Dreams , are they more then just imagination??

[ProStoner]

hey
I would like to know what u people here on the forum think about dreams
I believe myself that they are not just a way for ur mind to comprehend what happened the day before
but that they can really show u future things or maybe even let u be there ath place or event u dream about as a sort of astral projection
I have many more thoughts about this but its hard just naming them all now
so i`ll let u guys put ur findings about dreams here first
and see what happens

 

[Ilian]

have you ever heard of lucid dreaming?
its possible to be aware that you are dreaming and as soon as you can get that you can do whatever you wish in your dreams.
i cant do this myself, but its interesting and sometimes i try to remember my dreams (which is working).
might wanna check these out:
http://www.dreamviews.com/
www.ld4all.com
and google a bit for 'lucid dreaming'

 

[skrudge]

I'm really eager to 'learn' controlling my dreams. Same as having control of happenings and events in trips.

Since a few months I've been dreaming again, cause I'd been using marihuana for a long time (bout three years) I'd cut off my REM-phase, and didn't have any dreams. Now I haven't been smoking it for four months (pats on own shoulder) and I started remembering my dreams again. They've been very strange sometimes, and when I wake up I'm really tired, probably because they can be very intense. Sometimes I dream about finding huge amounts of dope and stuffing it in my pocket, and I almost never use it. That's worth a thought.
Another dream for example:

I'm walking around in a zoo, and walk to the crocodiles pit. I bend over, and someone next to me says 'It's okay to get in, they don't bite at all'
The next minute I find myself down there between de crocs. I a blur everything changes, and I'm swimming in the amazone, between hundreds of hostile crocodiles. After that it's blank.

 

[Guest]

I had some lucid dreams when I was little.
I could fly and/or change the world I was in.
I gave everything a different color, kind of the colors you see when tripping.
And everything shaped differently, trees could bend in al sorts of ways
My first mushroom trip reminded me of it

I had a lucid dream last year when I quit smoking weed, but I began again, but now I'm giving it another go. Acid meta-programming sessions can do wonderfull things. So now I'm training myself again to remember my dreams beter and hopefully will master the art of lucid dreaming again

 

[ProStoner]

Lucid dream yes I have heard of this
and also had them
its a funny thing but hard to control since the transfer from dreaming to lucid dreaming occurs "I think"just before u start to wake up
because then u realize ur dreaming and can't stay asleep anymore
now I had this lucid dream was when I was falling down a cliff
I`m sure more of u have had this dream cause its a very common dream
the whole falling things
well normally before u hit the ground u wake up in your bed and have this wicked feeling
this time I kept on dreaming and Hit the ground VERY HARD and it had hurt me
it was really weird hitting the ground instead of waking up
so I got on my feet and walked out of the canyon I was in and came in some kind of theme park in which I could let myself get killed in a 101 ways
which I did and that was kinda a cool experience lol
and yes its true that smoking weed pretty much stops the dreaming
I noticed that myself when I quit for about 2 months and started to have dreams each night again and very realistic and fun dreams
and some of those were lucid
but I still wanna train to get more of those dreams
but I fear that when I become good at this. u start creating a second reality "sort of" and it will be harder for me to make the difference between those
I have a friend who can do lucid dreaming whenever he wants
and he just lives on in his dreams as he does when he's awake
I dont even wanna know the juicy parts lol

 

[Guest]

Man that sounds crazy. I hope for his sake he doesn't mix up the things he did in his dreams with the things he did in real life

 

[forest]

Book:

PLANT SPIRIT MEDICINE

Every psychonaut on this forum would like it, dreaming is also a part of the book.
it is written (ofcourse) by a shaman.

 

[Forkbender]

Back to the initial question:

I think dreams can be both a comprehension of what happened the day before and an insightful moment. I experienced dreams that were precognitive (i.e. foretelling the future) on a couple of occassions. I also have dreams when I suddenly learn something about the nature of reality (this usually happens close to waking up, and reminds me of the clear high of shrooms, when you philosophize about all and everything). These dreams could of course be explained with you unconsciously learning something and than comprehending it consciously the night after in your dreams, but it is remarkable still. Lucid dreams initially don't give you these insights ("I don't wanna learn my future, I want to fly through walls and talk with beautiful animals! I want to colour the world!"), but I guess that with some training you get over this first stage of amazement and start digging into reality, just as you learn to trip deeper and deeper.

 

[Ilian]

Since a few months I've been dreaming again, cause I'd been using marihuana for a long time (bout three years) I'd cut off my REM-phase, and didn't have any dreams. Now I haven't been smoking it for four months (pats on own shoulder) and I started remembering my dreams again.

and yes its true that smoking weed pretty much stops the dreaming

i have also read that its basicly impossible to dream when you smoke pot daily. however, i have also tried to remember my dreams some time ago, and it worked! I smoke quite a lot of hash (pure) daily yet i was able to remember my dreams almost every day. It took me about a week of 'practising' (nothing else to do when im in bed anyway) and then i actually started remembering dreams as soon as i woke up.
So, my experience is that it is most certainly possible to dream and to remember them when you smoke hash. I dont know how its possible, but i have experienced it myself..

 

[skrudge]

maybe there's a difference between hash and marihuana itself, since hash is an extract.. I always noticed a different kind of sleeping state when i compared the two..
When I smoked hash, went to sleep and woke up I was (most of the time) pretty fast awake and rested. When I smoked marihuana I could sleep for hours and when I'd wake up I had the feeling I slept for four hours or so..

maybe more people have this experience?

 

[Ilian]

i guess that is possible. but it could also be because im smoking it pure? (bongs)
i think the difference between smoking pure/mixed is bigger than the difference between weed/hash.. but of course im just guessing as well.
what a mystery

 

[ProStoner]

if u dont remember a dream could also mean that u didnt dream at all
allthough this is kinda hard to ever find out

oh and about that book
i've heard of it
but do u have any idea where in the netherlands near eindhoven (would be nice)
I can buy this book ?? or order ?

 

[Nitroman]

I've been trying to get lucid during dreams but most of the times it doesnt work for me sometimes I get like sub lucid (if that is a word hehe) I mean I dont fully realize that I'm dreaming but I do know how to bend the rules.

Does anyone of you guys knowWaking Life?
Its a really interesting philosophical animation movie about lucid dreaming, like reality is one big dream.

When I'm going to sleep I always notice a few states of sleep:

first stage: my body gets very relaxed
second stage: where my thaughts get intenser, increased thaughts visualisation
third stage: logical thaughts patterns seems to get distorted and one thaught can flow into another thaught wich has nothing to do with the first one
fourth stage: leaving the waking world and entering the dream world, now I'm really starting to dream. and because of the thaughts overflow in my mind I cant seem to concentrade on the fact that I wanted to have a lucid dream in the first place

Here are a few tips for those who want to experience a lucid dream:

In your waking life try to add a few extra things to your daily life, like when you see a light switch turn it on or off and see if the light goes on or off, but really look at the light and ask yourself if the light really went on or off.

In a dream you cant usally adjust light levels, so if you get this "light switch action" in your thaughts system you may want to try it during a dream and then realize that you are dreaming and become lucid.
I got this tip from the movie Waking Life by the way.

Another tip is to watch a digital or analog clock, if the display seems to be all screwed up or there are to much or to less numbers you are probably dreaming, also try counting your fingers (lol that sounds stupid).

And last but not least, from the Waking Life movie this guy said that small patterns such as ae. a clothing trade mark logo are very unstable and can change very often.

But anyway I'm going to sleep now hehe I'm pretty tired, hopefully I'll have a lucid dream tonight. Wish me luck

 

[tryptonaut]

I recently had a weird dream (it wasn't lucid though). I dreamt I was doing ayahuasca and I began tripping in my dream. Just if it were real the "tripping" woke me up and then I still felt like I was tripping for almost 5 minutes.
It was very weird because I hadn't done any entheogenic substances for weeks.

Was this the call of ayahuasca? Some people do believe that you don't choose to use dmt, but dmt chooses you... maybe they are right?

 

[ProStoner]

Was this the call of ayahuasca? Some people do believe that you don't choose to use dmt, but dmt chooses you... maybe they are right?

that is very weird
I had exactly the same dream as u
I was stnading there in a room and there were 2 guys on sitting on the floor
and they were smoking DMT they said
and they asked me to join them and I said to them .. ooh k but just a little cause its my first time
so I smoked some and starting tripping a bit and then my dream totally switched over and I landed in a jungle like envirement with temples and such and I then remember having the Temple/jungle part of the dream before many years ago
very weird dream that was

 

[Siq]

Before the first day I had xtc (that is .. before last sunday) I once dreamed I had x. Not so really strange in fact, however .. this:

I don't know if I'm a lone soul in this, but I don't dream in color. Well, not that everything is black and white, or grayscale .. but I just don't recognize color as something distinct.

So except for the one time I used xtc in my dreams. I dreamed I was laying on my bed and it was rather dark (ok, I actually was lying in bed and it was dark, but this time it was a dream) and somehow got the hold of xtc .. so I took it. Next I saw things light up in COLOR. So I thought .. what the hell, mutlicolor! Sweet! It was but when I woke up that I realised I had never seen color in dreams before.

 

[Forkbender]

Tryptonaut/ProStoner, you can say it's the call of ayahuasca/DMT, or you can say that your mind is predisposed with drug-use (which I do not necessarily call a bad thing, but it might be the case, because you obviously think about it a lot...), so that you will dream about drug-use. The latter one is probably the 'scientific' explanation, while the former (your) explanation might be the 'shamanic'. I do not value one over the other, but I guess that your experience puts you into a direction and to some extent you might be the one creating the call of ayahuasca/DMT yourself. This doesn't mean that the call isn't true. Your experience up till now is probably what you need to do to be able to do ayahuasca/DMT succesfully. I'd say: follow the dream and unite with the cosmic spirit!

 

[ProStoner]

yes I agree on your points fork
i`ve also looked at it from both ways
but u know its so complicated anda matter of believes... cause there are whole believes and cultures based on the use of psychedelics plants but some scientists can explain every aspect of the drug and how its works on the brain and why its shows u this and so on..
but I do believe myself that theres more then just that
cause I feel like there really is a spirit in everything or an energie which u dont just explain by science
but anyways thats kinda offtopic
I guess i`ll find out if it really was the call of aya/dmt when I try it

 

[Forkbender]

ProStoner, that is indeed the one way to find out. When I took ayahuasca I had an amazing trip, really strong, insightful, empathic, best trip of my life. Yet, I didn't want to trip after that trip for about 5 months, and only now, almost 2 years later, I feel I *might* be ready for another ayahuasca trip.

I think science and shamans complement each other. Science got a somewhat bottom up approach: they look at the molecules, how they fit together and how they interact and so on, while shamans look at things top down: they see a cosmic unity and the different spirits within this unity that create the sort of oppositions science studies. Both work undeniably at their own field. The study of dreams is something that is originally closer to shamanism than science, because it is an entirely subjective experience. But that doesn't mean that we cannot explain dreams psychologically. It is a fact that if we deal with hard topics for a long while, these topics will return in our dreams. It's a matter of interpretation I guess. Which one is right? Each has got something to say for it, but probably neither is entirely correct, because these fields are again entirely subjective. There's no way out.

 

[TheeLord!]

YES, of course, it's more ...

Even from a "scientific" view of point it's defintily more than just imagination.

Sleep - what happens during sleep ? Why do we need to sleep ?
Some answers -> we are postprocessing things that happend during day ... (that's called dreaming). Before actual dreaming we are uploading data from a rather small harddisc (called Hippocampus) [that can hold memories/data only a few days, in other words short term memory] - to a very big one (Cortex, long term memory) . That's called deep-sleep. For lab-mice it could be proven that dreaming is something like a played-back video from during-day events. (Brain activity got recorded while they have learned something specific, their brain activity got recored while sleeping -> 1:1 correspondence).
Sleeping is a combination of uploading data to a bigger storage and (post) processing it. Usualy a couple of upload / process / uploaded / process cycles per night.
Uploads to the bigger one are rather unreliable, needs to be repeated very often.
Without sleep, things we have stored in short term memory would be lost forever .... and couldn't be processed ... in other words, to some degree we are learning during sleep ... re-thinking / re-playing / processing ... day time happenings / associating it with past data ...
The brain just wouldn't work without sleep ...

Very fascinating stuff, and that's just the scietific view / beginning ...

About lucid dreaming: Never had a real lucid dream, but a variation I call pseudo-lucid. Having them rather regular, a few times per year.
I'm aware that I'm dreaming, but I cant influence anything. I'm the observer opf my own dream so to say ...
Variation, something that I call nested dreams: (that's the weirdest type of dreams I've experienced ) -> I'm dreaming that I'm having a regular day ... going to sleep and dreaming .. a dream in a dream so to say ... waking up from the dreamed dream, thinking that I'm awake ... (sometimes mixes with pseudo lucidness) ... but actuly still dreaming ... maximal nesting level I ever had 3 ...

regards, tl