A thought occurred to me today. I just recently read some of tosxyChor’s guides. (I don’t know tosxy’s gender so for now I am just going to refer to tosxy as a him.) In one of his guides he talks about ‘knobs’ to control lucidity and sensory levels in your dream. E.G. You want to get more lucid? Turn up the lucidity knob. So I wondered to myself, “Could the same concept be applied to the actual length of a dream?” What I’m thinking of is a device I would call a Dream Timer. You could just summon it in your dreams and set a certain amount of time, say 2 hours. Then your LD would go on for 2 hours and if you wanted to extend or shorten this time you’d just change the amount of time left on the Dream Timer. This is something I would like to see be available so my real reason for posting this is to see if a Dream Timer-like device would indeed be possible. No matter what your answer will be, thank you. 
Actually yes. WritersCube uses what he calls the dream clock. It has two parts, one for real time and one for dream time. For example, he could set 2 hours real, 12 hours dream time. And yes, tosxy is male 
So this could work? I mean, I’ve drawn out a whole dream controller that I could summon in my LD when I have one, the clock is just one aspect. But the dream clock thing would work, would I also have to do input for real time?
To the best of my knowledge, yes it should work. I plan to do something very similar to what writerscube does in his dreams. And i don’t see any reason why you would set the time for real life, as when you exit your sleep cycle, you exit your sleep cycle, and that’s that. It would be useful to have a dream clock and a waking clock so you can see how much dreamtime has elapsed and how long it has actually been. Just don’t go setting the dreamtime for, say 3 days at first. Take it slowly at first and then try to make the dream last even longer the next LD.
Here is the link to WritersCube’s explanation. You may also want to check out his dream journal so you can see the results.
So now that my questions about the Dream Timer thing have been answered, I have another question to pose. If you control how long you spend in this world that you control and it has no honest-to-god correlation to real time; why not make yourself spend eternity in the perfect world of your dreams and that eternity be only one second in real time. So what I’m really asking is, why not have a never-ending dream in which you live out your life for billions, trillions, quadrillions of years!? This is just theoretical, I don’t want to do that for the time period, but I’m asking if it’s possible. Because if it is, we could in theory have a perfect world: Teach everyone to lucid dream, tell everyone one night to have a lucid dream that lasts for ever, everyone goes to sleep and spend eternity in their own heaven.
I know we kinda discussed this in IRC, but I’ll post here as well for the sake of others not in chat at the time. I guess theoretically you could adjust things near infinitely, but I can’t help but think your mind is only capable of stretching things out so long. Frankly we’re not quite sure how or why dream time works so it is a little hard to say.
There have also been studies by LD pioneer Stephen LaBerge that indicated LD’s happen in real time, so it’s also possible increased dream time is only an illusion made up of things like false memories.
I was actually also wondering about dream time. I wanted to ask, as an experienced LDer, how long have you [felt that you’ve] been in a dream? Even with all the false memories or whatever, what’s the longest time you felt that you spent there?
Also, you say don’t set the timer for 3 days at first… But it’s actually really annoying that when an LD comes once in a month and you can’t, just can’t get another one, and then when you do - it’s just under a minute you get to spend there! It’s so annoying…
Well, I hope you’re not asking me this, since I’m not an experienced dreamer but I assume you were addressing either Ninja or Rhewin, not me.
I’d like to add that all of my attempts to artificially increase the length of the dream (hands rubbing, stating intentions to be lucid for X hours, minutes, etc) have not been that successful. It seems to me that these things simply release some of my worry about the dream ending and help me focus more.
What really works wonderfully is dream reentry. I’m in process of re-learning that powerful technique. When the technique is known, the worry about the length of a dream disappears, because you can practically chain multiple dreams together and reenter them at will.
As for the dream time, here’s an example:
The distance between the triangle and the square towards the top right is ~26 minutes. Both were entered into a lucid dreaming app while awake, immediately after the fact. Taking into the consideration the time that it takes to fall asleep, wake up, etc, I estimate that lucid dream to be about 9 minutes long real time. Now the dream itself felt really long.
LD’s have pretty much all been in real time for me. The longest I would say is about 20 minutes. The longest I’ve felt in general is about a week in a ND.
You can set the timer for whatever you want, but I think it might be easier training yourself to adjust time by using a shorter time a first, but try what you want.
I have been able to extend my dreams by about 5-10 minutes through hand rubbing, spinning and autosuggestion.
20 minutes? ;_; Rhewin, you’re shattering my dreams.
I’ve also tried re-entering. No go 
but i i also can’t do WILD, cause if i think about anything or imagine, i can’t go to sleep at all. So that’s why re-entry probably didn’t work for me either…
Try counting like this as you go to sleep…1 I’m dreaming, 2 I’m dreaming, etc.
Has anyone ever had any luck with the dream clock idea?
Hey, they may not be days long but my LD’s have all been precious and I wouldn’t give them up for anything. And in the time I have had in them I’ve done things I never thought possible. I’ve flown, I’ve defeated my worst fears and I’ve piloted the TARDIS across time and space (ok, I didn’t get out after, but it was fun).
I completely agree with you, I do believe that’s not important the quantity as much as quality, and by quality doesn’t have to mean how long your LD was, but what have you achieve in those LDs.
I believe the reason why Rhewin said to you that would be easier or better to adjust timer for shorter time is because it’s more achievable then setting your timer on 100 years at first attempt, and by using shorter time you will more likely achieve your goal and by that you will get more motivated…
Peace!
Rhewin - yezzz, you’ll always get me with the TARDIS… 
actually that Jupiter and Saturn thing that stands as my lucid goal… Yep, I’m hoping to get there with the TARDIS too… Just need to get in an LD first 
running out of patience in this area…
LucidLiving - well, of course I’ve tried counting like you said. But if i do that, any HI will disappear and i can’t go to sleep at all. Basically if my mind is on, i will never go to sleep that’s why WILD just isn’t for me