Alyzarin

I had a dream before and after this one, but I was too lazy to write them down. They're not important, anyway.... I spent like eight hours helping a friend do yard work immediately after getting up so I don't remember much of this dream other than what I wrote down, but what's really important to me is what happened at the end....

Vividness Is An Illusion [DILD]

So first, the part of the dream I just barely remember. It was another high school dream, and there was some plot going on about some girl who wanted to kill us all and expected me to play along with it. (I don't remember this in the slightest, it's just from the notes). There was lots of really trippy stuff going on though, like when I was in a hallway and couldn't figure out which way to go, I looked at a wall and saw this guy J's face attached to the wall smiling this creepy smile and tilted sideways in the correct direction, so I smiled back and walked that way. Also, I remember being in a class and seeing my cat walking around, and people wanted me to follow them so I told them to hold up while I put my cat away. I picked up my backpack and unzipped the center area to put him in, but when I looked inside there was another cat already in there, and he looked like he was starving. I said "Oh shit! I must have put this other cat in here already and forgot about him, my bad.", then just left them both there and walked off. Anyway, so the girl that was trying to kill us wanted me to do something, but I didn't fall for her trap this time. I became very mildly lucid and just flew up, phasing through the higher floors, until I was over the building. I was just trying to get away from the girl and didn't really have any goals in mind, so from high up I just watched some kids playing soccer in the distance until I woke up.

This is where it got interesting for me. I'm no longer confused about the last time I woke up and was still dreaming but everything was SO real, including detail I hadn't actually seen before, and I even was pretty sure I was awake at first but then lost focus, in a way that false awakenings don't. That and this were hypnopompic hallucinations. So I woke up in bed, facing the wall. It was pretty dark still, but then suddenly I heard a guy talking extremely clearly and there was sounds of cheering on a TV. I didn't see either one, but I immediately got mental images, the voice was coming from a heavyset black man and the TV (which was not actually on) was showing some soccer game. Unlike the last time where I was asked by a hallucinated M if I was up and I responded "I think I'm awake....", but then forgot about it when I started listening to her, this time I knew exactly what was going on. I started mentally repeating to myself "It's a hallucination, it's a hallucination...." I got a very clear image of what was going on in the soccer game too, there were no players at all, just several soccer balls of different sizes. They were moving in strange trajectories one at a time until they hit the next one and caused it to roll, sort of like dominoes causing each other to fall over. The man was talking about the game, though I can't remember what he was saying now, it was all rather startling and I wasn't paying much attention, not to mention my short-term memory was still pretty terrible. Eventually though he started just saying complete gibberish words, and I knew the hallucination was falling apart. I took a leap of faith and quickly turned over to see if he was there, but the room was empty. All the sounds vanished, and I felt very dissociated for a second, and then I returned to full waking consciousness. There was no feeling of waking up because I was already awake, just sort of a transitional blip.

Basically what I can say about this is... it made me realize how much we fool ourselves into thinking that regular lucid dreams are vivid. I'm sure they can be made extremely vivid like this, but they're still nowhere near as vivid as waking life. My most realistic dream, which I previously would have said was possibly even more vivid than reality, now just seems like a hallucination compared to this. Senses like hearing and sight can definitely be waaay up there in dreams, the amount of detail in specific objects can definitely match reality, but there's so much more that just isn't present in dreams. In waking life your brain constantly monitors your heart rate, breathing rate, the position of each of your limbs and how comfortable they are, what temperature you are in various parts of your body, whether you have any itches, if you're hungry, thirsty, bloated, sweaty, physically nervous.... All five of your senses are constantly at work at full vividness, your brain knows that it has to keep itself aware of EVERYTHING in your line of sight and peripherals, not just what you're focusing on, it has stay aware of even the slightest sounds or changes in taste or smell or feeling. Basically, in waking life, your brain knows it can't just let loose like it can in dreams. Together these make for soooo much detail missing in dreams unless you're specifically focused on it, it's ridiculous. The reason we can feel like dreams are so vivid is because we don't normally consciously think about this stuff, and in dreams it's hard to remember what it's like to be in the waking world anyway, but this vividness is an illusion. Even when you're on drugs and awake and hallucinating in reality, they have a dreamy feeling to them and you often lose track of some of these sensations. This was different. I was in reality, totally hallucinating, and totally lucid. This feeling of knowing you're in a dream while being in the waking world was mind-blowing, at least to me. This is something I won't soon be forgetting. I wonder how much work it could take, what level of awareness would be required, to recreate sensations this powerful in dreams....