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I have had dreams from time to time that have taken up to 8 hours to write down. They seem to last up to two weeks when in reality i had it in a 30 min time frame. How is this possible? People i have never met in a society that does not exist. Cool but Wierd.
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lily65668 Spiderwilliams
Posted
I've had dreams just like that all my life (mid-70s now). It's fascinating, isn't it?
It's hard to say, but I suspect everyone's dreams are like this, but most people just don't remember them. The whole question of dream recall interests me, both as a former neuro nurse and a vivid dreamer myself but there seems to have been very little serious scientific research into it. What I do know is that if you put someone who insists they don't dream into a sleep lab and wake them during the REM phase of sleep, they'll always be able to recount a dream... which they'll have forgotten again in the morning. This presupposes that the individual does indeed go through REM periods during their sleep cycle. Certain drugs - notably antidepressants, and especially the tricyclic kind - suppress REM sleep, and a few individuals don't go into REM sleep for other reasons.
As far as I can make out just by talking to friends and family, and from forums like this one, those of us who have good dream recall are in a very small minority. In fact, I'd estimate that we're vastly outnumbered by those who have never recalled a dream in their lives (and frequently claim not to dream at all). Most people seem to have nothing more than occasional, muddled recollections of their dreams.
The ability to recall dreams can start suddenly. This is more likely to happen in our late teens or early 20s, but can start at any time of life. It's often a source of alarm, though needlessly so. I've answered several posts on these boards from people who've suddenly started remembering their dreams and think it's a sign of psychiatric or even neurological illness. This happened to my own mother, who quite suddenly started recalling her dreams in her late 50s, and was initially terrified. Interestingly, once the ability to recall dreams has been acquired, it tends to persist. Once people remember their first dream, they go on remembering them.
Sadly, dream recall tends to decline with age. My more striking dreams stayed with me long-term - I still retain detailed memories of extraordinary dreams I had 50 years ago - but these days I find that I lose them if I don't write them down immediately on waking. I suspect, however, that this is due more to age-related degeneration of short-term memory in the waking state than to failure of dream recall.
Vivid dream recall tends to run in families too, though it has to start somewhere. My father had it too. He and I used to spend hours talking about our dreams when I was young - much to the annoyance of my mother. It was only many years later that I understood the reason for her anger. When she called me on the day she recalled her first dream, she was in a state of terror, and would only say in a shaky voice: "There's something wrong with me". I was working as a nurse at the time, but managed to swap shifts to get the next day off to go home - by which time she'd had another night of remembered dreams of course. It was only after several hours sitting at the kitchen table (during which she smoked two packs of cigarettes) that I managed to convince her that what she was describing had been a dream. Initially, she denied this furiously, saying that she didn't "make things up" like my father and me. She actually preferred to believe she was suffering from a psychiatric illness rather than admit she'd been dreaming!
So... be gentle with those around you who believe they don't dream. It's their loss, and you're not abnormal, just slightly different. And don't let anyone tell you otherwise.
In other ages, people who had vivid dream recall were revered (or burnt at the stake as witches, of course!) These days we have a better scientific understanding of these things. Enjoy your dreams, and profit from them too. My dreams often give me pointers - sometimes encoded - as to where I'm going wrong in waking relationships. There have been many cases in history where scientists solved problems in their dreams. Google Dmitri Mendeleev, who conceived the Periodic Table, or August Kekulé, who formulated the Benzene Ring, the basis of organic chemistry. In the arts world, Robert Louis Stevenson is said to have dreamed the story of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde over many weeks.
Happy dreaming!
Spiderwilliams lily65668
Posted
lily65668 Spiderwilliams
Posted
Oh yes - been there many times. It's a potential trap, isn't it? When your dreams become more attractive than your daytime life, I mean.
When I was younger I had a lot of lucid dreams. I expect you do too. I had transcendent experiences in some of these dreams and would wake up yearning to be back in that space. Unfortunately I've almost entirely lost the ability to lucid dream with age, and I've heard this happens to a lot of people. Still, it's "real" life we have to deal with after all. Or rather, "the consensus dream we call physical reality", as Stephen LaBerge so aptly puts it. He's written a lot on lucid dreams, enlarging the bounds of dream science without venturing into sci-fi or fantasy.
I have read parts of Cayce's book on dreams. I think he had a good understanding of the workings of the unconscious but am a little queasy about where he went with this. Years ago I attended a lecture by one of his followers. I was OK with it till we got to the bit about the Atlanteans nuking the dinosaurs. He kind of lost me after that.
That's not to say I don't often wonder about the origins of dreams. My own are on such diverse subjects, and I seem to inhabit so many different people in them, I'm hard put to understand where it all comes from. Once I was a male child-molester in the dock, facing my victim's mother on the witness stand. The emotions I felt (as him) in the dream have informed my thinking ever since. I also dream complex adventure stories, even though this genre doesn't interest me at all in waking life.
I confess I've wondered about parallel universes (which is no longer outside the bounds of science) though I also think we tap into vast resources of creativity that exist in all our brains, but aren't available to most of us in waking life.