“How many RPM’s is your cat?”
this is a reply to ben7’s “animals are lesser” comment. Don’t think I’m pickin’ on ya, I just want to make a point of how “greater” animals can be.
Animals are greater and lesser from each other. We lack certain intelligence that other species have instinctively. Certain species are aware of Earth’s magnetic field and it’s changes, such as birds and turtles. Some animals are able to predict the weather and it’s seasons and prepare accordingly. Or an animal may be able to lead itself to water. Or a whale may communicate with another whale half-way across the world about certain food and living conditions. The levels of intelligence seem to be spread through a spectrum of levels throughout all animals.
However, True intelligence may be the lack of intelligence. Humans seem to be intelligent creators, but we fail to predict the impact these creations have on Earth and it’s creatures. That can be dumb. Our greatest intelligence may actually be our biggest threat. Unlike other animals who’s greatest intelligence is unusually something they use for survival; such as hunting, mating, or defense.
Humans lack a natural coat or fur from the elements. We are unable to survive the elements bare. We also lack a natural hunting skill. We don’t have a frog’s long sticky tounge or claws to grip our prey. We also don’t have any natural defenses. We don’t have fangs, camouflage, or poison. Actually, our whole darn “body design” seems pretty dumb and vulnerable.
So animals are not “lesser” than us. And we are not “superior.” We are just different and surely dream different. One animal may live more in it’s dreams than waking life. Koala bears sleep over 18 hours a day, what could they possibly be doing? Animals could use dreams to find a mate, a new water hole, nesting material, more sources of food, or hunting method.
One species may be the ulimate dreamer that we all can learn something from. As it seems we do adopt our greatest inventions and feats from the gifts of animals; flight, telescopes or sonar for example.
Heh, I wonder if cat’s are more likely to lucid dream during RPM. 
My dog is dreaming as I write this message, I wonder what she´s dreaming about. All she´s saying is “Viff…viff…voff!..viff!” rapidly - while her eyes are twitching .
I think that’s pretty much a matter of evolution. I mean, I think human’s started out just as primitive as every other animal, and then they all started evolving differently, the tiger evolved more on it’s body, and the human evolved more on it’s brain. That’s why we don’t have any fur coats to protect us from the cold and teeth to catch food and all that, because we simply don’t have need of it anymore, we rely on our brains. Not to say that animals are stupid or anything. I was actually thinking about this just yesterday, you know when you’re talking to your cat or whatever, and you know that of course he can’t understand what your saying, but you still have the feeling he’s listening to you? Maybe it isn’t a matter of saying what species is smarter, but every animal just has a totally different level of conciousness. (I really don’t think it’s a question if animals have conciousness or not, or else how do you explain things like loyalty and love, like when a dog risks his own life to save his master, that can’t be purely the subconcious. Can it?) But anyway, maybe, hmmm this is hard to explain, you know how you could take two humans and both of them think in ways exactly the opposite of the other, yet both are each capable of doing anything the other can do equally? Maybe that’s what it’s like with different species, just a bit more extreme. Maybe it’s not a matter of intelligence at all.
Anyway, congradulations if you got this far, it’s pretty late so I apologize if it’s sounding like babble by now. 
Our senses are only limited due to there physical composition. Our thoughts, dreams, bodies, and everything around us is composed of a chemical makeup. Our sense of smell is merely a chemical response in our brain and the same goes for what humans describe as love. It’s all simply a chemical response. So whether or not we become emerged in debating or discussing our belief in what “is or isn’t real” is almost irrelevant.
We can all agree as does the administrator of this website and researchers around the world, our brain emits electricity. Our body conducts it quite well and is comprised of mostly water (H20… chemicals that promote electrical impulses). The brain of any living thing and even the basic functions of single cellular organisms are built on the foundation of electricity. With that in mind, let me call attention to the ability of dolphins (a mammal) to use one of its ‘senses’ to locate objects hundreds of yards away. Or the ability of a homing pigeon to find its way back to its place of origin. How is this possible? The brain.
We consider both of these animals to be of relative or minimal intelligence. At least we accept our mental superiority over them. So why don’t we have these abilities… or do we? This concept is more or less a subtopic of LD and is almost embedded in the basic LD discussion.
Like previously discussed in this Thread, in LD are we the only being with a consciousness? Given the uncertain nature of dreams and how little we actually understand about them… who are we to judge. Consider this…. Falling down, falling of a building and falling over is not a good thing. The word ‘falling’ is basically a negative word or is only used in a derogatory context. However, FALLING asleep is okay. And FALLING in love (chemical response) is okay. Why is this? No offense, we understand so little about sleep and yet we all seem so ready to declare such definitive experiences, which is okay. Let me explain.
Please take this post for what it’s worth. I propose we use only one small piece of our brain. If you sleep beside another person, like I do, you may have an experience something like I had a few months back. Were drifting off to sleep my partner and I carried out a conversation. . . into our dream. I’m not proposing we ‘shared’ a dream exactly. Nevertheless, we awoke having the same dream. The details and the basic frightening/startling reality our brains continued communicating beyond our consciousness leads me to believe the following…
Our brains can communicate with one another without fundamental forms of communication. We may not be aware of it… but it happens. Have you known what someone was going to say before they said it? Remember the saying… “If you’re ears are ringing, someone’s talking about you?” Where did this come from. Quite possibly from people who have experienced what I call a ‘relative brain connectivity.’ Not telepathy… nowhere anything near it. But just like LD, our brains subconsciously continue activity well beyond our knowing. And maybe something near telepathy could be possible… but it’s a tad far fetched. Who knows?
All this said… if the general human experience is merely comprised of many chemical responses (our brains interpretation of sensory input), when our heart discontinues supplying the brain with blood…. the electricity in our brains dissipates, brain function stops and … we drift off into a ‘sleep.’
People who have had near death experiences say it’s as if they fell asleep and had a dream. Moreover, to bring someone back to life… (pardon the expression) doctors electrocute the crap out of you. Electrical impulses surge back through your brain…. and those “near deathers” report they come back to their physical bodies.
I feel the concepts described are an extension or LD or at least is connected in some way.
By the way…. never have I understood or even heard of LD until today… 1/12/02. I now understand I’ve experienced LD in some way shape or form in the past… but didn’t know it. The things described have been floating through my brain for many years. It’s all becoming clear now.
Let me know what you think.
" to cultivate a decisive perception of this or any reality one must question existence in itself…" — Levi
This is a reply to DreamAddict’s “Animals are superior, for they have fur” comment. Please don’t take this seriously, I just find that typing keeps the boredom-induced insanity away for a little longer.
You made a few links between ‘Intelligence’ and ‘Instinct’ at the start of your post, that I think may be a little unjustified. Intelligence is generally accepted to be the measure of a being’s problem solving ability. Now, when I say ‘problem solving’ I don’t mean jig-saw puzzles, or crosswords. I mean any and all of the challenges associated with survival in a particular environment, communication, prediction and manipulation.
Animals have what I call ‘built-in hardware’ that comes packed with the knowledge of how to survive in certain situations. These instincts arise whether they understand why or not. They suddenly get a desire to run when something big comes along, because they were born with this hardware that already has that reaction installed. And think about it, this makes sense. If each creature had to learn why it had to run from larger predators, nothing would ever survive the first encounter to put that lesson into effect next time. Humans have this instinct as well, yet also, evidentally a greatly improved learning ability.
You raised a point that people often discard the most valuable part of their intellect by not taking the consequences of their actions into account. Animals certainly don’t do this either, they just rarely get the chance to prove it given their inability to create anything powerful. Often what drives a man to create something that can potentially affect the environment on a large scale is a more immediate goal, like transportation or the ability to keep food cold for extended periods of time. Whether or not he thinks about the future of the environment is a valid, yet small point against his intelligence.
Most humans are conscious of basic rights, and bare some form of moral. An animal would kill anything it needed to simply to survive itself. Animals also don’t have any kind of continence to keep them awake for a few nights if they kill something cute. Score one for them, eh?
Humans lack all of those physical traits that you discussed for obvious reasons. If they did have them, they would rely on them so much that they would mentally devolve. It takes intelligence to defeat a bear when you don’t have any natural weapons. The only argument is what defines a better creature, evolved mind or evolved weapons systems? 
You’re point about animals and lucid dreaming brought about a few laughs. Not that I can disprove it, but admittedly I was reading it with the same frame of mind as you read a comic strip. Who knows, perhaps they are the lords of the dream world? It’s unlikely, but hey, anything can happen. 
There are lots of interesting posts on this thread, thanks for posting and good job! Many thought provoking posts, so here are my thoughts. My first few lucid dreams happened before I started making an effort to LD. I just suddenly figured out that I was dreaming, and wonder weather this is because of my relatively high intelligence as opposed to other animals (as some people have said in this post) who dream as well. We know animals dream, and we know that brainwaves tell us certain things about what is going on during sleep. We do not know if we or other animals have souls or not, this is up for much debate. Some of the comments in this thread allude to the fact that you must have the high intelligence of a human in order to know that you are dreaming. Why are people speaking like this, is it true? I think not, but I also think there is no evidence either way.
I was just thinking that since animals dream, there’s got to be a chance that one fine day my dog will be dreaming about raining dog biscuits, and figure something’s not right and suddenly he’s lucid (although admittedly this would take some cognitive abilities, but not too much). It might just manifest itself as an LD, with no clue, but he may just come upon the notion that he is indeed in the middle of a dream right now (randomly, as were my first few LD’s, and still are), and since he wont get in trouble he goes right to the garbage can to find 25 cheeseburgers that I threw out, and has a party with them on the floor with no worries about getting into trouble! What joy!
I also wonder if we do have a soul where does it go when we sleep, it must be there to experience the dreams. I believe other animals have souls too. I consider them to be little people with fur (or whatever) with the same basic needs that we all have. Most animals do not like to be alone, I know my dog hates it, he would rather be with anyone or any dog or even cat rather than be alone. He likes to have fun. He does understand what I tell him, because he listens (not so much to the words, but to my vibe).
Atheist, when you said animals have no conscience to keep them from killing something cute in order to eat it, I just had to say that people do not have to rely on killing their food in order to eat it. It comes in a bright yellow piece of paper with your favorite cartoon guy printed on it. Only a few of the many do the killing, but before food was so readily available, everyone was doing the killing with no remorse. You gotta eat! Hungry people will eat damn near anything, and if it’s cute it probably will taste great! If you were speaking more of a right or wrong sort of analogy there, well animals will defend their mates and children to the death. They do not search for conflict. They do not philosophize either, but I know for a fact that my dog aims to please me, not only for a treat, but really more for affection, and there is where I get my views that he does have a conscience and a soul. Because of your user name I guess you will beg to differ but that’s a whole new topic. 
I really wonder what these animals are dreaming about. The interesting part involves perspective. When they dream about a toilet, it is for the opposite reason than when I dream about one. Do they fly in their dreams, and if so do they chase birds? Do birds dream? Do birds dream about swimming (not ducks and such, but sparrows and those birds) underwater? Do cats have nightmares about big dogs?
Bottom line is that I figure some animals that dream a lot might just have the same chance of becoming lucid as I did. Why not? Is intelligence really a factor to the point where we discount the possibility or are there animals out there suddenly thinking, oh my gosh, I am dreaming!?!