Quote Originally Posted by Salathor View Post
The obvious problem with this is that there are only so many hours per night and so many hours of REM sleep in a single night.

I have had non-lucid dreams that I would have sworn had lasted more than a year, but when I remember the actual, literal events that occurred during those dreams, there usually wasn't more than an hour or so of activity. Stephen LaBerge has said--and I agree--that we can experience the illusion of time passing but cannot actually dream for longer than the span of a night. Contrary to what people say, you don't only use 10% of your brain--we're using almost all of it all the time. The idea that we could speed it up to experience a true lifetime's worth of actual thoughts in the span of 45 minutes is a lot to swallow.

That said, I fully believe it would be possible to, say, convince yourself that you spent a year training at a mountain shrine in a lucid dream if you had enough dream control. I think the events of that year would have to end up being concentrated, like a montage, but that you would come out of the dream feeling like a year had passed.
See a lot of people explain the "science" as to why it shouldn't and that it was like a montage, but I have had both experiences, so I know the difference. People try to convince other people that it isn't possible, but it has happened, so I can't be convinced.