Three weeks in one night

[pubbles]

Hello, everyone! It's been a while since I last posted. Does anyone even remember me? I've been slacking off a bit in the past few weeks as far as LDing and keeping a dream journal and everything, but last night I had a REALLY weird experience that rekindled my interest. I'll try to make it short, so that someone actually reads it. I had a really long dream. It lasted about three weeks. I didn't think that it would be possible, but I swear, that's how long it was. It was a semi-lucid, so I was aware enough to control my attitude and those things, but I wasn't aware that I was dreaming. I thought it was just real life. Some days were too short and other such inconsistencies that I noticed once I woke up, but otherwise it was all very real. When I woke up, I spent about 15 minutes pretty much in shock. After I asked several people what day it was and did all of the reality checks I know of, I finally came to accept that what I thought had been three long weeks actually took place in a single night's sleep. It actually shook me up a bit, and I still feel a bit akward now. I guess part of the reason I'm posting this now is that I need a little consolation, and maybe an explanation if you have one. Thanks for reading! -Pubbles

[Lomebririon]

Nice one! Well, i've heard several lucid dreamers talking about spending weeks in dreams, longer when in a fully lucid state. It's supposed to be a very strange experience. I want one.

[Lucid]

yeah Labeirge (or however you spell it) wrote about spending more than 100 years in a single two hour dream. I find that hard to beleive but I just had a dream that felt like it lasted an entire day in the span of about 15 real minutes. Lucid

[Jork]

Wow, very nice! Did you do.. Um, anything special to achieve it? I want one too

[pubbles]

No, nothing special. In fact, everything I did before going to bed couldn't have been any more routine. I guess I just got lucky.

[Scruffy]

Wow, that would be weird. I've had dreams where I was sure I was awake and going about my normal life, though they only lasted a few dream hours. Still somewhat disorienting, though. It would be so awesome to achieve complete lucidity in a dream that long! So much stuff you could do! I find it interesting that LaBerge says he had an experience like that. In his book, he says that dream time and real time are roughly equivalent, and that the passage of time works like we percieve it in movies: changing scenery makes us think more time has passed.

[pubbles]

Well, it's entirely possible that my dream wasn't as long as it seemed because of scenery changing and what not. I suppose it's possible that each day only lasted about 5 or 6 hours, but I know that it was 22 days long, which means that despite the length of the days, it's still WAY off from real time.

[Human #213-651-789]

I read of Laberge's study on dream time a little while ago. They had lucid dreamers count seconds in their dreams and give cues to the researchers watching every second or five seconds or whatever. They found that these lucid dreamers were pretty much right on with "real" time. This only really applies, though, if the dreamer is lucid and focusing on time. I don't think the experiment holds much weight, and imo studying such a subjective experience objectively is a bit of a waste. Not that I'm trying to slander on about the Institute, few of us would be here if it wasn't for its work. I just think we should be spending our precious LD time exploring the dreamworld and ourselves, not getting hung up on empirical "fact."