Someone’s suggested this possibility. It could happen, and probably will. It may already have, in fact. There are a few murder cases where people have used “the Matrix defense,” where they claimed they thought they were in the Matrix. A lucid dreaming defense would be very similar.
I don’t think it would get someone acquitted, but it might. Stranger defenses have.
But the really interesting thing would be whether a lucid dream defense would have a different spin on the insanity defense. Someone must be insane to think they’re in the Matrix, but if they thought they were dreaming because of a failed RC, they would be acting rationally.
I have the same opinion. I’ve never killed in an LD (though I did kill some guys in an ND). Don’t see why it would be positive.
On the other hand if I were to try to create a sci-fi episode in an LD, which involved killing an enemy etc, how would I do that? I don’t know… but perhaps I could get the DC to act like he was dead etc… Crazy idea, I know. But I’ve never done this yet…
That is true. However, do you know how many insanity defenses are successful. Would it surprise you to know that it is less than 1%. That’s why the insanity defense is usually the defense of last resort.
I had not heard about the matrix defense. That’s one that missed me. Then again with the war and the election there is not much else on the news here.
think about it… isn’t it bad to begin with that you even want to go on a killing spree… where would you draw the limits?
Would you plug yourself into VR in 2053 and feel the murder in all it’s bloody goodness based upon accurate murder simulations that your mind (assuming you aren’t a killer) could never dream up on it’s own?
Dream killing has its place, namely, non-lucid violent dreams in which you feel a need to kill someone for some reason…
I see that as blowing off steam, I see that as your subconscious is pretty pissed off at something, and needs to surface…
but if you find yourself enjoying senselessly murdering people, what the hell?
These dream people are just as real as people in real life. They MIGHT only exist within your head, but regardless, YOU ARE THERE, aren’t you? You are in front of another human, posing no threat to you, and you think what the hell, let’s kill this woman… let’s kill her kids too… it’ll be fun.
That says a lot about you as a person.
The finger is ultimately pointed at society here, I mean… killing IS cool… it really is… I enjoy violent movies and the occasional violent video game… but I also recognize that they DO affect me, quite deeply in fact… I’ve been obsessing over Kill Bill lately, and I find myself sitting next to random people and imagining what it’d be like to blow off their heads.
it’d be “cool” i suppose, wouldn’t it?
You need to be careful with that kind of stuff… if the dream envrionment presents itself to you in a harmless violent way, like a matrix dream, or a war dream, and you are having a good time shooting people, and the people are having good times, and it’s just a fun game of killing each other all over the place… great… you probably had that dream to vent feelings or something.
If you are fully fully lucid and you walk up to an innocent DC and hack him to pieces… i can’t see a good reason for that… not unless you want the DC to fight you back for the sole sake of mindless fighting.
But to predatorially seek people, especially people you know, out, and to cold bloodely kill them, AGAINST THEIR WILLS… I’d say something is wrong there… if you target a DC and it screams and resists and bleeds, and you make a huge habit out of doing that to them.
As mentioned: it could be a real person, if not it’s a facet of your subconscious that you are being pretty lousy too.
It’s better not to do those things… you know… if the DC shows pain, fear, etc… and doesn’t just kind of blindly stare at you and act goofy while you “kill” it… I wouldn’t engage in that.
My problem though is rape… I’ve made a habit out of having sex with anything and everyone out there no matter how they react… and well… recently I changed my whole outlook on this and realized I probably shouldn’t be doing it.
***I think of an LD much like I’d think of us living in a world with NO consequences… what would you do if you could disappear, shape shift, avoid all punishment and consequences for your actions? Rob? Kill? Rape?
Dreams can be healthy for getting out repressed feelings, but I think those should be left to NORMAL dreams, or LDs which are clearly in the context of the scenario, like stumbling into a dojo or a warfield or something.
I’d also like to say that frequent LDing most certainly makes you feel weird and dissociated from reality… sometimes I wonder whether I’m dreaming or not… I think a guy could maybe go crazy and go on a killing spree, thinking it’s a dream…
and I’d also like to say that I do believe in shared dreaming, which is mostly why I take up these stances.
My feeling has always been to feel free to hack a slash your way through your LD ‘s I just suggest having some positive dreams as well to stay in balance.
Lucid dreaming is a safe place to explore our fantasies, have adventures, spiritual growth, and even for exploring your dark side. It can be a great outlet for a lot of negative energy and many people feel much better afterwards.
I don’t think killing characters in your LD is too good since they are part of yourself. Why would you kill a part of yourself?
That said, I can think that it is possible to get a DC to play the part of being killed. Without ‘really’ being killed. So they get up unharmed after the ‘acting’ is finished.
i think a better question would be: can you kill a part of yourself ??? to which i would answer: no
like milod said, it is all about balance, i think holy reality’s post has demonstrated a very powerful stigma we have toward doing negative things.
if i have a dream where my subconscious has me act aggressively, i don’t think “oh that’s alright because my subconscious had me do it and it was in the context of the dream” i wonder to myself "why did my subconscious have to lash out in the first place ??? " it was because i was out of balance and haven’t been consciously tending to my darker impulses so my subconscious had to pick up the slack
if i can consciously keep myself in balance, then perhaps my subconscious could attend to more important matters
=> holy reality, you say you like violent movies (kill bill was awesome btw) and violent video games, but then go on to say that one shouldn’t use their LDs as an outlet for said violence unless it was in the context of the dream… why not ???
a lucid dream is a super-realistic video game, if you have the urge to go around and senselessly murder some people even if it’s outside of the context of your dream… go for it !!! too much negative energy with no outlet is why people go on killing sprees in WL, they just fill up until they explode… why not attend to these darker impulses in your lucid dreams ??? i’d say it’s not only a healthy thing to do, but a responsible thing to do
i’m not arguing that one should give themselves wholly over to negativity… it’s like milod said, negativity needs to be balanced w/ positivity… an imbalance either way is dangerous… too much positivity and you get self-righteous evangelists who are blind to the pain they are causing with their actions… too much negativity and you get a hitler
I have often used my LD ‘s to exact “creative justice” against wrongs I felt were committed against me in WL. I can tell you I was not genital or fair. Yet in spite of it I would wake up and feel great.
We all have angry feelings and dark thoughts they are always with us and are a part of us. To explore them is to learn more about ourselves.
To suppress them in my opinion would be unhealthy.
This part of ourselves that we don’t want to acknowledge will find a outlet sooner or later. It my be as: sudden bursts of anger like getting into an argument with some store clerk, ulcers, high blood pressure, migraine headache are just a few examples of what we do to ourselves when we suppress these feelings we have.
Giving yourself an outlet in your LD is healthy and normal and far better than the alternatives.
What fun is there in that? None of it is real any way.
Why? In a LD you can confront and deal with theses feelings in a safe environment. In a ND your reason for doing these things are unclear so you don’t really get closure with it but, in a LD you can.
Remember, in the end, it is no different than playing a video game.
I killed myself many DC. That’s no problem when you don’t have too great abilities. But remember that these characters are part of yourself and that their power evolves with yours. Some years ago, I began merging dream characters. With 10 of them for example, you almost make a dream god. A very powerful one. And when it becomes a habit, you begin to meet very powerful characters in non-lucid dreams, because some parts of you are used to do this alone - because of your LD experiments ! If you have too much agressive schemes in your psyche, you will then have very bad dreams, because you will be chased be powerful demons created by your own experiments. Even if you become lucid, it can be difficult. After 1000 LD or more, there are some characters I can’t overpower (let’s say a 150 feet fire demon). But I must confess that such characters only appeared after my merging experiments.
To see how you deal with your powerful DCs, you can try an experiment. During an OBE, go under you mattress and jump in the void, toward the lower levels. Call after the “mattress demon”. He is a great black shape which is “only” the equivalent of the merging of 8-10 DC (let’s say : a natural result of all your negativity). All my friends who searched for him found him. It seems to be a common psychic structure.
And when you find him… good luck !
Since I have been LD ing I have had few if any nightmares. I think giving your negative energy an outlet you actually cure nightmares.
Don’t get me wrong I do not advocate the whole sale slaughter of DC in your dreams and in every dream. (Though it is ok if you do) I believe you should keep everything(including your dreams) in balance.
I believe that any DC only has what power I give them.
to my opinion the dream world is like the earth world, if u kill there its something bad like u just killed someone in the earth world u know? U can say I am a monster in the dream world, I have like no control over anything, I only know one thing to do, kill everyone thats all! even in LDs all I do is kill…I cant help it its so fun but its so wrong, i cant control it either…I feel so bad for those DCs…Hopefully they might accept me not as a demonic being programmed to kill…
I don’t shrug them off either, I wonder where they come from and try to figure it out… however I don’t think that dreaming of killing someone necessarily means you have repressed violent urges, it could be symbolic for some sort of other problem in your life too.
Playing a game is hitting a couple of keys… sure you’re killing pixelated people, and enjoying it… but you aren’t actually picking up a gun, putting it against someones forehead, and pulling the trigger.
YOU ARE in a dream. How real it feels and how it affects you largely depends on what kind of dream it is. There are some so vivid that I’d venture to say you wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between real life/dream murder other than that you acknolwadge that you are dreaming.
I don’t think kind of realism is really beneficial to your mind. What you have to keep in mind is humans aren’t evil, or good… they are neutral… they don’t have an evil side or a good side… really… I mean… as far as I gather, if you took a random human and kept him away from this world with our morals, laws, etc… he’d just be an animal, a smart animal… capable of killing easily… but not desiring to senselessly do so… he wouldn’t have all sorts of pent up issues, etc… and he’d probably show some compassion to a human he interacted with, being as we are social creatures.
So… we don’t need to kill things, not at all… we need to deal with anger properly before it builds up to rage… there are healthy ways to do that, excercising, punching bags, screaming… then there are unhealthy ways, violent video games, randomly being mean to people… LD massacres…
when you use that as your only outlet, you know, you’re gonna get off on it, you’re gonna get hooked to it, you’re going to be really desensitized, and you’re going to form a habit…
at the extreme, anytime you get angry, you’ll think “kill kill kill kill kill!!!” instead of maybe for someoen that just finds a non-violent way to cope with things might do deep breathing or just really want to go jogging or something…
there is nothing inherently wrong with enjoying violent cinema/games, though if you are obsessed with them i’d say you have a problem… but you know, if you make a huge habit out of it, make a life out of it, you can simply type in a website address and see the real thing, see real people dying… what happens when that isn’t enough?
It can be a problem, very easily, though it can be an outlet, it ultimately only makes things worse.
Porn for example… you’re horny, you masturbate… fine… you’re addicted to masturbation maybe, that’s healthy for your body… (unless you do it WAY too much)… but maybe you make a habit out of porn… well… that escalates quite easily (as i know from experience) and though there isn’t anything wrong with it, it creates problems…
I’d liken it to drinking water that only makes you perpetually thirstier.
I think there is a problem if you need to realistically slay people, especially PEOPLE YOU KNOW, in dreams, on a regular basis, just to vent your feelings… I mean… WHY DO YOU HAVE FEELINGS THAT STRONG? I mean… maybe you need to try and put something else in place to keep yourself from getting that angry in the first place? You know? What happens when you get bored with LDs, then what? It’ll happen… I periodically get bored with them, if I used them for release (i used to, sexual release) … i’d just get that much more upset.
And it can snowball if you don’t have self control.
No, it’s a rather immature thing to do. If you have a problem with someone, do you kill them? Hopefully not. It’s better to try and use tools to root that problem out and solve it. Now granted, there are people that really deserve a good beating… but I mean… you have issues with your boss… maybe you’re about to explode… fine… give him a flogging in dream if it’ll really make you feel better, but maybe use the dream to talk to him, confront him, tell him your issues with him, etc… and try to integrate that into real life.
If all you ever do is kill him, that’s not going to fix the problem… and sometimes the problem doesn’t need to be there, unless he’s just a really particularly horrible person that can’t be dealt with rationally.
I don’t think an imbalance in positive is dangerous, the problem with evangelists lies in their BLIND ARROGANCE… you know… and well, suicide bombing, that isn’t positivity. They may view it that way, but … that all stems from a wee bit too much blind faith and ignorance… and of course poor living conditions.
I mean… you should immense yourself with the positive, but you shouldn’t pretend the negative doesn’t exist and hide from it… there’s no reason we have to be half good and half evil, you know? All we do is deal with emotions, all emotions are are chemical reactions, the key is not letting them build up… a lot of fake happy religious zealots pretend they don’t have certain “impure” thoughts and that can lead to problems.
But you know… don’t deny your desires, find a healthy way to release them, absolutely, but I can only see benefit from trying to be as positive as possible… just don’t lie to yourself and pretend problems aren’t there.
The whole point of this is killing sprees dont’ solve anything, they just temporarily release anger, but they never cut off the source of those problems in the first place…
if it’s just a once in a while damn i’m pissed off at the world thing… i guess… but if it’s a chronic problem and you see LD killing as a necessary thing to get rid of bad feelings, I think you need to be trying different methods… you know?
besids… FLYING… man… flying eleviates tons of stress… i guess it could make you want to jump off a skyscraper… but I don’t see anything psychologically scarring about flying…
sure if you want to have a violent dream once in a while it’s not the end of the world, though…I think we’re kind of on the same page…
I just don’t under any circumstances think you should summon someone you know and kill them or mess with them. I think you’ve crossed the line if you’re doing that and it leaves you feeling GOOD… if you have issues with a person they’ll show up in a ND sooner or later, and if they bother you enough in the dream… kill them, sure… it feels good, they did something to provoke it.
but deliberately summoning/hunting for someone you know everytime you are lucid so you can kill him is pretty screwed up…
my experiences have more than lead me to believe that you can summon real people into your dreams, and interact with them… but even before i had some confirmations it still felt wrong…
So… to sum most of this up in three(ish) lines:
find a positive and constructive outlet for negative feelings
don’t deliberately seek out and kill real people in your dreams unprovoked
if a DC doesn’t want you killing them, don’t… most of them are pretty willess to begin with, take the serious ones seriously.
Never, as far as I am concerned it is just a urban legend.
holy reality
I am far more creative than that.
Again I am not talking about obsessive acts. I am just talking about exploring different parts of yourself on occasion. As I have said Im not an advocate of turning all your dreams into a “choping mall” but, we all have dark thoughts from time to time and I believe that LD ‘s are a safe place to explore them. I think you are erroneously placing us both in a extremist category which neither of us belong in.
You don’t. All you have to do is look around the world to see what happens when things are thrown to far off balance. Look at history and you will see what happens when one side holds the upper hand.
It is the same for an individual, balance is important.
There is one point I do want to make that I mentioned in a different thread but is important enough to mention here. DC ‘s have no FREE WILL and are completely at the mercy of the dreamer. They are no more than puppets or video graphics and without the dreamer they are nothing.
You probably did not notice that every DC, every dream object, is the visual expression of a channel of your energy body. If you energy body is well developped (by microcosmic orbit, yogas, meditation, chi-qong etc…), you can verify it by merging with any object or DC : then you will feel the energy flow in the corresponding channel. Entering a tornado, you may feel the central channel. Entering less impressive objects, you may feel secondary ones.
Without you, for sure your kundalini would be nothing. But would you claim this energy being your puppet ? It arises in dreams too, and when it catchs you… your are the puppet.
Well is it that easy to answer yes or now? How do you know for sure?
Perhaps it depends on what the DC represents. How would that be affected?
Dr Laberge says that in doing this (crushing the symbolic appearances of characteristics of our personalities in dreams) we may be symbolically rejecting and attempting to destroy parts of ourselves.
Also killing DC’s is called the Senoi system.
But Paul Tholey found that this approach is not very fruitful.
Tholey concluded that a conciliatory approach is more likely to result in a positive experience for the dreamer - allowing the dreamer to understand the meaning of whatever ‘evil’ DC attacked him/her. This doesn’t mean giving in to an attack either.
Attacking a DC (or killing them) normally results in “dream avengers” according to Tholey’s research.
I do not agree. By seeking ‘dream revenge’ you are not doing anything positive except harbouring bad feelings inside of yourself. You know you aren’t really doing anything or really gaining anything, so the feelings don’t go.
As a Christian, I don’t suppress them, instead I give them to God (for His justice is better than ours) and it feels better that way too for me - angry feelings go away too when you do that.
