Realer than real...

For awhile (1 1/2 years) now I have been studying and learning about lucid dreaming. I usually accomplished this by watching videos bout lucid dreaming and joining lucid dreaming forums on the internet. I learned a lot from all this "studying" and I completely understood most of it, however, I always ran into the statement "realer than real" which was used to describe just how vivid someone's dream was.
I could never truly wrap my mind around the idea that anything could be more visually "real" than reality itself. The idea is almot a contradiction, infact it almost certainly is. I thought about this idea over and over, but I could never understand it. At one point I began to assume this was just that person's way of saying their dream was soo vivid that it looke exactly like reality. But that was the furthest I was willing to go, I could believe a dream looked exactly like reality, but nothing beyond that. And I held that view for many months.

2 hours ago my entire view on this issue was turned upside down because 2 hours ago I experienced 2 (or 3) of the most vivid lucid dreams I have ever had. The dreams were soo vivid, soo clear, and soo detailed that the only way to describe them is "realer than real". There is truly no other way for me to describe it. And honestly it may be impossible to truly understand it, or even comprehend it, without experiencing it for yourself.

The dream's clarity was absolute and the visuals were out of this world. The textures and feel of the objects in the dream were realistic and in a lot of ways they were actually superior to reality because the dream seemed to have enhanced my sense of touch to superhuman levels. Even my lucidity was off the charts.

So have any of you ever had a lucid dream that was soo vivid, soo clear, and soo detailed that is was "realer than real"?

I personally have. And I'm sure lots of people here have as well. I think it may be because our mind simulates things based on our senses, and while we sleep, it can do that without the limits of our physical bodies. Or something like that, lol. But yeah, some lucids (and nonlucids) I've had were extremely vivid to the point that the colors and my senses were really heightened.

Congrats in getting to experience that too! :)

Same. Remember the scene in Inception where the main character draws a circle, showing how the brain is simultaneously creating the world and experiencing it in a feedback loop? I think that creates the "realer than real" feeling. In waking reality, there's a lot going on. We only perceive a fraction of what's happening around us. But in a lucid dream, you are creating the whole experience and then consuming 100% of it. When you touch something, the experience of texture isn't just a few nerve cells in your hand. It's your whole mind generating the experience of texture and feeding it back into itself. So everything feels immersive.

I think its happened to me about once, but it didn't sound as good as what your dream was.

Yep. It's happened to me.

wow, I actually logged in to make a post about this. I guess it was never hard for me to understand this concept, but how many people actually experience this regularly? Although I've been studying and practicing lucid dreaming for over a year and a half, I'm still pretty rookie at this, and so every lucid dream I have is more vivid, detailed and longer than the others. Two nights ago I had a lucid dream, and while I was on it, it felt really, really vivid. But as soon as I woke up, It became just a memory, and it's like I wasn't even lucid at all. I know I was, but now it just feels like any other regular dream. This probably is just a matter of perfecting my dream recall. But if it is, how do I go from recalling 1/2 dreams every night, to recalling 4/5 dreams more vividly?

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Originally Posted by sisyphus

Same. Remember the scene in Inception where the main character draws a circle, showing how the brain is simultaneously creating the world and experiencing it in a feedback loop? I think that creates the "realer than real" feeling. In waking reality, there's a lot going on. We only perceive a fraction of what's happening around us. But in a lucid dream, you are creating the whole experience and then consuming 100% of it. When you touch something, the experience of texture isn't just a few nerve cells in your hand. It's your whole mind generating the experience of texture and feeding it back into itself. So everything feels immersive.

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That may be it, though I usually refrain from taking any of my science from movies hehe.
I wonder if this enhanced feeling extends beyond our senses and also affects our emotional states, as I have heard many people state that, while dreaming, their very emotions are much more sensitive and impactful than they usually experience in real life. And while one may not truly believe this to be the case, I believe one emotion that we can all agree on that is especially "enhanced" in dreams is fear.

Yes I have, many times. I could see much, much farther than I can in real life, the colors seemed more vivid, and all the senses were enriched. I agree with Paige. It seems realer than real because we are not limited by our physical bodies. We can see as far as we want to and change everything around us.