Thread: How much real is the lucid world?

I find it's really a large spectrum of possible clarity. I sometimes have "fuzzy" dreams, sometimes more or less like real life, and sometimes a sort of heightened awareness of my surroundings.

Yep, it changes with each dream usually, in some dreams colours are much more vibrant then real life and scenes breathtakingly realistic, other times they can be fuzzy with really poor colour and clarity.
If you dig around you'll find methods of enhancing dream realism and 'picture quality' .

I often comment to myself while lucid that the brains graphics card is awesome, its certainly capable of rendering a very realistic scene fit with reflections, shadows and perfect water effects heh. Apparently the reason for this is that the same part of the brain and the same processes used to model the outside world are also used when modelling the inside world of dreams.

If you think about it, everything you see while awake is just the brains model of the world in your head... your eyes recieve the light, and its carried as electrical pulses through the brain which is then processed and the scene created. In dreams the data just comes from the inside rather then the outside and your brain creates the image just the same.

Just to echo what RooJ said; the images we see when we are awake are processed through the brain before we see them so when we dream our brain brings all the things we see back up so it is possible to see something 100% the same as RL. Also many people seem to exp. increased clarity in some dreams which i guess is the brain sharpening the image for you due to some reason, while others have hazzy dreams which could mean the memory retreval isnt perfect, the other explanation could be how good your recall is of the particular dream.

Just another point on realism in dreams from personal exp. i find that you can exp. everything you can in RL. Now this sounds freaky but you get used to it, it does however in my case fluctuate in how realistic the dream is. Something that springs to mind after last nights strange LD is exp. pain in my dreams. I have felt pain a fair bit in dreams, this was really bad at first as i would wake up and have to check my self over for injuries and that sort of thing as i would stress out about it. These days i just take it for granted, pain is something that comes from the brain interacting with its enviroment so if the environment is a LD then i guess it makes sense that i can hurt in it (you havent been pissed off till you feel like you have paper cut yourself in a dream and wake up due to it).

you havent been pissed off till you feel like you have paper cut yourself in a dream and wake up due to it.

Or you feel like you've been stabbed/peirced through the sides, 3 spears in the right side of your ribcage, 3 in the left... damn that hurts.

Originally Posted by RooJ

Or you feel like you've been stabbed/peirced through the sides, 3 spears in the right side of your ribcage, 3 in the left... damn that hurts.

I had a guy cut the inside edge of my hand with a pair of scissors the other night. Yowch!

Apparently the reason for this is that the same part of the brain and the same processes used to model the outside world are also used when modelling the inside world of dreams.

I'm fairly convinced this isn't true. Very different areas of the brain are involved real life versus dreams, even if the sensations in a dream mimic the sensations in real life does NOT mean they are created by the same areas of the brain. Dreams mainly draw from past memories/subconscious thoughts and scrambles um all up then presents them through your sensory lobes of the brain. This is the exact reverse of what happens in real life where your experiences enter through the sensory lobes and eventually settle in the conscious thought/subconscious/memory lobes of the brain.

By the way, with the pain thing, i've never actually felt pain in a dream, extreme anxiety or fear... even to the point that they might be considered painful, yes, but never pain itself. For example i would see myself opening the microwave door, putting the paperclip on the safety switch, and putting my hand in then pressing start, it would cause extreme anxiety, but i would only wake up instead of feeling pain while asleep, i honestly don't think i would feel pain in a dream because of the simple subconscious option of just waking up. However, this might be just me though, and i'm not basing anything off of this.

My dreams are very realistic normally. Sometimes I do get hazy or fuzzy ones, but they are about as realistic as RL. Lucid Dreams however, are at least 50x more realistic than RL. It's like I can focus on everything at once, and all my senses are turned up to the max. As of now, it's the main reason why I LD.