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Originally Posted by
Cridegnosis
That means I am truly amazed, finding out some other persons interested in the same things I am... I believe these "issues" you are talking about are a concrete way to prove the utility of dreams, other than simple, let's say, pleasure or well being...
Everyone I spoke with about the "own" study of dreams said that this is mainly a lose of time, that if they can't serve a concrete and social purpose, they do not deserve interest, other than that revelead by phylosphical or psychological approaches. Here there is still a poor mentality, I think, and older people especially are looking first of all at the concrete and palpable aspect and rarely they think of the intelectual joy and the sake of knowledge...
Anyway, your idea is very interesting and productive. I myself am trying to come up with some way of using dreams as a source of creativity and exploring impossible things in the day to day life. I had some dreams which helped me in the study of dreams by the information they gave me. I think the real purpose of dreams is giving birth to the "new", because the dream is the only form of imagination availible at early stages of live, thus the only psychological process that creates new connections in experience (and brain cells). Why do small children have to dream so much??? [/b]
I'm happy that you also understand that this isn't an area to be ignored. Actually, I think there should be a lot more people than just you and I who appreciate these kinds of possibilities to some extent, even, as I mentioned initially, discounting those who believe dreams have supernatural attributes. If there isn't... well, maybe there isn't, actually. I suppose the kind of person who would be interested in that kind of potential could also largely be the kind of person who would just come to have interested in OBEs, etc. But I hope there are more exceptions (DuB and the people who posted in the topic he mentioned seem to be ones!), and since you've only been here a relatively short time (not relative to me, of course, I'm very new) perhaps you're pleasantly mistaken.
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Here's an example of such dream I've mentioned:
I was thinking one day that you can control your dreams, but not necessarily real time control but choice control. How comes ? Well, we don't control our lives, we just choose from a bunch of possibilities we have at some times. If we're hungry, we choose wether to eat now, or eat later, or die by starvation. We choose what to eat, but we can't choose not to be hungry.
Well, in dreams it seems we are forced into different actions, like in real life, but much less subtle, which gives us the impression we don't have control (anyway, the control in real life is a little different, but also based on choice and decision and not control of cause that leads to an effect. The latter is like choosing what to eat in real life. We choose A and not B and think we're powerfull, but it's only an illusion of control, because we choose according to the substances our body lacks at the moment). So, I thought I can control dreams by choosing from the possibilities that appear. Let's say I want to travel - I can walk, or go by car, or fly, or teleport myself. It's the same basic fact but with other skin, and skin isn't much of an important issue in dreams, I believe the content is the one that really counts. Anyway, that night I dreamed of an monster coming to eat me, and I was scared. But then I thought to myself I can choose to let myself being eat, so I'll take control of the situation (in dreams only :bigteeth: ). And I've had the monster over for dinner... It ate my little hand finger and I asked if it was good... It didn't say anything, but it did leave me alone and I wasn't scared anymore, but happy and ironic. The dream actually helped me to better understand how this control I had been thinking of really works in dreams...
So, I really do belive dreams can be used to enhance our day to day abilities, not necessarily reffering to dreams.
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Yes, that could be true.
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Originally Posted by
Cridegnosis
I've been planning on doing something in one of my next lucids that fits into this "category." I got the idea from one of my non-lucid dreams. At one point in the dream I was driving in my car with the radio on. The radio played a song that doesn't exist: Frank Sinatra singing a Van Morrison song in his lounge style (the song was "Moondance" for anyone who's wondering :wink:). After the song ended, it played another version of the same song, this time sung by Van himself, but the song had an overdriven electric guitar in it (the original doesn't). When I woke up I was amazed at this. The songs were perfectly clear, played start to finish, and even sounded pretty good, but they were completely made up! My unconscious mind had created them. I got the idea to compose music in my sleep. There are many ways I could do this, but I think what I'll do is manifest someone (maybe an existing artist, maybe a stranger, maybe even a reflection of myself!) and ask them to play a song for me, and I'll watch and listen. Maybe we'll even jam together :D. I'll probably wake myself up immediately afterwards so that I can recall it with the most clarity.
Anyway, I am convinced that this will work after that non-lucid dream that I had. I haven't got a chance to do it yet, but I'll let you know how it goes when I do. Maybe I'll even have a recording for you guys :D.
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Indeed, that's a great thought. Definitely let everyone know how it turns out! Sometimes I'm tempted to try something like that myself, since I have had experience with music in dreams and also am someone who likes music, but I've never done any real work with composition or music theory and I know since there's a limit to what the subconscious is capable of (as with hypnosis, dumb people are worse subject, for instance) I only would like to be able to write creatively with an in-dream method, if I find the chance. ;)
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People have often tried taking drugs in their dreams to see how it affected them. There have been some threads over it, you might want to look them up. Anyway, sometimes they work like in real life, sometimes the effects are completely different, and sometimes nothing happens. I can only ever recall doing drugs once in a dream. It was a non-lucid dream, and I took some acid. I've never done acid. In the dream, all that happened was that I got really stoned as if I had smoked pot (which I've done plenty of times).
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Very interesting. I don't know that this could be much more deep than how a person might act in real life if you told them you to believe they were smoking it, actually (except perhaps they'd be in a more clear state of mind, or something...). I think that in a dream, even your subconscious can be bizarrely erroneous associations, like as you said causing acid to seem like pot. Sometimes I think a person can't be very readily creative at imagining a sensation they haven't experienced, so the subconscious lazily redirects them elsewhere; an example would be how I'm constantly getting butchered in various situations within dreams, but all I feel is a powerful burning sensation and the wetness of my own blood (and if this makes any sense, pain feels the same but doesn't have the same "meaning" as it does when I'm awake, so I don't revile it).