What my friend thinks on LD's...

Well, if you need “instructions” how to decide wether you had a LD or a FLD, you probably either had no LDs or no FLDs so far. When you experience both it´s usually quite obvious.
The way you talk about LDs, and considering the fact how fascinated you are about them, I think that all users in here who don´t know how to identify a FLD simply only had “real” LDs.
(Ok, to differ between a real low-lucid dream and a FLD can be difficult).

Of course I can be wrong since I only know about my own feelings…

In a FLD, you have the knowledge that you are dreaming, yet you aren´t lucid. Usually, noticing that you are dreaming is accompanied by a change in counciousness (and often percpetion changes as well). This is often called “to awake in ones dream”.
In a FLD, you notice that you are dreaming, but still your dream-counciousness (or whatever you like to call it) is in full control. You recognize that you are dreaming, but this doesn´t cause you to wake up in your dream.

Unfortunately you can never tell for sure wether someone who´s describing a dream to you had a LD or a FLD, since the actions and thoughts can be exactly the same, but the feeling and state of counciousness is different.

tapir

Consciousness is an experience. If you’re consciousness there are signs of it that can be picked up by others (such as being able to send REM messages that would be virtually impossible to send if you were not conscious), but ultimately it is something that you can only “prove” to yourself by experiencing it.

Posts from a previous topic:

[color=darkblue]Lunatic[/color]: Ive had 5 seconds of a lucid dream before and I am not a disbeliever…

But a thought came to mind wich made me think. What if lucid dreams are just dreams? Maybe we think about them so much that we have a dream in wich we think we are in control and have free will.
Can anyone argue with this?

[color=darkblue]fear[/color]: well then does it really matter either way you do what you wanted to do.

[color=darkblue]Lunatic[/color]: well I guess its good either way, but it would really cut down my facination of it…

[color=darkblue]Tomas[/color]: Those dreams definitely exist, but so does the real ones… After a few lucid dreams, you really learn to know the difference between false and real ones…
In high level lucid dreams my consciousness is exactly as when awake… I think normally, memory is working, i know exactly where my real body is and so on…
When doing for example WILD, you even loose conscioiusness to start with, no blackout or anything…

Lucid dreams definitely exist…

(some offtopic stuff about astral projection…)

[color=darkblue]dreamwalker[/color]: A dream is a dream. A LD just means you are aware you are dreaming

[color=darkblue]pav[/color]: As LaBerge says, dreams seem so real because to dreamer they ARE real, so you can enjoy them as much as RL. And you are conscious, although it’s a bit lower level than in waking life.

[color=darkblue]Argus[/color]:

Then why dont you try to sleep again when in a lucid?
And then in that other lucid that you get sleep again
and again and again and again?

See were you get that way.

[color=darkblue]r3m0t[/color]:What do you mean Argus?

Now I’ll present an equivalent argument to the one Lunatic presented:

“Free will is just an illusion - we don’t conciously choose anything; everything we do is actually planned out by our subconcious”

“Lucid dreams are just an illusion - we don’t conciously choose things in lucid dreams because we aren’t really concious; everything that happens in these dreams is actually planned out by our subconcious”

See the similarity? So why do so few people agree with the first argument, while so many agree with the second?

P.S. by “subconcious” I mean something within our mind which is beyond our concious access (self-referential here, I know).

(end of topic which is now locked)

Explaining an LD to someone that hasn’t had one is a bit like explaining to a blind man what it’s like to see. Then the blind man says “you can’t really see. You only imagine you can see.” See what I mean?

I think that our brain don’t have enough power to render the entire world with so many other people in it and make it so real with such a detail and stuff to it, but what if we are in the dream of a super being outside the universe or something. That being, if it was so super, would certainly have the power to emulate the entire universe? But still I think and therefore I am, even if I’m only in somebodys dream I know that there is a me.

Two things: What does this have to do with the topic, and why would the brain need to create the whole world?

In fact, the brain is constantly using lots and lots of learned tricks to speed up how we percieve reality. The slow method would be to take our whole vision on each eye and then somehow combine them to create the perception of distance. But actually, it does clever stuff - identifying areas which are not changing, looking at shadows, filling in the blind spot, etc. What we see as reality is not always “the real thing”. But out brain is pretty accurate, and we rarely notice.

only a few out of all the people Ive told about lucid dreaminf think its cool and want to research it further… others are either reluctant, scared or too narrow minded to even consider trying it… fools… all of them

silva: There’s already a topic about that in Quest. Topic is like: “Why people don’t want to LD” (or similar)

Mike716… Yes some people have had dreams of lucid dreams, but for the most part your friend is absolutely wrong, jsut as any one that has had many lucid dreams would tell you.

There are however two levels of control in lucid dreams that I have experienced. One is concious control. An example of this would be making something apear out of this air or flying. Another type is sub concious manipulation. I think this is the most important type of control because it allows you to do amazing things that are just to complicated for your concious mind to accomplish. This would be like opening a door labeled 1989 denver broncos and having it open up into the football stadium with all the fans and the football team playing.

Lucid dreaming has been recognised and accepted by neurologists who have done experiments on dreams. Best simple example, someone that will observe you while you’re sleeping tells you to move your eyes to certain positions in a certain sequence so when you go to lucid dreaming, the observer can see your movements while REM.

Sure it can and does everyday. According to most experts everything you see, hear, feel and experience is created in your mind. For example, when you look at something you do not see it with your eyes. Your eyes just send impulses back to your brain creates the picture of what you are seeing. That is the basic non- technical description of it anyway.

silva

You are not going to convince everyone and if people do not want to believe you that’s ok. Respect there right to live in ignorance. Better to spend your energy helping people who want to know more about LD ing.

Good luck

Wow, that sounds like such a sarcastic statement (and yet sarcasm doesn’t seem like your thing). You’re right though. Sometimes you just gotta say “whatever” and forget about trying to change peoples’ opinions. They usually don’t want to make the effort so why even bother after they’ve slammed the door in your face? (That wasn’t meant to sound spiteful, I promise.)

When I first heard about lucid dreaming about a month ago, I thought of it as a novelty. Kind of like a dream catcher of some sort. The thing that made me interested and actually give it a shot was that I know that dreams do excist, so what is stopping anyone from controlling them. If I had never had any dreams in my life, I would have just thought it was some dumb spiritual idea just like all the others ones out there.

From my short experience with lucid dreaming, I have already had a lucid dream and and a false lucid dream. After I was done dreaming during the false one I knew that I was aware of my dream state, but wasn’t able to do anything to control it. Some stuff that I wanted to happen did happen though. I wanted to try to fly, and I did try, but I was not in control of my body, it was doing everything on its own.

If a skeptic on religion, ghosts, aliens, spirits and all that junk could believe in lucid dreaming, I don’t see how anyone else could object. Unless they don’t remember dreams, like I was saying.

I have always thought that lucid dream where real, even if I hadn’t had any. I’m not really sure why, because I usually ‘the scientist’ and awareness during sleep doesn’t really sound that logical. But lucid dreams are definately real.

Btw I don’t believe in ghosts or similar stuff. But I do believe in aliens, but I don’t believe that they have been to our planet. But they are definately out the somewhere in the universe. I mean consider that there are millions of stars in our galaxy and every star probably has atleast one planet around it. And there are millions of galaxies in the universe. How can we really think that we are alone considering those numbers?

Sorry for going off topic.

sno_isulli

LOL Yes it does. Now that I look at it again. I did not realize it at the time. I certainly did not mean it that way. I think I meant it jokingly.

Jarod:
“…‘the scientist’ and awareness during sleep doesn’t really sound that logical”
We have all observed the irrationality of dream and LD consciousness, even. The problem lies in the translation from logic, or what we can put into words, into the abstract which is what a good deal of our sleeping consciouness is (right hemisphere, abstract right?), and that into action. Funny, how INTP’s seem to dominate this forum and how they tend to be quite abstract and creative. INTP REPRESENNNNT! HEHE oh my god sorry about that cheesy asterisk comment thing.

"And there are millions of galaxies in the universe. How can we really think that we are alone considering those numbers? "
One of the reasons, i think, that people debate the possible infinite nature of the universe is because, by implication, if the universe were infinite, there would exist infinite other lifeforms in infinite other planets…of infinitely varying degrees of ‘intelligence’ and evolution i might add.

Downward~Spiral states:
“When I first heard about lucid dreaming about a month ago, I thought of it as a novelty. Kind of like a dream catcher of some sort.”

Woa, for some reason, from that i can totally see a different point of view. It is the view of the one who does not know about LDs.

“If I had never had any dreams in my life, I would have just thought it was some dumb spiritual idea just like all the others ones out there.”
Hmm, lack of experience of LD’s, one does not know their true worth and potentiality. For some reason now, the ignorant do not seem as ignorant. Thank you for the insight.

As far as such ignorance in people, yeah i must agree with the ‘let it be’ viewpoint. We all go through life differently, LDs may not be for them (though i doubt that there is a person alive who does not like having an LD!), eh, the most you can do is speak to them of personal experience and how beneficial and wonderful it is. From there it is their call.

first of all i don’t understand why everyone is getting so defensive about this - like you whole world would be turned upside down if this theory were even considered. i think its an interesting thing to think about but after a while you realize that there really isn’t much of a difference between the two possibilities. even in NDs you make decisions on what to do based on the possibilities presented in you environment and the current state of mind you are in. whether these decisions are controled by your subconscious mind or not is irrelevant (i hate when people talk about the ‘subconscious’ like it is a seperate being that is controling them against their will - you subconscious is YOU therefore anything it ‘tells’ you to do is YOUR will). if we accept that me make decisions in NDs then a ND in which you have the knowledge that you are dreaming you have the option of thinking about the implications of that which would shift you state of mind to a more waking-like state (this would result in what most of us would call a lucid dream) or you can choose not to think about those implications in which case you will have what we refer to as a fake lucid dream. the point i’m trying to make is that regardless of whether a dream is “lucid” or not we make decisions and knowing that you are dreaming is just another factor that influences the types of decisions you make. there is no difference between have a ‘lucid dream’ and a normal dream in which you are dreaming about being in control because the belief that you are in control would influence the types of decisions you made so it would be exactly like a lucid dream.

p.s. don’t reject theories just because if they were proven to be true that would imply something you do not want to believe - its a falacy (Appeal to Consequence)

Not quite. Lucidity is not the same thing as control of the dream or knowledge of your dream state. Lucidity is actually the experience of being completely conscious while in a dream state. Knowing that you’re dreaming or having control of the dream are only the primary consequences of lucidity.

WHat’s the difference?

Because even in a non-lucid dream, you can think “wow, it’s a dream, I’m going to fly now!”

With lucidity though, your brain becomes fully awake, you’re conscious. Have you ever said to yourself “why did I do that in the dream, my dream-self is really stupid”? When you become lucid your dream-self ceases to exist and your actual self takes control.