Time in a dream and time in reality

Hi, many people are talking about dreams and lucid dreams that looks like hours but that where only a few minutes in reality, well, i thought about a nice idea that can explain this, please listen ( sorry about my english ) -

When we are awake our brain is very busy, it have to handle huge number of data and information comming from our eyes, all ourl senses, our thoughts, our imagination… and so on, all this makes the brain work slower, that also make our thinking be slower, like a bussy computer that trying to do a matematic calculation and it’s taking it a lot of time …

On the other hand, when we are sleeping and dreaming our brain is much more free, it’s have to take care of much less information, so it’s couse it to work much faster, that makes out thinking be much faster, and this is why in dreams we can do much much more thing in time, then what we can do at the same time in reality.

So let’s say that now you are awake, you open the door of your house, going down the stairs, then you go untill the end of your street, all this takes you about 5 minutes. now when you are dreaming ( let’s say it’s a lucid dream ) you can do exactly the same thing and it will take you only 5 seconds, this is becouse your brain works much faster now, in the dream it’s still looks to you as 5 minutes becouse you have nothing to compare the time to, you did exactly the same things and same operations as in reality, and in the same areas in your brain, but it was much faster, so you estimate the time that passed like in reality and say to yourself that to go all thing distanse must take at least 5 minutes, althought it’s took you only a few seconds in reality time.

It’s like when you are flying very fast inside an airplane far away above the ground, you are flying very very fast but when you are looking down at the ground it’s looks to you as you are almost staying in the same place and almost not moving… becouse you have nothing to compare the speed to.

So, what do you think about my idea?

:smile: 

LucidGuess

just one thought-im not sure if we can agree on the fact that when we sleep our brain has a lot less to work with and therefore works differently.Sure it works differently-but knowing that the time perception spot is a space in our brain we can go both ways-
either its asleep too and therefore it works much slower
or is half asleep and aslo works differently
or LLv is right and our brain is free of all the day thoughts and can work faster.

But there are still those choices and we do not know which one is true.
I guess its the matter of different percepcion- when we sleep we percieve time in some unknown way…when we wake up we go by the rules of real world…those things dont match.
I personally think that things are happening just like they suppose to happen.because of different perception in a dream and in reality we have this problem,which is far more complicated and has few unknown options-main one is recall-we never know if what we have remembered from our dreams is full version or not.
Therefore i think we lack too many facts to get somwhere yet:(

You can also do more perhaps not just because your brain works faster but also because you don’t have to actually walk that distance. It’s like talking and then thinking those words in your head-in your head you can say them much faster than in reality.

Yes, in the dream the only limit for the speed is your imagination/thought. So you could think also that the only limit for the time is your imagination. But it actually doesnt go like that if you start to it speculate more. I would do it here, but my english skills arent enough to do that.

Laberge tested what’s the time speed difference between being awake and lucid dream.
The result was there are no differencies.

Here is a link you maybe would be interested in:
TIME DISTORTION EXERCISE

Laberge`s experiment wasnt/couldnt be really representative.I mean-lds are different.And it is different when person tries to let someone whos awake how time passes.That can be accurate because the one concentrates on the task.With different ld-lets say one when you travel a lot or do many different things time doesnt have to be same.
Doh,its bit complicated to say what i mean ,i hope you can understand.

ps.and btw-i doubt time would be accurate if the experiment was longer.Such an effects u can have i guess only for short periods.

I don’t agree with the opinion that the brain works slower when you’re awake because there is a lot of information to process. Information processing is also brain activity, and more information means more brain activity. Actually, BRAIN ACTIVITY = INFORMATION PROCESSING, so less information means less brain activity. On the contrary, in REM-sleep (dreaming) we notice SLOWER brainwaves (especially theta = 4-7 cycles per second) while the waking brain shows much faster brainwaves (beta = >12 cycles/second)! BTW brain activity in REM-sleep is still fast compared to DEEP sleep, in which brainwaves fall down to delta = < 4 cycles/second.

On the other hand, I agree with “the brain is more free in dreams” (though what is the meaning of freedom for a brain?) because in waking life the brain is bounded by the limits of EXOREALITY, the world independent of your mind. But when you’re asleep, senses are blocked (though not completely) and when you become lucid you are in the dreamworld of ENDOREALITY. In this world, subjectivity is much more important, if you think that you have been lucid for an hour because you have travelled by train from this city to that city there is no objective clock to correct you’re subjective time experience. Even if in “real” time you just travelled for a minute or so. In endoreality, you are the slave of your thoughts, subjectivity is the master, and there seems no “real world out there” with objective time to compare your subjective experience with. If you are waiting for a bus in waking life, it could seem to last for hours because you’re so impatient, but when the bus finally arrives you watch your clock and you notice that the bus is just 10 minutes too late… and then you know what was real and what was subjective experience. Not in dreams! EXCEPT if you are doing an experiment like LaBerge, then you are very concentrated and hyperconscious, counting “1000, 2000, 3000…”. But if you are not very attentive and just believing every subjective thought then you will be easily caught by the well known

Yes, when we see a movie we “know” because there is an objective time to compare to, but in dreams there seems nothing to compare to. But it only SEEMS so because if you are attentive and conscious like the subjects of LaBerge’s time experiments, then you will be able to differentiate between the subjective and the objective, even in the endoreality of your dreams. This will be very difficult, but it’s possible. Time exists independent of your thoughts, be sure of that: many meditators experience a profound sense of wonder when they reach for the first time a state of “no thinking” because they notice that they are still conscious and experiencing, even without any thoughts. Thinking is extremely important for our subjective experience of reality but even without thinking there is experience of reality. I know it’s hard to believe because we identify ourselves so much with our thoughts…

In an LD you can go faster than the speed of light !

I think i’ll try than next time.

it might be possible

hehe thats something:)

It was just an idea, i’m not saying that this is what really happen, i never checked it, but it gave me a nice explenation to different between dreams time and reality time.

Have a nice day everyone,

LucidGuess.

I tougth maybe the brain had much more to do. In real life it just has respond to all thats happening in the world, but in a dream it has to simulate this in the brain. lets use a metaphor, real world is like reading a book. just has to follow the words. but a dream is like writing the book. The brain has to make a world that looks like the real world, thats much harder. And Lucidguess wrote something about the brain didn’t have to hadle all information from sences and stuff, and could use this space to thinking, well 4 things. 1st. Compared to a coputer, we are like a multiprossesor computer, all sences are prossesed by different parts of the brain, so not using this won’t give free space for thinking. 2nd We are using the sences while sleeping, sound, light and tuches from the real world is either used in the dream or U will wake up from them. 3rd We only use about 10% of our brain, so why do we need free space? 4rd I forgot what the 4rd thing was, but I’m sure it was brainshocking information.

Keep in mind, this is only a thougth (not sure if I spelled thougth right, its such a hard word)

“it gave me a nice explenation to different between dreams time and reality time”-- Well it’s not really a nice explanation if it doesn’t match reality.

I would tend to agree with BrainHacker on this one. Perception of time is very attention/awareness driven. It is quite simple for time to feel different depending on your mood and focus.

Jack re your points against LaBerge’s experiment. Yes he did only test LDs and normal dreams are different. But could we trust the time perceptions of someone in an NLD anymore than we trust someone on magic mushrooms? LDs are the only ones we can hope to get a sobre report on.

Your point on how short the experimental time was may have something. We need someone to perform a long memorized sequence and see how it stacks up. I’m thinking a long yoga or dance sequence. Maybe someone has a long poem memorized. Until someone does that and proves LaBerge’s experiment faulty then I think its safe to assume dream time=real time. I am surprised that the LaBerge experiment is the only one I ever hear about. I think he did this 20 years ago and noone has tried to replicate it? It seems the science of LD is dead.

Darn, you’re right about this

LaBerge has fallen asleep some years ago, his last interesting research was about WBTB or napping method (article published in 1994: lucidity.com/NL63.RU.Naps.html ). The only thing those Lucidity Institute-guys are doing these days is selling NovaDreamers.
Still, we need more research, not only about dream time and real time, but also about possible new methods that make lucidity more easy to attain.

Also, nobody seems to be interested in finding out WHERE lucidity takes place in the brain, maybe that could learn us a lot about possible substances and other factors that could make lucidity more likely. Why does nobody open the black box of the brain?

In the last years we are witnessing a big revival of LDing on the internet, for example this forum is the living proof of that, and now films like the Matrix or Waking Life could make LDing more known in larger circles of the population. I hope this will eventually lead to a renewed interest in scientific LD-research!

Good point Helmut,i guess i didnt make myself clear(its damn hard to talk time relativity in english:)
What i was trying to say was that his experiment might be right under some circumstances.But because we have some reports about lds lasting for a day,week or month we cant say for sure how exactly does it work.Your idea about poem or dancing also might be proved right-but still,it will not give us an answer-what about paradokses like travelling in time,doing two things at the same time and space,so on so on-there are too many exceptions and our understanding of time we percieve now works “against” us.
Someone said that dream realm is far more relative than our reality-we are trying to solve the hard thing-we have some relativity in real world and we still struggle to understand it.

maybe you could all get together and found a LD research institute
or at least a virtual one…

Yes you have something there. There are 211 members and a few “guests” on this forum, and many of them are lucid dreamers. That would make a great research group. Maybe someone on this forum could post an experiment, collect results, and then write a report on it, like they do/did in the Lucidity Institute? What do you think?

EDIT: Damn the acronym doesn’t work in the quoting
[size=75][color=red]acronym fixed[/color][/size]

I think its what is just going on.Its called forum and chat but serves same purpose:)

This is all intruiging stuff but as I don’t have many lucid dreams I’m not at the stage of being able to do this kind of experimentation.

For lucid dreamers who have a computer near where they sleep (not me) it should be easy enough to get it to play a metronome type regular beeping or clicking sound which could be used a way of observing the passing of objective time during sleep.

This idea came from a story my mother told me about my great grandfather. He had a dream where a clock was striking, but very slowly, so he waited a long time between each sound, but he woke up his clock finished striking the hour at normal speed. This makes me sceptical about the conclusions drawn from LaBerge’s experiment. It seems like the volunteeers concentration on estimating a certain time accurately could have allowed them to do so.

Anyway, once a lucid dreamer is able to pick up on a regular sound, eg. a once a second beep, during a lucid dream, they could concentrate on slowing down the beeps, and making the gaps between each one longer and longer. If it worked… well, it would be fantastic. I’m sure somebody will want to try this, or maybe has tried something like it, and it would be very interesting to read the results.