Thread: Longest LD Experience you can get

Originally Posted by Shift

I have no idea how people can judge how long they were in an LD for, seeing as they were asleep. Anyone want to clarify this?

well if the dream seems to last a half an hour, and you wake up and your clock is a half an hour later than when you fell asleep, considering you fell asleep fairly quickly after looking at your clock, I think one might come to the conclusion that their lucid dream was in fact a half an hour long, wouldn't you say?

Originally Posted by lagunagirl

well if the dream seems to last a half an hour, and you wake up and your clock is a half an hour later than when you fell asleep, considering you fell asleep fairly quickly after looking at your clock, I think one might come to the conclusion that their lucid dream was in fact a half an hour long, wouldn't you say?

Well no, I would say that you spent some time trying to fall asleep, spent some time unconscious, then began dreaming for a short period of time right before waking up, and then looked at your clock. You can't tell how long a dream was just by looking at your clock. I believe that the majority of the time is spent just unconscious while sleeping, or in non-lucids that you don't even remember, and not to mention, you often wake up but don't remember it. So if you stirred in your sleep at 29 minutes, fell back asleep but didn't remember waking, and then had a lucid that seemed to last 5 minutes, but really only lasted one minute... then what?

Think about all the time you spend sleeping when you don't remember any dreams at all. I've slept for 8 hours straight and not had/recalled a single dream. If I had had a dream, and spent all 8 hours straight asleep, would you say that the dream lasted 8 hours?

Originally Posted by Shift

Think about all the time you spend sleeping when you don't remember any dreams at all. I've slept for 8 hours straight and not had/recalled a single dream. If I had had a dream, and spent all 8 hours straight asleep, would you say that the dream lasted 8 hours?

I see your point, but you can't really compare a night's rest to a nap since the majority, if not all, of a nap will be spent in REM.

I'm familiar with the theory of shadow memory and downloading from OBEs, but I believe that LDs do share the same method of recollection.

Originally Posted by AlexLou

I see your point, but you can't really compare a night's rest to a nap since the majority, if not all, of a nap will be spent in REM.

I'm just trying to point out how wrong it is to assume that's the length of a dream... sue me, I'm a science major I like my empirical evidence!

I just think with the majority of trouble that we have actually remembering our dreams, that there must be a more accurate way of judging the length. For example, the lucid I had today was during a 2.5 hour nap. So technically I was napping. The dream felt 5 minutes long. So how long was it really?

It seems most likely to me that a dream would last as long as it would take for you to think through it and relive it... since all it is is thoughts from your mind, wouldn't take a similar amount of time? I've always heard that dreams only last seconds, anyway.

And if people can consciously slow down or speed up time in their dreams, why couldn't this happen subconsciously? Maybe all dreams are really fast, but you don't notice. Like I said, I wish we could measure so we had some hard facts to go with.

It's like the concept of time dilation and astronauts. As oneironauts, why couldn't our dream time be under the influence of (apparently biological/neurological) time dilation, too?

Originally Posted by Shift

Like I said, I wish we could measure so we had some hard facts to go with.

Yeah, me too.