Thread: Help explain this: dream predicts its own ending

I don't agree with laberge for one. He showed that "sometimes dream time matches with waking time". None of the people in the test were trying or claiming dilated time.
I had a dream that I was standing on a cliff and I couldnt seem to get away from it. As I backed up, the edge somehow got nearer and nearer, then I fell I noticed that there was a giant rock that my head would hit before I even hit the bottom of the cliff. As my head hit the rock, I woke up with my head hitting part of a leg of my art table a I fell off my bed.

I would say that usually dreams occur at a similar speed to waking, but they don't always directly correlate. I have had a wild that lasted a minute and I woke up and an hour had passed, I have had a wild that lasted an hour and 2 minutes had passed, but in general, when I wild, it seems like a certain amount of time, and it is that amount of time.

Of course, it could be that your mind is much better at predicting things than we think, and since it know what will happen, it makes a dream to coincide with it when it does happen. I have noticed this in waking too. There is a certain feeling I get when I hit my head, like a feeling mixed with a taste in my mouth. I started paying attention to it, and it started coming a second before I got hit in the head and then 2 seconds, and now it seems to come and warn me that something is going to hit me in the head. I used to work outside and had a handheld that I needed to type numbers into and read all the time. I would walk around a corner and then get the taste and duck, 9/10 times, I would have slammed my head into something had I not. Which makes me think that my mind heard or remembered something that my conscious mind didn't.

Sensei good to hear that you had similar experience, even in this case it's things hiting our bodies =D

I think your expreience from waking life can be explained that your unconcsiousness can observe the upcoming danger and gives you warning according to your previous experience. (hiting your head last time in similar enviroment) but in our cases of dream, how the unconsciousness know? Your eyes are closed and things that will fall on you dont look like they will at the time of dream. And somehow there is a story created by your unconsciousness before it happen.

And i disagree with argument of time dilatation. Like if that dream could happen in one second before the awakening or so. Science showed us that exprience in dream is equal to experience in waking life, vecause brain just work the same way. The month long dreams and stuff like that must be caused by memory is fooling you. Maybe someone should research how deep could false memory go.

One thing to do the exoeriment is just being in a dream and someone will throw something on your head while in a dream and wake you up this way. Maybe it could recreate event like that. Haha im gonna try that.

Only explanation is that these all were False awakenings or causality of time is created by your mind and not physical outside world.

Originally Posted by Nfri

And i disagree with argument of time dilatation. Like if that dream could happen in one second before the awakening or so. Science showed us that exprience in dream is equal to experience in waking life, vecause brain just work the same way. The month long dreams and stuff like that must be caused by memory is fooling you. Maybe someone should research how deep could false memory go.

^^ That, I think, might shine some light on your answer, Nfri. Though I wouldn't call it false memory because that implies other stuff, memory might be the culprit here.

The unique thing about dreams is that they are the only experience we all have that relies completely on memory. There are no cameras, no witnesses (that we know of ), no recording devices, no means for confirming that what is happening is really happening in real time. All we have is what we can remember... and remembering can be an amazingly fallible process. For instance, I think much of time dilation is our mind inserting memories after we wake to make some sense of a sequence of dream snippets that don't exist well on their own -- you might have had a dream about, say, a visit to a friend's house, then an adventure with the same friend in a very different place and time, and then maybe your attending that friend's wedding years later. Each dream segment might have lasted only seconds, and really had nothing to do with each other, but upon waking your memory fills in details to create a narrative that makes sense to you; and one of those details is the impression of the passing of time.

Where am I going with this? Well, let's say that dreamer in LaBerge's book was sleeping and dreaming away -- probably about something that had nothing at all to do with guillotines -- when the book hit his neck: because his dreaming mind was still active as he was awakened, it created a memory that offered a good story to explain the sudden chop on his neck. In other words, the guillotine dream never happened at all, it was just remembered as a dream after the guy was wakened by a chop on his neck. And, memory being memory, the dreamer will swear that he definitely had the dream before the book hit him, even though he never did. So no time dilation, no clairvoyance, just a memory of a dream that never happened, created by a dreaming mind that hadn't quite shut off yet.

I just noticed that I'm pretty much repeating what Sensei said above, but it's written now so I might as well leave it... that said, though, I do think that predicting process you mention, Sensei, is a different one from the OP, one that relates more to the fact that our brain is receiving far more sensory input than we actually perceive (i.e., it knows to duck before we consciously perceive the obstacle)... in a sense it's processing a physical reaction to reality, while the remembered dream is a non-physical story about reality.

Interesting point with memory, Sageous. I hadn't thought about it myself, but knowing I have false memories all the time in dreams, it is entirely possible that through the same or a similar mechanism, the memory of a dream like that is created.

It's important to remember that the sensory organs are still providing input to the brain, and the brain is still functioning so as to construct its own model of reality, whether that reality is bound to external sensory perceptions or not. Even though a dream is honestly a ridiculously inaccurate model of our external reality, as a result of the lack of external input or at least the processing of it in the key areas of the dreaming mind, it is still a representation of what is going on around you. Most of it is internal, but external influences still make their way in.

Because for us the dreaming mind consciousness circuit is such a goofy way of processing input from both internal and external sources, the way it integrates it into the overall model of reality, and therefore, our dream experience, is going to reflect how abnormally the input was processed. It's important to keep in mind that our conscious experience has a bit of lag to it with respect to the actual occurrence of events outside of us. The mind gets to put its own finishing touches on its creations, it has the final say. It even has the ability to rewrite the details of an experience to make it fit more easily as a piece of the puzzle to make an overall memory more coherent. There are several studies out there that highlight the fallibility of our memories, and how easily they can be altered.

Originally Posted by Sageous

There are no cameras, no witnesses (that we know of ), no recording devices, no means for confirming that what is happening is really happening in real time.

There are "cameras" for example eeg, eye signaling during lucid dreams, and different brain imaging methods fmri and so on... All these outside cameras suggest that experience is happening in real time. Either awake or dreaming. And the best camera is subjective lucid experience.

All we have is what we can remember...

I would say all we have is experience which is basically formation of memories. Experience is now, memories are experience now that already happened if that make sense. During lucid dreaming, you can truly focus on these now experiences just as in awake.

[QUOTE]
and remembering can be an amazingly fallible process. For instance, I think much of time dilation is our mind inserting memories after we wake to make some sense of a sequence of dream snippets that don't exist well on their own -- you might have had a dream about, say, a visit to a friend's house, then an adventure with the same friend in a very different place and time, and then maybe your attending that friend's wedding years later. Each dream segment might have lasted only seconds, and really had nothing to do with each other, but upon waking your memory fills in details to create a narrative that makes sense to you; and one of those details is the impression of the passing of time.

Where am I going with this? Well, let's say that dreamer in LaBerge's book was sleeping and dreaming away -- probably about something that had nothing at all to do with guillotines -- when the book hit his neck: because his dreaming mind was still active as he was awakened, it created a memory that offered a good story to explain the sudden chop on his neck. In other words, the guillotine dream never happened at all, it was just remembered as a dream after the guy was wakened by a chop on his neck. And, memory being memory, the dreamer will swear that he definitely had the dream before the book hit him, even though he never did. So no time dilation, no clairvoyance, just a memory of a dream that never happened, created by a dreaming mind that hadn't quite shut off yet.

I like that but I dont think false memory explanation idea is the case here. And why? Because as i try to explain above, there is difference between experience and false memories. If i have false memories, they are kind of sketches of explanation. False memories just trying to fill in the story behind, but if you have recent experience from a dream you woken up, it just cant be confused with false memories.

I think if you have recent experiences, you wont confuse that with false memories. If the experience happened long time ago, like three days for example, these memories then can be confused with false memories just as a mix of memories and false memories which are now much harder to recognize-

I just noticed that I'm pretty much repeating what Sensei said above, but it's written now so I might as well leave it... that said, though, I do think that predicting process you mention, Sensei, is a different one from the OP, one that relates more to the fact that our brain is receiving far more sensory input than we actually perceive (i.e., it knows to duck before we consciously perceive the obstacle)... in a sense it's processing a physical reaction to reality, while the remembered dream is a non-physical story about reality.

Originally Posted by snoop

It's important to remember that the sensory organs are still providing input to the brain, and the brain is still functioning so as to construct its own model of reality, whether that reality is bound to external sensory perceptions or not. Even though a dream is honestly a ridiculously inaccurate model of our external reality, as a result of the lack of external input or at least the processing of it in the key areas of the dreaming mind, it is still a representation of what is going on around you. Most of it is internal, but external influences still make their way in.

How would sleeping body in darkness perceive 5 minutes ahead fall of the lamp. I mean it could, but im not sure how.

^^ All true, but:

Originally Posted by Nfri

There are "cameras" for example eeg, eye signaling during lucid dreams, and different brain imaging methods fmri and so on... All these outside cameras suggest that experience is happening in real time. Either awake or dreaming. And the best camera is subjective lucid experience.

Yes, but EEG's, REM monitoring, fMRI, etc., do nothing to record the actual dream; they only record that we are dreaming, which nobody is arguing with. The content of the dream, though, is still only saved by memory. In other words, monitoring devices record that we're dreaming, not what we're dreaming.

I would say all we have is experience which is basically formation of memories. Experience is now, memories are experience now that already happened if that make sense. During lucid dreaming, you can truly focus on these now experiences just as in awake.

Agreed again. In fact, a long long time ago I started a thread that discussed just this. Lucidity absolutely increases your ability to properly remember a conscious experience during a dream. Aside from noting that there was no mention of lucidity in the OP (and this thread is in a forum not centered on lucidity), so I was working from how we remember dreams in general, and not just LD's: keep in mind that even lucid dreams are relegated to being defined and recorded only by memory, unlike all our other waking-life conscious memories. That said, though, I think that if a dreamer were lucid -- and in much closer contact with their sleeping body -- that guillotine dream probably would not have happened at all, because the LD'er would know that something just fell on his physical body.

So yes, a LD -- as a truly conscious experience -- is recorded, in my opinion, just as efficiently as any waking-life event might be recorded -- which could, BTW, explain why so many people complain about how short or discordant their LD's seem to be in comparison with their NLD's. Of course, "just as efficiently" by no means equals "totally efficiently": even waking-life memory, as you noted, can be pretty fallible (which is why I think it is important to write down LD's as soon as you have them, before that memory fades). But I wasn't talking specifically about LD's here.

I like that but I dont think false memory explanation idea is the case here. And why? Because as i try to explain above, there is difference between experience and false memories. If i have false memories, they are kind of sketches of explanation. False memories just trying to fill in the story behind, but if you have recent experience from a dream you woken up, it just cant be confused with false memories. I think if you have recent experiences, you wont confuse that with false memories. If the experience happened long time ago, like three days for example, these memories then can be confused with false memories just as a mix of memories and false memories which are now much harder to recognize-

Agreed yet again. I'm pretty sure I even mentioned somewhere up there that I do not equate remembering a dream with false memories, and that (as you nicely describe) false memories are a different aspect of our dreaming life.

How would sleeping body in darkness perceive 5 minutes ahead fall of the lamp. I mean it could, but im not sure how.

I never said it did, and I'm not entirely sure LaBerge said that either. In fact, my point here was that the man's dreaming mind (which was active when the object fell on his physical body) simply did its job by contributing a story, in the form of a memory, that creatively explained the impact. In other words, the guillotine dream never happened as a dream at all, but was remembered as one after the object fell on the man. And, of course, the man can honestly swear that he had that whole dream before the impact, because that is how he remembers it.

tl;dr: I'm in agreement with you on all your points, Nfri, but I was not talking about LD's here. Also, that guillotine dream was a memory created after the object hit the dreamer, not before; not so much a false memory as a belated insertion into memory of dream imagery by brain still in dreaming mode.

Completely contrary to what has been said so far, my first thought is that explaining this phenomenon is only a problem if we think of dream and waking life as being separate in nature in a specific way. Namely dreams being mental whereas waking life is material.

If an observation cannot be adequately explained by our current model we should look for models which can explain it better.

The materialistic world view fails to explain a huge amount of phenomena that the mental does not. While, as far as I know, all explanations used in the material world view can be easily transferred to a world view in which we see the world as a mental phenomenon. We don't have to scrap our science... it's just put into another perspective. The world is still material... it's just that matter and mind are not separate.

Our experiences as lucid dreamers make the mental nature of the physical universe very clear to see. Yet it's a difficult transformation as we lack language and culture... the operating system if you will, for understanding the world this way. So we default back to materialistic thinking and problem solving.

Originally Posted by Sageous

^^ All true, but:



Yes, but EEG's, REM monitoring, fMRI, etc., do nothing to record the actual dream; they only record that we are dreaming, which nobody is arguing with. The content of the dream, though, is still only saved by memory. In other words, monitoring devices record that we're dreaming, not what we're dreaming.

What these so far primitive brain machines show us is actually dream content or you may say experience of a subject. It is just not viewed as subjective perceived experience by the the one who is experiencing it. And they can show us that you experience something either dream or lucid dream or awake in real time observed objectively.

Agreed again. In fact, a long long time ago I started a thread that discussed just this. Lucidity absolutely increases your ability to properly remember a conscious experience during a dream. Aside from noting that there was no mention of lucidity in the OP (and this thread is in a forum not centered on lucidity), so I was working from how we remember dreams in general, and not just LD's: keep in mind that even lucid dreams are relegated to being defined and recorded only by memory, unlike all our other waking-life conscious memories. That said, though, I think that if a dreamer were lucid -- and in much closer contact with their sleeping body -- that guillotine dream probably would not have happened at all, because the LD'er would know that something just fell on his physical body.

So yes, a LD -- as a truly conscious experience -- is recorded, in my opinion, just as efficiently as any waking-life event might be recorded -- which could, BTW, explain why so many people complain about how short or discordant their LD's seem to be in comparison with their NLD's. Of course, "just as efficiently" by no means equals "totally efficiently": even waking-life memory, as you noted, can be pretty fallible (which is why I think it is important to write down LD's as soon as you have them, before that memory fades). But I wasn't talking specifically about LD's here.

I asked my self question what is the difference between lucid dreaming and dreaming and awake. In essence, there is no difference, it is all experience. Only difference is that experience producing units are not activated well enough and are not glued to already existing experiences and therefore have difference in effectiveness of remembering.

keep in mind that even lucid dreams are relegated to being defined and recorded only by memory

Subjective now experience is basically very fresh memory. All memories LD NLD or AWAKE works the same way. How well glued they are, determines how accessible they are after some time they are not fresh memories.

I never said it did, and I'm not entirely sure LaBerge said that either. In fact, my point here was that the man's dreaming mind (which was active when the object fell on his physical body) simply did its job by contributing a story, in the form of a memory, that creatively explained the impact. In other words, the guillotine dream never happened as a dream at all, but was remembered as one after the object fell on the man. And, of course, the man can honestly swear that he had that whole dream before the impact, because that is how he remembers it.

tl;dr: I'm in agreement with you on all your points, Nfri, but I was not talking about LD's here. Also, that guillotine dream was a memory created after the object hit the dreamer, not before; not so much a false memory as a belated insertion into memory of dream imagery by brain still in dreaming mode.

This makes sense and even sounds good, but I think it is impossible as you say to create memory of dream experience in time of the impact of the book. You just remember these fresh experience of the dream that lasted some time. Believe me I know brain is powerful thing and it is capable of lots of unbelievable things but I dont think it is capable to create such a vivid inserted false experience memory.

It is worth to examine and experiment possibly experience it or disprove it.

Originally Posted by LighrkVader

Completely contrary to what has been said so far, my first thought is that explaining this phenomenon is only a problem if we think of dream and waking life as being separate in nature in a specific way. Namely dreams being mental whereas waking life is material.

Waking life is mental and dreams are mental too. All is subjective mental model and doesnt matter what state you found yourself in. Mental model is your perceived representation of a materialistic physical reality.

Originally Posted by Nfri

What these so far primitive brain machines show us is actually dream content or you may say experience of a subject. It is just not viewed as subjective perceived experience by the the one who is experiencing it. And they can show us that you experience something either dream or lucid dream or awake in real time observed objectively.

What the machines record are brain activity that shows we are dreaming. What they do not record is the imagery of the dream (aka, its content). For instance, if you have a dream about being on a tropical island, the machines will definitely show that you had the experience, and can even (I think) detect lucidity, but they cannot record what you saw, heard, did or felt on that island; they won't even be able to tell that you thought you were on an island. The only record we have of that imagery, to date, is memory.

So yes, the machines record the experience of dreaming, but the only thing recording the specific imagery of a dream, its content, is memory.

Originally Posted by Sageous

What the machines record are brain activity that shows we are dreaming. What they do not record is the imagery of the dream (aka, its content). For instance, if you have a dream about being on a tropical island, the machines will definitely show that you had the experience, and can even (I think) detect lucidity, but they cannot record what you saw, heard, did or felt on that island; they won't even be able to tell that you thought you were on an island. The only record we have of that imagery, to date, is memory.

So yes, the machines record the experience of dreaming, but the only thing recording the specific imagery of a dream, its content, is memory.

It is little bit off topic and I dont know enough about it, but Ive heard that they are able to kinda see dream content. Scientist can for example say you are dreaming about a house or dancing and so on.

But this is not what i tried to say, what i mean is that there are tools that enable other people to see that the brain is experiencing something during a sleep. Imagine you and I are in one room and you are standing and Iam doing push ups. You look at me and see: This guy is doing push ups. Now we are still in that room, but I lie in bed a go to sleep. Im lucid and I start to do push ups in a dream. You look at me and you dont see that im doing push ups but you see me just sleeping. Now you hook me up and brain scan me and you see brain activity which has pattern as push ups brain activity patern in real life.

So science tells us that dreaming is experiencing. And if you experience something real time, the falling lamp cannot influence past experiences. Arrow of time is set and future events cant influence past events. Causality of experience would be inverted.

^^ I never said, and I don't think anyone said, that dreams would not be experienced before that object fell on the dreamer. In fact, my whole point was that dreaming was active at the time of the impact: Upon that sudden awakening, the dreamer's unconscious used the most readily available tool (dream production) to account for the physical sensation of that impact, and -- because the dreamer was now awake -- that account came in the form of a memory that told a dream-like story of the impact.

That's it; nothing more. The whole point of my original post was to show a way in which the arrow of time would not be interrupted, that there was no clairvoyance going on. And, ironically, I was posting to amplify something you had said. We have been in agreement on this from the beginning, Nfri.

Also, and definitely off-topic, I am aware of the research that was being done on recording dream images, I think mostly at Berkley, and -- though it seemed promising -- I notice that nothing much has occurred or improved since the original announcements and imagery were released almost a decade ago. So, though there is hope, I think science may still be years away from accurately recording the content of a dream. When it can do that, I will certainly change my opinion on this, and be relieved that finally memory is not the only tool for recording dreams.

Originally Posted by Sageous

^^ I never said, and I don't think anyone said, that dreams would not be experienced before that object fell on the dreamer. In fact, my whole point was that dreaming was active at the time of the impact: Upon that sudden awakening, the dreamer's unconscious used the most readily available tool (dream production) to account for the physical sensation of that impact, and -- because the dreamer was now awake -- that account came in the form of a memory that told a dream-like story of the impact.

That's it; nothing more. The whole point of my original post was to show a way in which the arrow of time would not be interrupted, that there was no clairvoyance going on. And, ironically, I was posting to amplify something you had said. We have been in agreement on this from the beginning, Nfri.

Also, and definitely off-topic, I am aware of the research that was being done on recording dream images, I think mostly at Berkley, and -- though it seemed promising -- I notice that nothing much has occurred or improved since the original announcements and imagery were released almost a decade ago. So, though there is hope, I think science may still be years away from accurately recording the content of a dream. When it can do that, I will certainly change my opinion on this, and be relieved that finally memory is not the only tool for recording dreams.

Im in agreement with you too, just trying to find faultiness in my thinking using dialogue. And hope you re right, otherwise it would be crazy. I will see for myself soon.

One of my favorite scenes from a movie, John Dies at the End, touched on this topic:

"Do you dream, man? l interpret dreams... for a beer."

"Well, l don't have any beer, so l guess l'm out of luck."

"l'll tell you what l'll do, Mr. Skeptic Man. l'll do it like Daniel in the Old Testament. l'll tell you the last dream that you had and then l'll break down it's meaning for ya. And if l'm right, you owe me a beer. Okay, man?"

"Sure. l mean, you've obviously been blessed with supernatural gifts. What better way to use them than to fish for free beer at parties?"

"You had this one early this morning in the middle of the thunderstorm. And in the dream, you were back with your girlfriend Tina."

Whoa. How'd he know that?

"And you come home and she's there with this big honking pile of dynamite and one of them cartoon plunger detonators, ready to blow. And you say, 'What you doing?' And she says, 'This,' and boom. Your eyes snap open and the explosion at the end of the dream become the clap of thunder outside of your window. So tell me, man, am l close?"

"...Okay... You made a lucky guess."

"You see? You gotta ask yourself, man, you gotta be really brave to ask yourself the scary questions. How did your mind know, David, that the thunder was coming? The thunder came right as she hit the detonator at the end of your dream. Your mind started the dream 30 seconds before the thunder. Now how did the mind know that the thunder was coming? Hmm? Because...time is an ocean...not a garden hose. Space is a puff of smoke, a wisp of cloud. Your mind... is a flying corn snake, hovering through all the possibilities."



It's a great movie.

Personally I've had one of these, where I took up my bagpipes, inflated them, and then when I "struck in" (the term for starting the flow of air by squeezing the bag, thus starting the drones of the pipes) the bagpipes became my alarm. No idea why or how these dreams work, I much prefer to let the dream be what it is.