so I’ve been working on my dream recall lately, and I noticed a trend where in a few (read: <1/5) dreams I didn’t seem to have a body; it’s not that i was a ‘bystander’ not participating in the action, or had a weird dream body (plant/animal ect.), but rather didn’t seem to have a body at all like some sort of disembodied observer.
one could compare it to playing a video game versus watching a movie; in the game you control (or don’t) something that you can relate directly with yourself, and you generally interact with the local environment, whereas when watching a movie you see the events as they unfold, you may even empathize with some of the characters and understand their feelings and line of thought, but you don’t actually participate.
my questions here are these:
-is this a normal occurrence; as in how often do you have dreams like this versus regular (body available) dreams.
-not that i’m getting my hopes up, but how would one go about preforming reality checks without a body?
**edit:
after my recent personal encounters with horrifying consequences caused by perception blindness (or as I like to call it: stupidity), I’ve been double and triple checking information that I have.
and well on closer (re)examination, i noticed there’s a term for my experience; ‘disembodied observer’ is actually it.
I now feel incredibly stupid (and the worst part is that it’s not even the first time today).
anyway (re-reexamining), it seems to me that my question still has some validity; mainly in that i am not (yet) a lucid dreamer, and this phenomenon seems interesting enough deserve a more direct look by those more familiar in the dream realm.
so, do share your thoughts on this.
Hmm. I’m not sure if I can recall something exactly like what you’re describing, but sometimes I do feel more like an observer running along until I get pulled in somehow than part of the action myself. In a part of my last LD before I was actually lucid, I was kind of running along, watching a race, until something happened with a lady (I won’t say what) and I guess we kinda merged or something, and either she became me or I stayed myself except with her issues. I didn’t become lucid until a bit later in the dream, and I believe it was a DILD without an RC… so I really can’t say there. However, I guess that if you’re aware enough in the dream that you want to do an RC but can’t because you don’t have a “body”, I’m guessing that might be enough to get you lucid anyway. If you realize you’re a disembodied observer, couldn’t that trigger a thought that you’re dreaming? It doesn’t happen IRL, after all. I myself was becoming lucid several years back before I even knew what RCs were. So to me, RCs aren’t essential, but they’re a good tool to have.
Now that I rambled on and I’m not exactly sure what my point was or what I was trying to answer… Hope that was helpful/interesting to you anyway!
I have something similar to what you are describing in your dream recall. When I notice myself in a dream I look almost like a ghost as if I didn’t have an actually place in my dream world and I was just an observer.
As for being a ghost in the dream as a role, I’m not sure. It is as though people know I’m there in a dream but they pretend I’m not there so it makes me feel ghostly and for that part look like a ghost.
When I am am using my eyesight in a dream it is as though I have double vision and I am trying to perceive something more than the dream itself.
I’ve challenged this perceiving technique a few times to see if I can summon something from the other vision of my double vision. But, I have failed numerous times.
Discussing this phenomenon of having double vision and having almost no appearance has brought me to the question am I in a different field of time other than my dreams. I ask this question because I have had a few future telling dreams in this ghost like presence as well as crazy themes like looking-for-the answer-of-my-dreams where I am still in this state of no appearance or such and I can’t see straight.
My question and statements come to, can there be psychic evidence and scientific reasoning for why this happens to people who can’t gain lucidity or so on?
Aside from that, I’ve been trying to lucid dream since i joined this sight and have had one lucid dream and till this day I still question was I actually lucid because it was more like a realization of my dreaming self.?) <-----In that dream I had an appearance
I know exactly what you mean. Sometimes I will have an whole dream when I am a DO.
Othertimes, just a part of the dream would be through this viewpoint.
The majority of my dreams, I do inhabit a body though.
RCs … well an easy one would be I have no body so it must be a dream, you can also expect things to happen and if they do it’s a dream. Looking in a different direction and looking back … note if anything changes, is also another good RC.
If you realize you’re a disembodied observer, couldn’t that trigger a thought that you’re dreaming? It doesn’t happen IRL, after all. I myself was becoming lucid several years back before I even knew what RCs were. So to me, RCs aren’t essential, but they’re a good tool to have.
Hope that was helpful/interesting to you anyway!