Time is slowed in the dream world. Can it be multiplied?

Hi everyone :smile:

I’m aware real time is considerably slowed while LD’ing, but if you dream within a dream (and so on) will time be slowed even more? If so, it could open a world of possibilities, such as practicing things for days on end, studying and im sure you guys could come up with other uses.

Anyway, ty for your time, and im looking foward to reading your responses.

You’ve been watching too much inception :wink:

That movie is not based upon what LDing really is

Well, Jay, it is really true :content: time in dreams can be largely stretched, there’s reports of several people that had their LD last for days or weeks. and Writerscube here on this forum had a 2-week-long dream at least, and yes, he lived every hour of it.
Be sure to check his DJ to see where he describes his technique ^^

Yes, its very possible to have long LDs. I found that there was a guy who claimed to have a 100 year long LD (not on these forums)

Actually time is roughly the same in an LD as in real life. Was it LaBerge (spelling?) who did the study? However, you can have “false memories” (happened to me once, where I re-lived an entire life up to my current age, but in a different world) where you remember things “from the past” that never actually happened. As a result, yeah it felt like I lived a whole new life, but when I think back, I can (and only ever could) recall key moments of the life in the past, enough to make it believable.

Sort of when you are on the verge of lucidity, and you are plopped in the middle of a dream and you start thinking, “Wait, why am I here, what was I doing?” when in reality, you weren’t doing anything, but then you will ‘remember’, “Oh yeah, my friend called and I was supposed to meet them at the coffee shop! Shoot I am late!” Thus a false memory.

Soo… yeah, cool idea, but not really possible in that aspect. Sure though, you could study in a dream or something. Dnow how helpful that would be (but heck it is a few hours more than without) and dreams are certainly a playground for creating art, whether it be a picture, music, or merely an idea that you can carry into the world when you wake up. (Helped me write a boogie-woogie piece once for the piano, actually. Never would have come up with many of the runs and the bass line without the dream)

I’m sorry, but LaBerge was wrong in this regard. Many people experience the kind of phenomena you described, true, and it probably it is the main reason it is believed time can stretch in dreams, also possible, but from here to saying real time-stretch is completely impossible, now that’s a gap he’s not allowed to cross.
I’ve seen it done, I’ve been myself in a dream that lasted 1+ hours while I woke just 10 minutes after, and I could just list the sheer amount of events that happened to convince you that it had to be more.

Besides, it’s not that hard to believe in. Time is very relative, and it’s just about living events at a faster pace, it’s just about your mind processing events and reactions a little faster. I don’t see the problem with that, since I still don’t see anyone that dared putting some limits to the possibilities of the human mind.

Thanks for the answers, I was wondering the exact conversion for real time to dream time (if any is calculable)

And I’m not exactly sure how one could event tell how much time has gone by in a dream (clocks always seem to be spinning really fast in mine)

Well, if you want a real answer, just check Writerscube’s DJ, he’s the only one I know who can pull off a dream time stretching consistently and with precision :tongue: he talks about his dream clock at one point. He said he hasn’t tried yet testing the limits of his dream clock, but I reckon he could easily fit two months of dream time in a single night if he wanted (and he doesn’t because he would miss reality by then :lol:)

Never said it was impossible, I merely stated that time was roughly the same in the dream world. All I remember of the study (I read it a long time ago, haven’t been very active on LD research as of late) is that they had a person sleeping, and he/she would count in the dream and give signals after a specified amount of time. Not to say dream time can’t last longer per-say, I mean sure your brain may be working faster, or whatnot, there are possibilities and little is really known about dreaming. However, I think to say a dream could last, say, 100 years, or heck even a full year is stretching it a bit too far, we do have limits, declared or not. (Even if the brain works at it’s fastest pace, there is still a limit to how fast signals can be transferred etc.)

Either way, discrediting research done by one of the leading dream researchers because of mere opinion seems a little rash. Not to say LaBerge’s test results would apply 100% of the time, but at least he has solid evidence.

P.S. Hm, re-reading through this, comes off a little harsh. Not trying to be a jerk. :grin:

Yeah in my experience dreams that feel like they last forever are due to your point of references. For example if in your dream you were living in a certain world let’s say you met a girl, and throughout the dream eventually you had a kid for example. Your mind will interpret it as if a long time has passed, you had a kid after all. But that could happen in a minute in real time.

Real life there are perceived time distortions as well. For example when you enter a state of flow, time will go very very fast. You have no point of references, you’re really absorbed and focused on what you’re doing. Let’s say you have to stare at a wall for an hour, it’ll feel as if you’ve been staring at it for days possibly a week.

The whole “dream within a dream” theory is wrong, it’s only one dream you’re in, it simply feels different because your mind tells you you had a false awakening. If that made any sense.

As for time, it is possible to “slow time down” in the dreamworld, but it isn’t easy and it doesn’t always work. Time is a relative thing… You can try manipulating it though through memories.

Ah, dang, I didn’t notice I my reply to this got lost before sending it. =\ Alright, I’ll write it again.
I wasn’t discrediting LaBerge either, it’s just that too many people read that part and come to the conclusion that stretching time in dreams must be impossible, while LaBerge showed something completely different, and merely hypothesized a working because of which many people report having dreams lasting several hours, days or such.
I recognize my words towards LaBerge were misdirected, and I apologize for that. :smile:

Only time I’ve ever tried slowing down time, it made the dream world actually go in slow motion, and I was perfectly normal. Which wasn’t exactly what I was aiming for XD

Concerning this subject I just realize that people discuss 2 different things as one.

Objective time scale and subjective time scale…
objective time is absolute time that is counted on your watch. Subjective time is the time pace as you perceive it. (Stephen Laberge’s experiment do not deny the time stretch possibility it is an attempt to evaluate accordance between those 2 time scales in specific cases.)

In a simpler way, just think about how time seems longer when you are doing something boring and shorter when you are having fun. All in all, 15 minutes is 15 minutes.

It is also scientifically reported that extreme condition in waking life can cause subjective time to stretch (example falling). Accelerating the thinking process by ten, causing the subjective time to slow down related to usual time perception.

More importantly in addition to those RL phenomenon i would add that in dream state the whole time perception could be even more bended due to the dream universe complete subjectivity.

So i state that objective time is absolut and cannot change its pace. Subjective time, on the contrary, can stretch due to various psychological processes (ND, LD, WL). I have my own opinion but i stay open to others point of views. In order to better understand each other, please, state clearly which kind of time you are taling about.

I do agree with Kairos, it’s a matter of subjective time, so in a way ,you can get a 1 week LD, but it’s still 9 hours of sleep, it’s subjectivity that count when you are dreaming.

I guess…i mean , i think…

Well it’s not like inception, but I believe that dream time can seem longer. I’m not sure exactly how it works, but it does. I myself had a dream I was in for what seemed to be months; and I’m not kidding. I lived it, and the dream was EXTREMELY vivid; I lived almost every second of it (besides some of the middle, but time had passed; I think I might have split the dream into two different dreams, such as one dream and then the same dream continued about 90 minutes later when I entered REM sleep again). It was really cool, and it was my last day of Christmas break in RL, so it was like stretching my last day for months!

In buddhism we have to seek full-awareness through our whole life (i.e. WL & DL). This means that your life experience is the sum of your conscious awareness time. So instead of opposing those 2 time scales, you add them. When you are dreaming, your real body is paralysed and your perception is almost entierly originating from the inside. And if you are LDing your consciousness is tuned on this inner universe. So when you LD your “real life” is the dream not your asleep body. So the time that should be considered is the subjective one. Then the objective time shouldn’t even be accounted as it has no meaning for your asleep body. (@Faraday’s point of view)

madison981 dream experience do not only state that subjective time can stretch. It also state that it is an addition to RL (objective time based)

I would even state that your actual life time span is counted in subjective time only (awaken or asleep). Because the consciousness is subjective as a product of one’s psyche. Objective time rules apply only for your body (thus physical brain).

Objective absolut time is merely a practical human convention. See Einstein’s theory on relativity.

As an example, take a photograph. You think it is an image that represent something at a unique T spot on the time scale? Actually it’s not due to light speed that is not infinite.

your friend on the photograph would be T+something old, the mountain in the background would be T+something more old, and the sunset behind the mountains would be T+8 minutes old. But subjectively for the photographer there is only T XD

Kairos, what do you mean?

EDIT: not in the beggining, but when you commented on that I said

@madison981 : Sometimes i just put a wall of text to make myself clear … but not (FAIL XD) To me, the way you explain your experience justify that time can be multiplied inside dreams. But also, implicitly, you put on an equal value real time (1 day) and dream time (months). That was the purpose of me quoting you.

As I said in my previous post. In your case, i would only consider the time you spent in your dream because at that moment your consciousness was there and not in RL.