Thread: Whats the price of a dream?

You are always dreaming, you are always tired when you wake up.
I guess that's just the way it is.

Thinking makes your head tired.

Originally posted by Unleaf
Has anyone ever wondered what the cost of dreaming is?

A buck-fitty down at the corner shop-and-rob.

Seriously, though - if you're always tired when you wake up, it's not due to dreaming. It's probably due to one or some number of common disorders.

Sleep disorders, stress, malnutrition, iron deficiency, immuno-difficiency, acute anemia, depression, ... The list goes on and on.

None having to do with REM sleep.

U fubd when I have many dreams on a single night, I wake up more refreshed and happy. Its like gaingn so mucyh time, while you sleep! There is no "price" for dreaming, we always dream becase it is vital to our survival. Its like asking hwat is the price of breatheing.

I have a friend that thinks the same thing that Unleaf thinks...or at least
something like it

One time he said " I hate havin' lucid dreams because it makes it feel like
you dont get enough sleep"

Pretty stupid ..eh?

Originally posted by kimpossible


A buck-fitty *down at the corner shop-and-rob.

Seriously, though - if you're always tired when you wake up, it's not due to dreaming. *It's probably due to one or some number of common disorders.

Sleep disorders, stress, malnutrition, iron deficiency, immuno-difficiency, acute anemia, depression, ... *The list goes on and on.

None having to do with REM sleep.

I'd have to counter that. I respectfully disagree. Although I may not even be right, because I don't know a whole lot about this. But I also dream almost the entire night. Less the first 2 hours, but after that, the moment I fall asleep I'm dreaming. So I simply think my body is not getting enough regenerative sleep. So it's not that the REM sleep is CAUSING tiredness, but because REM sleep is taking place of the deeper, rejuvenating sleep, you end up more tired the next day. I have a friend that dreams very little, and he barely needs 4 hours of sleep a night. I dream a LOT and if I don't get more than 10 hours of sleep I'm a zombie.

I seriously advise you read Exploring The World of Lucid Dreaming cuz there LaBerge explains the phases of sleep and that'll give you a lot of insight to this.

Unleaf, your constant feeling of exhaustion could be due to numerous physiological disorders or it could be psychological, cuz maybe you think you were too "active" during the night. It's true, your mind is very active creating a whole sensorial world, but its just as active as when you're awake, cuz when you're awake, the only difference is that your mind is perceiving this world, which takes the same amount of activity (maybe more).

Sleep can be divided into 90 minutes cycles, the first minutes being regenerative and the last minutes being REM sleep. The more cycles you have, the longer the REM phase and shorter the first. (This is all explain with a LOT of detail inn the book EWLD)
So we're all basically just as active during the night, which means sleep cant really be an exhausting process, on the contrary, your body relaxes during the first minutes of the cycle and then your mind unwinds during REM. Its just natural.

For me it isn't the dreaming but the waking up and making notes. Sometimes I can't get back to sleep and that is a major bummer. I will sometimes take a break from dream recall for a week or two and then start again.

I agree with kimpossible and her chimpossible that its prob a sleep disorder!
If u dont sleep deeply enough or have not enough deep sleep (delta sleep) u will wake up tired!
Prob has to do with your melatonin level witch easely can be less from stress etc.

Matchbook: How do you know that the "moment you fall asleep you start dreaming"?

Have you been on an EEG or stolen one of my DreamCatcher Gloves ©?

Time when you're asleep is impossible to measure within the dream. Without actually looking at the waveforms from the brain, reports of timing are suspect.

Dream cycles do very a LOT from La Berge. I've had eight people on both my DreamCatcher Glove and the EEG, and only one comes close to conforming to the noted cycle durations. By the same token, your cycle is your cycle. If you weren't getting adequate rest, the body would change your cycle per-force, like it or not.

Originally posted by kimpossible
Time when you're asleep is impossible to measure within the dream.

Actually, LaBerge has scanned a number of lucid dreamers performing a task, such as singing, "Row, Row, Row Your Boat" and found that they were almost identical with scans of the same activity while awake. Furthermore, the time reported by the dreamer to perform these tasks was not appreciably different from the time observed by the researchers.

So it's not impossible, but it is probably cumbersome. (Who wants to measure time by how many times you can sing "Row, Row, Row Your Boat?")

Ok, I should have noted that your innate internal clock is worthless.

No, not at all! Just different. We need a frame of reference in order to use our internal clocks, I think. When I was a distance track/cross country runner, I ran fixed distances a lot and learned their times, so I could refer back to previous experience. I often knew my time within a range of 2 - 5 seconds from how fast I was actually going, and that can be essential for planning the entire race. Sometimes I'd get it exactly. (My coach nicknamed me "Swiss" lol)

The trouble is just that in dreams it doesn't take any time to travel any distance, a measure we so closely relate with time that we often express it with units of time ("The store is about 20 minutes away"). We need to find another basis for measurement.

This is highly speculative, but I often feel vibrations during lucidity (OBE'ers sometimes call them "exit sensations"), and over time I seem to have noticed the same vibrations while awake, if I relaxed a little. They feel as if they occur underneath the skin, but above or around muscular tissue... I imagine that it is just the "noise" of the vastly complex bio/electro/chemical system that is my body, but the OBE'ers associate it with an "energy body." Muscle movements or just about any other physical activity make them go away instantly. But, you know, it's not just noise... some of them seem periodic and very quick, but well above a just noticable difference. It's just that there are so many and any distraction makes them go away, so I wonder if the periodicity is an illusion. Nonetheless, it'd be wonderful if they could serve as some kind of "sync."

But I've had dreams that spanned virtual days but have shown to be a some fraction of 10mins of REM with measurement gear, and dreams that have seemed to last only seconds that appear to last most of a REM cycle with measurement gear.

A time sync would have to have a constant reference, would it not?

Only because you could theoretically measure times while dreaming doesn't mean you can by any means measure times while asleep, dreaming and not dreaming. When you wake at night, it is impossible to tell how long you have slept since you went to bed, simply because you were unconscious for vast amounts of time and didn't note any of the time that vanished.
The same applies when you have successive uninterrupted sleep cycles (which should be the case). 1. You don't know which sleep cycle you are in and 2. The unconscious phases of the sleep cycle make the feeling of time while dreaming worthless for the overall feeling of time while asleep. Only by factors like tiredness and outside light are you able to determine the time that passed since you went to bed. Or you use a watch.

As for the dreams that last months or years, I believe that these are fake memories. You are not actually experiencing months of dreaming while dreaming (even when lucid). It's probably a long time like 1 hour or so but you're skipping scenes and feeling as if skipping time but the memory gaps are filled in.
When you wake up, everything seems consistent and like an incredible amount of time that just passed but actually you just remember it as a long period of time while not being able to recall a lot of specific events that happened during this time. It's not possible to have real time distortion in such extremes.
The speed your cells would have to work at would eventually make them heat up so much that you die asleep. Also if it was a realfeeling of time and you remembered most of it, you could possibly get a psychological trauma from the experience.

>> 1. You don't know which sleep cycle you are in

I disagree. With appropriate equipment (see my posts in Research), I know exactly what cycle I was in when I awaken. And can set the equipment to wake me at any point in any given cycle. Statistically, I can even predict how much longer is remaining in a cycle and even individual stage. And that with reasonable accuracy.

Your point regarding the extended experienced time doesn't negate the point of an inconstant reference. Whether the FEELING of time is manufactured or real, it is real within the dream. Which again lends to an inconstant reference.

Originally posted by kimpossible
>> 1. You don't know which sleep cycle you are in

I disagree. *With appropriate equipment (see my posts in Research), I know exactly what cycle I was in when I awaken. *And can set the equipment to wake me at any point in any given cycle. *Statistically, I can even predict how much longer is remaining in a cycle and even individual stage. *And that with reasonable accuracy.

I meant to say that you don't know it without external reference (While you have an internal feeling of relative time in a dream you wouldn't be able to know which sleep cycle you are in intuitionally.).

Your point regarding the extended experienced time doesn't negate the point of an inconstant reference. *Whether the FEELING of time is manufactured or real, it is real within the dream. *Which again lends to an inconstant reference.[/b]

I don't understand what you mean by 'reference' but are you trying to say that there is no difference between the illusion of stretched time and time perceived differently? Do you mean that since dreams are completely subjective anyway it doesn't matter if time is experienced or believed to be experienced? What about measuring dream time and comparing it to real time. Most dreams are about proportional to real time. Maybe there is some kind of time-illusion system that makes these long dreams possible. I'm trying to make a difference between experiencing 10 hours and processing the happenings brain-wise and having the impression of having existed 10 hours.
My idea is that you never existed a couple of hours in in a dream of one REM period but you just think you did, by feeling and memory. If you had relatively detailled memory of 10 hours of a dream, I would agree that it would have to count as 10 hours of experience. But it is possible for the brain to manipulate the feeling of passed time without having to fill in memory gaps or anything. If you remember doing a dream activity for 10 hours, it is not very likely that your brain actually did anything likewise 10 hours of stuff. Afterwards the impression of time is altered and there you are. You can't possibly tell the difference between what was real and what was not. But if you're existing hours and hours in a always-changing dream environment the brain wouldn't be capable of processing these hours within just one REM-period.
Another option would be that subjective time-stretching happens while one recurring activity is performed and that due to this mechanism it is in fact perceived as exactly this stretched time. But as it is only a dream it wouldn't have any consequences for your real psyche (self-protection). It would just be extremely boring and you would remember it to be extremely boring and that's it.
But that wouldn't be possible with changing scenes, changing actions and the usual complexity of dreams.
Then again I don't know about the real power of the brain in these areas and since the brain is fricking awesome it would probably be able to create a pretty broad and detailled memory of several hours within just one REM period. The subconsciousness could even prepare the memory content but have it unaccessible before the whole dream takes place. You never know with the human brain.
I'm just wondering if it is useful for the human in any way? Why would you have such a long dream and really have to experience the time? As part of a biological being that has desire to live, I believe the brain to have much better stuff to do than create epic tales of year's duration, within just a couple of minutes of extremely high brain activity.
But, again, I don't know about the brain capabilities. Considering there are these dreams that last a few seconds or half a minute and seem like complete dreams of maybe 20-30 minutes duration.

Originally posted by kimpossible
But I've had dreams that spanned virtual days but have shown to be a some fraction of 10mins of REM with measurement gear,

Think about those virtual days in terms of data or information. Was it that you experienced so many hours and seconds, or that you experienced data in such a way that the information you get from it resembles what you'd get in a couple days, and that you assume it \"must\" have taken a couple days? Could it be that in the dream there was just more information density, and when you awake your natural inclination is to spread that out and ignore the gaps?

We often do not remember every detail of every day... most days are very similar to one another, and those similarities are often boring repetitious details that we don't need to pay attention to anyways. Did you experience those boring details in a time sequence or does your memory fill it in with generic stuff because that's what it's already accustomed to doing while awake?

I'm definitely open to the idea that dream experience can happen at a faster rate than real experience. But this needs to be distinguished, I think, from the rate of assimilating knowledge or information. Two hours of walking up and down an empty hallway could yield less information than two minutes of being absorbed in a good book or movie.

A time sync would have to have a constant reference, would it not?
[/b]

Right. If the vibration has a constant period, and if in fact it is the same vibration that is experienced in both the waking and dream states, then it could be used as a reference from one world to the other. (And for you special relativity folks, the body is at rest in the real world and therefore has a constant velocity through time, so no need to worry about that )

Each moment in the dream could then be sync'ed with a real world moment in terms of a location on the vibration's path through time. Say the vibration's period is 10 beats per second. This is too fast for me to notice each single beat on my own, but not too fast to go unnoticed in larger groups. Everytime it felt like 10 beats went by in the dream environment I would note it tacitly as one second that just went by. 100 beats or 1000 beats would be 10 seconds and over a minute and a half, respectively. The accuracy would not be very good, especially in the longer dreams, but it could yield a very good order of magnitude approximation, so that I would be aware of the difference between days, hours, minutes, and seconds.

And it would hopefully stave off the habit or desire to fill in dream details.

You know, I'm not sure what worth this would be, anyways... so I don't even know what I'm really thinking. There are just so many assumptions.

I hear what you're saying. I have two thoughts.

To explain the first further to Koritkke: My point is that if you believe you experienced that time (including for example the changing of the days which I have seen), then your frame of reference is the frame of the dream. That's not conducive to accurate time keeping.

On to Ex: Ok, but are you going to be able to do that counting whilst non-lucid? And what about when your mind figures-out you're doing that and starts giving you false-vibrations?

The upshot is, I believe, that it really doesn't matter if you experienced all of that course of time or not as long as you believe you did in the frame.

Originally posted by kimpossible
On to Ex: *Ok, but are you going to be able to do that counting whilst non-lucid? And what about when your mind figures-out you're doing that and starts giving you false-vibrations?

The upshot is, I believe, that it really doesn't matter if you experienced all of that course of time or not as long as you believe you did in the frame.

Yeah, those two scenarios are definitely problematic. And I think you're right, about the time really not mattering.

Most of us are not trained to be objective at consciousness.
Dreaming is an Associative process and very much open to suggestion!
When somone says i had a dream in witch i experienced a year i label that as time experiencing from association/suggestion as a year not being real containing the info of a year! And thats very logic to, lets divide a year real time info progress by 20 min rem time you have then 365*24* 3600 / 20 min rem sleep = 26.280 more brain signals needed a second! So someone who claims he really experienced a year in a dream well on average
of a 20 min rem dream at your last sleep cycle the brain should then work 26.000 times faster thats not really realistic.

The brain would:

1. Fry because so many more signals and activity a second would produce a lot of heat.
2. you die because the brain could never get enough oxygen to substain that activity.
3. Your brain cant level up the level of neurotransmittors needed for that.

Btw science would notice then an enourmous amount of signal increasing!
Did they ever measured that? Nope!

So its pure associative!
yes you can experience it but not from an objective way only pure suggestion!
And suggestions and associations can look pretty real, but thats another thing.

I don't think anyone in the thread has been saying otherwise. Associative or not, there's no solid reference.

LucidApple, I think you're confusing information with data. It's a common mistake, so don't worry.

Data are raw facts. When you go to weather.com and see that the temperature is 88ºF, you're looking at data.

Information is derived from data. More specifically it is data in context. So after you look at weather.com you might think, "wow, it's hot today." In doing so you put the data in context and created information.

So, you do you have a point. It is difficult to think that our brains could absorb days worth of sensory data in a few minutes, but not necessarily days worth of information, which could be derived from key facts or data (the sun setting and then rising is key, for instance, but not the time going up and down the stairs in your house).