Dreams like an alternate reality / parallel universe

**DreamHighlander** · 05-12-2014 11:12 AM

Sometimes dreams (mostly non-lucid) feels like an alternate reality, a parallel universe, because there are some dream elements that i only remember when i'm dreaming.
For example:
There's this train station that i always go in my dreams and i only know that train station. In real life, when i think of a train station, i immediately think of the ones near my house or my work. In my dreams, i immediately think of that one, with a park in the back, trees, etc. This doesn't exist in real life but in my dreams it's the train station i always use.

About 2 years ago i had a dream where i went with some friends to a theme park. We entered this Horror House where we had to pass some tests to get to the finish line. Those tests were very physical and frightening (jump on rocks to not get burned by lava, hide from real monsters, avoid axes and arrows...). I got tired and got hurt.
This week, in a dream, some friends invited me to that House again. I immediately remembered that experience and i said no to them. But it was curious because i didn't know i was dreaming. For me, this happened in real life (that alternate life that i thought was real). In waking life i never remembered that house.

It's like i have 2 lifes (waking and sleeping) with different events and i remembered those events separately in each of these lifes.

I guess this is common and you guys have this too. But it's pretty interesting.

**ageofthunder** · 05-13-2014 01:59 AM

in my dreams ive noticed that ive been around my neighborhood 2-3 times in dreams this past year, and in those dreams my neighborhoods had extensions in them. additional houses, roads, and even a trailer park added in.

**RecycledSoul** · 05-13-2014 03:34 AM

YES!! I have thought about the whole "Dream-Alternate reality-Parallel Universe" thing and such MANY times!! In fact, my friend and I were talking about stuff like that not too long ago.

I like that thought a lot.. I always have dreams that make me wonder stuff like that..

**Linkzelda** · 05-13-2014 04:10 AM

It’s not surprising that we may contemplate on pluralism (the metaphysical one), i.e., that there could be more than one reality (e.g. multi-verses). And sometimes to me, trying to justify it as my mind creating some perfect virtual experiential reality is also as problematic, so I’m mostly agnostic towards things like this since I don’t feel I could ever have enough cognitive grasp to confidently presume it’s just inside my head. So I just try to be stoic when engaging in those experiences rather than reacting to it in a negative matter (existential crisis imminent for some who aren’t used to those lucid dreaming experiences).

Ever since I started attempting lucid dreaming, trying to recall every experience for verbatim seems as if I need another day or several just to type them out (only to just summarize). I find myself holding back on posting, or extending on those experiences. Then with training I did with image streaming for a few months last year, how I existed in that lucid dreaming state just lingers onto me. It just amazes me that we’re still reigning in our existence, sense of self, and awareness despite of the vastness of all sorts of attributions of experiential realities in our natural sleep.

So much potential, so much contemplation on metaphysical pluralism, or just this being the only reality is definitely difficult to bear with at times, but still awe-inspiring at the same time. Guess we garner favoritism over experiences on how we define our existence potentially being blurry, or a blank canvas when we get used to our existence in dreams. Solipsism, metaphysical pluralism, panpsychism, mind-independent reality vs, mind-dependent reality, dualism, monism, dialectal monism….they’re all so fun to speculate in remedial meditation and other introspective acts I guess.

Glad to see a thread that takes these speculations so casually, thought I would be stabbed to death if I were to refer to things like this.

And those false awakenings, those moments where I take those subtle distinctions for granted, stripping my chance at lucidity, makes me wonder if we probably focus more on the good rather than being skeptical all the time that it may really just be a virtual experiential reality. Maybe we’re too saturated in the thought of our minds creating the ideal reality, or maybe something beyond that.

**blade5x** · 05-16-2014 11:15 PM

I can definitely relate to this. There are "locations" in my dreams that do not exist here in our physical reality. And every time I revisit these locations in my dreams, I get this odd sense of deja-vu, and then "remember" that I had been there before. It might even end up triggering temporary lucidity. But I haven't just had this happen with certain locations, but entire cities...

**tendre** · 05-19-2014 01:17 PM

I often experience dreams that make me believe I am experiencing being in a parallel universe. I have dreamt of very complex cities, with complex school systems and distinct architecture - sometimes it is completely foreign 'out of this world', alien.. other times I am in cities that could have been on Earth before, full of stone and tight walk-ways and civilians in robes. One time, I seemed to be stuck in a parallel universe- I told everyone around me I was from a different time and place and I got driven to an insane asylum ! The whole thing was very much in real time & I experienced every moment! Anyways, I've had dreams & experiences that make me wonder about alternate realities for sure! (: