue on. If nobody else has gotten harmed, why should I? Thanks

[justme]

i died plenty of times in dreams but sometimes after a violent dream my legs get sore and they stay like that for a few days and once my friend got a cut in a dream and she woke up with a cut on her arm but im pretty sure you cant get hurt in a lucid dream

[Placebo]

Originally posted by justme i died plenty of times in dreams but sometimes after a violent dream my legs get sore and they stay like that for a few days and once my friend got a cut in a dream and she woke up with a cut on her arm but im pretty sure you cant get hurt in a lucid dream She most likely got cut in the waking world somehow, and it filtered through to the dream. As for the legs, I've heard of people having an ache from a dream injury. That would be because your subconscious partly believes the injury to be real. It does not mean that you can die in dreams, only that you can wake up and have a bad day

[midknight]

I think the only danger is if you have an unusally weak heart, and getting excited could cause a heart attack. But I mean, thats not very likely and if your hearts in that condition your not having very good chances for life in general anymore. I have had strokes in dreams. Complete lack of thought and unconciousness followed by waking up. It was frightening, but I am still alive. I have also died a lot in dreams. It's no biggy.

[Gortiag]

So the common belief in the LD-world is that dreams are messages from your subconsciousness? And nothing more? You could get hurt, if you can't deal with the messages in an appropriate way. I always thought that dreaming was more like traveling. I've read about some tibetan monks, who when they decided they wanted to die, simply sat down and meditated. Then the traveled to the world where the connection to the body is no longer possible, and they died. Dreaming is a lot like impulsive meditation, meditation without the security and structure of the logical mind. Is there noone who thinks that you could do *real* tangible things in your dreams? That there could come actual physical consequenses out of your dreams? Some people use voodoo, and stuff like that in this world. And, it seems to work on the living ones in the waking world. When we sleep, we are much more open to things in "that sphere". So, would we not be even more vulnerable in our sleep? Both against our own mistakes and the actions of others? It would seem strange, if we would be "sealed off" when we go to sleep, and all we could contact was the subconscious levels of ourselves.

[Shadows]

yea i think dreaming can be dangerous. i have know dreams to hurt people mentally and i've known them to hurt people phyically. like last night. i had a dream that i was cut by thorns. i woke up this morning i had little cuts on me. as for mentally. even if they are JUST dreams. they can hurt people a lot

[Howie]

Originally posted by Shadows yea i think dreaming can be dangerous. i have know dreams to hurt people mentally and i've known them to hurt people phyically. like last night. i had a dream that i was cut by thorns. i woke up this morning i had little cuts on me. as for mentally. even if they are JUST dreams. they can hurt people a lot Hey shadows, where from Ohio are you from? Like stigmata? self induced marks perhaps?

[Gortiag]

Originally posted by Howetzer Hey shadows, where from Ohio are you from? Like stigmata? * self induced marks perhaps? Why can't anybody simple believe that we *could* be physically affected by others or our own minds? I'm open to this, because my grandmother could do those kinds of stuff.. People she has cursed have actually died. One time, it could have been a coincidence.. But after that, it gets creepy. I'm lucky to be born after she recovered her sanity a little bit. It's really baffling me to meet this attitude on a forum that discusses something like lucid dreaming..

[Howie]

Hey, I can't help it. I just don't believe it. And I feel that I am an open minded person. It would just be one of those things that would have to be proven to me. Like shared dreaming. I don't discount it yet I don't feel it is true. If I cannot believe I just can't believe. Give me your reasons that you do not think that the marks were made by oneself. preemtive remarks made by her? Just trying to understand.

[Gortiag]

Well, uh, I haven't got any reasons good enough to stand the criticism of a questioning mind, but I just have this feeling. My mom had such wounds once. These came while she were a sleep, and the came at such strange places that a normal person could not have done it and she's not very agile. She talked with some of the people she knew, reliable people - I've talked to them myself and all - and they said shamanism or voodoo. Sure, they could be full of shit, but it all seems to click in my head because of specific circumstances that I won't mention. Well, anyways. So, about the dreaming stuff. If someone could hurt you with those kinds of things, here in this physical sphere, then someone with more skill should logically be able to do those kinds of things on other planes. On the planes you go when you sleep. (I refuse to believe that dreaming is some crude, mechanical process only in my brain) The body you use when you sleep is a body linked to the physical body. So, this body getting hurt should resemble something in the physical body. And, aches and such are consequenses of dreaming that people seem to accept. If the aches is a result of a hurting "sleep body", then the results of killing "sleep body" would be fatal. I think my theories makes sense. And, why would someone lie on an internet-forum where nobody knows the real you? That doesn't make sense. Just trying to understand, too.

[Howie]

Originally posted by Gortiag Well, anyways. So, about the dreaming stuff. If someone could hurt you with those kinds of things, here in this physical sphere, then someone with more skill should logically be able to do those kinds of things on other planes. On the planes you go when you sleep. (I refuse to believe that dreaming is some crude, mechanical process only in my brain) (I refuse to believe that dreaming is some crude, mechanical process only in my brain) I couldn't agree with you more. There has to be more to it than going over the days events. The body is much more efficiant than that. That would be (I cannot think of the best word) profound? - if there were other planes & we could learn to use them. And for good no less what a concept.

[Gortiag]

" And for good no less what a concept. " Um, I'm sorry, what do you mean?

[Shadows]

Originally posted by Howetzer+--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Howetzer)</div> <!--QuoteBegin-Shadows yea i think dreaming can be dangerous. i have know dreams to hurt people mentally and i've known them to hurt people phyically. like last night. i had a dream that i was cut by thorns. i woke up this morning i had little cuts on me. as for mentally. even if they are JUST dreams. they can hurt people a lot Hey shadows, where from Ohio are you from? Like stigmata? self induced marks perhaps?[/b] im from Clermont County. down by Cincinatti. idk what they were. just i woke up with them and there was no way they could have been from something i'd done

[Shenjairo]

Will try to sort of go logically through this and add some of my own experiences. Let's go through the senses one by one to see how they fool the mind. Sight. The most basic, we all see things during dreams and don't even think about it. We can see lingering images sometimes when we wake up and in dreams sometimes see much clearer than what you've ever seen before. You never seem to need glasses in a dream. You don't actually see things in real life but your mind fully accept as having seen it. I don't know why some dream in black/white, some in color and some a combination of both. Myself I don't think I've ever dreamt a black/white dream. Hearing. Also basic, we talk with people in dreams and hear music or noises. Some people has even written down the music they heard while dreaming. I would imagine that people that has become deaf after they have grown up still can hear perfectly well in dreams. I had one unpleasant experience when I was around 8, I used to have these nightmares where I heard very loud crashes and banging of cymbals and it often zoomed out to show how small I was. One time when I woke up I still heard them for about 5 minutes and I felt sick and miserable. The sound wasn't real, yet my mind still thought it was and it did effect me, it took a while before I could hear the very subtle sounds around me like for example the rustling of leafs. Smell & Taste. Bundling these together since it doesn't happen very often and the focus of this post is mainly on touch. Personally smell is more common than taste, but both can linger slightly when you wake up if you happen to wake at that moment. It mainly seems to happen for me in lucid dreams, or if I experience it in a normal dream it's such an odd sensation that I become aware that it's a dream. Now if you can smell something nice and the brain thinks it's real since it registers it I think that theoretically smelling or tasting something really awful could make you vomit in real life. But since it (for me) mainly happens in lucid dreams I doubt that has happened. Who would in a very clear dream with full control actually go and eat something that you know you would throw up of if you did it in real life? Touch. Or maybe split it in skin-sense and nerve-sense. This is the sense that would be the most detrimental if it also happened to you when waking up. I had a dream where I just recently had fallen asleep. I dreamt I was still lying in my bed and trying to fall asleep and became slightly lucid because I could see my room even though I knew I was lying with my face mostly buried in a pillow so I thought to myself 'Odd, but if I put my hand down on this red wooden cube I have by the bed I will know if I'm dreaming or not. If I can feel it I'm still awake'. I couldn't actually see the red wooden cube, I just knew it was there in the dream. Normally I have no such cube by the bed, but when I put my palm against it it actually felt real, I could feel all over my hand how I pressed against it and I felt it clearly even though it was a light touch. It fooled me into thinking that I was still awake and I went back into trying to fall asleep. Then there's the sex part, without going into too much detail it can really feel real, or even better. You feel warmth, pressure and even someones breath on your skin, and many has had real orgasms from this even though nothing has been touched. Your mind definitely thought it real enough to warrant a bodily reaction. Most importantly though there's pain, and if the mind can be tricked into pleasure it's logical it can also be tricked into pain. As I wrote in my introduction post I had a dream where I woke screaming because almost every nerve cell in the left part of my brain thought it experienced pain after a lucid dream where I wasn't in deep enough sleep where I failed to summon something and concentrated too hard. If I were to rank how strong it felt it would probably place itself as the 4th most painful thing I've ever experienced. It would have been higher if it had lasted, but the initial pain lasted only 2-3 seconds before it gradually began to fade. It felt very much like the worst pain I've ever had, an exceptionally bad case of wryneck that spread itself through the nerve cells up into the brain with every slight move and after a while when stationary too because of a too static position. During that time in the 2.5 hours it took to roll out of bed so I could put some ointment on my neck I was wondering if you could die from pain alone without any other threats. I tried getting out once in a while, but was blackening out and didn't dare to become unconscious because I didn't know what would happen if I twisted my neck in a bad way while I was out. Since I've experienced it I can say that dreams can for sure inflict pain, and since it can I don't think I will go against the theory that it can also cause death. It's not like someone that it has happened to can come and confirm it. The times when someone dies in bed and everyone assumes it's because of a heart attack it could have been something else. Dying in a dream doesn't seem to have much to do with it since everyone has had that happen to them, if it could happen I would lean more towards my theory about fooling your nerve-sense. I know that if I had been in a hospital and being badly damaged when that happened to me it could have had an effect, or if it had happened when I was 80+ it could very well have caused a heart attack. It wouldn't be the dream killing you since it really is because of the heart attack, but since it wouldn't have happened without the dream I think the dream should get some blame for it. I wonder how we will think about these things in 50 years, would hope there's some major break-through in this area before it's time for me to go.

[Gortiag]

Great post Shenjairo. I agree, there is too little facts on this subject.. I hope researchers will find a way to examine these things for sure. Today, scientists can only touch upon the five senses, but many people believe that we have more, and I'm not about to try to prove them wrong. 500 years ago, the scientists of that time told humantiy that the world was flat. The "scientists" that proved it to be round, were not considered "scientists" at that time. They were considered lunatics, or people with too much fiction in their brains. There's just too many maybe:s.

[Kaniaz]

There are. Currently anybody with anything about Lucid Dreaming could be right until proven otherwise. Shame, really...

[Gortiag]

Yeah, but I guess that goes for all new branches of science.. Or rather, everybody could be right - but the most common attitude is that everybody is wrong until proven right. And that's very healthy, to an extent.