Are my dreams being manipulated by an external source, outside of myself?

I've had this thought about a lot of my dreams. Please tell me what you think. I'm sorry I made this way too long but it's basically my life story of dreaming and weird occurrences.

Now Idk about you guys, but I always thought dreams were just personal and a manifestation of your subconscious. For me it seems like I'm actually visiting a real place and interacting with real beings, trying to help me on my journey. I've gotten hypnotized by dream characters before. I got beaten with a club once in one of my dreams, I think to make my brain more lucid and aware of it's dreaming. When I got scared the girl who had the club said "you know your just making this harder on yourself". I've had a couple dream recently that I've had before years ago, even realizing inside of the dream "wait a second, I've had this happen to me before! whats going on?" Once I realized this the dream characters changed what they were doing, like they were waiting for me to realize this or something. In one dream I was taken to this hospital and told to flex my arm for a quick second. When I did this I saw they were shooting me up with something. They had me do it again (probably so I'd be more focused on my flexing than the needle). After this was done they told me, "Okay, now this is called the Sticker Press" or something like that, and my awareness was immediately transfixed onto this sticker on the wall. I thought I was this sticker! It was one of the weirdest experiences in my life, but eventually I realized no I'm still in that dream and I was able to escape that sticker, getting propelled down this long hallway and shown rapid visualizations faster than I've ever seen before.

Okay another strange thing I should mention: Around 8 years ago or so I recall having a dream where I was just watching this movie. The movie was about some girl who had to wait to be with the guy she loved for a bunch of years. It was a real life documentary of her time spent alone and waiting. I don't recall where the guy was or why they had to be apart, but I didn't think anything of it at the time and quickly forgot about it, never to think about it again. HOWEVER, at the end of that hospital dream I just mentioned, I get lead outside to meet my family again after my crazy night, this white van pulls up and out comes the girl from the movie, who I immediately recognize from that movie I saw in a dream 8 years ago! In waking life I can barely even make out her features, dont know her name or anything, it's almost like only my subconscious or some deeper part of me knows her. I realized when meeting her in that strange hospital dream that the movie I watched 8 years ago was about her waiting for me and she made a movie about it! Amazing stuff..although I never see her in dreams anymore and I'm just left to constantly think and wonder about this experience and what it could mean!

I don't see how these people could be manipulating my dreams so much, and they're always the people closest to me like family and close friends. Strange though they never reveal anything. Also, for those still reading, I've had one very very surreal experience in waking life once. Granted, I smoked some pot before this happened buts that besides the point. It was hours before any of this ever occurred and I've smoked approx 300x before and this has never happened. But that night I go to bed just like usual, however, after being in my bed for like 30 minutes my mom comes in the room. I notice I can barely move my body, yet my mind is completely awake and aware. At that time in my life I've only experienced sleep paralysis one time so I wasn't very accustomed to what was happening. I told my mom about how I could barely move my body, and she keeps asking me if she should call an ambulance. No no I keep saying. But for some reason she ended up calling them and in about 20 minutes the paramedics were there. At this point I couldn't move my body at all, but I was still completely up and aware in my mind, and still aware of my environment as well. All I could see was the blackness of my eyelids. The paramedics had to drag me off my bed, right at the moment my body lost complete control. They started to talk about me. "So this here is Eric Joseph, 20 years old etc". The weird part is they mentioned stuff that I've never told anyone outside of my therapist before! How could they have gotten this information? But yeah so they dragged me off the bed and put into this stretcher like thing, except this one had harnesses and straps and I was very snugly secured. Then, for the next 5 minutes or so I get the sensation that I'm being taken on this ride, I feel the "stretcher" that I was on speed up when my mind would get more relaxed and sleeply, and slow down whenever I'd get more anxious. Eventually I felt like I was being taking up this huge incline, like the ones on rollercoasters right before a big drop. I think that once I get to the top some climax of some sort will take place, like I'd find myself being hurling towards the Earth and I'd find out that my whole life was a dream. Instead, right when I got to the top I felt two metal clampers come down and pinch my fingers! It was very acute pain, and shot my awareness right back into the present moment, however for some reason I never opened my eyes...Upon reflection I believe this was because my body was falling asleep and they had to jolt my body awake with certain stimuli. They also did this an hour later with my sense of smell, as I recall trying to breathe in once and this incredibly harsh sensation filled my nostrils making it impossible to inhale, just once and just for a second, kinda like in order to just shock me back to life.

Right before I left the hospital (I was there all night), this girl with white hair comes in and claps her hand twice. At this I immediately recognize that I'm fine and I can get up and walk around, almost like they somehow trained me to respond to this certain stimulus! Crazy, I know. This happened about 6 months ago, and ever since then I've been having multiple LD's or APs (whatever you want to call them) a night, where I had little to none before! This doesn't sound like a naturally occurring thing to me, rather like I'm being guided by an external source on some path. I ask my parents about the things I experienced that night but they just shrug it off. I tell them about the stretcher ride that corresponded to my mental condition: "Oh, that was just when they took you down the stairs"...well we only have one flight of stairs in my house! Couldn't of taken that long! Or about going up that sharp incline and having the metal things clamped down on my fingers "Oh that was probably just when they were physically putting you into the ambulance" Hmmm...I know that the door to enter an ambulance is only a couple feet off the ground...so that's improbable. They always blamed this whole night on "weed hallucinations"

Once dream characters in my dream were teaching me how to hallucinate and willingly change my dream environment, something I could previously never figure out how to do. Even when I'd be flying around in my dreams, I'm usually able to do it at first but every single time I'll just lose steam (or lucidity I guess) and not be able to maintain flight after a while. So as I was straining my eyes to alter something, one character altered something for me! I saw his hand turn giant and he added a guy on a bike in my point of view. Upon reflection I just don't understand this. How can I teach myself something that I don't know? This has happened before multiple times, such as once I was arguing with my brother, and he told me that Astral Projection is what I'm really doing. He said I don't understand what I'm actually doing and that lucid dreaming is what they used to call it. I always thought this was the same thing so it leads me to believe I'm actually talking to real people in my dreams!

So back to the point at hand. After the character showed me how to hallucinate, I was able to change things on my own, like my the ground wavy and such. Then later I had the most deliberate change of environment I've ever accomplished. I was walking down some stairs and said to myself that past these stairs will be that part of the Indiana Jones ride from disneyland that has the giant boulder and we'll just go under it like in the ride. Lo and behold it appeared, except after dodging it once I must have lost control of the hallucination and the boulder just kept rushing on by and killed a boat load of people. I got scared by this, but eventually snapped out of it and even heard an external voice say (he mistook his hallucination for reality)

So that's all crazy in it's own right, but now I'll get to the really insane stuff. Later on in the dream I was walking in a hotel with a big group of people. I look on the wall to find a note. It says "Something crazy is about to go down, signed Emily and Allie (two people I know)". So I didn't think about this much and got led into a room with about 15 chairs all in a circle. I sat in one of them and conversed with these people for a while. I felt my chair morph into this machine like thing that had me strapped in. I was told I was about to receive a moment of "complete mental clarity". I felt the machine tilting backwards so it was bending my back, almost to the point where I thought it would snap in half! I also felt this acute pressure on my eyes, like someone was pushing their fingers slowly into them, although it wasn't as painful as it sounds. At first I was scared and thought it would hurt but I thought about how it wasn't real, thus getting me more lucid, until it would continue to bend and press more and I'd get scared again and afraid of the physical sensations I was feeling. Disappointingly I got too nervous and bolted out of this machine and locked myself in a closet :shock:. When I woke up I could still feel that same pressure on my eyes! Idk about you guys but I can't see how I could be the only one involved here, just me and my subconscious. I feel like my dreams are being manipulated or something.

I always thought, ever since I took shrooms, that something "strange" was happening in my life, outside of my control. My parents and therapists would attribute these to "coincidences" that happen to everyone, I'm just looking too much into them. Now I'm starting to realize just how right I was. Well I've made this long enough, sorry for such a long post but I've been meaning to ask you guys this for a while and decided to make one large question instead of a bunch of tiny ones, since they basically all revolve around the same question.


What the hell do you guys think is going on??

Wow. I read all of that..but..I honestly don't know the answer :O Your dreams are so weird x__x

I am inexperienced and I'm not knowledgeable about APs and stuff like that, so perhaps you might wanna read around the Beyond Dreaming section of the forum?

I wish you all the best, man. :)

I think you're wrestling with the concept of subjectivity. Your interpretation of your experiences while dreaming and tripping is yours alone, just as it is for every other person. Your experiences become memories, you weave the memories into a narrative, and you find meaning in it. That's not right or wrong. It's a natural function of our mind. We are constantly making patterns, narratives, causality, and connections in our mind to find meaning and to make sense of it all. In this philosophical model, there is no objective reality, just each person's subjectivity. Our measure of "reality" is just the degree to which our subjective narrative overlaps. In other words, if everybody believes the same thing, we call that "real" or "normal." And if somebody believes different, we call that "strange." But no one is objectively "right" in the absolute sense. Waking life and science tend to be labelled "real" because we share and verify them with other people. Dreams and drug trips are labelled "strange" because they are personal.

That's just one of many philosophical models. I'm not saying it's right and wrong. It's about trying to make sense of things with models and concepts. It has more to do with mapping out the way our mind works.

Are your dreams being influenced by external things? Yes, in the sense that your day-to-day experience influences your dreams. Conversations and interactions with other people can influence your dreams. Movies too. Drugs too. And in reverse, your dreams affect your life and external things. The mind is powerful and creative, more so than you give credit. Since you have experienced dreams and hallucinations, you know first-hand that the mind can create visual experiences that aren't "real" (in the subjective sense of "real" as defined above). If it can do that, then it can also create beliefs, narratives, explanations, and causality that aren't "real." The line between internal and external, between cause and effect, and between real and unreal, is blurry. Maybe there is no line at all (this is called non-duality). It is the ultimate irony: I know for sure there are illusions, but I'm not so sure about reality. This uncomfortable knowledge usually hits people in early adulthood when they finally gain the freedom to experience the world on their own terms, to create their own narratives, and to call bullshit on other people's narratives. Combine that with drugs and you'll create a whole lot of uncertainty for yourself.

So to sum up: Life is subjective. Our minds make sense of things by creating narratives. Because we are subjective, it's hard to get "outside" ourselves to see what is influencing our narratives. So, we often weave those influences into the narrative as well ("people are trying to control me!"). Both dreams and psychedelic drugs influence this pattern in two ways. They create "strange" memories, which you must somehow integrate into your "real" narrative. And they put your mind in an altered state, which distorts the way you create narratives. You're left with a tangled knot of uncertainty that you yourself created.

It's not for me to say what's "real" for you. But I can say that discovering the uncertainty of the world is a natural function of our mind and a natural part of the process of maturity. Resolving that uncertainty is also part of the process and it will happen in its own way for each person, good or bad. It could be philosophy, spirituality, schizophrenia, etc. You didn't ask for advice but I will offer it: Explore the philosophy of Buddhism. It's not a religion, it's a philosophy. It can liberate your mind better than drugs.

I agree with above post. There are a few ways to look at your situation in ways that could benefit you. The first is to see that everything that exists is always changing, and nothing is permanent. Everything is dependent on everything else. Nothing is independent. This is called emptiness. Nothing stands alone as having a separate inherent existence as an entity. Rather, everything is in a process of becoming something else. This means that all phenomena are empty of inherent reality. Take some time to see that you are putting a lot of attention and speculation into an empty subjective awareness and phenomena. This is all sensations that arise in your awareness. The awareness is the reality, not the contents of awareness. I recommend that you shift your attention from the story and contents that are unfolding in your awareness to the context and container of the story, to the awareness itself.

Another thing is very interesting about your story is the experiences you are having. The experience of pressing into your eyes but not uncomfortable in particular. If you put your attention on the pupils of your eyes when you have your eyes open, rather than have attention on the objects you happen to see, you may feel that you can feel textures of light and color with your eyes. It sounds like you are having dreams of clarity as they are referred to in Buddhism, but you are placing to much importance and belief in a substantial reality to your dreams. Remember, waking life and especially dreams are empty of inherent reality. The ultimate reality is your awareness, not what appears to it.

Another way to look at it is that dreams are a fabrication of the mind, like thoughts, and emotions, and beliefs, etc... All experiences, in a way, are fabrications. What you can rely on is the unfabricated. The dreamer, not the dreams. Wild experiences can distract you from the ultimate reality of your empty awareness as it is in this moment reading this sentence. But if they come, enjoy them. Don't cling to any experiences, and don't push them away. Take the middle path between all extremes.

This is my advice. I am concerned, just want to make sure you are on the right path.

Hey thank you to all who read and replied to this! I really wasn't expecting that as I went overboard and figured this would just get buried in obscurity after a while!

I love all the advice that I've received thus far! I hope I'm on the right path too, I worry about that all the time. Everything posted in the 2 messages above seem to relate pretty heavily to everything I'm working towards in my meditation practices. I've been researching Buddhism and the like and I'm really into it thus far! I find it very hard to actually apply all the advice appointed above. My mind defiantly focuses too much on my subjective experience, but it seems impossible not to! That's what minds always do (well mine at least). It constantly skews the actual situation due to my own thoughts and feelings about it, and I realize half the theories I've come up with are probably just dead wrong. I'm not referring to stuff in my immediate surroundings controlling my dreams, such as movies or society and the like. Of course anything experienced in waking life has a chance of reflecting itself in one's dreams. I'm more referring to something outside my control, beyond myself, such as the collective unconscious, the astral planes, or hell even something along the lines of the matrix where I'm just in some simulated reality all day. I don't know, I have so many theories and thought about this so much..I just dont know. My mind has been read in various dreams and I'm also able to communicate telepathically if I remember to! I haven't done any psychedelics in about 5 years, and only use weed very occasionally.

I know all of this sounds pretty out there and hard to believe. Even for me, after experiencing these confusing dreams night after night, I still have a hard time believing it. But all of the "evidence" seems to be pointing that way. Just last night I had a very detailed dream where I got sent to this facility where they were doing tests to determine the lucidity levels of dreamers. I told my parents that I was aware of my dreaming right when I realized it, and they drove me to this place (I even remembered being there once before). The tests were silly and nonsensical, and I was trying way to hard to "pass" and do everything right so maybe I wouldn't have to be so confused anymore and they'd reveal more about this situation. Only afterwards did they tell me that the tests were not simply pass and fail, but they were also watching how I interacted inbetween the various stations.

Now I'm sure you guys are probably tired of listening to my endless "proof", since this has pretty much turned into one giant dream journal! I forgot to mention this one certain dream and to me this one has undeniable proof on how these can't be normal dreams. And be wary that when I say normal, I know dreams are subjective and are gonna be different for every person. Everyone has their own perspective, thus it is wrong to label one right and the other one wrong, or unreal. I'm just asking what you guys would make of this if it were you, inside the conventional ideas of what a dream really is.

So basically I remember walking around inside a mall, rather lucid. I got taken to this one shop, and inside I got strapped into this chair. The chair would rise up towards the ceiling and then fall back to the ground. I hate to use this analogy again, but it felt rather similar to those rides at amusements parks where they shoot you up into the air and then free fall back to the ground. To me, during the dream and upon reflection, this seemed like they were testing my bodies ability to withstand certain stimuli without waking up. When I got off the chair I asked the lady who was controlling it how I did and she said it looked like I would pass! After this I was led out into the food court and we sat down. She handed me a piece of paper and told me to write down all of the moves I remember from this certain fighting game I play. I didn't know what this was for and had a very hard time filling it out. Now, looking back on it, the only logical thing it could have been was a way to test my brains ability to store and retrieve certain information, specifically that formed from muscle memory. I don't consciously think about the buttons I'm inputting while playing a fighting game, rather they just seem to flow out due to muscle memory, much like remembering how to play a song on the guitar.

I really don't see what else this could be. Either I'm right and somehow people are manipulating my dreams, or this is all just a figment of my imagination and my subconscious is playing some evil trick on me. I don't know how I'd come up with half this stuff though. Once I was even tested on my ability to move objects with telekinesis! Again this was by a doctor in some laboratory setting. Please, any help or advice would be greatly appreciated! I'm so confused by all this and tired of just bouncing these same ideas around in my head all day. It'll be nice to get some other peoples opinions!

The above advice has more wisdom than I can give you.
All I can tell you is, you aren't alone. These experiences can unhinge one a little.

Try testing your theories. Ask your dream factual questions which you don't know the answer to, and remember the responses!
Something like: What year did the Titanic sink?
If it gives you the correct answer, maybe there is an outside force which has knowledge you don't. Or maybe you read that date sometime long ago and the dream could access that information.
That is still a statement to the power of the subconscious.
You could try asking more obscure questions which you know you've never heard the answer before.