Why is "everything", but dialating time possible in a lucid dream

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Alyzarin

I'm not even sure what you mean by that.... Electricity in the brain is generated from the incredible amount of chemical reactions occurring simultaneously. Science is well aware of this. You're going to have to be more specific on that if I'm misunderstanding something.

As for where memories are recorded, I recommend you read this: Optogenetic stimulation of a hippocampal engram activates fear memory recall. This is a study which tests individual neuron clusters in mice as a theoretical basis of where memories are stored. They condition certain rats with fear memory and then label the brain cells in the hippocampus, long thought to be a major memory center, that were activated at the time of the conditioning. When they stimulated only these specific clusters later, the mice which were not conditioned showed no reaction but the mice which were began to react as if the fear-inducing event was happening again. When they later removed the neurons, the mice lost this reaction. The conclusion was that these neuron clusters seem highly probable as a place where memories (or memory fragments, as memories are known to not be stored as a whole regardless of where they are) are recorded, and as a focus of how memories could be theoretically removed. If you can find any theory or information which has more weight than this, I'm all ears.



Evidence supporting something and lack of evidence against something are not the same thing. Just because there has been, up until recently, some issues in discovering the location of memories in the brain doesn't mean even slightly that they must be stored somewhere else. The brain is unbelievably complex and so much of it is beyond our knowledge that the thought that we should have figured out everything about it by now is completely laughable.

You are right in saying that "true" science follows the evidence, no matter what. So where is the evidence that what you're saying is correct?

---

the evidence is spread through a bunch of books I've read. One I remember but don't know where I read it was a study with rats, where they would put a rat in a maze and time how long it took to get through it. The first time it was longest, and as the rat learned where to go it's times got better and then stabilized. They then would cut out part of the rats brain and send it back into the maze to see if that part of the brain was storing its memory of the route through the maze. But the rat did it in the stabilized time. They kept doing this to these poor rats and with different parts of the brain until they had cut out every part, and these rats didn't forget how to make it through. Wish I knew where I read it, I'll look for it.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Lucidpotential

Yes I agree, But ... Even if only some of his life flashed in a couple of seconds it seems to me that information is reaching his consciousness at a vastly accelerated rate. This guy who told me about his NDE in the plane crash took about an hour to tell me all the stuff he saw flash.

---

I've done a lot of research on the NDE and from what I've seen, people re-live specific parts of their life. A lot of people say the whole point was to learn, and the times when they did something bad that hurt another being, they would re-live it and feel what the person/thing they wronged felt. Like one person shot a bird with a bb gun when he was young, and he re-lived that but felt the suffering of the birds babies as they starved to death. Another had said some really hurtful things to someone and felt what they felt in response, and saw how what they ahd said negatively affected that persons whole life. And positive parts where they helped others and did good were celebrated. Sounds cheesy but thats what people are saying happened.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by PresentMoment

The problem I see with the idea that the brain is merely the filter for, rather than the origin of, the mind, is that this idea is inconsistent with the fact that if you were to 'smash' only part of the brain, then that person loses or suffers impairments in whatever function that region of the brain was responsible for (i.e. those lacking a hippocampus lose the ability to create new explicit memories). Where if it were true that the brain is merely a 'filter', destroying part of it should let more of the signal through, but this does not appear to be the case.

I would agree with you that consciousness itself is rather mysterious, and it's plausible that science will never truly understand it, simply because it's so difficult to study. But what we can study rather well are the contents of consciousness (thoughts, memories, emotions), and I don't think it's premature at all to assert that those contents are coming to us straight from the brain.

---

As sageous said, when you smash a certain part of the filter you lose the ability to filter that aspect of consciousness. Filter may be a bad word, think fo the brain more as a medium for consciousness. Like if you smashed a certain part of a tv circuit board that controls the appearance of the color blue (just an example), the color blue wouldn't be able to be generated in the reality of the TV, even though its still part of the source. You wouldn't get an over abundance of blue in that case, its the opposite. So the filter theory still stands. Believe me, there are a lot of materialist oriented scientists who would dearly love to deal the death blow to the filter theory because it goes against what they believe, and many have tried, but it still stands at the moment. Some who try end up concluding that the filter theory makes more sense. I know I'm just spewing crap out here without references, I'll try and find where I've read this stuff.

Though Tofur's response said enough:

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by PresentMoment

It would seem to me in that case, Sageous, that if the entire brain was destroyed, experiencing conscious states would become impossible because their connection to the real world would be permanently out of order. I can't say for sure, but I doubt this is what advocates of the brain as a filer/reciever hypothesis believe, as the whole point of their idea seems (at least to me) to be to present a reasonable non physical basis for consciousness, that isn't completely at odds with neuroscience and, most importantly, allows for experience after death, which doesn't follow if a functional brain is needed for the 'signal' to be experienced.

The filter hypothesis also seems to be inconsistent with the fact that we can induce certain conscious states quite reliably by stimulating certain brain areas. For instance, if we can see that the amygdala is active while someone is in a state of fear, and if we can induce a state of fear by activating the amygdala, then we have more than a mere correlation, but clear cause and effect. I don't see any room for an outside signal here, if you don't think that our activating the relevant brain region to induce fear is actually where the fear is coming from, then I guess you could claim that the outside fear signal is coming in at the exact same time that the activation is taking place, but this is obviously an unparsimonious explanation. All we need to explain the fear is the brain activation, you're adding an extra, unnecessary, dimension.

---

Like I said, it was just a thought... I didn't even realize you were referencing a "brain-as-filter" school of thought; I assumed you were presenting a metaphor.

That said:

Wouldn't experience after death follow, using this filter plan? After all, once we're dead, we're no longer connected with the physical world, right? That signal is only for experiencing the physical world, after all; there isn't much need for that after we've moved on. Also, just as unclogging certain bits of filters make them work better, there's no reason to assume that triggering specific circuits in the brain won't simulate physical-world related events (i.e., fear). In other words, the only fear you're explaining is the brain's mechanical process for "filtering" fear, when the actual event happens.

Again, I wasn't adding any dimensions; I was simply sharing a thought your post gave me; I've never heard of this brain-as-filter school, and though I'm certainly not a member, I have to admit that their logic, as you presented, seems fairly straightforward.

And, just for the sake of relevance, wouldn't a consciousness independent of the brain be helpful in dilating our perception of time? After all, since the circuitry of the brain might not be capable of handling the information necessary to dilate time, some other factor might be nice. Don't you think?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by tofur

the evidence is spread through a bunch of books I've read. One I remember but don't know where I read it was a study with rats, where they would put a rat in a maze and time how long it took to get through it. The first time it was longest, and as the rat learned where to go it's times got better and then stabilized. They then would cut out part of the rats brain and send it back into the maze to see if that part of the brain was storing its memory of the route through the maze. But the rat did it in the stabilized time. They kept doing this to these poor rats and with different parts of the brain until they had cut out every part, and these rats didn't forget how to make it through. Wish I knew where I read it, I'll look for it.

---

I believe this is the one you're referring to, I didn't type this up but it basically sums up what my response would be:

Lashley's Research | in Chapter 06: Memory | from Psychology: An Introduction by Russ Dewey

Quote:

---

If each part of the nervous system stores memories of its own role in neural activity, this may help explain a famous series of experiments that baffled psychologists in the 1930s and 1940s. Karl Lashley, one of the world's foremost brain researchers, tried to locate the area in the brain where engrams or memory traces were stored. He sliced or removed sections of rat brains after teaching the rats to run mazes. None of the brain injuries abolished the "maze-running habit," although Lashley tried removing tissue in almost every area that allowed the rat to remain alive. Lashley concluded that memories had to be spread all over the brain, throughout the tissue.

In retrospect, Lashley probably picked the worst possible laboratory task to study, if he was trying to find a specific location that stored a memory. Maze running involves many parts of the brain. At minimum it involves vision (remembering the sight of correct pathways), spatial sense (remembering the direction to turn), olfaction (smelling the cheese and moving toward the more powerful odor), and kinesthesis (the feeling of arms and legs running a certain direction). If one type of clue is eliminated, there are many others remaining, allowing the rat to guide itself to the end of the maze. So Lashley was half right: memory is widely distributed. He was also half wrong, because he assumed memory was unitary and there was one type of memory trace stored all over the brain.

Lashley's research was very influential and led to a persistent anti-localization bias among psychologists. For decades, psychologists were inclined to believe that complex mental functions would be spread all over the brain in equal measure, with one area of brain tissue being able to substitute for another after brain injury (how else to explain Lashley's results?).

Lashley's conclusions implied that a skill would never depend upon one tiny area of neurons. However, as it turned out, almost the exact opposite is true. Specialized circuits exist in every part of the brain. But so many locations are involved in a complex act like running a maze that eliminating one part of the brain is not enough to disrupt the entire act.

Posner (1993) noted the "popularly held belief in psychology that the cognitive functions of the brain are widely distributed among different brain areas." However, he concluded, "imaging studies reveal a startling degree of region-specific activity." In other words, most brain tissue is highly specialized. A typical cognitive act does indeed activate many places in the brain, but each area is doing something different from the others: something for which it is specialized.

---

If you find the full study feel free to still post it though, I'd gladly give it a read. However, you're going to have to do better than that if you want to defend it. For instance, you're going to have to explain why they were able to delete a memory response in mice in the study I posted, which was conducted last year, as opposed to Lashley's that are now 80 years old and very far behind in understanding of the brain.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by tofur

I've done a lot of research on the NDE and from what I've seen, people re-live specific parts of their life. A lot of people say the whole point was to learn, and the times when they did something bad that hurt another being, they would re-live it and feel what the person/thing they wronged felt. Like one person shot a bird with a bb gun when he was young, and he re-lived that but felt the suffering of the birds babies as they starved to death. Another had said some really hurtful things to someone and felt what they felt in response, and saw how what they ahd said negatively affected that persons whole life. And positive parts where they helped others and did good were celebrated. Sounds cheesy but thats what people are saying happened.

---

Do you have any links to those reports? I'd love to read over them, those sound strikingly similar to ibogaine experiences.

yeah that prob. is the thing I read about. To be honest I read a lot and tend to take in information as a whole big picture, often not putting specific things to memory so its hard for me to pull up things to defend with. Not a big fan of defending hypothesis' anyway.


I don't know what ibogaine is, but the real question is why and how are these experiences happening when the body is clinically dead? We are still learning what clinical death means, but suffice to say these things are happening when theres no heart beat, no activity in the brain, and when their pupils are dilated (or whatever the term is for non responsive pupils). The rebuttal that they are happening when everything is coming back online doesn't stand up (brain still isn't capable of generating such a coherent, intense and hyper real reality at that point, and the common delusions and hallucinations of the brain coming back online are chaotic and not coherent). And how the experiences are so similar across all cultures and among people who never interact. They aren't random trips, theres distinct commonalities across humanity as a whole even though they all vary in how many of the common aspects are present and the depth of the experience.

here's a link to a ton of accounts:

edit: haven't been on this site in a long time, the second one down from the top is crazy!

http://iands.org/nde-stories/iands-nde-accounts.html

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Sageous

And, just for the sake of relevance, wouldn't a consciousness independent of the brain be helpful in dilating our perception of time? After all, since the circuitry of the brain might not be capable of handling the information necessary to dilate time, some other factor might be nice. Don't you think?

---

Well certainly if consciousness is independent of the brain and unconstrained by the laws of physics that would probably allow for limitless time dilation, but just wanting something to be true for the sake of making extreme time dilation possible gives no credence to claim. (I'm not saying this is what you believe, I don't presume to know your opinion on the relationship between brain and mind)

I stand by my earlier points about the filter/receiver/medium hypothesis being unparsimonious, in that it requires 3 components, the experiencer, the brain, and a signal being sent from some unclear source. Compared the 2 components of the neuroscientific view that the mind is what the brain does (which is the view that I subscribe to, and which has mountains of evidence in support of it). It should also go without saying (though I'll say it anyway) that the filter idea appears to be unfalsifiable, insofar as it would be impossible to disprove that your thoughts originated inside the sun, shot around the earth 3 times and then through your brain into your conscious awareness. Though I will concede that the idea can at least be presented in a seemingly coherent manner.


In regards to the main topic, I had been under the opinion, based mainly off of LaBerges work that time could only be dilated in dreams to the extent that it can be in waking life. Though I'm not closed to the idea that we're capable transient moments of extreme dilation, I know one of my friends had an experience during a heavy mushroom trip that he said felt like an eternity. So maybe it is possible that the right combination of brain activation can lead to a radically alterted experience of time. And I also have to say, Alyzarin, that while very intimidating in length, I found your posts quite interesting, you're impressively immersed in the relevant scientific literature.


Also on the topic of NDE's, the evidence of anyone having any type of experience with 'dead brain' is in short supply, though the claims for the contrary certainly are not. Here's a link to an article from just today refuting a very popular NDE that purported to provide evidence for life after death:

Well it appears that my account is not old enough to allow me to post links, but if you google 'the proof of heaven author has now been thoroughly debunked by science' you'll find it.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by tofur

yeah that prob. is the thing I read about. To be honest I read a lot and tend to take in information as a whole big picture, often not putting specific things to memory so its hard for me to pull up things to defend with. Not a big fan of defending hypothesis' anyway.

---

Uh-huh. Have fun trying to convince people like that.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by tofur

I don't know what ibogaine is, but the real question is why and how are these experiences happening when the body is clinically dead? We are still learning what clinical death means, but suffice to say these things are happening when theres no heart beat, no activity in the brain, and when their pupils are dilated (or whatever the term is for non responsive pupils). The rebuttal that they are happening when everything is coming back online doesn't stand up (brain still isn't capable of generating such a coherent, intense and hyper real reality at that point, and the common delusions and hallucinations of the brain coming back online are chaotic and not coherent). And how the experiences are so similar across all cultures and among people who never interact. They aren't random trips, theres distinct commonalities across humanity as a whole even though they all vary in how many of the common aspects are present and the depth of the experience.

here's a link to a ton of accounts:

NDE Accounts

---

Ibogaine is a chemical in a tree that some historians believe is the origin of the tree of knowledge story from the Garden of Eden. It's a hallucinogen that normally causes trips that are almost exactly like you described, in fact that's the only time I've ever heard anyone describe that kind of experience from anything else.

Clinical death is a medical term that means your heart and breathing have stopped. Your brain can still be perfectly alive for a short period afterward, but of course your body will not be properly functioning. Since your breathing is stopped, you will stop taking in oxygen and or putting out carbon dioxide and your levels of the latter will slowly rise. This then leads to the activation of chemoreceptors in the brain which respond specifically to carbon dioxide, causing a flood of at least serotonin, norepinephrine, and glutamate throughout the brain, and other neurotransmitters and hormones that are released as a direct result of that. This includes oxytocin and vasopressin, the love chemicals that causes the euphoria and feelings of peace and love felt during orgasm. Both of them cause a large release in endorphins and could easily account for the feelings of acceptance and joy that sufferers of near-death experiences feel. The serotonin could logically cause some of the hallucinations and loss of fear. Norepinephrine, in the absence of that fear, also causes feelings of stimulation and serenity. Glutamate has also been implicated in multiple hallucinogenic states, both from drugs and from psychological disorders.

A study was even performed which specifically tests the oxygen and carbon dioxide levels from blood samples that were taken immediately after cardiac arrest patients were admitted to a hospital. They found a significant correlation between the levels of carbon dioxide detected and the number near-death experiences reported. It's located here: The effect of carbon dioxide on near-death experiences in out-of-hospital cardiac arrest survivors: a prospective observational study.

There have never been any verified cases of near-death experiences happening while someone was brain dead. Nothing short of recorded brain activity alongside proof of consciousness can say otherwise.

And the accounts are so similar across cultures because people are people. Regardless of which argument you use, whether it's real or whether it's a chemical reaction, obviously it's going to give a similar experience when it's the exact same thing happening. That doesn't really validate anything.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by PresentMoment

In regards to the main topic, I had been under the opinion, based mainly off of LaBerges work that time could only be dilated in dreams to the extent that it can be in waking life. Though I'm not closed to the idea that we're capable transient moments of extreme dilation, I know one of my friends had an experience during a heavy mushroom trip that he said felt like an eternity. So maybe it is possible that the right combination of brain activation can lead to a radically alterted experience of time. And I also have to say, Alyzarin, that while very intimidating in length, I found your posts quite interesting, you're impressively immersed in the relevant scientific literature.

---

I really do apologize for the length of my posts here, I've never typed so much in so little time in my life. I'm glad you enjoyed them, though. :) I think I may be about out of them for now lol.

And yeah, generally what I tell people is "Anyone who doesn't believe in time dilation has never eaten magic mushrooms." :chuckle:

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by tofur

yeah that prob. is the thing I read about. To be honest I read a lot and tend to take in information as a whole big picture, often not putting specific things to memory so its hard for me to pull up things to defend with. Not a big fan of defending hypothesis' anyway.


I don't know what ibogaine is, but the real question is why and how are these experiences happening when the body is clinically dead? We are still learning what clinical death means, but suffice to say these things are happening when theres no heart beat, no activity in the brain, and when their pupils are dilated (or whatever the term is for non responsive pupils). The rebuttal that they are happening when everything is coming back online doesn't stand up (brain still isn't capable of generating such a coherent, intense and hyper real reality at that point, and the common delusions and hallucinations of the brain coming back online are chaotic and not coherent). And how the experiences are so similar across all cultures and among people who never interact. They aren't random trips, theres distinct commonalities across humanity as a whole even though they all vary in how many of the common aspects are present and the depth of the experience.

here's a link to a ton of accounts:

edit: haven't been on this site in a long time, the second one down from the top is crazy!

NDE Accounts

---

Seems like the nde hallucinations could happen before they were completely brain dead and then when revived or whatever they just were remembering those hallucinations from right before they went brain dead.

the issue with the endorphins being plausible for explaining the first aspect of the NDE is they're decay time. It takes hours for a person to "come down", and for the pain suppressing affects to wear off. NDE experiencers go from no pain at all to full out pain right as they're experience ends. Some feel that maybe enkaphalins, a neurotransmitter related to endorphins, are to blame. They're thought to have a much quicker offset, but it's still in the 5-10 minute range which is still too slow. As for all the other neurotransmitters, to say they are the cause is nothing more than speculation at this point and they still don't fit in with the timeline of the NDE as with endorphins.

studies have shown that as the brain becomes anoxic, it ceases to function. As oxygen supply diminishes people get disoriented and confused which is the opposite of what NDE experiencers report. As far as hypercarbia, the effects are pretty well known at this point. In the 50's, L.J Meduna studied the different effects of hypercarbia with the hope of it being a solution to some psychiatric disorders. What he found was when peoples carbon dioxide levels were pushed up they experienced some of the stuff found in NDE's, but they also consistently experienced stuff not found, like seeing brilliant geometric patterns, fantasized objects like musical notes floating by, and seeing double or triple. And extreme hypercarbia produces violent muscle spasms which aren't tied to the nde.

not to mention that catastrophic oxygen loss would accompany the carbon dioxide increase, which would render the brain incapable of creating the kinds of clear, coherent, highly structured and easily remembered experiences NDE people report. Also there is a case of a man who reported a deep NDE who had a blood sample taken during the cardiac arrest, and when it came back his carbon dioxide levels were lower than normal. More on that case can be found here: "Fenwick and Fenwick, The Truth in the Light, 308; Gilksman and Kellehear, "Near-Death Experiences and the Measurement of Blood Gases".

Just had a time dilation dream of sorts. I will give a link to it in my DJ,
http://www.dreamviews.com/blogs/siva...s-wheel-48166/
I do not think it sheds any light on the topic, but I figured someone may want to read it. It is kind of interesting, just in that to me it seemed to last perhaps 5 hours, but clearly did not.

^^ Oh yeah ... this is a time-dilation thread. I keep forgetting that!

Did your dream seem like 5 hours during the dream or after you woke up?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Sageous

^^ Oh yeah ... this is a time-dilation thread. I keep forgetting that!

Did your dream seem like 5 hours during the dream or after you woke up?

---

It honestly seemed many hours long while I was inside the dream. I even had a discussion with some DCs about how it was going on and on, and appeared to be many hours worth. However, now that I view it as a memory and read the parts I recalled enough to write, it could easily have fit into 90 minutes. I am not sure what made it feel like hours while inside the dream. I assume it was a case of the mental trickery I have already mentioned. What seemed like long conversations (say 5 minutes) were in fact maybe only a dozen or fewer actual sentences. The walk I took with my step mom seemed like an actual walk, but now is remembered as perhaps less than 2 minutes in total.

It felt like 5 hours, but in reflection, nothing mysterious seems to have happened, it really is more like a case of trick photography or cinematics, if that makes sense.

Or perhaps it is more a lack of exact recall than it is of accurate dream experience. Just an hypothesis of course.

Depends. Can you think up of a long story really fast? Time dilation is only limited by your mind and your willingness to sacrifice vividness for quantity.

Another example I have of the "Life flashes before your eyes" phenomena is a car accident my Daughter was in. She was driving and the car flipped end over end three times. Judging from the Bruce Willis movie car stunts I estimate that the crash took less then 5 seconds. During those 5 seconds my Daughter had the "Life Flash" and also a long question and answer session with a invisible DC? pretending to be God. Her boyfriend stayed conscious during the crash and can confirm the short time duration. I don't think this is an example of the typical NDE where a heart attack victim quits breathing and his brain has time to go into chemical imbalance or whatever happens to create the NDE hallucinations.
Even at very skeptical time estimations my daughters Life Flash and interview had to have presented an enormous amount of data to her consciousness in that 5 seconds. At that rate of time dilation it seems to me that living a full day in a LD could take very little Rem sleep time. What do you think?

Quote:

---

I also have been thinking about other apparent time dilation events in hopes of improving my expectation for them in LDs. I spoke at length with a guy who survived a plane crash and claimed that he had one of those near death experiences. When you Google "life flashed before my eyes" there are many examples of people who saw their entire lives flash before their eyes in the couple of seconds it took for a car crash to happen. Seems to me that if these "life review" accounts are true ??? then obviously our brains have the capacity to process a whole lifetime of events in a few seconds. I can't see why we can't dream a whole lifetime of events in a few seconds.

---

^^ I think the whole NDE/life-flashing before your eyes route might not be the right direction to be heading in, when considering LD time dilation.

In both cases there is likely a whole lot of things going on that could never happen during a typical night's sleep which seem to be wrapped around the entire brain getting "lit up" with activity by the massive intensity of the moment, or perhaps sudden catastrophic change in brain chemistry/workload (NDE).

With all apologies to your daughter, Lucidpotential, what is remembered after experiences like these aren't necessarily what actually happened. If your daughter's brain was suddenly running at very high capacity and she was flooded with a massive volley of simultaneous imagery involving all layers of her memory and imagination, and primal consciousness -- everything firing at once, in other words, then the conversation she described might be how she tried to make sense of the event afterward.

Yes, she may have actually had that conversation, I won't and can't deny that, but the conversation might have only lasted a couple of seconds; it's just that it was so filled with information that in retrospect it became a very long memory only after your daughter put it all into a linear story she could understand and communicate to others.

This is an awesome thing, by the way, and shouldn't be downplayed, but being bombarded by many layers of simultaneous signals, be they memories, trips to the afterlife, or chats with The Big Man Himself, might not be easily comparable to time dilation in LD's. Doing so might take us all away from making it happen, or head us toward trying to do so through trauma, death, or dangerous chemicals, none of which seem a healthy idea.

From my own personal experience with things similar to the life flashing before my eyes, I come up with a montage ( a technique which uses rapid editing, special effects and music to present compressed narrative information) as the closest comparative.

I am not trying to downplay anyone's experience. I think when something like this happens to someone, it gives them some feeling of having a special story, and that brings some pride in the story itself. What I remember, when honestly reviewing something like the life flashing thing, is short sequences flashing by rapidly giving a hint at many portions of life, but lacking any detail. exactly like a movie montage.

You may see a image of your grade school and you playing with an old friend, then an image of loading the car to move away from that school and friend, followed by an image of the first day at your new school.

I hate to down play it, but that is what my own experience causes me to think. I believe when someone experiences something like this, they do not want it reduced or made less special, but in the end, if they are honest, I think it was just brief flashes, not reliving their whole lives.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by sivason

From my own personal experience with things similar to the life flashing before my eyes, I come up with a montage ( a technique which uses rapid editing, special effects and music to present compressed narrative information) as the closest comparative.

I am not trying to downplay anyone's experience. I think when something like this happens to someone, it gives them some feeling of having a special story, and that brings some pride in the story itself. What I remember, when honestly reviewing something like the life flashing thing, is short sequences flashing by rapidly giving a hint at many portions of life, but lacking any detail. exactly like a movie montage.

You may see a image of your grade school and you playing with an old friend, then an image of loading the car to move away from that school and friend, followed by an image of the first day at your new school.

I hate to down play it, but that is what my own experience causes me to think. I believe when someone experiences something like this, they do not want it reduced or made less special, but in the end, if they are honest, I think it was just brief flashes, not reliving their whole lives.

---

actually most people who have these experiences don't tell anyone due to how personal and powerful it was, it takes years and years for deep NDE experiences to integrate, and they drastically change people for the rest of their lives (there has been long term research on this). A lot of people also mention it to a nurse or doctor and they get a negative reaction much like sageous just gave, basically reducing it to a faulty brain and viewing it as fake and false, and that goes so completely against what the people experienced (completely clear, coherent, more real than physical life, etc) that they become afraid people will think they are literally insane and so stop talking about it.

Also, research has been done on NDE experiencers in regards to memory. They quizzed a group of people on the experience right after it happened, then they let them live their lives for a decade, then asked them to recall the experience and describe it, then went back to them some years after that, etc. It is the same, the story didn't change and the memory was still as clear as it was the day after it happened. So the memory of the event is stronger and more stable than any other memory.

You guys really should look more into the NDE, it flummoxes scientists who aren't so egoic as to think they have it all figured out already and who aren't so rooted in one particular view of the world as to become defensive of it. Something really crazy is happening to these people, and I agree with Sageous that the NDE doesn't parallel a dream at all, the time dilation in an NDE isn't just dilation, its the complete absence of time, that when people look back on it the best word they come up with to describe it is eternity. They were there for eternity then popped back into linear time.

If time dilation is possible in a lucid dream or psychedelic experience, and NDEs are a form of lucid dreaming or psychedelic experience, does that mean that when we die, we start to experience a lucid dream of infinite duration? It's an idea that I've seen people mention on other forums: that at the time of death, our sense of time gets stretched out to infinity, and even when the "outside" world goes on we're still inside that moment of death for eternity. Could that be what the afterlife is? A lucid dream that feels like eternity to us but is squeezed into a split-second?

I really don't know. But it's an awesome idea, and I'm interested in time dilation in lucid dreaming regardless. It'd be cool if I could enter my own personal Matrix and be there for days and days, and then come back and it's only been a few minutes or hours.

Wow. Very interesting idea zenwraith. This thread is the most interesting thread iv came across on dreamviews so far. Im pretty new here but still. Awesome thoughts everyone!

Quote:

---

actually most people who have these experiences don't tell anyone due to how personal and powerful it was, it takes years and years for deep NDE experiences to integrate, and they drastically change people for the rest of their lives (there has been long term research on this). A lot of people also mention it to a nurse or doctor and they get a negative reaction much like sageous just gave, basically reducing it to a faulty brain and viewing it as fake and false, and that goes so completely against what the people experienced (completely clear, coherent, more real than physical life, etc) that they become afraid people will think they are literally insane and so stop talking about it.

---

Yes, I think the negative reaction also happens with a lot of people who have never had a "real" Lucid dream. They have no conception of what a Lucid dreamer is talking about and default to a skeptic septic attitude. But when you take the time to sit down with an open mind and listen to people who have had these kind of "out of the ordinary" experiences you really begin to wonder if there is not some truth hidden in there that can also bring a higher quality of life to ourselves.
I have had times when the person took like 5 minutes trying to explain to me how vivid the colors in the grass were. Every leaf a different shade of green, the shadows between the stems, straight and bent leafs all blending together to make the whole. This is not someone who just had a short flash of various events, they were in fact experiencing the events in fine detail.
Perhaps the term "Time Dilation" has already got a preconceived definition stuck to it and doesn't actually describe what we are talking about.

Well... this one guy from Korean LD forum tried out Skullyy dream dilation technique from here, DV (he's the one who claimed that he lived in dream for 2 years by practicing watching a clock in a white room) - he practiced the technique with his friend in dream for a month, and they really had success with it, by increasing 10 minutes to months. But they stopped spending more than months in LD because they started getting confused whether it's reality or not.

I've been reading this thread for whole time, and I really wanted to dilate time in dream too. But after this guy told me about his experience and practice, I believe that time dilation is real. So why not just try it out, I thought, and 2 days ago I had a LD and tried out my own time dilation technique. My previous LDs generally lasted for 10-20 minutes, but I had an hour long LD 2 days ago - it was my longest LD ever. It didn't 'feel' like an hour has passed by like watching a 3-hour movie but in the story a week was spent. There was no scene shifting in my LD at all. I just concluded that an hour went by in LD comparing to the sense of certain amount of time I had when I did ADA for 2 hours in reality.

I will keep trying it in the next LDs and update my progress here. :D

For those wondering:
http://www.dreamviews.com/general-lu...d-ability.html

I'm pretty new to the concept of lucid dreaming...I mean calling it lucid dreaming, but I have been lucid dreaming since forever.. all my dreams are basically lucid dreams and I've been controlling what I do in my dreams since I was 5.. I do find it hard to control everything though when there is someone I love in my dream that I have to protect... anyway, I don't really know how to control the time either.. I have spent a couple of "days" in my dreams before but I forgot how I did that... really depends on what you're dreaming about too..the pace of it..
Sometimes, when I've wanted to stay longer in a dream, I just sent myself into a deeper sort of sleep.. I was more.. I guess conscious in my dream, then.
Like I said, I'm pretty new to the whole lucid dreaming as a real concept and all it's properties... but I do know what I've experienced and all the things I can do.. From what I've read so far, I think I can do basically anything..