Thread: On Shapeshifting and Extension of Self

In order for something to exist in a dream, it must have our attention. So, the amount of things we can be in a dream at once is limited to how many things that can have our attention at once.

Originally Posted by LeaoLouro

Hello everyone, I hope you are all having a wonderful day!
Extension of self, on the other hand, consists in extending what your awareness and being several things. When you shapeshift into an ant your awareness goes to the ant's body, and you feel like an ant. What about extending this awareness into three ants? Or to the whole hive? What about being an entire forest? The trees, the rocks, the birds, etc... What about being two people at once? What about being the Earth and all that it contains? What about being the whole universe?

I think there's a limit to this before it all becomes a big mess and your brain is unable to keep up.

If I could add my own experience with this, I've experimented with stuff like this. (This was all a few years ago)

You can transform yourself into different things but if you are having a difficult time doing that, you can summon something and posses it. This is easy once you are lucid and remind yourself that everything in a dream is yourself.

I've turned myself into several different things, including but not limited to other people, animals, a fridge, a tree, the dreamscape itself...

You don't magically get any more awareness as another thing, your perception of the dream is whatever you believe it would be as the thing you possess. When I was a tree, it felt like I had several more arms and that I could feel with each one. When I was the dreamscape, I could feel the dream characters walking on me. It was a strange sensation but it didn't come with any additional awareness or "total sensory information" for lack of a better term. I could only focus on the same amount.

As you all pointed out, yes there is a limit. However does this limit prevent us from being able to be several things at once?
Not the whole universe, obviously, but, for example, two people?

^^ In truth, LeaoLouro, I don't believe there is a limit... even the whole universe.

I think Him already sort of mentioned this, but in a dream the entire universe is "You," period; there are no other objects, only other aspects of your own imagination. So, if you can come to fully understand that there is no separation between DC "You" and the other people, things, critters, landscapes, biospheres, etc., then there is no reason you couldn't become any or all of these things -- because you will know that you already are them.

Though it would be a very difficult exercise, because our natural state of dualism (a "me" separate from and observing everything else) works all too well in dreams, I think it is an exercise worth attempting and perhaps working on for quite some time. This is because it will help you to develop a sense of non-dualism, an achievement that ought to be a standard goal for all LD'ers. If you want to get started in this (and haven't already) I suggest you look into sleep yoga, because this is a major focus of that discipline.

Finally, just to echo what others have said, be advised that, as far as I know, even after you've developed a purely non-dual perspective, the other objects you might occupy in your dream will still be extensions of you, so you will not learn anything more by being them, except perhaps how powerful your imagination can be... unless of course there really is an actual dream plane that we visit every night or dream-sharing is possible, in which case you might just happen to find yourself experiencing life in an actual ant colony, which would be very cool, but I don't think that's what we're talking about here!

This thread is reminding me of the game Everything (here's a gameplay vid). It's a simulation game and you can change your perspective to any object in the environment, whether it be a tree, animal, snowflake, planet, or the entire universe, and then move through the simulation. You can also combine with others of the same object and then as you move, each object that is a part of "you" moves with you.

I have had zero transformation experiences in my dreams, but I thought this would be cool to share.