Thread: Is it possible to be aware in more than one location?

Originally Posted by Raetin

I would think of it as looking at a reflection in water. You can see through the water but you can see yourself too.

That's a good way to put it. The only thing is that when you look at water, you can only look at your reflection or look through the water at one time. What i'm thinking is maybe being able to look at both simultaneously. Like you say in your sig, you would like to be a dragon rider. Imagine that you could be both the dragon and the rider simultaneously. Then when you wake up, you could recall the experience from both perspectives. That would make for an awesome ld. Or maybe you could have 2 ld goals (maybe one goal is to fight zombies and the other goal is to fly) you would like to accomplish. Imagine that you are in an ld, then you split your consciousness into two. One of you would go fight zombies in the nearest grave yard and the other one would go flying through the night sky. When you wake up, you would remember both experiences and would have accomplished both goals. I guess this would be comparable to omnipresence; except that would mean been everywhere at the same time; i'm just thinking about being in two places at once.

i would say it is absolutely possible because we can do similar things while awake. like looking down a thin wall where your nose is in the middle so your eyes see either side of the wall, you can see two seperate images. or putting one hand in a bag of sand the other in water, you can feel both. this means that your mind could hypothetically create two different points of view or other types of awareness in dreams. it wouldn't be two complete consciousness since that's impossible but yes you should be able to have two different points of awareness. more than two would be a real challenge and i'm not sure how possible that is but who knows?

our brains can handle only so much input, like try to watch two tvs and you'll do okay, now try to watch ten. try to keep your mind going and figure out whats going on on each one without looking at any one individually but look at them all at once. i can't imagine having much success at all. or try putting each of your ten fingers into different substances. you won't be able to take it all in at once. try to ask yourself without looking which substance your ring finger is in. then look. you'll probably be wrong. or listen to two different songs on two ear buds. you should hear both more or less. now try six different ear buds each a different song, three per ear. good luck lol! so i think we're designed for two different inputs at any given time so in a dream you could make two consciousnesses but no more.... maybe three but that's probably the limit. however i've always wondered about this. ever since that guy in waking life said he has three sixty view in dreams i've been trying to wrap my mind around such concepts.

i can't even picture in my mind what three sixty view would be like. so is it possible to dream about something you cannot imagine? like can you really picture seeing in 360 degrees? i can't but i can picture seeing two different images and maybe three. so i guess if you can do it while awake then you can do more extreme versions while asleep but not much more. like seeing two sides of a wall in waking life could be seeing two different worlds in dreams wow now i want to go to sleep and try this!

but in dreams our brains are very powerful so maybe i'm wrong and you could, with practice, make ten separate points of awareness! wouldn't that be amazing? i wonder if it would improve your perception in waking life. in minor ways like you would be able to take things from your peripheral vision in better or hear two conversations at once more clearly. this stuff is really interesting, good thread!

Originally Posted by somniumrex

our brains can handle only so much input, like try to watch two tvs and you'll do okay, now try to watch ten. try to keep your mind going and figure out whats going on on each one without looking at any one individually but look at them all at once. i can't imagine having much success at all. or try putting each of your ten fingers into different substances. you won't be able to take it all in at once. try to ask yourself without looking which substance your ring finger is in. then look. you'll probably be wrong. or listen to two different songs on two ear buds. you should hear both more or less. now try six different ear buds each a different song, three per ear. good luck lol! so i think we're designed for two different inputs at any given time so in a dream you could make two consciousnesses but no more.... maybe three but that's probably the limit. however i've always wondered about this. ever since that guy in waking life said he has three sixty view in dreams i've been trying to wrap my mind around such concepts.

For little things like that we can do it, but to handle two separate entities and their surroundings all at once, I'm not sure the human brain can do all that at once (I mean, it's designed (so to speak) to do all that onceover, so twice...). That aside, I never thought of this before and I'm interested to try it. If I get any results (once I finally LD again, just too damn busy) I'll post back here.

Originally Posted by Caden

I think people are limiting themselves way too much. Very simple animals can pull off this feat and some barely have brains at all. Many insects can do this and you would literally need a microscope to see some of their brains. The most intelligent animal that I know of with 360 vision are ducks. This is an animal so dumb it eats its own waste and doesn't even realize it.
Look at this video to see how smart a duck is.
http://www.ebaumsworld.com/video/watch/80487386/
If Quackers brain can do it, yours can too!

I have to agree. Just think of how a fly sees things. They're stupid, but they have compound eyes that see hundreds (or thousands, i'm not sure) of different images. I think the human brain is capable, but finding the method to make it work could be the difficult part. I think animals have it easier, because their brain is wired for this kind of stuff already and they have the hardware for it too (their eyes ). I think what's important is what you said Caden, that we don't limit ourselves. The second we start to limit what we think we are capable of in an ld is the second that create a limit. Hopefully were onto something in this thread.

Originally Posted by somniumrex

hmm i think it's possible that it would make it more stable. one thing that makes dreams collapse is withdrawing attention. like if you get all excited and run around crazy and cease to interact with anything specific a lot of times it fades. but if you get really involved with something in the dream that usually helps it last longer.that being said i can only imagine how much reforming of things your brain will try when you are making it form two worlds. not to mention you would be so very involved in the dream itself. i would assume that this is the case, it will stabilize the dream. that is the best way to look at it.

I'm thinking the same too. Hopefully engaging the senses to such a great extent will super stabilize the dream. We just have to make sure that we don't lose lucidity. You know how easy this can be sometimes when we get caught up in the plot of the dream or whatever we're experiencing at the time. I imagine that if we can pull this off that we could easily get caught up in the experience and potentially lose lucidity. Guess we just have to be careful.

Originally Posted by Aquanina

Yes...omnivision! Something I'm totally going to try in my next lucid dream. Though you just blew my mind slightly with the looking inwardly as well. I can't even fathom that. I'll still give it a try though.

I think you might have coined a new word. Omnivision sounds like an awesome term to describe seeing in all directions at once. I think that's what we should call if from now on.

Originally Posted by Supernova

For little things like that we can do it, but to handle two separate entities and their surroundings all at once, I'm not sure the human brain can do all that at once (I mean, it's designed (so to speak) to do all that onceover, so twice...). That aside, I never thought of this before and I'm interested to try it. If I get any results (once I finally LD again, just too damn busy) I'll post back here.

I know this sounds difficult and it is, but i think we can do it. We just have to make sure any doubts or pre-conceptions that we have about it, doesn't limit us. One reason that i think it is possible is people with multiple personalities. Some of them claim to see and have all of their senses, but they can't control themselves, because another personality is in control, and i'm assuming that both personalities are receiving input from the senses. I'm not sure, i'm just speculating (i personally don't have this mental disorder, thankfully). Anyway, all we can do it try.

I had a cool thought today about the removing the dream eyes experiment. Is anybody familiar with what it looks like when there are two mirrors facing each other. They keep reflecting each others' reflections "infinitely". It looks like there is a portal or infinite tunnel in each of the mirrors. You can get the same sort of effect if you take your webcam and point it at the monitor of your computer; it looks like an infinite tunnel on your computer screen. Having said all of that, what would happen if you took both of the eyes and pointed them towards one another. Would you get the same effect? What a trip that would be! Having both of your eyes looking at each other and have this "infinite" tunnel thing going on in both eyes! I seriously need to ld tonight, so i can start experimenting with this stuff.

EDIT: Now that i think about the infinite tunnel thing, i'm not sure why it would work after all. The eyes would not be reflecting anything really, i don't think it would work any better than if you pointed two video cameras at each other. So i think i was wrong about it, but it's still an interesting thought.

I'm really enjoying this thread.

The nature of the dream that was initially discussed has been termed "Simultaneous Dreaming" from what I've read. Not too bad a name for it.

Even though I was really having a hard time wrapping my head around this, I agree with Caden's comment in that the human brain is capable of experiencing and pulling off a lot more than we realize.

I'm not sure that we need to separate our eyes to be able to use our vision at various angles within the same moments. I think we can simply do that with our mind's eye by dividing the direction or multiplying our identity and placing it in different directions. I am starting to believe that we may have experienced this behavior multiple times without even noticing.

It's common for us humans to over-analyze and get overwhelmed when we inspect the nature and philosophy of something that we experience naturally, and I think this is one of those natural things that could overwhelm us easily. (Many people still think lucid dreaming is overwhelming... Impossible even. )

Looking inwardly from multiple directions, for instance, is something we probably do a lot of and would be one of the most capable of achieving since it's internally based. We do this a lot because we're complex and mindful beings. That's where we get those aweful internal conflicts from.

About that interesting dreamer I talked about, Aquanina, I said it was a woman, but now that I read it again, I doubt "Jayron" is a woman's name, I just assumed the dreamer was a woman before reading his name. I'm so sexist.

I found a direct link to his letter:
http://www.dreaminglucid.com/article...eamer%2053.pdf

Enjoy