What my friend thinks on LD's...

I was thinking the exact same thing actually, I told my friend that before posting the topic… I was just curious if what he was saying was true or not.

LUCID dreaming is real. The scientific community as even accepted it as real. Of corse pointing this out to your friend would be pointless. Your friend is missing out on a great opportunity to learn from you and start to have LD ‘s of his own. People are often to quick to reject things they do not understand. I can remember when books about LD were found in the occult section of most book stores. Now I find LD books in self help, psychology, or dream sections of book stores in my area.

two questions:

has your friennd ever had a lucid dream ???
have you ???

your friend seems to be making a lot of claims, none of which seem to be based on anything (that is, if you explained his argument accurately) but i’m all for entertaining theories, so let’s take your friend’s theory to its next logical step

who’s to say that that life isn’t itself a dream, where we just think we’re living ??? can you be sure that i myself am not just a dream character in the dream that you call your life ??? am i real or do you just think that i’m real ???

the point i’m trying to make is that if we can’t trust our perceptions in a lucid dream, if we can’t trust that when we say “i’m dreaming” inside a dream that that perception itself may be a false one, then who’s to say our perception has any worth at all if it can so easily be fooled ???

i’ve had dreams that i will call lucid–where i was conscious of the fact that i was dreaming. i’ve also had false lucid dreams that seem to be what your friend was talking about–where i was simply dreaming that i was lucid. i can tell the difference between the two. i used to not even think FLDs existed until i had one

for all i know, your friend could be right, but i don’t think that he is. my senses are all i have to experience the world (the dream world as well). if i can’t trust the only means i have of experiencing the world… then what’s the point ???

I´d say it isn´t true, simply cause I know what it feels like to dream about being lucid.
What your friends says happens to me quite often, but it simply isn´t lucid dreaming, it feels different. Our actions aren´t of importance for wether a dream is lucid or not, the important thing is our state of mind.
Perhaps he has experienced these as well, but no “real” LDs so far?

I have had quite a few lucid dreams, my friend hasn’t had any.

Everyone here has brought up some good points. Thanks for all of the responses.

Dr. Steven Laberge proved the reality of active consciousness in our dreams many years ago. It is mentioned here:
Lucidity.com FAQ

REM can be used to send signals to the waking world, and that is just what he did. All sensors and machines showed his brain in the sleeping state, but his eyes sent “morse code” type signals to the waking world.

Stanford University has conducted many controlled experiments with Laberge for over 20 years, and has logged over 1000 of his lucid dreams. The doubt about the validity of lucid dreams has been pretty well removed.

You can doubt if that’s really you in the dream - but it’s because you are much more “stupid” in dreams; our brain activity is near the waking life state, but it doesn’t actually reach it. And it seems that memory doesn’t work very well.
But you can be REALLY aware of your state and implications of the fact that you’re dreaming. It’s what we call lucidity, and it can be low or high level. When you have real LD (not a low-level one) it’s very close to the waking life.
And after all, dreams seem real to your mind - it’s only a question of where your “data” about surroundings comes from - your senses or yourself. So even if you don’t have any control, it’s still much fun - flying in LD is as good as flying IRL could be.

Tell your friend to have a lucid dream. The kind of consciousness you have in an ld is so different to a regular dream, the feel is so different, that clearly they are genuine.

I got a couple of skeptical friends to try it and they came away as pleased with their ld’s as I did.

Quite frankly i don’t really care what your friend thinks (that sound rude wasn’t meant to) Had he ever actually had an LD then i would be willing to hear him out, but since he’s saying it’s not real yet has never experienced it firsthand then his argument has no ground to stand on.

To me that’s just the same as saying Austrailia doesn’t exsist because i haven’t been there. While i’m not discounting the possibility he is correct i am just not willing to take seriously someone who has never experienced that which they are trying to disprove.

your friend hasnt had a lucid dream? then how the hell would he even know what its like?

Ive had LD’s, so I know and am 100% sure, that you reall do have control of the dream. This is because you dont think the same way in a LD, than in a ND. You think differently, more logically.

In a LD you know you are dreaming right…So your friend thinks, that in a dream that you know you are dreaming, you are dreaming of KNOWING you are dreaming? lol sounds crazy,

-stranger

well, that does happen. We call them “False lucid dreams.” It’s not rare to hear stories of dreaming about lucid dreaming AND not be lucid. hahaha, confusing but true. :wink:
Lucidity is marked by an obvious increase of awareness, and the wide scope of perspective we are use to when awake.

Hi DreamAddict,

I never thought of it like that! although can you explain with an example?

because i dont fully understand how its possible

thx!!
-stranger

Yes, I think that when you awake, you can know that you had an LD, because you felt the feeling of thinking, more than acting (as is in normal dreams).

Once one have lucid dream he havn’t any doubts about its realness anymore.

I think the way you can tell the difference between a LD and a FLD is if you actually made decisions and followed through with them (or at least tried to-many have tried to fly and failed in lds). In normal dreams it is more like you are watching a tv show, in lds you are participating in them as an actor. But, i am not 100% sure that this is definitive that this means you have control, but i think if you have had the experience where you think you were in control then why care if you didn’t because it is fun anyway.

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. :eek:
:help: 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… :neutral:

[color=darkblue]Tomas[/color]: Those dreams definitely exist, but so does the real ones… :smile: 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… :happy:

(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
:smile:

[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? :wink:

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.