Conceptual Thought And Dreaming

[Merlock]

Topics about time and actions in dreams pop up regularly throughout the forum and have been appearing for probably as long as the forum existed, though I cannot speak for any time before I joined. There have been plenty of discussions on the matter of time in dreams. People tend to think that dream events are of the same plain as events happening in the waking state. That is, the physical plain. Or at least relatively alike in concept and properties. Due to this it's easy to see how plenty of people adhere to time in dreams as a currently flowing stream of events like actions in the waking state. However, this is faulty seeing how dreams happen within our minds and thus belong in the mental plain alone. As I've stated plenty of times in the above mentioned threads, a dream can "last" pretty much any amount of time from 5 seconds to 10 years or even an entire life time, technically speaking. How can such a dream occur during just one night or even within the bounds of one dream? Simple: Events in dreams do not happen linearly and at any given moment like actions in the waking state. The mind's ultimate form of thought is conceptual thought. It is the thought the subconscious uses on an ultimate level and the type of thinking we do when really concentrating on something and contemplating it. At such moments we forget speech in any language and forget conscious thought patterns. Our mind takes over with conceptual thought and we think through something far swifter and with great detail - that detail being concepts, not words. The same, if not even more precise, thought type is what our dreams are built of. Upon dreaming of an entire day at school, of walking through hallways, sitting in classrooms, listening to lectures and talking with others, these events do not actually happen physically as they would in waking life. The conceptual thought form of all these events, pretty much identical to memories, is placed into the dreamer's mind. Thus, even an entire day at school can play through in a dream at anywhere from a few seconds to one dream period, which lasts, of course, far less than an entire day. So, all together, conceptual thought is like its name states - thought through concepts. And seeing how it's really not a complicated concept, I suppose there's not much more to say about it so I'll end it at this and hope that this "article" of sorts was comprehensive enough.

[Canuck]

I agree. It has always seemed logical to me that dreams are a culmination of moments. Our brains, conceptually, construct these moments into a logical situation, including a logical amount of time passed. Thus, time in dreams is often skewed. Good post.

[Tornado Joe]

Yes, I believe this to be true for those "extended" dreamtime episodes. I think what gets some people confused is that LaBerge's studies did show that time elapsed in real-time during his lucid dream tests where he was able to communicate with staff awake in his lab. It's really a combination of both. There is always that possibility that (in dream state) we are somehow able to fold time and space in which we travel - but that's up to each own's beliefs. Either way, the time on THIS plane is constant and separate from our dream's. Whether it passes conceptually or cosmically.

[Follower]

I think what gets some people confused is that LaBerge's studies did show that time elapsed in real-time during his lucid dream tests where he was able to communicate with staff awake in his lab. It's really a combination of both.[/b] LaBerge's studies don't contradict anything written in the first post. His tests were about lucid dreams, while the first post was about normal dreams.

[Merlock]

That's an interesting observation. Not having had any lucid dreams yet, I can't say from experience but somehow it seems to make sense that since we gain awareness and consciousness in lucid dreams, the events in them, though still in your mind, are likely to gain a realistic time frame with thoughts flowing at a pace, not instantaneously forming through conceptual thought like in regular dreams.

[arby]

Coceptual thought: it may seem quite abstract but bear with me as I try to explain it. Actually, I can't seem to put it in words at the moment and i'm really busy. So, self-quote time. everybody seems to think that conceptual thought is just what goes on in the backround. They're asking about what they see, feel and hear. And do you want to know what we really see, feel and hear in dreams guys? Nothing. Its all pure thought. We only think we see because we think we should be seeing. We only hear something because thats the way we're used to gaining information. When a DC comes up to you and says hi, they never said hi. What happens is that you have the knoledge that the DC said hi. You would then "see" that their mouth is moving because they are speaking. Now for the time element. That thought or recognition that the DC is saying something passed through your mind in a milisecond. That means the DC saying hi - an action that would take about a second in real life - took a fraction of the normal time in the dream.[/b] I'll expand on this later and try to explain it better.

[Drk Pwnr]

That sounds simple enough. The mind calculates dream time as fast as it can to maximize efficiency. Now I'm interested in unlocking the hidden potential of conceptual thought...

[Lucid Warrior]

Wow. good post. I like the idea of the culmination of moments, you get all of these moments and later the brain puts them together and fills in logical holes. This would give you a sense of a lot of time, but it wouldn't take time. However, what about slow motion?

[Merlock]

Slow motion = your mind created the conceptual memories of a slow motion event in your dream. It really is simple. The actions never happen literally - physically, the concepts are built in the mind and leave impressions of such actions and events. The reason we recall our dreams as sensory input is because we use our senses in the waking state. While awake we are not beings limited to our minds. We do not use telepathy to communicate but rather the senses to act. Thus, the conceptual thought that our dreams are built of is interpreted into sensory information. That's actually a continuation of conceptual thought and such topics, to say that telepathy, if used, wouldn't be two people speaking mentally with words - they would exchange conceptual thought at extreme speeds and there would never be a single misunderstanding because they would relay to each other absolutely all the information they are trying to relay, instead of using the limiting functions of speech over time.

[unclesirbob]

I know people talk about time in dreams. But personally I believe that time in dreams goes as fast as we think it goes. Dreams speed through things as a device. They will concentrate on one thing that they figure is important eg the look on someones face and then you are suddenly somewhere else. I think time in dreams is related to time in the sense that we can comprehend thought. We watch a film and it passes by t a certain speed. We need moments of rest and reflection and momnents when nothiung happens to allow our brains time to rest. So dreams conduct themselves at a pace that we can understand. Its really like speech in a sense. That dreams conduct them selves at a rate that is comofrtable. Too slow and we get bored and too quick and we lose concentration. One thing of interst to me is time in the sense of passage of time. We have lots of symbols for scary things such as snakes ,crocodiles and lions. Yet we have none to represent the passage of time. The only on e that is obvious is a clock and that rarely appears in dreams. If dreams represent conceptual thought then we need some language to represent the passage of time. I think personally that old people in dreams can symbolise something along the lined of passage of time. Perhaps they could represent building blocks in conceoptual thought. Such as an old person rpresents the thought process "its been a long time since" or "I have learned a lot since I have " or "just how long will this project take". ------------------------ Many dreams simply link to very immediate urges and problems which demand attention immediately. If you are sexually aroused when you wake then interpret the dream in that sense. It is likely to link to involve sexual and fleshy emotions. It will include a real sense of excitement. http://www.geocities.com/hairybobby2000/dr...yhowtopost.html Interpreting dreams http://www.geocities.com/hairybobby2...ssayhowto.html Triggers for dreams http://www.geocities.com/hairybobby2000/dreamessay.html Dream dictionary The pages above all help you to learn the basics of dream interpreting

[petersonad]

If someone were to be asleep for less than 5 minutes, but had a dream that felt much long than that. The only logical assumption I have come up with, is that this person could've experienced an extra-dimensional frame of time. If you were to imagine time, as we all perceive it, to be moving along a straight line. But in a dream, there are times when you are moving along this line, of time, and the line suddenly sinks. This is when time in no longer linear, and you are experiencing more conceptual time, than you are experiencing cosmic time. Let me post a graphic to further explain this: [attachment=426:Conceptual_Time.gif]

[Merlock]

The idea of "conceptual time" doesn't make sense. Time is a measure of action, it doesn't "happen". Perhaps I didn't phrase the original posts clearly enough. Conceptual thought forms -everything- in dreams. Absolutely everything. You moving your hand, the wind you feel around it, the time it takes to move it (even the knowledge of how long it took is a concept that appears, not an independant quality of the events that happened in the dream), etc. The hand never actually moves, the dream isn't in the physical plane, but concepts come together in the same form as memories to create that event. The event transpires while you dream but all in all, time is irrelevant then. You are sleeping, lying in your bed, dreaming while your dream is forming with conceptual thought to relay within your mind a dream that depicts the passing of many days in a row, even though you are just lying there for, say, 5 minutes or, say, half an hour. ^^^ That right there is the only thing that is hard to comprehend and fully analyse about it. It doesn't seem like conceptual thought takes absolutely no time; it does take some amount of time when dreams happen; however, finding the relation between time in the waking state and how long it takes for a dream to happen (and whether this is a constant value) is quite troubling.

[petersonad]

I think I understand what your saying. That our minds creates everything in our dreams, even the time it takes to do something.

[laconix]

Yeah I think I've grasped this now. From what i understand; Time while dreaming is governed by our brain through conceptual thought, hence why people can have hundred year long dreams (or in my case 5 day long dreams). But not only time is governed in this way, but space, life, and everything is in the dream state. But though this may be true it is important to understand that time is of no importance during the transgression of conceptual thought. And hence this is why time can be seemingly 'bent' this way. Hmm, I hope I'm right..

[Merlock]

Aye, that's the one question that remains to be answered though: time isn't utterly irrelevant to conceptual thought. After all, it does seem to take some amount of time to accomplish. Far less than verbal thought and the like but nonetheless. It's just irrelevant to the events that are portrayed through it. Also, keep in mind that we use conceptual thought in the wake too. Dreams are built of it because they happen via our subconscious but when we think in the waking state, when we really think while awake in reality, we use conceptual thought too, simply not noticing it most of the time. It is when you truly think of something with great intensity and concentration.

[person-person]

Good first post Merlock - for me, it explains well how we have very fragmented dreams and 'travel' is often cut out, as are logical explainations, It's weird though, our mind creates those sense by simply replaying the electrical signles that were sent by our reseptors to the brain. I guess it makes sense with 'creating' memories... i spose it does... maybe

[memeticverb]

Conceptual thought, according to the general way such a thing has been referred to in relevant works of persons who deal with the issue, is unfortunately much different than what has been communicated in this thread so far. If conceptual thought is ruled by the connections of concepts, then what are these connections? Are concepts the same as experiences? It seems we are lacking a clear way to relate these supposed atemporal experiences with how our mind actually works. Studies showing that our lucid dream perception of time is correlative to our waking perception of time dont seem surprising. They simply confirm what philosophers have been saying for quite some time; that our conceptual thought is dependent on language, and that language in turn is dependent upon time. Experiencing anything without time would seem to be impossible, because time, or spacetime, is the necessary background for any experience. :yumdumdoodledum:

[Cridegnosis]

Indeed thinking is based mostly upon language, but this is not the sole form of how it works. There were experiments showing that there is much more than language involved in this process. One thing is that children before age 2-3 do not speak as adults do... Does this imply they have very poor thinking? NO, it is just that they think in images and natural concepts that form in other ways than thorugh language. In the same time, there are people born deaf, and some deaf and blind... Some of them learn how to speak in different manners, but some do not. Even so, they think very alike to a "common" "normal" adult. It may be that at first some abstract and more complicated concepts are born thorugh the mediation of language, but at some point they will not be dependent of it anymore. Children learn how to speak and implicitly know grammar rules without having someone explaining them. Grammar rules are very complicated concepts... Then, even if some concepts are achieved thorugh language, that does not mean they are time dependent. Our minds work, at some levels, without having time dictating their flow. We can think at two or more things simultaneously... We can have some very complicated ideas in matter of seconds and not be able to verbalize them not even in 30 minutes or a day or more. Language does not egual thinking, even if thinking is based at some level, at some points, on it... In the dream world, conceptual thinking it as its very best - we see 3-4 things in the same time, perceving them as a unitary sole thing, feel another thing, acting out another etc. A concept is the synthesis of the main characteristics of something, thus it needs no time, because it is abstract, peeled off the "concrete" object/thing that gave birth to it. Then, these concepts are deeply related to one another and they can be activated more in the same time. That's why we sometimes clearly remember talking to someone in the dream but we do ot remember what we were talking about - we were only dreaming about the idea of talking, there was no actual dialogue. In the same manner we can dream of a lifetime events, because our minds uses the ideas of them, or their mental images (which are also veri synthetic), it does not relive them. It is true that sometimes dream do take place in a somewhat real time manner, but this referrs only to simple actions, to some kind of dreams... What I want to say is that I do not think the dream story is knitted on the base of a certain stimulus - for example, the most common dream that incorporates the sound of the clock in the morning. The dream does not follow the inner representation the sound activated in a whole new story, it only adapts to the stimulus and changes (more or less) its previous course (which, being rather random based on step by step connnections, can misguide the dreamer into thinking all the dream was generated by the sound of the clock)...

[Merlock]

Studies showing that our lucid dream perception of time is correlative to our waking perception of time dont seem surprising. They simply confirm what philosophers have been saying for quite some time; that our conceptual thought is dependent on language, and that language in turn is dependent upon time. Experiencing anything without time would seem to be impossible, because time, or spacetime, is the necessary background for any experience. :yumdumdoodledum:[/b] Conceptual thought may or may not utilise language. It would take a very deep research, diving into serious mental states of focus and concentration with conceptual thought, to realise it. Concepts could indeed be portrayed even in the ultimate form of thought through language or they might not and instead pure concepts in some other way are present thus. On the topic of time - of course, time is a measure of action, and it's been stated in this topic and other related ones that conceptual thought isn't timeless. It simply is so swift that the actions portrayed through it in dreams can take less time than they would in the waking state. And then again, they can also take the same amount of even more - depending on the dream.