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

There's no anger in here. This turned into a really good thread.

^^ Agreed. Also, sometimes a good debate leads to new ways of seeing -- and doing -- things.

^while I do agree that debates are most often good, I feel like the main point was misunderstood, this thread has been fantastic, but still no one is trying and experimenting with the length of dreams which is what I've been focusing on. We all know time dilation in dreams is possible, but how is what we need to ask and what control do we have over it that's what I want to know, and that is why I made this thread more as an open discussion about results and tactics.

maybe its as simple as intending minutes to feel like hours, much like when we intend for gravity to cease to exist or fly or anything else. The dream world is us, we are it, so there shouldn't be anything off limits. Hell if we can defeat gravity (an all pervasive powerful force in the universe), time (which doesn't inherently exist) should be no issue

I've experienced time dilation many, many times, but I have yet to figure out how to control it or do it on purpose. I've had WILDs that lasted 4, 5, 6 hours dream time and only 15-20 minutes of real world time had passed. I can speak from experience and say that it is very possible. I'm sure there are those out there who can control it to a certain extent. At some point, I'll work on it in the lucid state. To be honest, I haven't put a lot of time into experimenting with it during the dream state. I've worked more on prolonging and extending my dreams by evaluating things that often cause the mind to wake up. Time Dilation is deep stuff that I'll touch one day after I have accomplished some of my other goals.

Perhaps the OP has missed the observations of several posters suggesting there is no one way to dilate time. People figure out ways past limitations using their own strengths in their own way. There is no one solution is any particular problem.

Originally Posted by dreamer7

people have experienced lucid dreams that felt like it was an entire life time (on purpose)

This reminds me of a particularly disturbing comment I saw on YouTube.

Someone said they kept having horrible nightmares every night that seemed to last for a year each... just imagine being stuck in a nightmare for an entire year. Shit.

Well, I google searched time dilation and lucid dreams. I found plenty of discussions, but this one guy on another forum uses a computer to massively manipulate time. I mean, he claims to spend weeks in a lucid dream. Basically, all he does is type in the time on a computer. He types in the number of hours he wants to stay in the dream. So, I decided to try this. I tried my best to suppress any expectations and doubts I had for this technique. I haven't typed the dream up yet, but once I do, I'll link it in this post. Basically, I waited until I was pretty deep into a long LD (about 2 hours or so into the dream, in dream time). I did this because I wanted to wait for a dream that already had time dilation active in one way or another (in reality this dream lasted about 45 minutes, but it lasted much longer dream time). I found a DC and told them I was looking for a computer that can dilate time and extend my lucid dream. The DC pointed me toward a bathroom. I entered and found the computer. I typed in 3 hours and hit ok. It "confirmed my order." The dream lasted maybe 30 minutes (dream time) after this point. I guess its possible that my doubts for this method bled through, but I thought I adjusted my mind pretty well in preparation. I just don't think that time dilation is something that can be controlled so easily, but I'll continue to experiment. I just think that computer typing isn't going to do it for me .

Nice thread everyone.

It's gotta be an ability we are able to hone and develop, that of experiencing it (which as far as I'm concerned is what really matters at the point we're in). I mean, people are talking about experiencing hours within minutes, often twice the amount of time actually spent dreaming, if that's so, with proper understanding couldn't that be escalated? Also there are people consistently experiencing lucidly different degrees of this phenomenon which begs the question, what do they all have in common to different levels and intensities? Or are we better of assuming it is impossible for us to figure it out and put it in a box?

I have experienced time contracting (?) extremely with conscious awake meditation where for example an hour or two (not sure anymore) felt like a couple of minutes. Time / perception of time is edgy, it's much too soon to close the case my friends

Originally Posted by KingYoshi

Well, I google searched time dilation and lucid dreams. I found plenty of discussions, but this one guy on another forum uses a computer to massively manipulate time. I mean, he claims to spend weeks in a lucid dream. Basically, all he does is type in the time on a computer. He types in the number of hours he wants to stay in the dream. So, I decided to try this. I tried my best to suppress any expectations and doubts I had for this technique. I haven't typed the dream up yet, but once I do, I'll link it in this post. Basically, I waited until I was pretty deep into a long LD (about 2 hours or so into the dream, in dream time). I did this because I wanted to wait for a dream that already had time dilation active in one way or another (in reality this dream lasted about 45 minutes, but it lasted much longer dream time). I found a DC and told them I was looking for a computer that can dilate time and extend my lucid dream. The DC pointed me toward a bathroom. I entered and found the computer. I typed in 3 hours and hit ok. It "confirmed my order." The dream lasted maybe 30 minutes (dream time) after this point. I guess its possible that my doubts for this method bled through, but I thought I adjusted my mind pretty well in preparation. I just don't think that time dilation is something that can be controlled so easily, but I'll continue to experiment. I just think that computer typing isn't going to do it for me .

Interesting idea I'm going to have to try that myself next time I'm in a lucid dream. I'm glad to see suggestions, I'll try some more ideas I have and I'll post results if i have any.

Originally Posted by Sageous

Here's the thing, as I see it, about time dilation.

There is no such thing as time. There is no thing made of mass or energy that can be called "time." There is no time wave or time particle (sorry Star Trek fans). Time is simply the tool for measurement that we use to understand actual physical events like change, movement, velocity or acceleration. Unfortunately (for these purposes), that tool has been so completely embedded into our psyches that we are hard-pressed to experience reality without time on hand to help us wrap our heads around what we see. Indeed, our invention of time the tool was so complete that it has followed us into our dreams -- a dream, especially a LD, will pass in about the same amount of time as whatever time is passing in waking life. Under the rules we've created for observing reality, even dream reality, there seems no way to experience reality without using time to measure it, and apparently that yardstick of time is ruled immutably.

So, you cannot dilate time because it doesn't exist, and how can you change the dimensions of a concept that has no dimension? Also, you can't dilate time because its "length" has been perfectly fused into our psyches, giving us a nearly indomitable "sense" of time that can only be slightly effected by things like boredom or excitement. Seems a pretty tough nut to crack.

But what if, in dreams, you can possibly eliminate the nut itself? As the OP suggests, since you can do anything in the reality that is your dreams, instead of dilating time -- which might be impossible for the reasons I just said above -- why not simply ignore it? Why not just remove it from the process of how you observe and participate in the reality of your dreams?

This would be extremely difficult, because the programming is so perfectly imbedded in us to use time, but it seems that, with enough effort, you ought to be able to produce a dream that does not include time. Here's the irony in successfully doing so, though:

Erase time from your dream and suddenly your existence in the dream is eternal. You might be in your dream world "forever," but you won't know it, because eternity is no more than an endless here & now, with no time passing.

tl;dr: So, Tye, your conundrum might be more simply stated: Yes, you can do or change everything in a dream, but time, unfortunately, is not a thing, so it cannot be changed... it must instead be ignored, erased, or rather removed from your mind's toolbox for comprehending reality.

I don't think I'm being very helpful or clear here, and I'm confident that my opinion is in an extreme minority, so I think I'll stop ... just thought I'd share my thoughts, and maybe plug the thread I started about the nonexistence of time, because I think that's what really matters in a conversation like this.

I'd hate to reply to a post more than 1 month old, but I feel compelled to do so.
With that said, I can say with near certainty that time does exist, that it can be altered, and it's effects can be observed.
For a long time (pun not intended) physicist couldn't really explain what time was or if it even existed, however, Einstein's theory of general relativity explains how time works. In his theory Einstein claimed that space and time were intimately woven together like a straw basket. He also described how any object with mass bends space around it. This bending of space was his way of explaining gravity but this is also interesting because it states that because the object bends space it also indirectly bends time. This has the interesting effect of "slowing" time down around the object. For small objects with little mass this is barely noticeable with even the most accurate atomic clocks man has ever built. However, this time-bending effect becomes much more noticeable when the object in question is extremely large and massive.

Black holes, for instance, are the most massive and densest objects known to exist in the universe. This means they have an extremely powerful gravitational force (the most powerful of any know object) and it also means they bend time to an enormous extent. How enormous? Well, imagine you had a space craft that could teleport you into orbit around the closest super-massive black hole near you. Should you orbit this black hole for what you believe would be 1 year and then teleported back to earth, you would find that while you have only aged 1 year while earth has aged many hundreds, if not thousands, of years. This is not a trick, people on board you spaceship will have experienced time at a different rate than people on earth. What is amazing about this is that you would not notice it. People on your spaceship would feel like time is moving exactly how it should be. Concurrently people on earth would feel like time is moving exactly how it should be moving as well. It's actually quite mind blowing. (And yes, this is kind of a way to time travel into the future without aging all that much but it is a one way trip)

To give a real world example on why this is important let's talk about GPS, or Global Positioning Systems. Our GPS systems are all based on satellites in orbit around earth. Now GPS satellites have internal atomic clocks in them that are extremely accurate. However, scientists found that atomic clocks in orbit around the earth ticked slightly "faster" than atomic clocks on earth. This is because an object's gravitational pull gets more powerful as you get closer to it's gravitational center and thus time is bent more on the surface of the object than in orbit around the object. So why would this be a big deal? Because the GPS systems in our cars are all based on receiving signals from 4 different satellites around earth. All 4 of these signals reach your car at different times which tells the car's GPS exactly what it's position on earth is. However, should the satellite's atomic clocks get out of synch with the GPS clocks in your car your GPS systems will not work properly. Thankfully scientists identified this problem and adjusted the satellite's clocks accordingly to insure they stayed in synch with our clocks our surface clocks.

Because of Einsteins breakthroughs most physicists are now quite certain that time is a real thing and not merely a concept invented by man to explain nature's law of cause and effect in a coherent and understandable way.

(Sorry if this was too off topic or if there are glaring errors in my grammar or sentence structure. I wrote this hastily just to get my point across and not waste too much time. If it is determined this post is too off topic I will gladly edit it into something more topic friendly. Also, if you would like to learn more about how time works and how gravity/mass/energy effect it I suggest you google it as it is quite a fascinating subject)

^^ Okay, the backup for your statement is compelling, but aren't all your examples really showing that changes in the state of actual matter and energy require changes in our use of time as a tool for measuring that change? And you repeatedly said that time gets "bent." What exactly is the material or force that is being bent?

Also, from where did you hear that, since Einstein, "most physicists are now quite certain that time is a real thing?" I had heard exactly the opposite, that time "existed" quite soundly until Einstein et al came along and showed that time can be quite different from perspective to perspective, and that its once-assumed concrete "behavior" broke down pretty regularly. Indeed, from what I've seen, quantum theorists are using time more as a mathematical place-setter than ever before... what have I been seeing wrong?

I'm not being facetious here, or playing with words. I think my original thesis still stands: there is no material or force that can be quantified as a thing called "time." No particles, no waves, no anything at all. Yes, motion and change exist, and from our perspective there must be time present to understand that motion and change. But is it present as a tool for observation and understanding, or would it be there even if we were not? I'm still going with the former, I think. Plus, our perspective can change, can't it?

The changes in time that you list only more clearly note its lack of substance: What other item in physics can change its very nature like that? Yes, particles in a black hole might be mightily compressed, but they are still particles (and should they stop being particles, I believe something cataclysmic happens, like a big bang -- so they can return to their "correct" state, perhaps). The same goes for the forces: gravity increases in a black hole, but it is still gravity, and that gravity still behaves in a uniform manner. Light seems to "bend" as it passes through gravity wells, though it is still going quite straight, and its particles are continuing to behave in a predictable, relatively unchanging manner. How is it that time actually gets bent, even though there is nothing to bend? Could it be that time must change in order to make the formulas work and enable us to somehow grasp events like change and motion? And doesn't it make sense that, as a tool rather than an object or force, time would be the part of the formulas to change? I does to me.

So, though your argument is clear, I think it might do more to describe time as an unreal tool than as an existent article of energy or matter. If all physicists now are sure that time is real, where are their experiments splitting time particles, or generating time waves? Shouldn't someone by now have bottled time?

Please note, Tranquility Trip, that I speak respectively and with no sarcasm. I think this subject is important, and innate human acceptance of time as a real "thing" might form a formidable obstacle that prevents us from making great new "outside the box" strides in consciousness development. Like, for instance, functional methods to change the tool and dilate time.

And yes, I would love to be proven wrong, because, if time did have presence as matter or force, that would make it a thing we could physically manipulate ... which would be very cool, because we're already very practiced at manipulating things physically, as opposed to consciously.

Originally Posted by Sageous

^^ Okay, the backup for your statement is compelling, but aren't all your examples really showing that changes in the state of actual matter and energy require changes in our use of time as a tool for measuring that change? And you repeatedly said that time gets "bent." What exactly is the material or force that is being bent?

Also, from where did you hear that, since Einstein, "most physicists are now quite certain that time is a real thing?" I had heard exactly the opposite, that time "existed" quite soundly until Einstein et al came along and showed that time can be quite different from perspective to perspective, and that its once-assumed concrete "behavior" broke down pretty regularly. Indeed, from what I've seen, quantum theorists are using time more as a mathematical place-setter than ever before... what have I been seeing wrong?

I'm not being facetious here, or playing with words. I think my original thesis still stands: there is no material or force that can be quantified as a thing called "time." No particles, no waves, no anything at all. Yes, motion and change exist, and from our perspective there must be time present to understand that motion and change. But is it present as a tool for observation and understanding, or would it be there even if we were not? I'm still going with the former, I think. Plus, our perspective can change, can't it?

The changes in time that you list only more clearly note its lack of substance: What other item in physics can change its very nature like that? Yes, particles in a black hole might be mightily compressed, but they are still particles (and should they stop being particles, I believe something cataclysmic happens, like a big bang -- so they can return to their "correct" state, perhaps). The same goes for the forces: gravity increases in a black hole, but it is still gravity, and that gravity still behaves in a uniform manner. Light seems to "bend" as it passes through gravity wells, though it is still going quite straight, and its particles are continuing to behave in a predictable, relatively unchanging manner. How is it that time actually gets bent, even though there is nothing to bend? Could it be that time must change in order to make the formulas work and enable us to somehow grasp events like change and motion? And doesn't it make sense that, as a tool rather than an object or force, time would be the part of the formulas to change? I does to me.

So, though your argument is clear, I think it might do more to describe time as an unreal tool than as an existent article of energy or matter. If all physicists now are sure that time is real, where are their experiments splitting time particles, or generating time waves? Shouldn't someone by now have bottled time?

Please note, Tranquility Trip, that I speak respectively and with no sarcasm. I think this subject is important, and innate human acceptance of time as a real "thing" might form a formidable obstacle that prevents us from making great new "outside the box" strides in consciousness development. Like, for instance, functional methods to change the tool and dilate time.

And yes, I would love to be proven wrong, because, if time did have presence as matter or force, that would make it a thing we could physically manipulate ... which would be very cool, because we're already very practiced at manipulating things physically, as opposed to consciously.

It is unknown what time actually is. However, the most commonly held belief is that it is a dimensional plane. The fourth to be exact. In this way it may not even exist in the same way we usually think of something "existing". This means that time is not a physical object as much as it is a plane of existence. This dimensional plane (of time) is technically separate from our 3 spacial dimensions, however, they are both are wrapped around each other so that anything affecting one also affects the other.
So, to answer your question on what gravity is bending when I say it is "bending" time is the same answer I would give to the question about what gravity is bending when we say gravity bends space. It is bending the dimensional planes that make up our universe. This may also answer you question as to "what other item in physics can change it's very nature like that", in which case the answer is space itself.
Furthermore, it may also answer your question on why we haven't been able to isolate time particles/waves, it would be like asking why we haven't been able to isolate space particles/waves.
(This is all dependent on whether or not time is a dimensional plane, which so far our experiments suggest it is)
I'm going to completely avoid touching upon any form of quantum physics if only because I am even less qualified to speak upon it than normal physics and because quantum physics makes my head spin at times .

(P.S. I hope I'm not confusing too many people or making unclear and unsupported points. I'm only 16 and have been only studying basic physics on my free time for about 3 years now. So I am by no means an authority on this topic and as such should not be held with the same respect as a professional would/should be.)

^^ The easy response to your above post is that space also does not physically exist, for the exact same reasons that time doesn't exist, but that would just sound snarky, I think. A valid response, yes, but still snarky!

I've never heard of these successful experiments that suggest time is a dimensional plane; care to share a link? Also, wouldn't this dimensional plane of time need to coexist with our dimensions, or else we would not be able to experience it?

Otherwise I'm afraid I'm not convinced. Calling time a dimension does not call it a physical entity, I think, as dimensions usually tend to be more convenient mathematical devices than actual things or places, and in no way confirm physical properties. Also, if you're not into quantum mechanics yet, well, there is where time as an entity tends to break up, so there's really not much to talk about. To avoid a long discussion that wanders off-topic and succeeds at nothing, I suggest we leave it at that, with each of us still in our own camps.... it would still be nice to get that link, though!

Sorry for the digression, Tye...

Originally Posted by Sageous

^^ The easy response to your above post is that space also does not physically exist, for the exact same reasons that time doesn't exist, but that would just sound snarky, I think. A valid response, yes, but still snarky!

I've never heard of these successful experiments that suggest time is a dimensional plane; care to share a link? Also, wouldn't this dimensional plane of time need to coexist with our dimensions, or else we would not be able to experience it?

Otherwise I'm afraid I'm not convinced. Calling time a dimension does not call it a physical entity, I think, as dimensions usually tend to be more convenient mathematical devices than actual things or places, and in no way confirm physical properties. Also, if you're not into quantum mechanics yet, well, there is where time as an entity tends to break up, so there's really not much to talk about. To avoid a long discussion that wanders off-topic and succeeds at nothing, I suggest we leave it at that, with each of us still in our own camps.... it would still be nice to get that link, though!

Sorry for the digression, Tye...

hehe, yes I believe we both expressed our sides quite well and am glad it remained in the bounds of a respectable conversation and there would be no reason to continue this conversation of physics and philosophy on a lucid dreaming forum (lol). I will try my best to get you those links for you btw .
To get us slightly more on topic however, I would like to ask you something. Have you ever personally believed you had dialated time in a dream by a rather great deal, such as making a 1 hours dream last 2 hours in dream time?
I'm sorry if you already answered this question earlier in this thread, but I looked and couldn't seem to find if you did or not.

We can talk about time dilation as a mental construct and not assume time itself is altered. I am sure that is in line with the OP. I have experienced what would seem to be an entire evening in LDs. The perceived time being perhaps 5 hours, while it is physically unlikely I could have maintained an LD much beyond 90 minutes.

Originally Posted by Sageous

Sorry for the digression, Tye...

It's alright Sageous, I feel like having discussions about the existence of time is awesome, but we should talk about the existence or non existence of course, and how the existence or non existence would relates to dreams.

Also after thinking about this topic for a while, I think that there is no such thing as time also. I think that events happen and humans create a system in their mind on how they perceive events happening. This is also why I believe time travel into the past is impossible because events happen there is simply no backwards because there is no time. It is somewhat hard to think of the concept because we use time for everything. I think time exists in a way, but that it is just a classification system of everything that happens in the universe.

I think it can relate to dreams if you can alter your classification of time in dreams.

Pretty much everything that tranquility trip has said comes straight out of einstein's theory of relativity. We experience time as he's talking about everyday like with the gps clocks. As well as all 4 of the dimensions that he has mentioned as they are all bound together. Im not sure how to link you to something supporting this but its not too difficult to find if you google the theory of relativity and time as the fourth dimension.

Hey doesnt it also say in his theory somewhere that if you could travel at the speed of light that time would stop for you or go backwards compared to others not moving at the speed of light?? This feels like its probably a dumb idea but maybe you could try using this idea somehow in a lucid dream...wait nevermind I guess this would only make it seem like time dilation would have happened. Nevertheless maybe a possible starting point perhaps?

Originally Posted by rastro13

Pretty much everything that tranquility trip has said comes straight out of einstein's theory of relativity. We experience time as he's talking about everyday like with the gps clocks. As well as all 4 of the dimensions that he has mentioned as they are all bound together. Im not sure how to link you to something supporting this but its not too difficult to find if you google the theory of relativity and time as the fourth dimension.

Yes, as I told Tranquility Toad already, all his examples were valid and familiar to me. I also told him that they tended to illustrate the "non-existence" of time by pointing out how time is uniquely changeable, thus lacking the inherent stability of all forms of matter and energy. I was looking for specific experiments proving time as fourth dimension; I'm sure that I can google explanations of it easily, because time has been known metaphorically as the fourth dimension at least since Newton, and there will be plenty of folks describing it as such. No, I was looking for the mentioned successful experiments proving that time exits as a separate and somehow connected physical fourth dimension, and that unfortunately is far beyond my feeble search skills.

Hey doesnt it also say in his theory somewhere that if you could travel at the speed of light that time would stop for you or go backwards compared to others not moving at the speed of light?? This feels like its probably a dumb idea but maybe you could try using this idea somehow in a lucid dream...wait nevermind I guess this would only make it seem like time dilation would have happened. Nevertheless maybe a possible starting point perhaps?

Not such a bad idea at all, I think! Yes, you'd need to set yourself as the observer of an object exceeding the speed of light -- as if you're waiting for it to come home -- and attempt to experience its passage through your time, if that makes any sense. But that part might not matter, since the expectations woven into such a concept might be enough to separate yourself from the constraints of your internal clock. Might be worth a shot!

If time dilation is possible in a dream then shouldn't a skilled practitioner be able to dilate his perception of time in real life too, or at least in a light meditative state.

The concept still makes absolutely no sense to me, and honestly I don't see how you could "trick" your mind into dilating time but that's something I'll leave since no one here can really have the answer. As sageous has pointed out, the nature of time is pretty much unknown and we just don't know enough about it to make usable assumptions on how it works. For now I will try it for myself and wait for others to prove scientifically of their abilities.

Has anyone here ever successfully dilated time in waking life?

Originally Posted by dutchraptor

If time dilation is possible in a dream then shouldn't a skilled practitioner be able to dilate his perception of time in real life too, or at least in a light meditative state.

Absolutely! To me the real attraction of time dilation -- or more specifically adjusting your perception and use of time -- in LD's is that, once we can learn to "erase" time where it should be easy to do so (in a LD), then it might be possible to do so in waking life.

Originally Posted by dutchraptor

If time dilation is possible in a dream then shouldn't a skilled practitioner be able to dilate his perception of time in real life too, or at least in a light meditative state.

The concept still makes absolutely no sense to me, and honestly I don't see how you could "trick" your mind into dilating time but that's something I'll leave since no one here can really have the answer. As sageous has pointed out, the nature of time is pretty much unknown and we just don't know enough about it to make usable assumptions on how it works. For now I will try it for myself and wait for others to prove scientifically of their abilities.

Has anyone here ever successfully dilated time in waking life?

Yes. If we again accept time dilation as nothing more than an issue of time appearing to alter.

I learned in martial arts how to do that trick Neo does where everything appears to move slower, giving me an advantage in any physical conflict. I used it one time simply because my I-phone was falling towards a concrete floor. I did not keep it from hitting, but it allowed me to hook it with a foot, and make three attempts to get my hands on it. I slowed the phone enough it landed gently. This is not something sustainable and lasts perhaps less than 10 seconds. However, in a fight having 10 seconds stretch out like 30 gives a huge advantage.

In meditation I can remove time as an easily perceived factor. It just involves passing time while meditation without thinking much. In one class the instructor said I had been in deep meditation over 15 minutes before be disturbed me, but I guessed my time at under 5 minutes.

Like I already said here I once experienced the opposite of time dilation where 2 hours meditating felt like 5 minutes or so, it was an isolated event and not intentional.

I don't recall ever experiencing any significant time dilation in my dreams though and I would love to see the people advanced enough in "skill" and opportunity aiming for this and reporting what they find overtime, I mean seriously this has to be a pinnacle to dreaming consciously.

Originally Posted by Sageous

Here's the thing, as I see it, about time dilation.

There is no such thing as time. There is no thing made of mass or energy that can be called "time." There is no time wave or time particle (sorry Star Trek fans). Time is simply the tool for measurement that we use to understand actual physical events like change, movement, velocity or acceleration. Unfortunately (for these purposes), that tool has been so completely embedded into our psyches that we are hard-pressed to experience reality without time on hand to help us wrap our heads around what we see. Indeed, our invention of time the tool was so complete that it has followed us into our dreams -- a dream, especially a LD, will pass in about the same amount of time as whatever time is passing in waking life. Under the rules we've created for observing reality, even dream reality, there seems no way to experience reality without using time to measure it, and apparently that yardstick of time is ruled immutably.

Sageous, let me say first that I have respect for you and mostly agree with what you're saying, but I find your presentation of it to be rather frustrating. I don't think you're doing this on purpose, like I don't think that you're perceiving it this way, but trying to look at this from an objective standpoint it sounds very contradictory. The first thing you do is claim that time doesn't exist, and then you go on to describe how it does. I get what you're trying to say when you say that time doesn't exist, but I think you're going to mislead people more than help them by saying it that way. Just because something is a measurement tool doesn't mean it doesn't exist, or that it doesn't have very real boundaries.

Originally Posted by Sageous

So, you cannot dilate time because it doesn't exist, and how can you change the dimensions of a concept that has no dimension? Also, you can't dilate time because its "length" has been perfectly fused into our psyches, giving us a nearly indomitable "sense" of time that can only be slightly effected by things like boredom or excitement. Seems a pretty tough nut to crack.

But what if, in dreams, you can possibly eliminate the nut itself? As the OP suggests, since you can do anything in the reality that is your dreams, instead of dilating time -- which might be impossible for the reasons I just said above -- why not simply ignore it? Why not just remove it from the process of how you observe and participate in the reality of your dreams?

This would be extremely difficult, because the programming is so perfectly imbedded in us to use time, but it seems that, with enough effort, you ought to be able to produce a dream that does not include time. Here's the irony in successfully doing so, though:

Erase time from your dream and suddenly your existence in the dream is eternal. You might be in your dream world "forever," but you won't know it, because eternity is no more than an endless here & now, with no time passing.

This is where we really start to differ though. Certain experiences and drugs have been shown to consistently alter our perception of the passage of time. I believe what you're trying to say is that because time does not exist as a physical external object it must be illusory. I can't agree with this, because I believe that our perception of time exists as a physical internal object, one that is rigidly defined by our neurochemistry. Of course, when it comes to how each neurochemical state is personally experienced there will always be some subjectivity involved, but I do believe that there are hardwired methods of either lengthening or shortening it which as far as we're concerned would amount to the same thing as changing the external time object, at least in situations like this. I also don't believe that this system can simply be ignored, no matter what you do.

Do you get what I mean?

Originally Posted by dutchraptor

I will use a hypothetical computer game as an example to try prove my point.

Imagine a game in which anything is possible as long as the computer can handle it. The system specifications of the computer is simply a processor which can handle 500 objects per second.
We will create our own racing game on this computer. Generally we load the world and it looks normal, it runs at the same rate as which we perceive time. There are trees in the background and a few buildings around you, totaling to around 250 objects in the scene. The moment we start driving the computer is forced to start processing much more, it must render what is ahead of it, behind it, the speed of each object etc. There is a threshold as to how fast the car can go and the computer cant perfectly render every object on the screen since more than 500 objects are passing at any point.

The human brain would function in a similar way. The first explanation of time dilation I will address is that of people saying that they are actually witnessing 2 hours of dream time identically as they would in a normal dream but in only a 1 hour time frame. While the human brain can process a significant amount of data there still is a threshold just like the computer.

How would the computer handle the situation? It would create the effect of a car driving really fast by minimizing the power needed by other objects in the scene. Game developers use methods where only objects directly in your line of sight are rendered, the resolution is lowered, the complexity of the scene is reduced etc.
The same is applied to our brain, there is only so much power we can use to render an environment and it's properties, the only way to possibly do it would be to create the sensation of it (Don't ask me how ). But in the case of just making up the sensation one can argue whether you are actually dilating time, if you are just making up the feeling, while it may feel good you can't actually do twice as much work in such a dilated dream. Really using an illusion for time dilation would make it obsolete. \

The brain verifiably works this way as well. A very easy example of this would be in the way that very strong adrenaline rushes, which cause strong time dilation, can cause things like temporary colorblindness. Your body works this way in other purposes as well, such as shutting down vital organs in a near death situation in order to divert all power to keeping the brain alive. Both of these examples are ways that your body tries to maximize your chances of survival by cutting out everything but what is absolutely necessary for you to continue to make decisions to survive, and because of this combined with stimulation to the parts of your brain involved in perception and decision-making, that time dilation can occur.