Thread: What makes a LD vividly realistic?

Yes I more and more realize that all my dreams are experienced vividly, it's just the memory of that vividness and detail that starts to fade with waking. I think though that the closer to lucidity one is while dreaming, the less damaging to dream memory the transition to waking is. Waking from a lucid dream with good awareness is basically no transition at all: everything goes right into the conscious memory bank.

So I do believe that it is more than just memory: the closer you are to lucidity, the more "awake" you are in your dreams, the better you will remember those dreams (which means the more "vivid" they will seem).

It is no coincidence that supplements that cause "vivid dreams" also can cause insomnia: the result is a more awake brain.

Just random question please,, when ld were are u in that dream and does it change alot???

I just noticed this thread, and couldn't help but notice that the discussion is more about memory than vividness. In the end it really is all about memory, isn't it? In the world of dreaming we're really never measuring vividness (or lucidity) when we're there as much as we are remembering an event as best we can.

I'm sure that this has been said, but as long as I'm here: For me, a lucid dream is a waking-life consciousness event, so it is immediately stored in the same sort of memory bucket that any other exciting conscious event occupies -- as opposed to non-lucid dream, which slide from memory quite quickly, having almost no memory bucket at all to occupy.

I think I've also said once or twice on other threads that, from a here & now standpoint, lucidity has nothing to do with vividness: you can be incredibly lucid during the dullest of dreams, and not lucid at all during the most vivid of dreams -- and vise-verse.

Originally Posted by abcde

Just random question please,, when ld were are u in that dream and does it change alot???

For me not so much the change as its the ld part ,,but others,,,,,,,cant be sure

Yeah this does make sense, about the memory fading according to the gap between the LD and waking up. But still, aren't details increased when we stabilize inside a LD? I mean, the world becomes clearer and more detailed when I focus on making it so. But that might not be related to vividness as much as 'summoning' those extra details I guess.

So awareness plays a role too because the more we are aware, the more details from the dream that will be stored in our memory, thus the dream will be remembered better and with more details when we wake up. Makes sense.

There are different dream vividness levels though, right? Do we have dull dreams just because of low memory of it? And more awareness gives more memory? So all dreams are of same vividness, it just depends on how much we store in our memory? And the difference in dream vividness while we are lucid? I mean we can spot increasing vividness as we stabilize inside a LD. Is that because we 'summon' more details and textures, not actually increase dream vividness?

Originally Posted by LouaiB

Yeah this does make sense, about the memory fading according to the gap between the LD and waking up. But still, aren't details increased when we stabilize inside a LD? I mean, the world becomes clearer and more detailed when I focus on making it so. But that might not be related to vividness as much as 'summoning' those extra details I guess.

So awareness plays a role too because the more we are aware, the more details from the dream that will be stored in our memory, thus the dream will be remembered better and with more details when we wake up. Makes sense.

There are different dream vividness levels though, right? Do we have dull dreams just because of low memory of it? And more awareness gives more memory? So all dreams are of same vividness, it just depends on how much we store in our memory? And the difference in dream vividness while we are lucid? I mean we can spot increasing vividness as we stabilize inside a LD. Is that because we 'summon' more details and textures, not actually increase dream vividness?

What a great idea, summoning detail! Think about it, everything in a dream requires attention to exist. We've essentialised this 'dream state' that can be more, or less, 'realistic', but really how is detail any different to the nightmarish monster pursuing you? Both will vanish if you stop paying attention, both are simply objects of attention. These objects do not have an independent existence, all are products of expectations based on mental schema; sometimes photorealistic, sometimes videogamy, sometimes cartoony - there's no 'natural' or 'absolute' dream state, only attention fueled schemata.

Increased awareness leads to greater attention leads to greater memory, this is the principle of ADA and why it benefits recall so much as well as LD induction.

Originally Posted by Ctharlhie

What a great idea, summoning detail! Think about it, everything in a dream requires attention to exist. We've essentialised this 'dream state' that can be more, or less, 'realistic', but really how is detail any different to the nightmarish monster pursuing you? Both will vanish if you stop paying attention, both are simply objects of attention. These objects do not have an independent existence, all are products of expectations based on mental schema; sometimes photorealistic, sometimes videogamy, sometimes cartoony - there's no 'natural' or 'absolute' dream state, only attention fueled schemata.

Increased awareness leads to greater attention leads to greater memory, this is the principle of ADA and why it benefits recall so much as well as LD induction.

Yes, but I'd say that objects and places in dreams don't 'require' attention to exist. Think about it, when you open a dream door and a whole new place appears, you did not focus on any of it, maybe not even the possibility of that setting at all! The subconscious still has a big part in generating the dream objects and places, and that is what makes me think about dream vividness not only being about memory, but also how much detail we and our subconscious generate to it, though my only defense for this is the fact that the dream becomes HD and more detailed often when we stabilize or will it to, but again, it might just be extra detail summoning, wait, which is what vividness essencially is, right? The dream is more vivid because of more details. So this means that regular dreams, can be more vivid, not just because we remembered them better (due to gab between dream and waking, and also awareness and brain chemistry that effect memory stirring), but also because our subconscious integrated more details to it!
So there is different vividness to regular and lucid dreams, it is how much details we and our subconscious integrate to the dream, other than the memory storing.
Also ppl think that because a dream was vivid, they remembered it better, but it is the opposite. Because they remembered the dream better, it was vivid (since they remembered more details). This is a defense to the memory part of dream vividness (which I totally support), and I'm still ready to debate the details part being the second factor of dream vividness. I mean, it must be, it makes perfect sense that other than the memory, how much details are incorporated to the dream increase it's vividness! I don't mean it awareness wise, but actual dream content.

On a side note, ADA may increase our focus and thus details to dreams, but induction wise, extra details don't help in becoming lucid, because we already do notice the monsters and irrational things in our non lucid dreams, but the problem is our semantic memory that fails to remind us that these things aren't normal. So, ADA doesn't fix that, thus not much effect in induction as to that particular point.

Could anyone give a straight up definition of a natural, everybody tends to say different things, like one has ld every day, or they started at a very young age, my story's a bit long and emotionally confusing for me to just write it in a random thread, i just want some simple answers, it was a curse for me in the beginning, then i just give in to its uncontrolable effects it had on my life ,,," here i am , i do know im dreaming, and ill have deal with it in silence" on this site i feel my silence has been broken, but still feel the people im talkinging to or the ones listening will never real understand or ever grasp the depth of truth im looking for,,, natural or no natural means shit to me , what i know means everything,,,,,your the creator of everything in your dreams, even you thoughts, ie " i can fly" is a thought u created, or "is this a dream" yet another thought you created,,,,, gods lucid dream called reality is one of the most elaborate creations anyone has thought up,,,, shit it even has feelings and emotions ( a far cry from the creation of jumping of a building and been imortal"*****don't be afraid****

Creating flying and imortality in a dream is one thing,,,,next time u ld try creating the best feeling ever, a place of pure emotion, and true love with no broken hearts,and why not throw a few superpowers in for good measures,,, then you will start to begin to understand the question everbodys asking them selves ,,,,WHATS IT ALL ABOUT,,, the world according to abcde *****DONT BE AFRAID OF THE TRUTH*****

Originally Posted by abcde

Could anyone give a straight up definition of a natural, everybody tends to say different things, like one has ld every day, or they started at a very young age, my story's a bit long and emotionally confusing for me to just write it in a random thread, i just want some simple answers, it was a curse for me in the beginning, then i just give in to its uncontrolable effects it had on my life ,,," here i am , i do know im dreaming, and ill have deal with it in silence" on this site i feel my silence has been broken, but still feel the people im talkinging to or the ones listening will never real understand or ever grasp the depth of truth im looking for,,, natural or no natural means shit to me , what i know means everything,,,,,your the creator of everything in your dreams, even you thoughts, ie " i can fly" is a thought u created, or "is this a dream" yet another thought you created,,,,, gods lucid dream called reality is one of the most elaborate creations anyone has thought up,,,, shit it even has feelings and emotions ( a far cry from the creation of jumping of a building and been imortal"*****don't be afraid****

LDs are defiantly wonderful and so amazing! You get to have self awareness, all your senses, emotions, and desires, and be able to control everything and see how the dream world around you is influenced by your wildest emotions and desires! I defiantly have a philosophical view of reality. I think of it as an illusion. LDs shouldn't be dismissed just because they "aren't real"(oh what, they aren't real just because they aren't waking life?!). I say if you can see it, feel it, and enjoy it, then it is real, because real is what we can interact with, what can influence and effect us.

About the natural thing, it is simply someone who has a regular amount of LDs without practicing. It doesn't matter how much he has them (as long as that amount can be considered a regular amount though), or when he started having them, it just matters that he started having them without willing them, like, unintentionally having them, without practice. Of course naturals aren't so different than us, they don't have any special extra brain parts that help them, they just have more potentials that pushed them to the lucidity 'threshold' , but this subject is still vague.

Tl;dr: A natural is someone who started having LDs unintentionally, without practicing or willing them.

U say " this part is still vague" every one has intense dreams to the point they wake up, that is point of a ld to be or not to be , an unatuaral can train to realize this point and take it further, ie ld, a natural gets to this point in a dream and is just naturally trained to take it to an ld,,,, i think i may have understood the word natural a bit more today, after 100+ ld ( lost count about 10 years ago) its all making a bit more sense,,,,*****DONT BE AFRAID OF THE TRUTH, LD MAKES U JUST A BIT OLDER AND WISER THAN U WERE YESTERDAY****KEEP YOUR INTELLIGENCE TO YOURSELF, AFTERALL NO ONE LIKES A BIG HEAD****

Originally Posted by LouaiB

Yes, but I'd say that objects and places in dreams don't 'require' attention to exist. Think about it, when you open a dream door and a whole new place appears, you did not focus on any of it, maybe not even the possibility of that setting at all! The subconscious still has a big part in generating the dream objects and places, and that is what makes me think about dream vividness not only being about memory, but also how much detail we and our subconscious generate to it, though my only defense for this is the fact that the dream becomes HD and more detailed often when we stabilize or will it to, but again, it might just be extra detail summoning, wait, which is what vividness essencially is, right? The dream is more vivid because of more details. So this means that regular dreams, can be more vivid, not just because we remembered them better (due to gab between dream and waking, and also awareness and brain chemistry that effect memory stirring), but also because our subconscious integrated more details to it!
So there is different vividness to regular and lucid dreams, it is how much details we and our subconscious integrate to the dream, other than the memory storing.
Also ppl think that because a dream was vivid, they remembered it better, but it is the opposite. Because they remembered the dream better, it was vivid (since they remembered more details). This is a defense to the memory part of dream vividness (which I totally support), and I'm still ready to debate the details part being the second factor of dream vividness. I mean, it must be, it makes perfect sense that other than the memory, how much details are incorporated to the dream increase it's vividness! I don't mean it awareness wise, but actual dream content.

On a side note, ADA may increase our focus and thus details to dreams, but induction wise, extra details don't help in becoming lucid, because we already do notice the monsters and irrational things in our non lucid dreams, but the problem is our semantic memory that fails to remind us that these things aren't normal. So, ADA doesn't fix that, thus not much effect in induction as to that particular point.

For the sake of clarity, when I'm saying attention, expectation, etc., I'm referring to their usage by The Cusp in this thread: http://www.dreamviews.com/dream-cont...m-control.html

This is where things get theoretical. You're in a room in a dream, what is outside that room? The walls of your skull. We don't make any physical movements, it would be more accurate to say that the dream moves around our point of attention.

When you open the door you have shifted your attention to a new environ, which could be anything. Think of your attention as an empty space that is filled in by your unconscious but is nonetheless constitutive of that very filling-in. Afterall, there wouldn't be a dream without you there to witness it. Attention can be thought of as empty, non-physical dreamspace.

I'm not a big fan of the term stabilisation, because it implies a duality between dreamer and dream. When we stabilise, really we focus our awareness by attending to the sensory immersion of the dream as opposed to the sensory immersion of our waking life bodies.

I feel a need to say this, because "vivid" appears to be interpreted quite differently in this thread, from how I use the word.

To me, a vivid dream is one where my "inner" senses receive particularly strong signals. I.e. the sound volume is loud, the colours are very bright, textures feel very intensely, etc. Memory plays no direct part in this, and neither does the level of detail. There could be one single petal from one single flower in the dream, and nothing else, and it might not remind me of anything at all, but still it could be an intensely vivid dream.

I'm not a native speaker of English though, so my usage of the word may be excentric.

When I'm using the word 'detail' I mean the same as your usage of the word 'vividness'. When I say detail I do not mean one petal or one hundred, but the quality of said petals.

Why do you think that memory plays no part in vividness?

@Ctharlhie Sorry I interpreted what you meant by attention as focus. I thought you meant we need direct focus on something in the dream or else it won't interact with us. Clearly you meant we need attention, as in be in our field of 'interaction' (as in we can interpret it and what is happening, essentially what can effect us). My bad, sorry.
And you are right, I guess nothing happens where you can't see, but what I meant is like, if there is a monster in the room and you shift your attention to something else, this won't stop the monster from like hitting you, yes because he is still part of your 'attention field' that can effect you.

@Voldmer oh I was using the word vivid as in clarity, like let's say an HD(resolution level), and details and textures. When ppl say "increase the dream's vividness by stabilizing", they mean the clarity and details part, right?

Originally Posted by Ctharlhie

Why do you think that memory plays no part in vividness?

For the same reason that I do not think memory is involved if I turn up the volume on my stereo. The impression gets stronger, but I don't have to remember anything in order to experience it. It's just the direct experience of the current condition which is made more forceful.

Of course memory is necessary to remember the vivid dream, and better recall will - almost by definition - involve more details remembered. But that's just the memory of the dream; it's not the dream itself.

Originally Posted by LouaiB

oh I was using the word vivid as in clarity, like let's say an HD(resolution level), and details and textures. When ppl say "increase the dream's vividness by stabilizing", they mean the clarity and details part, right?

Maybe they do. But if I ask for more vivid dreams, what I hope for is a more intense experience - less dull. A non-vivid dream to me is like being somewhat drunk in waking reality, where you don't really experience the world all that intensely, because your senses have been dulled down. A vivid dream is like sobering up.

Originally Posted by Voldmer

Maybe they do. But if I ask for more vivid dreams, what I hope for is a more intense experience - less dull. A non-vivid dream to me is like being somewhat drunk in waking reality, where you don't really experience the world all that intensely, because your senses have been dulled down. A vivid dream is like sobering up.

Oh, so esencially it's that we are not aware enough to soak it all up, so we feel it is dull. Makes sense.

So I would say there are 3 categories:


_Awareness: How much aware we are (like being sober not drunk)

_Memory: How much of the dream was saved to the memory (more details saved means dream feels more detailed and senses and emotions remembered)

_Details: basically how much details there is inside the dream( like let's say a table with that flowy surface texture vs solid Single color, or a mountain with all it's roughness vs a dull looking mountain( imagine a full dream scene with low textures, it's like a bad art piece vs a good art piece))

I think these are factors that play.

Originally Posted by Voldmer

For the same reason that I do not think memory is involved if I turn up the volume on my stereo. The impression gets stronger, but I don't have to remember anything in order to experience it. It's just the direct experience of the current condition which is made more forceful.

Of course memory is necessary to remember the vivid dream, and better recall will - almost by definition - involve more details remembered. But that's just the memory of the dream; it's not the dream itself.

The concept of decibel doesn't have any more bearing in a dream than the concept of metres. When you turn up the volume on your stereo there is a material effect in terms of the vibration of the speaker cones, those vibrations as sound waves in the air which then excite your ears and finally are interpreted as electrical signals in the brain. In a dream all you have is electrical signal.

I don't necessarily disagree with you completely, I just want to explore this idea of vividness as memory as far it will go.

Also, even that physical stereo in your waking life is being remembered, albeit so quickly we don't notice. Everything we experience is working memory relayed by the hippocampus at such a speed that it appears as continuous sensation.

Well I've been pondering this "vivid" thing for a while now. I can remember that a dream was vividly experienced even if I cannot conjure up the details in to my waking mind. But this doesn't happen all the time, sometimes the entire dream session is hazy. And sometimes I have detailed memory remain upon waking.

Although my most favorite aspect of "vivid" that I enjoy is the feeling of vivid awareness: that it's really me there, responding to dream stimuli, acting, and observing the results, even non-lucid. That's the best.

Originally Posted by FryingMan

Although my most favorite aspect of "vivid" that I enjoy is the feeling of vivid awareness: that it's really me there, responding to dream stimuli, acting, and observing the results, even non-lucid. That's the best.

And every non-lucid dream I've woken from directly without passing through more NREM is like that! Like a waking event that I've just lived out. I honestly believe that it is the passage through deep sleep and the way it distorts memory that affects vividness, and the sooner that technology can wake us directly from dreams, the sooner we'll start experiencing the entire day as a lived event (lucid dreams or not - although such technology will undoubtedly help in the pursuit of lucidity).

^^ Interesting. Yes, 3 nights ago I summoned up the willpower to record after every waking (didn't quite achieve that, I woke more than I recorded I believe), and I ended up with such a cool collection of remembered scenes:

http://www.dreamviews.com/blogs/fryi...rn-body-58433/

And two nights ago it was such a "I was *there*!" experience (right after the linked one above).

Yes I guess the trick is waking yourself before dipping back into NREM. I think that's where being generally caught up on your sleep plays into better recall: if you're too tired you simply fall right away back into sleep without the chance to even summon any willpower to wake up enough to recall and the dream memory is severely shredded.

It never ceases to amaze me to realize how much we dream every night, and it's upsetting that so much of it is lost forever. So much funny/strange/interesting stuff.

Originally Posted by FryingMan

Although my most favorite aspect of "vivid" that I enjoy is the feeling of vivid awareness: that it's really me there, responding to dream stimuli, acting, and observing the results, even non-lucid. That's the best.

Me too, right after waking from a dream. This may be because the memory is still intact, and we feel we were very aware, but still it is not entirely about memory, and how a weaker memory of the dream makes us feel we weren't very aware, because, don't forget, WBTB serves to increase our awareness in dreams, so awareness does vary. No, wait a second, maybe it is all about memory. WBTB doesn't increase awareness, it changes the brain chemistry allowing us to remember the dream better, right?

Edit: there is a way to always succeed in waking ourselves up right after a dream, use a REM Dreamer, and set the light power to max so it will wake you up during REM (I think you can set the time when during REM for the light cue to activate (like maybe 20 minutes after initiation of REM) so you would have time to actually dream.

There was a fascinating study I read about where students were hooked up to EEG machines while sleeping; those woken during REM reported vivid, life-like narrative experiences; those woken 5 seconds after REM ended reported your classic kind of dream recall; and those woken a few minutes after REM ended reported only hazy half-remembered images.

I can't remember the source now, but when I do, I'll post it here.