Has anyone ever tried to commit suicide in a dream... and succeeded?
I'm personally curious as to see what my subconscious mind would formulate as an afterlife if I were to kill myself in a dream.
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Has anyone ever tried to commit suicide in a dream... and succeeded?
I'm personally curious as to see what my subconscious mind would formulate as an afterlife if I were to kill myself in a dream.
Remember its all about what you expect. If you dont expect anything then you will probably just stop dreaming
I've died multiple times, usually on my own account since I'm invincible most of the time. It's nothing special, since I expected nothing special. Usually I just go into black, return to a different scene or wake up.
However I bet that if I were to kill myself in the hope of going to an afterlife or different dimension etc I'm sure my brain would come up with something unreal.
It's the same case with everything in dreams, as Erkums said it comes down to what you expect.
What are the consequences of dying in a way that results in the complete and instant destruction of the body?
Also (related): What would the consequences be of something like that when you have no expectations?
Not that I necessarily have belief in heaven or hell... But I'd sure like to find out what my dream hell would be like lol.
Can't wait to accomplish this dream goal!
Keep in mind, ScottyPs, that you literally cannot commit suicide in a lucid dream.
Why? because no matter what you do to yourself, you are still secure in the knowledge that your waking life body will still be alive and well, waiting for you to wake up.
That said:
I also have died many times in LD's (and NLD's, for that matter), and have rarely experienced anything more than a brief presence in oblivion (again, not actual oblivion, because I was still aware of my self). I think, to also slightly address Bobblehat's 2nd question, this is because I've never cared to lay out expectations of what an afterlife will be like.... I'd rather just ready myself for whatever surprises my afterlife presents, if any -- with my self-awareness intact, of course.
I believe that anything you discover after you kill your DC "you" in a dream will be based purely on your own expectations. So yeah, your mind could indeed formulate an afterlife, if that's where you want it to go. This could be an interesting experiment to see how your dreaming mind manifests your expectations, I think, but keep in mind that that is likely all that is being manifested. In other words, if your dream suicide results in some special heaven where, say, all your problems are solved, the people whose love you desire in waking life actually do so, perhaps you are in a new world of independence and power, or, conversely, you find yourself in a not-so-special hell riddled with pain and grief, keep in mind that all those things are facets of your own imagination and might not reflect the real thing... this might matter after you wake up.
Thank you Sageous.
I've been reading a lot from your WILD sessions, you've given me a lot of insight about my mind and dreams.
I'll look more into this, and report any experiences. Unfortunately, I'm not too consistent with my LD's so might be a bit.. Working on my self-awareness at the moment.
Great question. I'm with the above poster, Erkums here. Sometimes I feel compelled to jump off of tall buildings in lucid dreams...not to fly, but to die. I hit the ground. What happens in my mind is that time "freezes" and I stay frozen at that last instant until I awaken.
I can't say I've tried to commit suicide before in a dream, but I have accidentally fell off a building when I was chasing a butterfly. Once I started falling, it felt like it took a long time for me to get closer to the ground, but right before I hit the ground, I woke up. It was very strange, but intriguing at the same time.
One time in a dream I literally ate shit and died
I died in a non lucid, but in lucids I am pretty invincible. I can land on sharp rocks, do whatever I want really. I am trying to change that. Gonna weaken this body or find someone stronger to fight.
Long ago, before I knew it was possible to induce lucid dreams, RC's, etc. one of my favorite activities when I became lucid was to see "What happens if I try to kill myself". I didn't know what was going to happen although I knew somehow I was not going to die. Basically, I jumped off buildings or stood in front of oncoming trucks and trains. It was a curious experience, when I didn't certainly know it's not possible to die that way, because of there was still a natural fear which tried to avoid me from doing that.
Couldn't LD last night, ingested two hits of LSD lol.
I look forward to a longer peaceful sleep tonight!
Dream suicide sounds fun.
I think I tried to commit suicide in my dream last night, I can't swim and as this woman was chasing me I threatened to jump into the deep end of a pool and without waiting for her reaction I jumped in a sunk down to the bottom like an anchor, but then the woman and another DC pulled me to the shallow end so I guess my subconscious prevented it?
Something similar happened to me the first time I jumped off a building. I was trying to get out from a haunted place. It was some sort of terrace inside a building, the door was on the floor and once it got closed, it wasn't possible to open it from above, besides the ghosts started to rise around it. The only way I found to get out was by jumping off this place which was a second or third floor. As far as I can remember, it was the first time I did this sort of thing. I thought something like "if one can die in a dream, I'm done..." then I jumped and something like thousand hands held me during my fall until they put me safe on the floor...
That is quite similar Box77, it's like the subconscious is very considerate, knowing the intent wasn't to die, but a drastic last resort to escape so it made it so with the possibility of being unscathed :)
I had already trained myself to stay asleep through nightmares because I found them more interesting than "normal" dreams... and they usually resolved themselves if I could get through them, which would leave me less stressed out during the day. When I first started lucid dreaming, I went a bit nuts. I wanted to try all the things I couldn't try while awake. This included dieing. I had died in dreams before, a new dream just started up afterwards, almost like reincarnation (except that I didn't have to start as a kid), sometimes I would end up in hell (never heaven). So I've personally tried to get myself killed every way imaginable. To top it all off, I feel pain in my dreams. Sometimes so vividly that it lingers for days afterwards.
The following list is by no means complete:
I've been eaten alive by insects.
I've drowned (took several tries before I honestly couldn't breath. It was very peaceful).
I've died from falling.
I've been beaten to death.
Run over by a car.
Crashed a plane.
Impaled on a hook.
Ripped apart and eaten by all manner of monsters, including zombies.
The two that I haven't experienced are death from a gunshot, or death by fire. Getting shot just makes me angry. It's literally my least favorite experience. I become instantly lucid when shot, and it NEVER ends well for the those who shot me. As for fire, I've always been immune. I've only been burned in two dreams, neither of which had lasting effects. To me, I can feel the warmth of the flames, but it doesn't burn. This makes it feel more like a liquid as the flames lap against my skin. It isn't like I don't know what it's like to be burned either. I've got several real life experiences of being burned as well as a few experiences of being seriously burned. But in my dreams, I am almost always greater than the fire.
From the deathly experiences my friends have told me about, that they had, they just woke up about a split second before any impact. For example, my friend had his first lucid dream on his first try, and he was about to enter a space craft. When he had gotten in, the rocket had launched, and he forgot his phone. instead of getting another one, he jumped out and tried to fly back down. He didnt know how to fly, and well, The fall he almost landed woke him up.
Usually I woke up from my death experiences (induced or not), I think it was because of the rush of adrenaline. I have had many other death experiences, although I didn't look for them, including being shot in the head which was the most interesting for me, because of all my dream memories were slowly fading out as I died, while my waking life memories were slowly coming back as I woke up. I got to think perhaps death could feel something like that, just like waking up from a very long dream in another world. Anyway, the last time I jumped off a building in order to feel the "falling" it did hurt, I was laying on the ground while thinking something like "ups, perhaps I was wrong".
Being hit by the train was the most intense, I felt like an electric shock while the whole train ran through me. Before it hit me, it was very difficult for me to stand in front of the oncoming train because of I felt like somebody was pulling my arm trying to take me out of the rail road.
I think I was only able to experience death in my dreams because I had trained myself to stay asleep.
The important lessons I walked away with are these:
1) Death in a dream does not equal death in reality. I now do not fear death in dreams.
2) If death in reality is anything like death in my dreams, then I do not fear death and I do not fear the afterlife. The process of dieing still sounds pretty awful, but the transition from alive to dead... I don't see anything worth fearing there.
What's bizarre is that this is in spite of the fact that all my visions of the afterlife have been some form of hell. Never have I experienced heaven. But I'm still convinced that even hell isn't something I should fear. It's also slowly becoming more generalized to become "I should not be afraid of that which is inevitable. I should not be afraid of that which is out of my control."
This sentiment actually lends a lot of credibility to the theory that dreams are threat rehearsal.
As far as I can remember, I visited my dreamy hell twice. The first time I was lucid and I went there because of I wanted to talk with Lucifer. The second time I wasn't lucid and I fell there because of I accidentally broke the leg of a kitty, then I came back transformed into Lucifer.
Whenever I go upstairs in a dream, I use to say I'm going to my idea of heaven, and usually those are peaceful places, although some time ago I was able to find that downstairs too. So, I think it all depends on what you think about those places.