Dreams

EatFakePlants

Avid ingester of all things plastic and green.
Joined
Oct 3, 2018
Messages
7
Reaction score
8
Awards
4
I'm curious to see what y'all think about dreams. It's kind of crazy to me that as humans we can near-perfectly simulate emotions and stimuli in our brains while we sleep, so well in fact that we sometimes have trouble remembering if a memory was real or a dream. We've got the capacity to replicate and shape "realistic" experiences in our minds while we sleep, but when we are awake it can be hard to visualize a cow rotating in our heads. I guess all the processing power is going to walking and stuff, just seems like a waste to me compared to total control over reality.
alfred hitchcock dreaming GIF
 
Virtual Cafe Awards

brentw

Well-Known Traveler
Joined
Jan 4, 2022
Messages
669
Reaction score
1,665
Awards
181
There's a couple interesting threads if you want to read about some dreams people around here have had.
 
Virtual Cafe Awards
To me, dreams are our visits to the astral plane while our body rests. We play out scenarios to learn, review or try to make sense of situations, but also we simply play around with other souls, whether incarnate or not. I have periods where I don't remember dreams (probably because there's nothing to be found there, or I'm just too tired) and periods where I remember them all, but I only note down the ones I feel are very significant or have something particularly funny, scary or weird happening.

I used to think that it was just "from the brain", because I was raised by an atheist mother who isn't much spiritual (now she's more open to this, but in my childhood, she wasn't), although I always suspected that the places we go to have an existence of their own, and that we meet people in these dreams, not just "avatars" of ourselves. I thought like this until I had a very vivid dream a year ago or so, the most vivid dream of my life, with somebody deceased who had sorta been in the back of my mind until I had sudden thoughts that were out of character for me to have, and wanted to get rid of them through lucid dreaming and then move on. I didn't lucid dream that night, but in the morning, bam. Most vivid dream of my life. I didn't see it coming at all.

That one definitely changed how I saw the whole dream thing. It was so intensely real. Everything felt as if my senses were hyper-hyper sensitive but not overstimulating, it was weird. I could feel every detail of her, as if she was really there, and the feeling is still with me today. It's insanely precious to me. It changed my creativity like crazy. Since then I've not just been over 9000 brimming with creativity, I've also changed as a person. I feel like there was a pre- and post- this dream (and spirit). We didn't cross paths in this lifetime (language barrier and age would've been an issue, as she died when I was a kid), but still... it was real. I've had other extremely vivid dreams that looked exactly like "reality", except there were dead people in them and of course, it didn't behave logically like in waking life, but it was still so realistic I could've sworn it happened in the physical.

I realized you can't invent someone's vibe, especially someone you didn't know physically. It feels like them, and you don't find it with anyone else that you may know. It's their unique signature. My best friend is much more "down-to-earth" and "scientifically-minded" than I am, but she recently told me "it's like touching the person's soul" when you see them in a dream. It's true. It does feel like touching a person's soul. I also noticed I accurately picture people in my dreams: a handful of times I dreamt of my online friends without knowing their height. The first time I dreamt of my best friend, I didn't know she was actually taller than me. It was at the beginning of our friendship. I thought that maybe it was dream physics that made her look tall, since people in her country aren't that tall, but turns out, she is in fact tall... With another, I pictured him about 172-75cm tall, turns out, that's his real height... and I had no way to know, as I didn't see pictures of him that could've given out his height. Either I'm a goddamn psychic or I'm onto something.

I'm not the only one whose life was changed by a dream, and I think that if people dared look at them in a different way than "oh lolz its ur brain", a lot of them would find a lot of meaning there, and possibly be happier, or at least have a less limited and pessimistic view of life. Sure, I still do struggle with bouts of depression, feeling worthy of love and all, but... something in me has changed since I had that dream and I can't "unsee" it. Likewise recently I had a dream that inspires me to write something. My dreams are very important to me. I kinda want to train myself to lucid dream, so I can choose where to go, but every time I went lucid I noticed I had trouble moving or I just got so excited I woke myself up. Shared dreams are also a thing, although rarely reported. Again, I think that if people were more open about it, it'd have a bit more coverage. I could go on and on about dreams, my post is already getting too long, but hopefully this answers your question.
 
Virtual Cafe Awards
I saw in a NOVA documentary years ago that dreams could be simulations created by the brain based on past experiences to prepare you for real life.
I think I've seen the same documentary. Was there a guy who had a recurring dream about a head of cabbage in a bowl of milk?

In the documentary I saw, they monitored brain activity of rats (or dogs, can't remember) while they were put through tests (mazes, etc). They then monitored brain activity while they slept. They found that the patterns were often identical. When they differed, it was always the same areas of the brain activating, just in different orders, which led to the theory that the brain is trying things out, rearranging experiences to see what works and what doesn't. Some sort of survival instinct. I might not be doing the actual science justice. It was definitely fascinating though.
 
Virtual Cafe Awards
I highly recommend that anyone interested in the topic of dreams check out this lecture by Marie von Franz. She was a protege of Carl Jung, and shares many of the baffling experiences she had with dreams both in her own life, and from the numerous patients she worked with. Above all she provides a strong case against the reductive view that dreams are just physiological phenomenon:
 
Last edited:
Virtual Cafe Awards

mydadiscar

Webcomics! Banzai!
Joined
Jan 20, 2022
Messages
1,558
Reaction score
5,700
Awards
266
I sometimes feel like dreams are alternate realities that I am in. Lucid dreaming is just godhood.

I constantly get dreams mixed up with my regular life, which causes some anguish since usually when that happens something bad has happened in the dream.
 
Virtual Cafe Awards
I highly recommend that anyone interested in the topic of dreams check out this lecture by Marie von Franz. She was a protege of Carl Jung, and shares many of the baffling experiences she had with dreams both in her own life, and from the numerous patients she worked with. Above all she provides a strong case against the reductive view that dreams are just physiological phenomenon:

View: https://youtu.be/tIYinOEIicg

So I posted a link to a video that was uploaded several months ago, and within a few hours of me making that post the video gets taken down. That's kind of fishy...

Edit: The video is up on their odysee channel, so I fixed the link. It's still kind of eerie that it got scrubbed off of Youtube soon after I linked it here though
 
Last edited:
Virtual Cafe Awards

brentw

Well-Known Traveler
Joined
Jan 4, 2022
Messages
669
Reaction score
1,665
Awards
181
Virtual Cafe Awards

Deleted member 3578

There was an agora sign among my dreaming night before last. And yesterday I posted a thread went over terribly. My dream knew. :|
 

-SteampunkTraveler-

Some Random Occultist
Joined
Nov 14, 2021
Messages
229
Reaction score
264
Awards
63
Website
boardsofthenorth.freeforums.net
Same dreams with similar themes for me , most of them are in a way absurd and horrifying , but same themes.

I have this theory that when dreaming we are in a different reality continuing our work there/ being there in general but it differs from reality in an interesting way being all trippy for some ,scary for others, absurd too and etc. it is a reality itself and we have relationships as we do in our reality as we may see people we know in those dreams too, but just a different version of them
 
Virtual Cafe Awards

Makadam

Traveler
Joined
Jan 17, 2022
Messages
32
Reaction score
74
Awards
10
There are two radically different currents that attempt to explain dreams. Among psychologists and people who run online horoscope sites, you've got various forms of dream interpretation where dreaming of a certain colour means X, dreaming of a relative doing something means Y, etc. I've always found that a bit stupid because how in the world could anyone come to those conclusions, especially when you get down to some incredibly specific dream elements.
On the other side, there is dream mythification that you often see in paranormal circles, where dreams are explained through a perspective that removes all skepticism. I'm looking at you, /x/, just because we're on a paranormal board doesn't mean everything is about spooks.

That said, I keep an open mind when it comes to the field of the supernatural, so the second option still has more merit to me personally. There are two opposite views of the paranormal and while on the internet, the one that uncritically marks any aspect of the paranormal as being 100% legitimate, in real life, you are bound to come across a lot more hyperskeptical ultrarationalists who shoot down every single theory with explanation after explanation until they run straight into a wall and the only argument left is "But it couldn't possibly have happened". There are two forms of dreams that I - and many others - have experienced that are simply too baffling and extraordinary to be so easily dismissed and over-rationalised.
Firstly, dreams of people who die or experience some other life altering condition very soon after, or possibly at the time of the dream. Some people dream of planes falling down, and that can be explained because that's really not that strange of a dream, especially if your mind has been preoccupied with thoughts about a flight you are about to take in a day. But I specifically dreamt of my grandmother the night she was taken to the hospital. This was at a period when she had no particular health problems, so it was all very sudden. Additionally, I just didn't have many dreams with her at all. The second dream that truly sealed the deal was the one that occurred months later, after she had already returned from the hospital and back to her normal life. It was, unfortunately, the dream before the morning when we received the phone call from my aunt that my grandmother had passed away.
Secondly, let's talk about the phenomenon known as deja reve. Sorry, I'm sure there's a Frenchman lurking in the shadows, ready to pounce so let me correct myself - it's déjà rêvé. Not to be confused with the more famous déjà vu, which deals with events that have already been seen or experienced, déjà rêvé specifically involves events perceived to have already been witnessed in dreams. I write "perceived", because some of those dreams can be explained away, although that strange feeling that accompanies the realisation would still feel spooky.
My dream was not particularly special; in fact, it was quite mundane and I think I mainly remembered it because it occurred at a time when I was particularly obsessed with noting down as many dreams as I possibly could. I was in high school at the time, so dreaming of being in a class room was really not that special. The only things about the dream that were off were the location being different from any view seen through the window of the classrooms in my high school (at the time, I figured it was just the view out a window of my primary school) and none of the people in the classroom, neither the professor nor my peers, being any people I knew. There was also a pretty mundane exchange between me and a peer, where she asked me for a pair of scissors. I wrote the dream down in my journal and moved forth, awaiting more interesting dreams.
Fast forward a number of years and I'm in university. It was just another day, just another lecture. I was looking through the window while listening to the lecturer. I looked at a guy at the back of the room and panned my view across the room towards the front. As I did so, that weird lingering feeling emerged at the back of my mind, and it slowly grew stronger as my view moved across the room and the view through the window - the room in particular was positioned on the north side of the building, the building itself located about a dozen kilometres from the primary school I attended and offering the view of the same mountains from a slightly different perspective. As my eyes reached the lecturer, I was starting to get nervous as things started dawning on me. Then, the crescendo began. The girl sitting next to me said something. I looked back from the lecturer and to her, nervous with anticipation. And then - she said it. She asked me if I had a pair of scissors she could borrow, and as she said it, I heard every single word in my head as it was said in the dream - exactly the same. The event peaked and obviously shitting bricks hard at this point, I could not do anything other than quote the exact same line I said in the dream. Flooded with the feeling of deja reve, I could only sit there, pondering over what I had just experienced.

Some people chase the next high of the cool big lucid dream but honestly, deja vu/reve is where it's at. Truly, it is something else. The timeflow of mundane reality seems to slow down for a moment as you feel a light tingling in your mind grow into such a strange, almost physical sensation. And then after the quick peak as you are finally hit with the realisation and the events unfold before your eyes, things go back to normal as if nothing even happened.

 
Virtual Cafe Awards

brentw

Well-Known Traveler
Joined
Jan 4, 2022
Messages
669
Reaction score
1,665
Awards
181
I saw in a NOVA documentary years ago that dreams could be simulations created by the brain based on past experiences to prepare you for real life.
Was there a guy who had a recurring dream about a head of cabbage in a bowl of milk?
:FeelsSpecialMan:

Had a really rough time sleeping last night between the chilly night, the dog and the wife moving around, and the warm blankets getting pulled around and not covering me properly. I was finally getting a little sleep when the damn alarm woke me up mid dream. :PepeHands:

And you know what I was dreaming about when I woke up?

We were having a picnic, got sleepy, and were going to take a nap.
And before we could go to sleep I was desperately trying to figure out some elaborate arrangement of the handful of blankets and sheets I had on hand to make it comfortable, while the dog was distracting me because it wanted to play.

I was immediately reminded of this thread and the possibility of dreams being used by our brain to solve really stupid problems. :monkaHmm:

--
The setting of this dream was one I was unfamiliar with. We were having our picnic in a large empty lot, the only features were hard dried mud and concrete rubble. In retrospect it all seemed very post-apocalyptic, although I didn't seem to notice at the time.
 
Last edited:
Virtual Cafe Awards
Had a really rough time sleeping last night between the chilly night, the dog and the wife moving around, and the warm blankets getting pulled around and not covering me properly. I was finally getting a little sleep when the damn alarm woke me up mid dream. :PepeHands:

And you know what I was dreaming about when I woke up?

We were having a picnic, got sleepy, and were going to take a nap.
And before we could go to sleep I was desperately trying to figure out some elaborate arrangement of the handful of blankets and sheets I had on hand to make it comfortable, while the dog was distracting me because it wanted to play.

I was immediately reminded of this thread and the possibility of dreams being used by our brain to solve really stupid problems. :monkaHmm:

--
The setting of this dream was one I was unfamiliar with. We were having our picnic in a large empty lot, the only features were hard dried mud and concrete rubble. In retrospect it all seemed very post-apocalyptic, although I didn't seem to notice at the time.
I've had similar experiences. There's gotta be something to it.

On a related note: my wife is also a covers hog and we sleep with two dogs in the bed. Get yourself your own blanket. Trust me.
 
Virtual Cafe Awards

ↄOx-fiVes-xOc

Internet Refugee
Joined
Jan 4, 2022
Messages
9
Reaction score
12
Awards
3
I had a minor lucid dream last night. It's been a while since I've had one.
 
Virtual Cafe Awards

Hexagon

Internet Refugee
Joined
Jan 27, 2022
Messages
10
Reaction score
30
Awards
4
Secondly, let's talk about the phenomenon known as deja reve. Sorry, I'm sure there's a Frenchman lurking in the shadows, ready to pounce so let me correct myself - it's déjà rêvé. Not to be confused with the more famous déjà vu, which deals with events that have already been seen or experienced, déjà rêvé specifically involves events perceived to have already been witnessed in dreams. I write "perceived", because some of those dreams can be explained away, although that strange feeling that accompanies the realisation would still feel spooky.
My dad has a couple stories of very mundane precognitive dreams. For instance, he had a dream about being underwater and seeing some weird looking creature, and the next day went over to a friend's house, where their kid was watching Ponyo. He looked over and saw a scene that matched his dream exactly. He didn't even know of that movie's existence prior to that.

I like the idea that when we dream, we visit the afterlife/astral plane. Time doesn't exist there, and knowledge can be accessed about the past or future, or from the collective consciousness. Maybe with practice it would be possible to reliably extract info this way, but for most people I believe it just happens by accident.
 
Virtual Cafe Awards

theshredneckcsr

Metal E. Leetist
Joined
Jan 31, 2022
Messages
79
Reaction score
196
Awards
41
I'm curious to see what y'all think about dreams. It's kind of crazy to me that as humans we can near-perfectly simulate emotions and stimuli in our brains while we sleep, so well in fact that we sometimes have trouble remembering if a memory was real or a dream. We've got the capacity to replicate and shape "realistic" experiences in our minds while we sleep, but when we are awake it can be hard to visualize a cow rotating in our heads. I guess all the processing power is going to walking and stuff, just seems like a waste to me compared to total control over reality.
alfred hitchcock dreaming GIF
I remember after I lost my dad I had a lot of vivid dreams where he was present. It was so real. I wish it was.
 
Virtual Cafe Awards

mydadiscar

Webcomics! Banzai!
Joined
Jan 20, 2022
Messages
1,558
Reaction score
5,700
Awards
266
I just had a dream where for some reason I was really lucky with picking up change. I would just look at the ground and there would be a bunch of coins all the time.
 
Virtual Cafe Awards