posted on Jul, 24 2009 @ 11:49 AM
My (admittedly limited) experience with lucid dreaming has caused me to question the notion that it's 'just a dream'. I do not believe that I've
ever 'astral projected' in the purest sense of the word, but I have the feeling that a lucid dream is just another variation of an 'out-of-body'
experience.
I'll try to explain my line of reasoning, and what led me to this theory. I've had many flying dreams that, while thoroughly enjoyable, I dismissed
as mere dreams because I'd be flying over an area I was familiar with, but there would be something out-of-place, "Hmm, there's not usually a
ferris wheel in the middle of I-10 this time of year" ...Now I believe that I may have been traveling out-of-body, AND dreaming, kind of like when
you sleepwalk. You might see an amalgamation of your dream AND your actual surroundings.
The other thing that contributes to my idea is that there seems to be a set of rules or physics that many people agree on existing in the 'lucid
dream realm' (for lack of a better term). There are other threads on ATS that discuss this. This thread grabbed my attention because of my experience
with this.
Before I learned about any of this, I used to find myself in an occasional lucid dream. Like you, I am a non-violent person, and always have been, but
I thought of my 'dream world' and the beings in it as 'mine', and would often try to attack the nearest person, more or less just to see what
would happen, like in a video game. This is where the 'dream world physics' I mention earlier come into play. For some reason, I am unable to hit
anyone in these instances. It's like they are surrounded by a squishy force-field that reduces the might of my hardest punches into a slight tap. The
person I'm trying to hit usually looks at me with confusion, or with a knowing, slight grin.
Other people have told me that they experience the same thing, so I like to speculate about why. It's caused me to wonder about *all* dreams and
their significance (or lack thereof), the other 'players' in them, and if there is something more to it than just "the mind's way of processing
data while you sleep." The truth is, very little is known about the mind by mainstream science, so dismissing these theories outright is just as
ignorant as believing that everything that happens in dreams is 'real'.
It's a worn-out cliche (with dozens of ATS threads dedicated to it) but "what is reality?"