My opinion on what a Dream is

[Xanth]

http://unlimitedboundaries.ca/2010/10/29/what-are-dreams/

I've been answering questions lately regarding Dreams and I wanted to explain what I believe Dreams are. If you've been reading my posts from the start you'll probably have a good idea of what I'm about to say. So, let's get going!

First off, I'll say this... Dreams, as an objective experience, do not exist.  Dreams are NOT what we think they are.  They're not some random interplay of images and scenes that play out while we're asleep.  What we humans call a dream is one part of a much bigger "non-physical whole".

So what is a Dream? A Dream is you being in the non-physical and being completely oblivious of that fact. You go about the environment as if you were wide awake and living your physical life. The environment is being fueled entirely by your own subconscious thoughts, desires, intentions, beliefs... everything.

Now, what's the difference between a remembered dream and a non-remembered dream? Well, obviously to remember a dream, you have to first experience it as it's happening. Or at least, this is the only way *I* can remember a dream (if anyone else has another method for how they experience and remember a dream, please do share your insights). This requires a form of conscious awareness which I call "Dream Awareness".

There is the thought that we dream every night of our lives, even if we don't remember it. I guess certain experiments using brainwave monitors have been used to figure this out. This means that we don't remember these dreams because we're simply not aware enough to remember them. We don't experience them as they're happening, so they don't get pushed into our memories. That begs the question are these memories lost or do we actually retain them after the fact?

[Stookie]

I tend to remember dreams long after they happened. Months or years later. Or have a new dream that takes place in a similar environment that makes me remember an old one.

Unconscious dreams have the possibility of forcing our subconscious mind to interact in ways we normally wouldn't. They can cause change in a person without them realizing or remembering it.

Well, obviously to remember a dream, you have to first experience it as it's happening.

So if you don't remember a dream, does that means you didn't "experience" it? We experience a lot in our daily lives that tend not to be remembered later. Does memory really depend on self-aware experience or can it work independently?

[CoryTheAnswer]

I guess I'm totally unsure on what dreams actually are.

But I think that dreaming that directly effects your soul... or maybe the other way around. Either way I think dreaming is a great way to study your own soul and give greater insights into life. More than that though, its also a way to stay more aware of your life. In a sense you live longer right? I mean you are gaining all that time in your life that you would normally just forget in the morning. But really they are just one more reason it is great to be human, whether there is a reason for it or not, we get to be god every night when we go to bed if we really want to.

Those are my thoughts on it.

[horaciocs]

I think of the physical/waking reality as a point where we focus our conscience on, just as any non-physical reality that we may become aware of. If we shift our focus, we can experience many other realities and have similar experiences.

However, the physical restrains our sensibility significantly, leaving most of us with nothing but our 5 senses to live with. That totally alienates us from other realities, creating the false impression that this is the real world and that everything else is nothing but a dream.


I find that when we dream, somehow, we are freed from our restraints. We experience the full potential of our consciences. Not remembering dreams has, most likely, something to do with our physical brain having no past memories to attach new sensory inputs to. We may experience wild new senses, feeling we've never felt before, colours we've never seen. Our brain can't cope with that, it can't make up anything that makes enough sense with all we've just experienced (according to our sensory experience limitations), so it just puts those experiences aside and sticks to what's known.

One has to have an extremelly open mind, totally freed of rigid preconceived concepts, to have access to other realities. I think. Otherwise, his subconscious will keep on trying to make both experiences meet, with no success.

Has anyone ever remembered a dream that has absolutely no connection with his experiences in the physical? Few people have, and those who have are usually naturally more open to new ideas and realities, rendering their subconscious more flexible to new ideas by consequence.

[Stookie]

Good post horaciocs.

Here's how some esoterocists view how sleep & dreams work. It varies to certain degrees:

As the physical body falls asleep, the etheric body rises out of it. As the etheric body's impulses reside, the astral body slips into it's natural element. And as our astral-impulses reside, our "I" experiences things/forces well outside of what we can consciously experience (deep unconscious sleep). Then the "I" recedes back into the astral body which takes those experiences and applies our emotions/feelings/impulses to them, then recedes back into the etheric which applies our physically learned concepts and experiences, which in turn makes the unconscious experiences memories, or what we interpret as dreams. How well we remember it from the physical depends on a number of factors, like how soon you wake up after the etheric re-integrates with the physical or how powerful the emotions in the astral body were and the impressions it left.

[Xanth]

Has anyone ever remembered a dream that has absolutely no connection with his experiences in the physical?

I'm not sure I follow that... could you provide a quick example, if possible?
I want to make sure I go in the right direction if I answer it.  LoL

And yeah, along with Stookie, those are some great ideas, indeed.
It's interesting to see just how much we don't really know about this state which we spend a third of our lives in!
It fascinates me.  LoL

[horaciocs]

I was talking about experiences that are simply unexplainable, any way one might try to explain them.

I think the best way to try describe them would be the way Monroe did on some of his journeys. I can't recall one exact situation right now, I'll try to find some examples of it later tonight.

The passages I'm talking about are those where you can see the extreme diffficulty the author has to explain the mixture of feelings he went through. The ones where he even says that he couldn't translate all his feelings into words. I'll look for a fine example and you'll get the picture. (I mean, if even people who have gone through it have great difficulty explaining it, imagine me, who hasn't :p )


Edit1:

Well, you could probably see the difficulty I had trying to explain myself earlier. I think more tangible examples would be, for instance, smells you've never smelled before, meeting with people you've never met before (I think this one is more likely to happen and may not always be related to a experience on another reality), among others (Can't think of others, actually, but I think you got the picture).

I could relate the actual dreaming experience (not what we recall of it, the real deal) to what surrealist painters try to represent in their paintings. And the process of their painting to our conscious mind trying to make sense of what it just saw. And the paintings themselves to what we actually recall from our dreams.

Edit 2 What I actually mean, after giving it some thought, is that you almost never dream a dream that totally changes the way you think. It never does because your conscious mind isn't open enough to new ideas, it takes (easily) only information that doesn't conflict with its past experiences.
End of Edit 2

I think that ALL types of contact with anything non-physical require some sort of detachment to all expectations regarding the experience. Once we are able to experience the world from a viewer's point of view (as user Indian mentioned in another topic), giving no thought to what to expect from anything, we will be more open to whatever it is our subconscious mind tries to tell us, opening the doors to all sensory information we might be interested in perceiving.

I must link you to his (indian) original post, it gives some great insight on this "viewer's point of view":
http://www.astralpulse.com/forums/welcome_to_astral_consciousness/question_about_a_meditation_tecnique_breath_awareness-t32121.0.html;msg264712#msg264712
There are two posts of his, it's a fascinating read. I understood it as a different take on the "empty your mind" philosophy.  

I'm not quoting Monroe anymore, I think the new approach is better. It's hard when you learn on-the-fly while writing, ideas keep popping up, I could edit forever here haha  

End of Edit 1

[Alakazam]

Hello all. In case you haven't read it, I'd like to ask you to go see my introductory thread; it should explain a lot about where I'm coming from on this, and help to prevent needless fighting.

Dreams are NOT what we think they are.  They're not some random interplay of images and scenes that play out while we're asleep.  What we humans call a dream is one part of a much bigger "non-physical whole".

So what is a Dream? A Dream is you being in the non-physical and being completely oblivious of that fact. You go about the environment as if you were wide awake and living your physical life. The environment is being fueled entirely by your own subconscious thoughts, desires, intentions, beliefs... everything.

Why do you think this? I'd like to know what led you to hold this belief, if you can explain it.

There is the thought that we dream every night of our lives, even if we don't remember it. I guess certain experiments using brainwave monitors have been used to figure this out. This means that we don't remember these dreams because we're simply not aware enough to remember them.

This seems self-contradictory to me. You said that you believe that a dream is not a physical event, right? If that's true, then why would the brain-wave experiments indicate whether or not we were dreaming every night? Or am I misunderstanding your position? Please correct me if I am.

[Xanth]

Why do you think this? I'd like to know what led you to hold this belief, if you can explain it.

I can't really answer that without bringing up a hundred other questions from you.
So, to be brief... my experiences and what I've learned from them.
To explain further I'd really just suggest you stick around and learn to have your own experiences. 

This seems self-contradictory to me. You said that you believe that a dream is not a physical event, right? If that's true, then why would the brain-wave experiments indicate whether or not we were dreaming every night? Or am I misunderstanding your position? Please correct me if I am.

Not at all.  Brainwaves seem to be the result of how our consciousness interacts with our physical brain.

[Alakazam]

I can't really answer that without bringing up a hundred other questions from you.
So, to be brief... my experiences and what I've learned from them.

Fair enough.

To explain further I'd really just suggest you stick around and learn to have your own experiences. 

Probably not going to happen at this point. Part of the reason that I don't believe in this stuff is because I used to spend a lot of time trying to get myself to experience all these things that the other people talked about. I never had any experience that wasn't fairly easily shown to be mundane, though.

Not at all.  Brainwaves seem to be the result of how our consciousness interacts with our physical brain.

Now, I'd ask why you think that the consciousness is separate from the brain, but I know that would lead into a thousand-question discussion.

[Xanth]

Probably not going to happen at this point. Part of the reason that I don't believe in this stuff is because I used to spend a lot of time trying to get myself to experience all these things that the other people talked about. I never had any experience that wasn't fairly easily shown to be mundane, though.

Let's go this direction then...

Perhaps we can help you find some experiences that AREN'T mundane?
Can you describe what were you experiencing to us?

[Alakazam]

Let's go this direction then...

Perhaps we can help you find some experiences that AREN'T mundane?
Can you describe what were you experiencing to us?

Lucid dreaming, mostly. I experimented with Ouija boards for a while. The Ouija I gave up when I realized that it was just the ideomotor effect. I still experience lucid dreams on a regular basis, but I don't think that they're anything along the lines of astral projection, as most of the members here seem to.

[Xanth]

Lucid dreaming, mostly. I experimented with Ouija boards for a while. The Ouija I gave up when I realized that it was just the ideomotor effect.

That's definitely one strong possibility of what they are.
The movements could also be something else.  You gave up... why did you give up?

I still experience lucid dreams on a regular basis, but I don't think that they're anything along the lines of astral projection, as most of the members here seem to.

Unfortunately, there's very little, if anything, that I could say to sway that opinion of yours.
I prefer to use my time and energy more wisely. 

[Alakazam]

That's definitely one strong possibility of what they are.
The movements could also be something else.

Yes, they could. I just see absolutely no reason to think that they are.

You gave up... why did you give up?

Because several years' experimentation had failed to produce a single iota of evidence that there was anything to it beyond the ideomotor effect. A man only has so much time to spend on stuff like that.

Unfortunately, there's very little, if anything, that I could say to sway that opinion of yours.

Probably not, no.

I prefer to use my time and energy more wisely. 

Ah. You are a wise man.
[/quote]

[horaciocs]

Yes, they could. I just see absolutely no reason to think that they are.

Because several years' experimentation had failed to produce a single iota of evidence that there was anything to it beyond the ideomotor effect. A man only has so much time to spend on stuff like that.

Probably not, no.

Ah. You are a wise man.

Mate, most people here welcome the idea that there is a non-physical world and that we interact with it in various ways, be it through intuition, through dreams, through astral projections, etc. Some people aren't so receptive to such idea, and try to look for some hard evidence before directing more efforts and time into it.

The basic premise that keeps this belief going on is the following: no one can say the non-physical doesn't exist. It's not proven it exists, however, so the main difference between believers and non-believers is how much energy one is willing to direct into this investigation. Each one has different experiences, and it is the sharing of these experiences that helps us understand the whole picture, little by little.

This discussion doesn't go too far, it usually isn't very productive, but we welcome anyone who's willing to have a decent conversation on the topic. I say that because this thread was meant for the discussion of dreams. If you want to, we can all gather in another topic and talk about that later on.

[Alakazam]

Mate, most people here welcome the idea that there is a non-physical world and that we interact with it in various ways, be it through intuition, through dreams, through astral projections, etc.

Yes, I know.

Some people aren't so receptive to such idea, and try to look for some hard evidence before directing more efforts and time into it.

That's me.

The basic premise that keeps this belief going on is the following: no one can say the non-physical doesn't exist. It's not proven it exists, however

Exactly. I don't believe in it because it hasn't been proven to exist.

so the main difference between believers and non-believers is how much energy one is willing to direct into this investigation.

I don't think so. The difference, to me, appears to be more along the lines of what one considers to be evidence. You consider your personal experiences to be evidence of it (I assume that you do, anyway - it wouldn't make much sense if you didn't). I don't consider personal experiences to be much evidence of anything, on account of them being notoriously unreliable.

Each one has different experiences, and it is the sharing of these experiences that helps us understand the whole picture, little by little.

But this assumes that there is a whole picture to understand. This, to me, is an unwarranted leap; you can't say that you are gaining understanding of the "whole picture" until you prove that the data you are gathering is anything more than a dream.

This discussion doesn't go too far, it usually isn't very productive, but we welcome anyone who's willing to have a decent conversation on the topic. I say that because this thread was meant for the discussion of dreams. If you want to, we can all gather in another topic and talk about that later on.

I agree, but it wasn't me that took the conversation in this direction. Xander asked me what my experiences were, and why I don't believe. I'm fine with splitting it to another thread if that's what the rest of you think should happen, but since it's Xander's topic split in Xander's thread, I think it's his decision.

[Xanth]

Exactly. I don't believe in it because it hasn't been proven to exist.

And your goal in "discussing" it is what then?
Because there is a very strong chance that this stuff will NEVER be proven.

You might be better coming back when the day comes that science says "hey, this stuff is real" or "hey, this stuff isn't real".

I don't think so. The difference, to me, appears to be more along the lines of what one considers to be evidence. You consider your personal experiences to be evidence of it (I assume that you do, anyway - it wouldn't make much sense if you didn't). I don't consider personal experiences to be much evidence of anything, on account of them being notoriously unreliable.

Fair enough.  However, you do understand that is YOUR problem and not ours, right?  

But this assumes that there is a whole picture to understand. This, to me, is an unwarranted leap; you can't say that you are gaining understanding of the "whole picture" until you prove that the data you are gathering is anything more than a dream.

Again, you not being able to understand (or attempt to understand) what that "whole picture" might be isn't our problem.

See, the problem is that you're going to face this kind of understanding anytime you try to question what we're experiencing here.
It's a kind of understanding which you're just always going to be in firm disagreement with.

There's really no "discussion" to be had here.  You either believe that Astral Projection is possible and you're here to learn about how to do it... or you don't believe it's possible BUT you want to try to experience it... OR you're you.  

And I guess you're referring to me when you say "Xander"?
It's Xanth... or more to the point, you may call me Ryan.

[Naykid]

[Alakazam]

And your goal in "discussing" it is what then?
Because there is a very strong chance that this stuff will NEVER be proven.

As I said, I'm here because I find this stuff very interesting, both on a personal level and because it provides great inspiration for the games that I make. I don't care if it's ever proven. I'm just here to observe. I ask questions because I want to know the answer so that I can know exactly what it is that you believe. The more I know, the better I can adapt it to my games.

My experiences in discussing the paranormal before now were mostly in the area of ghosts and psychic powers and spiritual healing, not dreams, so this is almost an entirely new area for me. That's why I'm asking so many questions.

You might be better coming back when the day comes that science says "hey, this stuff is real" or "hey, this stuff isn't real".

Except that that's not what I'm here to talk about. I just want to know what you believe. I'm not here to disprove anything.

Fair enough.  However, you do understand that is YOUR problem and not ours, right?  

Yes. Again, I'm not here to disprove anything. I'm just responding to what was asked of me.

Again, you not being able to understand (or attempt to understand) what that "whole picture" might be isn't our problem.

I didn't say that it was.

See, the problem is that you're going to face this kind of understanding anytime you try to question what we're experiencing here.
It's a kind of understanding which you're just always going to be in firm disagreement with.

There's really no "discussion" to be had here.  You either believe that Astral Projection is possible and you're here to learn about how to do it... or you don't believe it's possible BUT you want to try to experience it... OR you're you.  

Yep. Here, "me" means "you don't believe it's possible, but you'd like to learn what other people believe about it anyway".

I think that the fact that I don't believe is causing conflict where I'm not trying to make any. I'm just here to observe, not to debunk. I asked why you believed this stuff about dreams because I'm trying to build a coherent picture of what it is that you believe, not because I'm trying to disprove it.

And I guess you're referring to me when you say "Xander"?
It's Xanth... or more to the point, you may call me Ryan.

Yeah, sorry. I got you mixed up with someone on another forum. Xanth... Zander... I got mixed up.

[Capt. Picard]

I base my "belief" off of a specific philosophical point. That your reality is whatever you are experiencing. When you are councious in a "dream" that is your reality. In the same way that other people's perceptions of physical reality are different, does that mean that some of those people aren't experiencing reality period? Reality is shaped by the perceiver, even wave particle dualty supports this, we just apply that same philosophy to our OBE's, as we are indeed councious and interacting with the "dream" environment. Anyways, I just want to ask, if different people within physical reality have different views of this reality, and wave-particle duality can be observed combined with quantum theories that state atoms may be created by the collapse of probability waves (both meaning the physical universe is not as solid as you think), is it that far of a leap to for us to assume that when OBE we are experiencing what we appear to be? That is, percieving a reality. Im by no means saying the nonphysical reality is proven to exist, but when we cant prove it real or fake, but we can experience it as traversable and interactive reality, why should we have to choose disbelief over belief?

[CFTraveler]

why should we have to choose disbelief over belief?

Exactly.  What would it serve us?

[roomsearching]

According to Robert Bruce, Dreams happen while we are still inside our physical body.
RTZ, Astral and other realms happen outside our physical body.
So a lucid dream is not the same as astral.

[Xanth]

According to Robert Bruce, Dreams happen while we are still inside our physical body.
RTZ, Astral and other realms happen outside our physical body.
So a lucid dream is not the same as astral.

And that is definitely one of many opinions. 

[Capt. Picard]

I disagree, dreams and astral projections are way too similar of environments in my opinion to put such a drastic seperation between them, and lucid dreams and projections are pretty much exactly the same depending on how councious you are at the time. Even RTZ I often wonder if it deserves to be seperate from the astral, but it does seem more dense and unlively then the astral so I can see why a distinction is made there.

[Naykid]

Yeah, I'm not quite ready to define exactly what a dream is and I'm OK with that.