LD's drove my friend insane

schizophrenia, yes, is the negative aspects of that state of mind. however, everything in life is a tool, and tools can be used wisely or inappropriately. sometimes tools break. he tried to use a tool and it broke. that is unfortunate. however, with more experience he will be able to judge the strength of his tools, and anticipate when he needs to strengthen his tools. knowing how far the ‘steps’ apart are, and being prepared to take them, are worth more than the actual experience, as proved here. blind faith leaps 9 times out of 10 fail.

my life isnt based on LD-ing. my life is based on the fact that we are gifted with the ability to percieve a reality, but most of us choose to go along with the subconcious flow. excersizing control of this subconcious and concious allows one to -improve- quality of life. it is unfortunate when it doesn’t, but this generally happens when the individual is unprepared. when i achieved my state of dual-lucid/waking life reality, i expected it. I came out of the experience grinning, and able to tell my friends that i was able to fly. nobody ever douted that i never achieved that experience, that i did fly. if one chooses to not be able to seperate lucidity and collective conciousness is when one is deemed ‘in trouble’ and usually sent to the funny farm. this is because they achieved it in purity, which those who are not in that state cannot understand and fear it. if you can wake up one day, and realise you control everything, like i did, but then go ‘right, that’s cool, so i’m going to sit at this level of collectiveness for now, and eat a hotdog and tell my friends about how i can do these things’ and be sociable, whilst maintaining control. becoming ‘god’ for lack of better terms, is incomprehensible if you take the experience to total purity. it is possible, if you have the experience and control, to keep your godliness as your personal experience and personal tools, and thus appear sociable and not ‘insane’. When you become equiped with the power to control conciousness, the energy that you realise you possess, usually drives people insane. It requires careful consideration and immense experience of control to go ‘okay, so i’m the master of the universe, so i’m going to choose to accept that fact, but maintain certain rigidity of collective conciousness’.

becoming god does not mean you must destroy everything that you linked to collective conciousness. the god that i am of my conciousness, i have defined as an observer, and occasionally a changer of events to help better my close friends quality of living in the collective.

It’s all about balance. Internally, externally, conciously and subconciously. If you cant keep those in balance, you usually end up sedated and restrained, which is unfortunate.

I’m going to go against some of the comments here and say that if your friend was diagnosed with schizophrenia, he probably had some symptoms before. I disagree with the comments saying that he had some control over what happened to him and that his problem can be solved just by “moderating” his lucid dreams as schizophrenia is a very real disease of the mind that can’t be solved simply by “controlling oneself.”

I also don’t think his lucid dreams “caused” his schizophrenia. Since schizophrenia is based on the grounds that the person has trouble distinguishing between whats happening in his mind and whats happening in the real world, it seems very likely that to me that when he would think he’d be lucid dreaming in the real world.

First, I think LDing can actually help to distinguish between dreams and reality. I mean, what you do when trying to LD is to repeatedly decide whether you are dreaming or not. I don’t think your friend’s attempts at LDing caused his schizophrenia. I guess in the day you described, he felt something was wrong. As a lucid dreamer, he probably did RCs when his perception of reality became strange, and because of his illness, those checks failed. The only explanation he had for this was, of course, that he really was dreaming, and it probably looked like that to him.

Well, second, I want to disagree with nOOdle. While it is true that, philosophically speaking, we all live in our private universe created by our perception and imagination, this private universe should match the “real” one as close as possible. Fooling yourself by overlaying your perception with your imagination won’t help yourself any bit in the real world. Retreating into an imagined world may be a last resort for people without hope so they can still be happy, but most people will prefer improving reality over ignoring it.

I hope that didn’t sound too wiseguy-ish, but this kind of thing can really lead to mental illness. If you want to go mad (which is exactly this - retreating into a fantasy world), it is your choice and I won’t stop you. But please don’t tell everyone that this was desirable.
Just my two cents out of my private universe.

MedO

but he could have had a really normal dream in the dream-world and because of many other problems he had or some other factor, he could have got confused between a normal day with he actually experienced as a dream or LD and RL which seems so unreal he did an RC and thought it was unreal.
Then when somebody tried to explain this all to him IRL he got serousily confused and couldn’t work which he belonged to.

That sounds possible.

I agree, Med0

I read that Schizophrenia is in fact an umbrella term for quite a variety of mental disorders.

To quote Patrick Holford in his book, Optimum Nutrition for the Mind:

I just read in my book ‘Lucid Dreaming’ by Celia Green & Charles McCreery, that Lucid dreaming can be of benefit to schizophrenics.

I think it was more likely a coinicidence that he had an interest in lucid dreaming and the mental illness was already there. I hope your friend is doing ok.
I also disagree with n00dle. The idea of lucid dreams and waking life being indistinguishable, to me, is more about a lack of control and not a pleasurable state to be in.

So your friend was hallucinating that he was in a dream. He mispercepted the surroundings…

I agree with everyone disagreeing with me. grins and keeps stirring the pot

It’s a shame what happened, yes. But just remember dreams don’t have to be wacky. And if you were unable to distinguish dream from reality, then you’d have enough control of it to not make a mess of whatever reality you previously believed you had. Upgrading your conciousness doesn’t always mean danger, but sometimes it can be. I hope your friend sorts himself (inside and out).

Ok, i’m sorry if this is real, which i’m becoming more and more attuned to, and my orginal post was under the thought that you were an attention whore. we get a lot of them at newgrounds, so the transition was weird. I’m real sorry about your friend if this is real, which i’m starting to think it is.

Ok all of those who want to have some understanding about schizophrenia you should check out this amazing movie.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0268978/

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Indeed that is a great movie. I sometimes associate him with John Nash from A Beautiful Mind.

I think your friend was insane, and he happened to also be into LD. LD didn’t make him insane.

I think his friend’s state was the other end of the spectrum from enlightenment. In a dream, you gain full control when you become lucid. When this guy’s barrier between dreams and “real life” dissolved, it doesn’t sound like he became lucid. It sounds like he got his waking life sucked into a state of dreamliness. Now his waking life is out of his conscious control. All lucidity is gone. He’s trapped in a dream, and it’s not a lucid one.

Some door shouldn’t be opened if you’re not ready. If you stare into the abyss, it stares back into you.

Well said, sage.

From reading the thread…

This seems it coulda been a gift to the guy…

I would like to achieve this state, and maintain myself enough to not Seem like a total NUT JOB to society… don’t wanna be in a cell with padded walls … Like keep it under-wraps a bit.

But yeah, Wayne Dyer, talks in one his books in your life becoming Awake, and in the Dream state at the same time.

And totally agree with the observer thing(Wayne Dyer also talks about this). If your friend was just witnessing/observing what was happening to himself he would be a lot more chilled out and would come up with a solution to all of this.

Do you mean that you could be in a constant LD and could control everything but to everyone else it would look as if you were just acting normal?

To say LDs made your friend insane is like saying video games makes people violent.