sleep as a form of ego death (attachment to reality)

[qualia]

I don't think we can ever know for sure whether or not our waking lives are any more real than our dreams.

indeed. that's why i think, at least what i was trying to say, is to not be attached to the idea that we are either real or not real, and just be in whatever reality we find ourselves in from moment to moment. truly that is the only reality, that which you are experiencing at this moment.

To answer your questions qualia, I'll give you another question - if you knew you might never wake up again, should that stop you from trusting that you will?

um... i don't know.

[chilli]

waking life is different to dreams in the way it has continuity and regularity

sometimes dreams overlap and you go back to the same places or meet the same characters etc, but there is rarely continuity unless you master lucid dreaming, but then you are conscious.

Some dreams seem more real than waking life, and in a sense dreams are real. the parts of the brain that create the dream world also create the real world. the subjective self witnesses both data from the real world and data from the dream world. the butterfly is symbolic in both worlds

it seems the prefrontal cortex is mostly offline during dreaming, unless one becomes lucid when the 'higher' parts of the brain kick in..

interesting because lucid dreaming by definition means that one has become conscious of the fact that one is experiencing a dream, some say enlightenment is the recognition of the same in what is commonly considered real life, and some say true enlightenment occurs during the deepest part of sleep, so in a sense we mediatet every night

some studies have shown most people have negative dreams: anxious, angry and confused in nature, so it would be no wonder some people dread sleep, or sleep poorly.

maybe the continuity of waking life is an illusion constructed by the supposedly logical parts of the brain and all of reality is subjective in nature

as you say qualia, exercise and good sleep hygiene will probably go a long way to solving your problem. exercise is the easiest one to nail first

Edited September 30, 2012 by chilli

[C_T]

yeah real dreaming are memories being replayed to another part of the brain and storage, hence short term to long term.

as you awaken, you can guide these dreams where fiction and lucid parts play effect. similarly with hypnogogic hallucinations and sleep paralysis, its the transition between wake and sleep.

but the weird stuff is exaggerated by sleep deprivation, you'll get rem rebound which can cause weird things to happen.

on another note tho, unless you've got eeg readings, its extremely arrogant to predict your state of sleep or whats happening during your sleep...

[C_T]

but i don't see any relation to ego death. even experiencing sleep paralysis, isn't even close to ego death imo.

i don't see any relation to real dmt in sleep, but melatonin is made in the pineal gland, and could be called a pre cursor to dmt... perhaps. maybe.

[IndianDreaming]

Mugwort is great for nice relaxing dreams - It has helped me in the past with sleep continuity, because I'm usually engrossed in a nice dream. A Chamomile tea before bed, and a little bag of mugwort in bed is fantastic. A few minutes vigorous excercise in bed also works wonders...

I often accidentally wrench myself back to reality right on the verge of going to sleep. I find it quite funny, like I actually have two brains and one doesn't want to let the other out to play... Which one is the real one I have no idea, but I really like the comment above. Be in the present moment - and take that as reality for now.

As an aside, I have a few safety net rules, because I love lucid dreaming and actively seek out these experiences. One of them is this: If ever I'm trying to fly in a dream, I never throw myself off something. I make sure I can lift off and then drift over the edge of whatever is there. Because I have this rule, I feel much more secure that I won't walk off the edge of a building in 'reality' because I think I'm dreaming...

Edit: Thought I was dreaming so had to edit the post to make sure i was awake

Edited September 30, 2012 by IndianDreaming

[qualia]

i should write a book, become a millionaire. heck i even see a stint on oprah!

don't tell me i'm dreamin'

[chilli]

There are many ways to tell if you are in a dream.

If you practice them regularly and seriously enough in waking life you will greatly increase your chances of having a lucid dream:

1. Breathe - Can you hold your nose and mouth shut and breathe?
   
2. Jump - When you jump, do you float back down?
   
3. Read - Can you read a sentence twice without it changing?
   
4. Look - Is your vision clearer or blurrier than normal?
   
5. Hand - Can you push hand through a solid surface?
   
6. Time - Can you read a clock face or digital watch?
   
7. Fly - Can you will yourself to fly or hover above the ground?
   
8. Palms - Do the palms of your hands look normal close-up?
   
9. Mirrors - Does your reflection look normal in the mirror?
   
10. Math - Can you add up two numbers for a correct answer?
    

 

http://www.world-of-...ity-checks.html

Edited September 30, 2012 by chilli

[C_T]

jesus, that 1 persons opinion, what about the rest? (no offence but i'm against the topic responses)

[chilli]

jesus, that 1 persons opinion, what about the rest? (no offence but i'm against the topic responses)

 

What are you referring to?

[C_T]

well the simple fact is you can't tell if your asleep or not...

[C_T]

ive set myself up coutless times with eeg and when done, its not what i thought.so it kinda makes my belief system slightly different

[Thelema]

qualia, it sounds like you could seriously do with some sort of "nonduality" type therapy or awareness. Maybe you should seek out "sailor" bob adamson, or at least read the book "awakening to the dream" by Hartong.

In fact, I encourage everyone to read that book

[chilli]

well the simple fact is you can't tell if your asleep or not...

 

Hardly a simple fact. There are many ways you can tell, I just listed 10. If you try the things on that list in a dream vs real life, there will be noticeable differences.

For example, try flying right now. Oh you can't? ok you are probably not in a dream then.

If you can fly, you're dreaming.

Or look at some text, look away and then back again.

Is it the same? not dreaming.

Did the text change in some way? You are in a dream.

Lucid dreams are based around the idea that you can become aware of the fact you are dreaming. This is why getting in the habit of doing these reality checks works. Sooner or later, you do it in a dream and you get a different result and you realize it is a dream and become lucid. Usually, even just wondering if it is a dream is enough to make me lucid.

I am not sure what EEG has to do with this?

Sorry if I missed your point.

Edited September 30, 2012 by chilli

[C_T]

well apparently whether your asleep or awake is determined by eeg... so i assumed it was relevant.,,

unless we should just take your word for it? does sound cool, but wow, been there done that hehe

Edited September 30, 2012 by C_T

[C_T]

see you at the ASA sleep conference in darwin oct 11-13.

Edited September 30, 2012 by C_T

[chilli]

well apparently whether your asleep or awake is determined by eeg... so i assumed it was relevant.,,

 

So are you saying your EEG results were the same sleeping and waking? EEG taken during REM phases can appear similar top waking states.

unless we should just take your word for it? does sound cool, but wow, been there done that hehe

 

You don't have to take anyone's word for it, you can test it for yourself right now. It is not something someone just made up, it is the result of a lot of people's research into sleep and dreams.

Like I said earlier, regularity and continuity are features of waking life that dreams do not share. These reality checks exploit that difference.

Been where done what?

[bogfrog]

As an aside, Bogfrog, I once dreamt the entire life of someone as if it were myself, and woke up remembering everything that that person had experienced, an entire life that wasn't my own and I had no attachment to. Very interesting.

 

Wow, that must have been one very long night. The most interesting part is how irrelevant it is to your own life.

I get a real kick out of my 'other people dreams' (nice change from my regular nightmares), especially the sort of emotions that you experience, eg: in the guy on the motorbike dream i was trying to save my wife from this other guy who was using her as bait to lure me in.

To feel that rage and determination to get her back, coupled with fear that she might be hurt, the profound love i had for her and the shame i felt that I let the other guy take her, i mean woah. what a head trip.

Somehow reminds me of a couple of salvia experiences i have had (salvia is legal in NZ)... who is the "i" that is experiecing these things.

[whitewind]

That's the interesting thing about dreams, the timescale can be so varied. Years can pass by, they don't correspond to waking life. sometimes time is compressed, sometimes it is slooow. It's just like a trip. Also, I had a past-life experience while awake and sober (unless there were funky things in the massage oil I knew nothing about) where time used to run much slower, as it was in the distant past (and time was slower then). Because time was slow, I was incredibly ancient, which was also explained by the fact I was a rock being (on an alien planet). Current waking life does appear to be the reality, probably because I am so exhausted still from the hours of sleep lost from having a child that I don't remember my dreams any more.

[qualia]

qualia, it sounds like you could seriously do with some sort of "nonduality" type therapy or awareness. Maybe you should seek out "sailor" bob adamson, or at least read the book "awakening to the dream" by Hartong.

In fact, I encourage everyone to read that book

 

i suppose i could read as many books as i want but until i experience something first hand then then it all just remains an abstract concept.

[whitewind]

Somehow reminds me of a couple of salvia experiences i have had (salvia is legal in NZ)... who is the "i" that is experiecing these things.

 

I started doing some of these dreaming exercises, and started to experience effects rather similar to Salvia experiences I have read about online (having never taken Salvia, I can't make direct comparisons) I was very disconcerted by effects like my body splitting into an infinite number of individual conscious entities, separate and identical yet not the same, all with a slightly differing timeline, that I couldn't fall asleep for fear of becoming dissolved, and so I stopped. The insomnia was also affecting my work, which didn't help.

Conscious Dreaming and Controlled Hallucinations

[Yeti101]

A lot of the responses aside (do you know if you are wake or dreaming ect) I think what would really help you, qualia, is to practice mindfulness meditation - like the body scan. I used to have a lot of trouble getting to sleep due to anxiety (actually had a bit of an issue with anxiety in general) and this really helped. I know what you have going on is probably different, but mindfulness might help you get inside what is happening for you, both physically and mentally. That, and it seems to help calm the waking mind/ego - for me at least. Re-reading your OP I can see that you kind of did that already by concentrating on breathing, but I would encourage you to take it further. You don't need anything fancy or mystical - I used Mindfulness For Dummies by Shamash Alidina.

[qualia]

i actually did some sitting meditation before bed last night, and it helped still the waters, and i had a pretty good sleep, undisturbed until sunrise. about 6 hours which is a vast improvement on recent efforts. but yeah operating on sleep deprivation i get pretty stressed and it seems to compound itself over time. i've been reading books on zen buddhism/mindfulness for the last couple of years, and it's helped immensely with paranoia etc. which i'm prone to, not so much stopping it but putting the onus back onto me and how i react to a situation rather than the specifics of what the situation is. i have practiced sitting meditation in the past but more as a thing i feel i should do because someone says i should, rather than something that's important to do in and of itself. so yeah, the whole thing is just another aspect of life's journey, as corny as that sounds.

[Thelema]

practicing all those techniques to tell whether you're in a dream or not has one obvious drawback: unless you're lucid dreaming, you're not going to be able to interrogate yourself in the dreaming state.

Hence all they're useful in proving is that you're NOT dreaming, but none of them will identify, EVER- if you are in a non-lucid dream. And thus they are pretty uselss, apart from habits of reality-mind with which to develop lucid dreaming.

[chilli]

practicing all those techniques to tell whether you're in a dream or not has one obvious drawback: unless you're lucid dreaming, you're not going to be able to interrogate yourself in the dreaming state.

Hence all they're useful in proving is that you're NOT dreaming, but none of them will identify, EVER- if you are in a non-lucid dream. And thus they are pretty uselss, apart from habits of reality-mind with which to develop lucid dreaming.

 

It is the success of the technique that helps you become lucid, not lucidity that makes the technique work.

eg. in a dream you wonder 'is this as dream?' You check by using one of the technoques above, realize it is a dream and become lucid.

Realizing it is a dream is how you become lucid, not the other way around.

Anyway, I think anything that reliably fosters lucid dreams is far from useless.

*edit: I missed the part where you said about not being able to interrogate yourself unless already lucid, but that is not true. If you do these enough while awake, the habit eventually spills into dreams and you do the check without consciously thinking about it, and then you may become lucid. The techniques are for inducing lucid dreams, so it wouldn't make much sense if one already had to be lucid to employ them, would it?

Edited October 1, 2012 by chilli

[IndianDreaming]

It is possible to over do these techniques.

Quite a few times I've been in a dream and practicing the techniques, and closed my eyes (in the dream) and dreamt a second dream where I'm practicing the techniques and realise I'm dreaming, then wake up from the second dream and try to 'fall asleep' again so I can go back to dreaming... these dreams within dreams are interesting and quite fun, but also very disorientating and recursive... I can see how people could believe that reality is a dream. All we really ever do is percieve in one form or another, so it's a hard question to answer. I often wonder if I'm a blob in a tank somewhere, but can't think of an experiment to test that hypothesis...

A particularly funny incident happened when I was explaining to my friend the lucidity techniques and saying "I can tell when I'm dreaming most of the time' - My friend gave me a really quirky knowing smile - and only after I'd woken up did I realise that I was talking to a dream friend - So funny, I can recall the look even now, it was a 'haha yeah sure you can, except right now ya dill' - I love dreaming

Qualia: Practicing lucid dreaming has by far been the most rewarding thing I've done, it also helps to take your mind of the daily grind and switch into sleep mode. I'm terrible at sitting and meditating, but I find my meditation is done before, during and after bed time - I find lucid dreams to be the most relaxing and life changing experiences - you can re-wire yourself whilst you're sleeping, solve problems, etc...