Senses, How come they feel so real?

[jason1987]

Something occured to me about the things we experience in our dreams, I distinctly remember Tasting, Smelling, feeling cold/hot, floating even pleasure within my dreams. How come the mind can emulate these feelings whilst asleep and they feel so real, yet you cannot emulate these feelings upon demand awake. How come they feel so real in the first place? I mean in dreams you can practicaly on demand a certain sense stimulated, but most certainly not whilst awake, not that i'm aware of anyway.

[Digital.Totem]

The brain is an amazing machine, it can call up any memory from your past and paste together the most realistic dream possible. Dreams can and will come to encompase your entire real life and show you many things that couldn't be more unreal. You'll have sex, real sex, you get shot, you'll die, you'll come back from the dead.

[Grunkie7]

How come the mind can emulate these feelings whilst asleep and they feel so real, yet you cannot emulate these feelings upon demand awake. How come they feel so real in the first place? I mean in dreams you can practicaly on demand a certain sense stimulated, but most certainly not whilst awake, not that i'm aware of anyway. Probably because when you're sleeping you essentially cut off all the external senses and focus on the imaginary ones you create. When you're awake your mind is more focused on feeling real things. Trying to feel imaginary senses in waking life is usually like trying to hear a whisper in a rock concert.

[avalonandon]

The brain is an amazing machine, it can call up any memory from your past and paste together the most realistic dream possible. Dreams can and will come to encompase your entire real life and show you many things that couldn't be more unreal. You'll have sex, real sex, you get shot, you'll die, you'll come back from the dead. I agree with you about the senses, Tot. As far as the emotional feelings are concerned (ecstasy, sadness, remorse, fear etc), most of these would follow from the perceived reality of the sensory type experiences of the dream but are REAL as opposed to being "pasted" together. To me this is an interesting commentary on the power our beliefs have on our happiness or misery - which I take a step further to mean "our reality". I completely believe in our ability to change reality and our experience of it through our beliefs themselves. Too bad its not as easy to achieve enlightenment (lucid living) as it is to dream lucidly...

[Oneironaught]

They feel so real because they are real. The only difference between dream sensations and "real" sensations is that, during dreams, the sensory organs generally have limited or no input or say so over the things experienced by the mind. Senses and sensations happen in the brain no matter what state of consciousness you are in. The waking body only tells the brain what to experience. It doesn't actually create the feelings, tastes, smells, visions and other sensations.