Quote:
This thread has given me a reason to put some effort into Lucid Dreaming to prove Zoth wrong.
I believe the Matrix IS an Intelligent Being independent of me (my waking and dreaming mind).
I get that belief from mind-blowing outer-world (waking life) synchronicities.
Coincidentally, Havago helps me make my point. As you can see BjStrife, we can grab all these theories that might even be true (we can't be sure), but by testing this via lucid dreaming is impossible. If Havago has a lucid dream in which an identity says there's a coin behind the closet in the living room, and Havago wakes up and finds this to be true, she will most likely be victim of confirmation bias, because she already believes that there is an intelligent entity influencing our dreams. Havago might as well be right, but since she is unable to confirm this entity (or make any supported set of predictions based on it), we can't never say exactly what's going on. A much more likely scenario would be that she one day notice the coin, but never gave it a thought.
Quote:
The idea that a DC can give you a lot of information regarding yourself, which you may not be aware of, but it is stored in your subconscious, is quite common, as far as I know, but it's still a theory for me, so I wouldn't know.
Luckily, even a person without any lucid dreaming experiences can clarify this :) We (as lucid dreamers) tend to commonly revolve around concepts like "dream guide: expression of your subconscious" or "Dream Character", but the truth is, there is no entity (at least, inside our brain) creating our dreams but ourselves. When we mention the word subconscious (which should be more like "unconscious") we are referring to processing of information that is outside the individual's awareness. Take for example when you're in a party: you can't pay attention to everyone, so you end up speaking with a person, but suddenly you hear someone saying your name. What happened? The answer is that you were perceiving all the information in the room, but since doing so would be a tremendous use of resources, your brain unconsciously processes all that sensory input. When it deems something relevant, like your name (which might be a sign that you're being called, or that information of interest is being received), it dips that information into your consciousness. Other example is driving: if you had to do everything in a conscious manner - using both feet, looking in front, hands on the wheel, look for cars, signs, etc etc, you would likely go insane after a few minutes of driving, and most likely have an accident. Thus, once you get some level of automaticity, driving seems like "driving a bike", so natural that you don't even need to think about it.
Quote:
I saw numerous people claiming that LDing helps with their personal development due to getting some kind of advice about their lives from their dreams.
Yes it works (quite nicely most of the time). At the same time, a bit of denial takes place. For example, people that don't share Havago's beliefs can still dream about a dead relative and experience great psychology effects. This occurs just as easily with people that hear voices: many of them actually develop emotional relationships with their voices, and take offense if someone tells them they are not real. They know (well, some of them :P) it's their own voice, but that particular denial grants them the ability to have a close friend always around. Cotard's syndrom's patients are even worse.
Just because it's a dream, and you're talking with a mental model created by yourself (subconsciously derived from memories/fears/worries/etc), doesn't mean it doesn't feel (or is) real. Honestly, sometimes I feel like a child when I talk to some dream characters: after all, it was a dream character that gave me my first dream control lesson ^^
It's because of concepts like this that I find neuroscience so fascinating: we're already believing in irrational things, like hallucinations, and dreams, and experiences, etc etc, but once we stop to realize that our brain is doing so much more than just reading the lines of this text, it becomes apparent that much of what we perceive is actually a product of ourselves and not really the outside reality :)
Quote:
Also, I bought a little while mouse and named him Buck-Hello because he was a boy and I used to say Hello to him a lot. I bought him to try and Share dream with him. And I did.
We can never agree or disagree with this statement because we weren't there to confirm the facts (or determine how on earth did your mouse confirmed he had dreamed about you 0o).
Quote:
This, on the other hand, would probably mean that everything, including shared dreams, OBEs and so on, is real, which I'm not really sure of.
Well, OBEs are indeed real (we can even induce them in the laboratory). We can even go further with objects like the "God's Helmet". I'd pay to try one :D
