Inception, dreamwalking, and mind control?

Okay so this new movie is coming out Inception, and it's about people who are paid to go into others' dreams like a dreamwalker and to control them, I guess (only because I have not actually seen the movie yet) that they are using the dreams to do a sort of mind control on the "Targets". Now I know there is a beleif that one can go into others' dreams and they're known as dream walkers in native american tradition. But, do you beleive that this can really be done? That they the government, or even just people who are dream walkers could actually use your dreams as a means of mind control?

I have pondered on this ever since the previews were shown, because Although I have led a strange and variant life, I am actually really thinking someone has controlled me through my dreams. And here's why, I will suddenly get a notion to start learning about certain things that never interested me at all. I have also become interested in television shows and movies I never would have liked say twenty years ago. The field I am currently studying now, IT, I never wanted to do before but suddenly one day I woke up and said I need to be doing this.

It's like my tastes have totally changed like 360 degrees changed and even my food tastes have changed, all the sudden I am cooking Indian food, Alot of Asian foods, which I have always loved chines and japanese cuisine, but Indian I never even had until I cooked it!!! And the recipes come to me out of the BLUE!!! I will check online as well, and find that my thought on the recipe is dead on!!!!
The oddest part is I never even knew if I'd like Indian foods????

Honestly I don't know what is really going on, but Inception's movie trailer has sparked something that rings true in every fiber of my being.

And in case you don't know the movie I am referring to here is a trailer:

Inception Trailer

Sorry it's not a youtube or google vid so I don't know how to embed it.

I haven't seen this movie yet either, but from what I gathered from the previews, they were trying to extract information from people rather than control them. This would be rather difficult. While in a lucid state, I was trying to recall details about my waking life, and there were things I couldn't quite remember. It was exactly like trying to remember a dream that's on the edge of your memory but you can't quite reach it. I believe the culprit in those situations to be a sort of state dependent memory. Trying to get real world information out of someone in a shared dream would yield gibberish most of the time. Not to mention the perceptual differences involved.

Shared dreaming as portrayed in that movie takes place in a stable dream environment. In reality, each person experiences their own unique dream. It's like an online game where each person replaces the graphics files on their computer with their own unique artwork. The people involved are still interacting in the same game, they're just seeing different versions of it. The graphics in this instance would be analogous to an individual's person archetypes. I'm not entirely sure how much that effects conversations between people in a shared dream, or how accurately conversations translate from one person to the next, but visually, there are differences in shared dreaming accounts which essentially describe the same thing, just with slight personal variations.

As for influencing someone's behavior, I suppose it could be done through simple positive and negative reinforcement scenarios.

I've seen inception, and it is a great movie. Basically, they are building a dream prior to the dream and then they work from within their design to get information. For instance, they design a layout pre-dream with an empty safe. Then they go in and the person they are trying to get informaton out of's mind will alter the dream and automatically put information they want hidden in what their brain believes is the safest place (ideally, the safe). Inception is when they plant an idea in someone's head and try and disguise it as the other person's.
In the movie they have to use drug cocktails for a stable lucid dream effect.
I've experimented with lucid dreaming, and I used a similar method used in the movie. They carry around unique objects so when they are dreaming they can figure out if they are dreaming or not. You can do thisin real life and it works. The best method I've found for lucid dreaming is to imagine watching myself walk down a hall continuously as I fall asleep ad carry a unique object or 'totem' as I walk around during the day.

Just adding my 2 cents...

[edit on 19-7-2010 by time91]

I saw it last night and was a great movie. I have read alot about lucid dreaming and have done experimenting for at least 10 years. I would say that I get maybe 2-4 very lucid dreams a year in which I have total control and alter things at will.

One dream that is the most memorable was I was in the container terminal in downtown Vancouver at night. And fully I recognized I was dreaming as I knew I wasn't there, because in my dream I was in the restricted part of the terminal and I don't work there in real life. So that realization is what twigged me to this being a dream so then I got super excited which makes it difficult to stay in the dream. I decided I wanted to fly like NEO does in the Matrix so I gave that a try and it worked. It ended up being more akin to the 1st Spiderman when he's learning his skills and flying from building to building. Well I was doing this from container crane to container crane. Sometimes I would miss and others smack right into it. Never felt pain or fear.

I think that dream was the best thing I've ever felt. It's difficult to describe but in the movie they describe how people can long for the dream world once they've seen it's true potential. I personally believe that dreams are more than just our brains reprocessing information and running scenarios for possible future events.

It's a great movie and would recommend to anyone into the subject.

reply to post by ldyserenity

Now I know there is a beleif that one can go into others' dreams and they're known as dream walkers in native american tradition. But, do you beleive that this can really be done?

I wouldn't have believed it until about a year ago...but one night, I had a really strange dream...at the time I was going out with a girl that really just annoyed me, and pushed and pushed until I would go out with her. Anyway, this dream started where I was saving the life of a drowning girl, and apparently I knew her, in fact it felt like I loved her and had known her for a long time. After she was feeling a little better, were were just lying by the beach next to each other and my annoying real life girl friend came up to us, haha sorry...

Anyway, she started to get really really angry at me and started to raise her voice, but that's when I just snapped, and started going off at her, telling her all the reasons I didn't want to be with her and wished she would just go away and leave us alone...I woke up right after still feeling angered and annoyed, like I had really just yelled at some one for a real reason...I just had a feeling inside me that I really did just hurt my real life girlfriend by saying what I said, and I would never ever even begin to say things like I was saying in this dream to her in real life. But there was no feeling of "Phew, it was just a dream" when I woke up...

Late afternoon the next day, she signed onto windows live messenger (an instant messenger application), and we had a rather long discussion...the topic of dreams came up, and it was her who brought it up which I found odd. So I asked her, has she had any weird or significant dreams the last few nights...and she tells me, that the night before, the same night of my dream, she had a dream where she was standing on top of a cliff, looking down at me on the beach saving the life of some drowning women she did not know...she goes on to tell me she came down to us on the beach only to be verbally abused by me...

Take my account for what it's worth, there are many "stories" here on ATS...but I assure you, those are the facts as I know them, believe me or not, I've said all I can.

[edit on 19/7/10 by CHA0S]

That is a crazy experience. I for one believe that dreams are our chance to experience the world without the rules that bind our waking reality(physics, gravity, time travel, etc,etc) It's the true spiritual part of us in my opinion.

I heard one on Coast to Coast AM about a man who laid his young son down for his afternoon nap and then had a nap himself on the couch. His dream started out like he was on a game show and he won a python that was meant to get rid of rodents(he also comments on how strange that is). Any ways the python gets loose in the house and he can here screaming. So he goes looking for the screaming down the hall but as he turns the corner its a different hallway from a previous placed he lived and so on and so on. He can't find the screaming and soon wakes up only to hear his little son screaming. He wakes him up and asks him what's wrong?

He tells him about his dream and that this big snake was chasing him in this strange house that kept changing! Creeeeeppppyyyy! But cool also!

reply to post by time91

Inception is when they plant an idea in someone's head and try and disguise it as the other person's.

See that's what I thought the term inception implied. What if the art is imitating life here? In other words, as insipid as it sounds, maybe they TPTB or someone is doing this and the movie is based on truth?