Time dilators: present yourselves!

[Spamtek]

I hear this muck all the time. It shows up in a newbie thread or in the middle of a completely unrelated thread; someone asks about a dream they had that felt like it lasted for a day or someone asks "hey I heard about this monk who lived 1000 years in a single night! what's up with that?" Then inexperienced skeptics will say it's not possible, other inexperienced optimists (like me) will talk about how maybe it is if you overclock your brain or something, and then a third body of completely mysterious mysticists will show up and talk about a friend who totally did have a week-long lucid, or they might even be brave enough to say they themselves have had an experience like that. And then you ask them about the mechanics of the experience or to provide a detailed recollection of the time period in question, and they dodge the interrogation or just never reply at all. Everyone wants time dilation to be true (controlled time dilation, at least), and a bunch of people are making vague claims that they first- or second-handedly know without a doubt that it's true, possible, and within a dreamer or lucid dreamer's grasp. So for all of you who've had an experience like this or all of you who intimately know the details of a friend's experience like this, show yourselves and prove you're not making it up. Present enough evidence, detail, or reasoned logic to show me that the 100-year life as a Japanese grammar teacher you lived really was as deep, long, and detailed as a 100-year-old Japanese grammar teacher's, and not just a delusion you got ahold of. Right now I can explicitly visualize having lived a long and detailed life as somebody without ever actually having done so. I can compartmentalize these concepts of 'long life' and 'lifelike detail' as individual thoughts, and think them and feel that I know what I'm talking about, but I simply don't have the depth and detail of memory to back those impressions up. Show me you're not fooling yourself the same way and passing it off as truth.

[KuRoSaKi]

Okay Time Dilation also known as Time Incubation is the process of making a dream that takes place in real time going anywhere from 10-2 hours seemed to last in dream time many hours, days, weeks, months, years, lifetimes, etc. How does this work? It has to do with believing, and memory manipulation. You may remember a thread from a while ago where someone said they had lived a month in Japan after stepping into a odd portal? This is one method in which you can induce Time Dilation. The method most commonly used from people who I have chatted with and performed myself is the portal. Once you have the portal it is belief and suggestion. You implant in your mind that once you step into the portal you will have a dream about (Blank) that lasts for (Blank) amount of time. Once you re-assure and confirm to yourself that this is what you will experience upon entering the portal it becomes so. Now does the dream really last for a week? Of course not, but it seems to last for a week. And it is recommended that you start off small having the dream last for a few hours, then a day, then a two days, etc. working your way up. I have had a dream that has lasted for upwards of 18 hours or so it seemed. Okay so what's my opinion on lifetimes and years? I cannot say from firsthand experience that I have had a dream that has lasted this long. Although I have talked with people who said they have experienced it. As of now after my own experiences I am saying that this is indeed a possiblity. I hope this helped.

[Acedreamer]

Okay Time Dilation also known as Time Incubation is the process of making a dream that takes place in real time going anywhere from 10-2 hours seemed to last in dream time many hours, days, weeks, months, years, lifetimes, etc. How does this work? It has to do with believing, and memory manipulation. You may remember a thread from a while ago where someone said they had lived a month in Japan after stepping into a odd portal? This is one method in which you can induce Time Dilation. The method most commonly used from people who I have chatted with and performed myself is the portal. Once you have the portal it is belief and suggestion. You implant in your mind that once you step into the portal you will have a dream about (Blank) that lasts for (Blank) amount of time. Once you re-assure and confirm to yourself that this is what you will experience upon entering the portal it becomes so. Now does the dream really last for a week? Of course not, but it seems to last for a week. And it is recommended that you start off small having the dream last for a few hours, then a day, then a two days, etc. working your way up. I have had a dream that has lasted for upwards of 18 hours or so it seemed. Okay so what's my opinion on lifetimes and years? I cannot say from firsthand experience that I have had a dream that has lasted this long. Although I have talked with people who said they have experienced it. As of now after my own experiences I am saying that this is indeed a possiblity. I hope this helped. Wait a minute, is it really possible for 10 hours? i doubt even laberge can do it.

[trigotron]

ok, firstly, let's refer to it as "time incubation" from now on, because "time dilation" refers to the relativistic concept that you will always experience time slower than anyone else you see (see general relativity for better description) Anyway, this is entirely possible, as i always say: the human brain is capable of a lot of things, and anything that it is capable of doing can be controlled with enough practice. Are there real life examples of time incubation: Yes. In the instances of NDE's (near death experiences), the brain's neurons/synapses begin to fire at incredible rates, up until the time when they expire. It is an exponential thing, where the last 3 seconds of brain activity left may seem to last for minutes, and the last milisecond of brain activity could last for hours, however, very few people are recovered from this state in time for them to experience the last milisecond of life, perhaps only the last few seconds, or last 10 seconds, but the closer the brush with death it seems, the longer the time they estimate elapsed for them. People also report having this same effect in car crashes, moments of extreme stress, etc. for probably the same reasons. Our brain knows that it is in grave danger and does everything it can to save itself, including speeding up the speed of the neurons firing. Is this controllable: I believe so. We can force our brain to slow down our heart rate, increase electrical activity (EEG voltage at least), even force our brain to shut off our sense of pain. It is just a question of practice and confidence, if one believes they can speed up the neuron activity so their sense of time slows down, it is possible. As Xei and Brandon suggest: there may be even more to this concept than just neuron speed, it may in fact be memory modification as well, making one second in the dream seem in memory like it had taken an hour is another way our brains could control our sense of time through memory. It is a kind of time-lapse in the memory effect. I've never actually had a dream that has lasted for thousands of years, but i have had dreams that felt like they've lasted a lot longer than one night, but i doubt i consciously forced my brain to work faster and slow down time, it just kindof felt in hindsight like i was in a dream for a few days. However, i believe there might be more of the conscious thought speed increase in lucid dreams because i would imagine it is a lot harder to modify your memories when you are actually conscious.

[Bear]

As Xei and Brandon suggest: there may be even more to this concept than just neuron speed, it may in fact be memory modification as well, making one second in the dream seem in memory like it had taken an hour is another way our brains could control our sense of time through memory. It is a kind of time-lapse in the memory effect. I've never actually had a dream that has lasted for thousands of years, but i have had dreams that felt like they've lasted a lot longer than one night, but i doubt i consciously forced my brain to work faster and slow down time, it just kindof felt in hindsight like i was in a dream for a few days. I agree with this, that dreams can seem to last a long time, but that doesn't necessarily mean they actually did. I can easily imagine someone waking up from a dream with dream-memories spanning a hundred years, but that's very different than claiming that they actually dreamed every second of those hundred years. Has anyone ever woken up and had full memories of 100 years worth of life? I think that would screw me up completely and prevent me from carrying on my normal life, if yesterday was 100 years ago. Having full memory of 100 years and having memories spaced out over 100 years are entirely different. LaBerge did an experiment on the speed of time in dreams and found it was basically the same as in the waking world: "We have been able to receive a direct answer to this age-old question by asking lucid dreamers to estimate various intervals of time while dreaming. The dreamers marked the beginning and end of estimated dream time intervals with eye movement signals, allowing comparison of subjective "dream time" with objective time. In each case, the intervals of time estimated during the lucid dreams were very close in length to the actual elapsed time (1), as shown in the figure below." (http://www.lucidity.com/NL53.ResearchPastFuture.html) Now, I know that this isn't any sort of proof that time incubation isn't real, and I'm not offering it as such, so don't flame me for it! However, I think it is useful as a baseline to show that normally, time in dreams is the same as time in waking life. And if the two options for getting away from that baseline are massively increasing the rate of neuron firing way beyond anything possible in everyday life, and giving the impression of a long span of time through dream memories, I'd call the second option more likely, just because it's simpler.

[Sivason]

I dream between hitting the snooze alarm. Lets say I enter the dream instantly and dream the whole 5 minutes. My dreams can take up to 1/2 hour to describe. However, while I would love real weeks to pass, it is more like when I read in a dream. I can look at the book and know what it is saying (not looking at the words) it may be a large thought, but takes just a flash in the dream. My experiance is that it seems like an hour, but is really just crowded in tight. Lets say I walk down a path that I feel is 1000 yards long... I do not feel and see every step but feel I walked 'very far' maybe 10 seconds of real time pass and I think I just walked for 5 minutes. Not like the idea that I can have 5 minutes of second by second detail in 10 seconds real time. So, my thing is not magic, but feels like say an hour in 5 minutes between snooze alarms. Good enough for me,,, it is fun if not amazing.

[Gothlark]

I've had plenty of experiences with time incubation. I can't say for sure the mechanics of it, since all I did was open a portal in the dream requesting for the new world I arrived at to last for however long before I woke up. I didn't have to really worry about how it worked. However, it seems to me that there are two possibilities as to how it works. One is the more scientifically based idea that we only experience some parts of it and we remember the parts in between only when we try to. Our mind creates false memories and all. Even if this were the case, well, in real life the average person doesn't consciously participate in most of their life either. As for the less founded belief which still makes sense to me, we experience every moment of it because our mind can create every moment of it. Our mind can compute things faster than any supercomputer, even if it's stored away somewhere. Of course, people will say that the conscious mind can't think that fast. Remember, you're in an altered state of consciousness here; you may well be able to interact with the rest of your mind as if you are thinking that fast as well. There's also the new age belief that time doesn't exist, solipsism, etc. I personally don't care how it works, so long as it does. In my experience, I was able to recall anything from the day I took my first steps to the day I tied my first shoe quite vividly in a lifetime where I chose to age as if it were real. I could also recall every dreary day laying around and reading some cool novels about the adventures of Ivan, or watching some quite abstract television about cookies. I could remember wandering around and just hanging out with people. I also remembered the more important things such as my dad going to war and my mom later going to identify his body but getting in a crash on the way there. I didn't use dream control very often in this particular one (though I do in most) since I wanted a fairly realistic life simulation. Sad, though. I died trying to protect the only person who was there for me, thinking "Why did I have to die in front of them and make their life horrible." I was only 18 at the time in the dream. Most are happy, but I don't regret the experience all in all. I can make them quite a bit longer than 18 years long, of course. My point is that it's real to the person experiencing it, whether all of it's true memory or some of it's false. It's pretty difficult to tell a real memory from a false one, but I'd wager they're as real as any other dream.

[Sandform]

I've had plenty of experiences with time incubation. ............... My point is that it's real to the person experiencing it, whether all of it's true memory or some of it's false. It's pretty difficult to tell a real memory from a false one, but I'd wager they're as real as any other dream. So Gothlark are you saying you lived 18 years? Dang. Lol I wish I could do that. That is neat if that is what your saying, I didn't really catch exactly what you were saying. Anyway, in real life how old are yuh? your profile says your 16, so I guess you are. But the reason I ask, is cause I wanted to ask, do you feel like your...well however many years your dream was + your waking age or do you still feel 16? EDIT: Time incubation would be fun for little mini vacations if your feeling over stressed, or if you had a test or something and you wanted time to study in your dream world. Maybe you couldn't introduce new information, but it would be easy to 'reinforce' information you already knew. Or if your an actor with a play that lasts X amount of hours, and your wanna practice =)

[BeSomebody]

I always believed in it, if my mind can recreate a perfect copy of a road I know along with realistic texture, wind and sound, why can't it simulate sound? I've had very long dreams after falling asleep for twenty minutes before. Why not?

[Xaqaria]

I've had dreams in which I remembered long periods of times or in which the dream would jump extended periods of time but the actual amount of time I experienced was normal. I have remembered things that happened in dream that were from hours or days previous but didn't actually experience them and I've had dreams in which I was doing something and then it would be hours later all of a sudden but never actually experienced long stretches of time.

[Moonbeam]

I remember a lucid once that I thought three days had passed in, but when I woke up it didn't seem like it anymore.

[Xei]

Our memory is 'made' of neurons. Many people remember having week long dreams, but these memories are just neurons, and the brain can shift neurons however it likes (by suggestion, for example). So such memories are unreliable, and do not represent the truth. Experiments show that conciousness is linked to time pretty solidly, so that's the most probable idea. Spamtek says it all, really.

[fonti]

I can't "prove" that it happened to me, but it did. Not 100 years...more like 2-3 months. In my dream I was about 12 years old, and I was absolutely in love with a young japanese girl who was about 10. A deeper love than any I've experienced in life. I went to her dad to ask for permission to marry her, and he said, "if you can figure out how to say 'no' in japanese, i'll let you marry her." So I went down to the library, which was relatively small (maybe 20m long, 6 m wide, 5m tall)...essentially just a large room, but filled with rows and rows of books. This is where the time dilation happened. I literally read every one of those books beginning to end. Granted, most of them weren't in English, and the ones that were didn't make any sense, but I read them all. No breaks to eat, sleep, go to the bathroom etc. Anyway, on the last page of the last book was my answer. 2-3 months is a guess. It could have been more, it could have been less, but it was much, much, much longer than any dream I've ever had before or afterwards. So I leave the library the happiest I've ever been (happier than I've ever been awake), and I find the little girl at the playground. I put her on my shoulders, and we run to find her dad. Running, running, running...and I see him sitting on a bench. We're both laughing, and I'm crying from happiness. I'm about 5 metres away from him. I trip...and the girl falls off my shoulders (this happens in slow motion) and she lands head first on the concrete...here head and skull split open, there is blood everywhere...I take in a breath to scream...and I wake up. got a bit carried away there, and I don't know if this is what you were looking for, but yeah. That's my one and only experience in this matter.

[conisag]

Interesting, well i think you can speed things up in a dream to make it feel like more time has passed. I think fonti, that your dream may have been about perception, or maybe you read the books so fast faster than possible in reality that it appeared to spread over months. either way i would do anything to live a year in a dream imagine the life span- increase, a million years of experience anyone?

[Jeff777]

I believe this is extremely possible. But impossible for those who believe it's some cheap parlor trick or not real. Our beliefs are our only limitations.

[Sandform]

Our beliefs are our only limitations. Liar.

[BeSomebody]

I can't "prove" that it happened to me, but it did. Not 100 years...more like 2-3 months. In my dream I was about 12 years old, and I was absolutely in love with a young japanese girl who was about 10. A deeper love than any I've experienced in life. I went to her dad to ask for permission to marry her, and he said, "if you can figure out how to say 'no' in japanese, i'll let you marry her." So I went down to the library, which was relatively small (maybe 20m long, 6 m wide, 5m tall)...essentially just a large room, but filled with rows and rows of books. This is where the time dilation happened. I literally read every one of those books beginning to end. Granted, most of them weren't in English, and the ones that were didn't make any sense, but I read them all. No breaks to eat, sleep, go to the bathroom etc. Anyway, on the last page of the last book was my answer. 2-3 months is a guess. It could have been more, it could have been less, but it was much, much, much longer than any dream I've ever had before or afterwards. So I leave the library the happiest I've ever been (happier than I've ever been awake), and I find the little girl at the playground. I put her on my shoulders, and we run to find her dad. Running, running, running...and I see him sitting on a bench. We're both laughing, and I'm crying from happiness. I'm about 5 metres away from him. I trip...and the girl falls off my shoulders (this happens in slow motion) and she lands head first on the concrete...here head and skull split open, there is blood everywhere...I take in a breath to scream...and I wake up. got a bit carried away there, and I don't know if this is what you were looking for, but yeah. That's my one and only experience in this matter. That's happens to me so much it's a dream-theme of mine. I fall in love and then either she disappears, or she dies horribly.

[Abra]

Hypnosis has been used by some to implant/distort memories. Perhaps in a lucid, one could use that lucidity to rapidly implant memories, thus giving the illusion that a long amount of time has occurred.

[BeSomebody]

Hypnosis has been used by some to implant/distort memories. Perhaps in a lucid, one could use that lucidity to rapidly implant memories, thus giving the illusion that a long amount of time has occurred. A lot of my dreams feature memories, but they are recognized as such and I don't feel like I have lived them.

[thegnome54]

A lot of my dreams feature memories, but they are recognized as such and I don't feel like I have lived them. That doesn't prove anything, because you have no way of knowing which parts of the dream were actually memories to begin with - yes, you recognize the memories you recognize as memories. However, if there are memories that you don't recognize as such, you won't recognize them. Right?

[Abra]

A lot of my dreams feature memories, but they are recognized as such and I don't feel like I have lived them. The only difference between an implanted memory and a true memory is that you remember actually living through the true one. Through will, you can make yourself believe that implanted memories have been lived through. And if you were the one who implanted the memories, then of course you would will them to be true.

[nayrki]

I don't know about living days or weeks or years in a nights dream, but i've lived for hours on end in the space of five minutes many a time. See, when i was in the military, i had a lot of times that i'd fall asleep for five minutes at a time, only to be woken up again. Hitting rem sleep as soon as i closed my eyes, i'd be able to dream enough that i wouldnt even remember myself, and id question reality when i woke up. Was i lucid during these times? no, i would say not. But i can say that i dreamed for a lot longer than i was actually asleep. Time dilation is a huge possibility. The main problem is, the average dream only lasts a matter of minutes normally, and sleep cycles interfere with this. The only way to achieve time dilation to the period of weeks or months or years, would be to utilize alternative sleep patterns, that promote longer periods of REM sleep at a time.

[lagunagirl]

I usually like to think realisticly and use logic to understand things but when you think about it, just because we haven't experienced it doesn't mean it can't be experienced. It can be just as hard to prove that it's not possible as it is to prove that it isn't. Just because you may have more information on one side doesn't mean that there really IS more info. that's just the only info that we know about. we as humans haven't even gotten anywhere near to figuring out all the possabilities in life. There are things that our subconcious' will do that we still don't understand. We don't even nkow the capabilities of our own minds on levels much simpler than trying to pull of something like this. I'm not saying it is true, I'm just saying there's really know way of knowing until you actually experience it yourself.

[bcomp]

I'm convinced time incubation is possible, since I've experienced it (quite recently in fact.) In a five minute snooze button alarm cycle, I had a dream that lasted at least 15 minutes. During that time, I read a chapter of a book with a DC - reading every word on every page out loud - and then flew with her... and I was aware of every second. You can argue that memory modification was a play, but I awoke feeling as if I had just dreamed for fifteen minutes, not five. Whether or not the time really passed differently in my dream can never really be proved I suppose, but it felt like it truly did... and isn't that all that matters?

[SKA]

I once was on MSN with a DV member some year and a half ago if not longer ago. Can't remember who it was. He spoke of another DV member with who he's been discussing Time Dillation and that this person was able to dillate dreams to many many years-experiences and that he pulled it off too. Not too much time after that convo I found myself in a Lucid Dream and decided to "Stretch the Dream to the time-experience of 1 month". My dream didn't turn into a 1 month experience and I soon lost lucidity again. HOWEVER, the rest of my nonlucid Dream was VERY vivid and memorable and defenitely appeared to last for an entire day-worth of experience as opposed to the common 10 minutes - 30 minutes snippets of Dream I usually experience.