Nadda, this sounds like a great discussion! I myself dream vividly a great deal of the time and I have always been fascinated by dreams and contemplate their purpose and meaning.

I find the architecture in my dreams extremely detailed. Buildings I have never been in, places I have never visited. Two nights ago I dreamed I was in a building in a large city. People lived there, but there was also an area of this building that looked like a hospital. It was extremely detailed with just about everything you'd find in an actual real-life setting. I was with some family members who were milling about the building and I would run into them in certain parts, by an elevator, or in a random room, but we are talking about fully furnished rooms with all sorts of odds and ends around. I remember one of the more interesting rooms had strange lamps, several misc items, a glowing painting, oddly colored carpet and an old fashioned rocking chair, none of which I believe I have ever seen before.

This gets me to my point that I have believed for awhile that many aspects of our dreams are derived not from our own mind, but from other peoples experiences that have been documented in the collective unconscious. A small bit of research revealed that others including Carl Jung may have had similar beliefs but I am not sure if any of them went as far as to say that one persons experience was being used in another persons dream.

There are many things to be discussed such as what is the real reason we dream, why do some people have dreams that accurately foretell the future and why are some dreams so clearly remembered while some vanish even before we wake up.

Everything with a brain appears to dream, the question is why?

I've read in a couple of places now that when we are asleep, we visit the astral plane and work with beings there to help us work through problems/issues with our current life and prepare for the "future".

Gary, why, is a good question and i've honestly never thought about that. I've often wondered what the point of sleep itself is. If our brains never stop, why can we not stay conscious all the time. As far as i've been able to find theres no specific answer as to why we need sleep. The same goes for dreams, why not just allow time to pass in the blink of an eye like it does, without dreams. Weather i dream or not i always seem to instantly wake up as soon as i fall asleep even though 8 hours passes. Why dream..

I believe dreams can be everything. Some dreams can be your imagination, some could be premonitions, other could be the astral plane like ImBill said.
I've had about 4-5 dreams in my life that i truly believe were premonitions. I look at things like, seeing the future, with skeptical eyes but i was shocked by the accuracy and details of those specific dreams when i later seen them played out in real life. One of them happened the very next day.

I can only remember one specific time that i actually woke up inside a dream, and stayed asleep. In my dream i was in my house that i previously lived in and when i woke up in the dream, i couldnt believe it, and actually started walking around the house just looking at everything. I could open any door and walk anywhere i wanted. That was the only time i could control myself and my dream. I havent been able to do it again.

Have any of you guys ever experienced Deja Vu from a dream? I have had a ton of dreams that, while im in the dream it feels like ive dreamed it a million times before.

How about flying, i've flown and have jumped over buildings and could see everything..i could see myself leave the ground and see everything else on the ground...how is that possible to even imagine in such clarity.

Oh yeah. As a kid, I had this crazy dream about what ended up being an evil clown, but started out really indistinct and hard to see. It was on a kids bike, riding down a path beside our house where there's a really steep hill. I can still remember the sense of growing dread, watching this thing coming towards me, knowing it was a dream, knowing what was about to happen in the dream because I thought I'd dreamed it before, being filled with horror as I saw this clown thing with fangs careening at speed towards me, tongue lolling out, sharp teeth bared, the malice in it's eyes and claws as it reached for me, I dived, it swerved and lunged and grabbed but missed, I just escaped it and it was gone down the hill as fast as it came. Then I woke up and, and realised that although I knew what was going to happen before it happened because I'd dreamed it before in the dream, that I'd never had that dream before.

I get really intense emotional catharsis from dreaming, my feelings in dreams are hyper-real. So nightmares are not fun for me. I've found I can catch myself at the point where it gets lucid and guide my dream, like dreaming I can suddenly fly to escape from threat, or make myself invisible, or gain super human strength and dream myself out of trouble even as I'm waking up.

The weirdest thing is though, I very rarely remember my dreams now.

Yeah, thats exactly what i experience. I'm no clown fan, so glad i dont dream about them (whatever you do, dont watch "IT" by stephen king). Ghosts usually haunt my dreams.

Yeah, sometimes when my dreams get really scary, I sometimes realize its a dream and i start telling myself to wake up lol. When a dinosaur is biting you what else can you do lol. I suck at fighting back against scary dreams, i once got into a gun fight and ended up giving myself a gun that didnt work and only shot plastic bullets lol.

I have had dreams about flying for as long as I can remember. At first, I used to start off running and then my strides would get longer and longer and I would start kind of floating, then zoom off into the sky. At some point, I finally realized that all I have to do is exercise this ability. There's some kind of special energy or something that I access. It's kind of like just concentrating on floating and I just levitate into the air. After that, it's kind of like I would imagine a Seque would be, I just kind of tilt myself in the direction I want to go and I'm off. Sometimes I really have to work and concentrate to get more than a few inches up.

I've always had recurring dreams, but they are rarely the same sequence of events, they just happen in the same place. There are quite a few places that I visit in dreams that are very familiar and/or I visit quite often. Most cannot be traced back to anywhere that I am consciously familiar with. My most vivid and stress inducing dreams usually involve some kind of weird stairs with no railings, landings with no stairs below them, creaky/leaning stairs, wobbling stairs, etc. I seem to have lots of those.

Characters and scenery change very abruptly quite often. I've also had a three dreams in the past year or so that I remember quite well in which a horrible catastrophe has happened. The first two started with a feeling of impending doom. The first one you could see something building up on the horizon, so we started driving away from it across country as fast as we could go. The last thing before I woke I turned to look behind us and the huge rolling clouds of dust were just about to overtake us. They filled the horizon from north to south like a line of erupting earth. The second one found me running and hiding from machines in the air. It started with a few airplane type vehicles and ended with these little dark globes like cover surveillance cameras but were hunting us down and shooting us with a laser like weapon. The last one I was in the parking lot of an upscale drive-in restaurant of some kind at night and looked up in the sky to see what I took to be a squadron of airplanes and an alien spacecraft. Several of the planes just disappeared as if they were hit by some invisible beam. Then one of the remaining planes fired a missile and shot down one of the alien ships, which then crashed just down the road from me. It started to get a little close for comfort, so I woke up. I don't remember ever having any major catastrophe type dreams before and am interested in finding out if anyone else has experienced them.

wow that surprised me. i can only remember having one dream that was of a catastrophe and it too was about a year or so ago. I was working with some family members and there was this blinding white flash from the horizon and we tried to look out the windows to see what happened but i instantly knew that this was it. this was the end of everything. I remember we had a couple of seconds and i told my family that i loved them and that everything would be ok and then when the blast hit us everything went black. I knew i was dead but i realized i still had consciousness and i could hear my family talking, asking what happened, if they were still alive. At that moment i remember feeling so relieved that even though we all died, everything was fine because we still had our consciousness.

I forgot about that dream until i read your post. its one of my favorites.

My favorite dreams are the flying ones. For the past few years, I can just lift myself off the ground and it is such a joyous feeling. In fact, that's kind of how I access the ability is by filling myself with joy. At first, it was difficult sometimes to get off the ground. There were dreams I can remember where I knew I could fly but when I tried to, I couldn't get it right away. Now, it's like I'll just be standing there and will lift off just because I can. It's kind of funny because it feels like I should be able to do it when I'm awake and I often feel like I'm awake when I'm having those dreams. It's like walking, I can take it for granted most of the time.

I was also remembering today what it was like dreaming when I was in jail in my younger days. I'm sure it's the same for most people in any depressing/stressful situation where you have these really vivid and wonderful dreams that are totally the opposite of what you are currently experiencing in real life. Then when you wake up and find yourself in the crapper, it can really bring you down. I'm kind of wondering, since it is normal to suppress negative feelings, if these vivid dreams are created in an effort by the subconscious/whatever else is out there helping to make one consciously experience the negative feeling, since the feeling of it is what can dissipate the charge built up by the suppression of the feeling.

I wish i could have flying dreams more. I fear heights but at the same time i love the rush and i often go to sleep imagining that im on the roof of a skyscraper. It doesnt work though, i've never been on the roof of one. And everytime i have flown its always on some completely random dream.

You know, thinking back to the night i had those vivid 10 dreams i mentioned earlier, i realize that was the same day i was really stressed out from work...before now i never even knew stress would give you dreams like that...

I remember waking up that morning feeling really good and just being amazed i got to have those dreams. It seems to me that my mind was just trying to escape and get away from the negitivity. Like it was just a reminder to stay positive, there are more things in life to be happy about.

As much as sleep has been studied there still seems to be very few answers, but it is most certainly some type of recharge. Nothing feels better than a solid nights sleep (I am sure most PATHS users will attest to that).

So if the brain needs the recharge, why dream? I really think that a dormant brain would quickly wake up, derailing the repair process. So keep the brain busy with dreams. I'd have to really think about it but off the top of my head I don't think I have many boring dreams. There seems to be always something going on interesting and engrossing. Some seem less interesting when recalled after waking up, but at that moment and time they seem pretty important.

I don't recall long drawn out dreams with me doing a mundane task. They are usually much more exciting, but that could just be me. I wonder if any of you have boring dreams with not much going on, maybe eating a sandwich or sitting in a waiting room.

I have woken up inside of dreams maybe once or twice and I have always woken up before I could really do anything.

Bill, I never have the flying dreams. I am always in an aircraft if I am flying, although in one dream I got picked up in a UFO that was being driven by Jerry Garcia from the Grateful dead. He flew around for awhile and then dropped me off. The odd thing was I really didn't know who he was at the time nor had I ever paid much attention to the group. I always wondered just were that came from..

You could be right, but i think its bigger than that. Maybe because humans naturally explore their surroundings we are perhaps exploring our memories and the creativity of our minds. It would explain why no dream is boring. Even though our bodies are asleep our minds are still awake, maybe our minds get bored and naturally start exploring?

What about the time while falling asleep, you know you dont just go from being 100% conscious to being 100% asleep instantly and vice versa. I know its not normal but I usually start dreaming before im even asleep. I dont know why or how i do it but some nights its fun, other nights it creepy. I also uncommonly experience something known as night terrors, its basically waking up but not fully being able to regain consciousness. Its almost like sleep walking except for me i usually try waking up from a bad dream but it takes several seconds before i actually realize im awake. I've had dreams before where i was drowning and have woken up and wasnt able to actually breathe for several seconds. Pretty scary when its happening. Has anyone else experienced that, or have experienced sleepwalking?

Since the brain (local) accesses the mind (non-local) where are the dreams coming from, the brain or the mind? We know that the conscious part of the brain shuts down and that the subconscious continues to do its job. When we are awake and conscious, where do thoughts come from? Probably the same place the dreams come from. What I've noticed about myself when I am in that state between being fully awake and fully asleep is that the thoughts that pop up are much more full than waking thoughts. When I'm awake and have a thought, I either stick with it and explore it to a logical conclusion or dismiss it and move on. In that twilight state, it's more like a thought comes and then a sort of random trail follows with no clear logic to it. I'll wake back up and wonder how the original thought led to those thoughts I was having just before waking.

I've never had the night terrors you describe that I can remember. I remember in high school I was taking a nap with my clothes on lying on my back. When I woke, my left arm was so fast asleep that I couldn't move it. I had to pick it up with my right hand to move it and massage it back to life. Although I wake up quite frequently with an arm asleep, that's the only time I couldn't move it. I did used to walk in my sleep when I was very young. I remember my dad one morning saying that he met me in the hallway and asked me where I was going. I told him I was going out to water the flowers (one of my chores). He told me to go back to bed, which I did. I didn't remember any of it or any other instances. I'm pretty sure that by the time I was 10 or so, I was no longer sleepwalking.

I'm a cigarette smoker and I had a dream within the last couple of months where it was very painful to breathe, kind of like a preview of what it would be like if I kept smoking. That's one of the things that always amazes me about dreams, is that the bodily sensations match what's going on in the dream. Water feels wet, painful situations cause real physical pain in the dream. Of course, it all goes away when you awaken, but it always baffles me how the sensations can feel so real when they aren't real. Kind of a mirror of "real" life when you think about it...

There are a couple of caveats, one being don't pee in your dream.

It is interesting you bring up patterns of thoughts and the differences between awake and asleep mind. I find that asleep I never know what will happen next in a dream. Things are unfolding before me, things I do not expect, while when awake, there seems to be much more control over the next thought, action and I am never surprised by it.

Awake for me is like telling a story while being asleep, it is being told to me.

I have experienced not being able to wake up, but i have always had a different understanding of what Night terrors are, even though I think it could fall under what you are describing. Night terrors to my knowledge are when you are awake but your mind is still in a sleep state. It happens a lot in kids and I have dealt with it a couple of times with my own. They seem to be completely awake, moving and in a full tantrum. They stay impossible to deal with and cannot be consoled until they begin to move out of the sleep state.

Not being able to wake up from a dream i think has more to do with the natural paralysis that occurs at times during sleep. I will say that I have had a few dreams involving people who have passed on, and I almost always have trouble waking up from those dreams. Not sure why that is.

Yeah i just went with the closest name that related to it. Its similiar in the fact that the dream seems to carry over even after waking up. Theres was only one time that i think i had a real night terror, when i was a kid i woke up once in the middle of the night and i had the blankets over my head, but i realized some type of big animal was laying on me and i could feel its breath comming through the blankets and into my face...i tried to move and it started growling...i realized it was a lion. It was so scary i still remember after all this time. That was the only time even as a kid that anything like that happened. I dont know why.

Your exactly right, i read about that after not being able to move my arms and whatnot, but i still dont know why i wouldnt be able to breathe. How could it paralyze the lungs?


Yea, its different than being asleep, it doesnt even feel like its your arm. I'm surprised thats only happened once to you. its happened several times to me, i once woke up and jumped out of bed, but fell flat on the ground because both of my legs were paralyzed lol.

Yea! its so weird. Something will happen in a dream and i'll react like i would in real life but there always seems to be a random factor that pops in with no real rhyme or reason and logic just goes out the window.

I have a weird question, when falling asleep do you guys ever hear random sounds? I mean sounds that are so vivid and clear it sounds like your hearing them with your ears..Sometimes i hear completely random stuff, babies crying, a whisper, a scream. Whats crazier is that they differentiate between ears, sometimes i'll hear a sound on one side as if im hearing it with one ear and not the other. It only happens when falling asleep so i usually keep the tv on low just to keep my imagination busy. Also, about once a month just after falling asleep i'll hear a loud crack, like lightening or wood snapping and i'll jump being wide awake. You guys ever get that?