I had an idea...

First of all, it IS possible to slow down time so that you experience years in the dream, correct? I've heard of people doing that, and I want to make sure it's possible before I explain my idea.

what it is, is that our perception of time slows down...unless you believe in astral and all the spiritual parts of LDing, but if we're going scientific here, what it is, is that our mind simulates the feeling of the passage of time within a moment...also our minds can move much much faster while dreaming than life deos while awake, so, while you're awake, as fast you can, say, talk internally, is how fast events can occur in a dream, each syllable(bad spelling yay ;p) being a different event action etc. ...so yes and no...unless you believe all that spiritual stuff, in which case, yes

Yeah...it requires alot of DREAM CONTROL. You have to really concentrate at first. And as WB said...it is our OWN perception.

You ever had those afternoons or days where time seems to pass by really slow? Kinda like that. It's perception.

That's what I'm trying to do now: slow/extend time.

I had some success - at least I remembered to say "I want to spend 2 days in this dream" twice.

I think it's absolutely possible.

i envy u guys os much....id love to have an ld whcih i could have full control in.....wat kinda stuff do u do besides the usual flying...ect ???

cheers fellas ;)

Alright... so, let's say you had extremely good control over your dreams. You were a master lucid dreamer. You stretch time out so that you seem to experience decades. I've talked to someone who does this commonly - they spend years, even lifetimes, existing as fictional characters. Going through their lives.

Based off of this, here is my idea: you stretch time out so that your dream is the length of a lifetime. You then simulate a world as close to real life as you can get. Of course, for it to be stable and realistic, you'd have to be REALLY good at LDing. Anyway, the concept is simple. You just live life through - be it as yourself or another person. The point is to get the full experience of life. Everyone knows how much wisdom many of the elderly possess - because they've had so much experience. If you were to create and live through a life with the depth, struggles, passion and stability of reality, you could wake up with 70 or 80 more years of wisdom and life experience than everyone around. You could do this for several nights and end up having hundreds of years of wisdom under your belt - while only being 15 or 20 or 30 or however old you are.

To do all this successfully, one would have to have enormous amounts of concentration, LDing experience, dream recall, discipline, and patience. But if it worked, imagine what kind of a person you could become. Also, you could devote certian lifetimes to different things. You could spend an entire lifetime studying and being with giraffes, so when you woke up, people would suddenly find you an expert on the field of giraffes. The only snag I can think of is retaining the knowledge from the dream to reality. You would have to have excellent dream recall and you'd have to be at a very high level of lucidity.

What do you think? Is this even realistic?

Next time you are lucid, try this:

Find a door and tell yourself (or better shout): When I will enter this door, I will find myself in a lifetime (or xx years) long Lucid dream which will last only 30-45 minutes of real time.
You may add things like "I will move freely" and "I will never lose lucidity" and so on...

It is supposed to work, and right now it's #1 on my to do list
Hope It's gonna be fuN!

You know control time in a Lucid enviorment can be pretty tricky. I mean think about it. You can slow time down but you're still only limited to the actual lenght of the dream by your REM period. So I would think no matter how much you slowed time down in your dream you're still going to only get the amount of REM Periods of sleep before you exit that dream.

I think I'm going to write a tutorial on this subject...

That is a really cool idea. :D But, using your example with giraffes, you know only as much as you know. What you know about a giraffe is all that will be in a dream, no extra knowledge will be aquired. You couldn't consider yourself an expert. You are just spending your time arond what YOU think giraffes are.

If you told someone that the real name for zebra was "giraffe", and told the person to dream about giraffes, they are going to dream about a certain black and white striped animal. A zebra. ;)

But you could practice for other things, like public speaking. Live your life as a polititian, and in RL you may be more confident in your public speaking.

Alright, taking from the politician idea...

How much does lucid dreaming affect your physical attributes? I've heard it does to a certain extent. For instance, say you lived a life as a samurai. Devoted your life to the way of the warrior, to the sword. Would you wake up more skilled with kendo(japanese fencing), markmanship, horseback riding, et cetera... all the things samurai live by?

Or, say you live as a buddhist monk. You wake up much more experienced and skilled with meditation. You wake up more peaceful, you gain more clarity and calmness. You remember all you have been taught in your alternate lifetime and apply it to the real world.

Live as an artist, wake up better at painting.

Live as one fully devoted to lucid dreaming, wake up better at lucid dreaming.

Live as a blind, deaf and mute person, wake up appreciating your eyesight, hearing and speech more.

The possibilities are endless... assuming they're possible at all.

Or is it more like in The Matrix? You can learn kung fu instantly in the matrix, but that means nothing in the real world.

i think that there would be a limited amount of time, even if you could slow time down to decades
dreams use much mental power, your brain in other words which uses approximately 20% of all your energy consumption, thereofre i suggest a person will become tired and have no energy left after a short time!!

In lucid dreams you know as much as your subconcious mind knows. And it stores all information you seen/learned/heard since you were born.

That's a lot of information. Add here your mind's ability to predict and imitate and you can get almost any experience possible...

Problem is *how* close to reality it is....


You can definitely learn in LDs.

I like how time can be relative. Some say time is an illusion. But as long as you can control your perception of time, thus changing your feeling of it, that's what matters, if you're trying to control time.

Like...do a verbal command. "I want to enjoy every single moment of this dream." Maybe it'll work.

You would not gain any real attributes, except for maybe an appreciate for deaf/blind/mute etc. people and a better confidence, but not a full understanding of the subject. I believe ericja clarified this. Say I watch kung fu movies all the time, and I dream I train for all that and live my life as a martial arts master. When you wake up, you might think you can do all those things, but actually your body probably isn't even suited for that work and effort, and all your "Training" was produced by YOU. Your mind. If your not a martial arts expert already, nothing your mind can produce can train you. Not even if you watching people using kung fu everyday, training and everything, you still wouldn't have the mental discipline and focus that only a real expert could have.

If your questions were hypothetical, well, I don't know... :|

I'm not sure about gaining attributes, but I definitely think an expert lucid dreamer can refine his/her own abilities in a dream. I forget where I read it (probably this site, knowing how off my brain is today!) that coaches will train their sports starts to lucid dream sometimes, so that they can practise while they sleep in a safe environment. Sure, the physics of a dream may be wonky and not the same as real life. But at the very LEAST someone can gain confidence in what they're doing by practising it in a dream.

Or as a different example, I would wager that somebody who is afraid of heights could conquer this fear in lucid dreams - jumping off cliffs, flying, etc without any real fear of consequence. I guess in this sense, you ARE gaining some kind of attribute.

At any rate, I'm horribly off the main topic here. My apologies!