The Dream that Lasted for Years

Beyond Dreaming
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Hi all. I just stumbled across this site and chose to make a post. I’ve never really talked about this before because most people would think that i was lying or exaggerating or for that matter just making it up, but i swear I’m not. For the sake of space and time I’m goin to skip over most of the storyline details and just talk about the experience.

A few years back I had a dream in which i lived for Two Years that I can remember from start to end, just as though i was living my normal life. It felt like real life as well. When it started i had thought that i was waking up in my own bed the next morning, but when i got to looking around the room i quickly realized that i was someplace else entirely. I got out of bed and got dressed quickly, somehow i knew what drawer to look in. As i was getting dressed i caught myself in the mirror, I was someone else entirely,close to the same age but someone else. After leaving the bedroom i might someone in the hallway, a girl my age in the dream. she called me by name, but not my real name, and oddly enough i knew hers. She said breakfast was ready, of which i could smell it. At breakfast i met the rest of the family, which i had never really met or seen before, but once again i had some knowledge of who they were already. They then filled me in that i had been asleep for several day after i had had an accident and hit my head.

Up to this point i was fairly certain i was dreaming. I’ve had LD’s all my life and i just know when i’m dreaming pretty much always. However i couldn’t seem to find any mistakes or abnormalities to prove that i was dreaming, as i do with most LD’s. So i just went with it, since as i said it all felt real.

So i lived out the whole day through out which i tried as hard as i could to prove to myself it was a dream. I did this by trying to do things that i’ve found impossible to do in dreams. The first was writing. I had found a bound notebook and pen and began writing a journal entry. After i got done i then tried to read it, which i’ve never been able to do in a LD. When i have tried to do this i find the text unreadable or just jiberish. next i tried to change the environment around me which i’ve had more than enough practice doing in dreams, but nothing. Long story short i could never prove to myself it was a dream nor could i get myself to wake up on que.

I finally started to get scared that i was stuck, specially since the dream had be consistent for what had seemed to me to be a whole day. At this point i was getting ready for bed in the dream. Then it dawned on me that maybe if i went to bed I’d wake up. I was grasping at straws. So i laid down closed my eyes and tried to sleep, and the dream changed to another dream and i woke up the next morning, but when i sat up i quickly realized that i was still in the first dream.

It went on like this, day in day out for two weeks. I even confronted the other people in the dream about it. I told them all about my real life and that i wasn’t who they thought i was. but they said that was just all part of a fantasy caused by trauma to the head. At this point i began to believe them.

A year and fifty more weeks went by before I woke up the entire time of which i kept the journal that i had started the first day, never fully believing that it was all real. After the two year mark i left them of my own accord do to reasons pertaining to the dreams storyline. Like i have previously stated i’ve glossed over the storyline of the dream so i don’t get carpaltunnle. There is much much more detail and many more memories that i hold from this dream. To date I have yet to find anyone who has had the same sort of experience. I guess a part of me hopes it was real somehow, but let me know what you all think or if you’ve heard of someone having such an experience before. P.S. Sorry for any errors. I’m not much of a writer

1 Like
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This is unbelievable! I’m afraid I can’t really comment on this since I’ve never had such an experience, but have you heard of Erin Pavlina, or maybe read her blog? She’s a psychic medium as well as an expert lucid dreamer. In one of her blog entries, she told us of a dream very similar to yours. You might want to read it. Welcome to Naptown

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True that does sound kind of similar, but i couldn’t change my dream by concentrating like normal. My experience was also continues from beginning to end except for one point where i woke up near the end, about a year and 3\4 in. It was cause by a moment of frustration in the dream in which i could not solve the problem that the dream was based around.When i awoke i was confused as to where i was and who i was, cause when i awoke i could see my reflection, til i realized that i was actually really awake.

At first i was happy to be back, but i quickly realized what i had left behind and the people that i had thought i had abandoned. I was awake 15min-ish and quickly got back to sleep in an attempt to get back. Once i was asleep I was back. In the dream i had apparently passed out for a couple of seconds and had fallen to the floor.

Another oddity of this dream was that while in it i was able to think much more clearly and over the two year period i had learned and gained insight on subjects and theories that i can only begin to wrap my head around when im awake. In the dream i had become their Einstein so to say. The reason i find this odd is because when i woke for that 15min period i still retained all that information that i had learned from mathematical equations to the little moments, like a family photo we had taken during one of their holidays. However when i woke up for the finale time everything was just a blurred image of what it once was, like the memories of a persons early childhood.

A final oddity was that this is the first dream i’ve ever had where i could actually feel pain and not just the idea of pain.

Sorry for writing kind of in tangents it’s just hard to know where to begin.

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wow thats intense. like im oficially super creeped now. thats some matrix stuff going on there…

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So… I’m assuming that you learned a lot of things during this dream that pertain to waking life? If it truly felt like 2 years, did you change as a person would in 2 years? Were your morals/values/perceptions any different upon waking for good?

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Can you go back there? If you willed yourself to appear there in a dream, would it work? That would be a bummer to be cut off from your world of two years…

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Wow, let me start by saying awesome questions. I’ll just go down the the questions right in order.

“I’m assuming that you learned a lot of things during this dream that pertain to waking life?”
Yes, in the dream i actually had a great deal more brain power than I ever could in real life. The society that populated the dream was for the most part equal to the early 1900’s America they had some complex tech but not very much. Their society was more based on quality of life than quantity so they only developed what they needed, so there was much room for improvement. I remember building some of there mathematics from the ground up. Near the end I had some pretty complex stuff i was working with. I don’t remember much of the absolute details of the formulas, but I know I retained something because since that dream I’ve had a much easier time understanding some of the more advanced physics topic. Where as before i could only begin to start something like that, let alone taken an interest in it.

“If it truly felt like 2 years, did you change as a person would in 2 years? Were your morals/values/perceptions any different upon waking for good?”
Simply put. Yes…lol. I became much less self centered, because it made me realize how big the Universe must be. Because if my mind could create it’s own little world like that, then what can the all of time and space do? Alternately, if my mind didn’t create any of it and it really some how happened… Well imagine the possibilities then. So guess it just made me realize what all else there is to life. I’m all around a much happier person as well.

“Can you go back there? If you willed yourself to appear there in a dream, would it work?”
I’ve tried quite hard and the closest i’ve ever got was seeing the girl that i met in the dream, Mia, once. =-( But i have been able to do it with other dreams.
As far as being cut off for two years wasn’t that bad. Don’t get me wrong it was a shock at first, but if i could do it again… I would.

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I can’t believe this… a dream lasting 2 years. Not only a ND but a LD. That’s unbelievable. Please excuse my skepticism, I try being open-minded to everything and not just pushing it away, but this sounds very, very awkward. You must have been in a very strange trance during the dream with it being so real… everyone telling you that you had an accident. You’ll end up believing them. So please tell me: :grin:

1. Can you remember those “dream-days” like your normal RL days ? Can you remember certain actions one after the other ?

[IRL we all go through many actions throughall the day, unlike in a ND where mostly the dream consist of just 2 to 3 actions. For example IRL one can say they woke up, went to work, ate, had an argument, met someone, talked to someone, took a nap, wrote an email etc. Long story short, IRL one can tell how they got there while in a ND one can’t, they’ll just remember: I was chased by X.]

2. How real did it feel compared to RL ? Do you know realize some strange feature which occurred during that dream which were abnormal ?

[Even in LD’s people get confused, especially if it’s a low awareness level LD. People think a ND (even one in which they lost lucidity) was RL, but after they woke up they can easily ‘discover’/pick out the strange thing which happened in their dreams which prove it was a dream.]

3. Do you recall any special achievements in these two years of dreaming ?

[Two years is a lot. People would remember certain achievements they’ve accomplishes during 2 years (even one year) or important events like graduation, job performances, losing/getting a job… .]

4. How vivid do you recall the experience to have been ?

[This is IMO a key question for all dreams and lucid dreams. They are never as real as RL. Even though some may be very vivid and clear, there still will be some treats concerning visual features which prove that it was a dream.]

5. Were there really 2 years, talking about the ‘time’ measurement like IRL, or where there “dreamyears” (you only remember them being 2 years from the dream) ?

[Like said, 2 years is a holy lot… aren’t you perhaps recalling wrong ? You remember it from the dream to have been 2 years and now you’re only confused…]

I’m trying to find some things which prove the fact that you were dreaming and that it couldn’t have been 2 years, taking in account the RL duration. Although this may be true… I don’t know, and don’t judge anybody. I believe you, though I want to see if there were any treats to prove that it was a dream.

I won’t put in philosophical statements like: you experienced a distant projection of yourself, you went in a past live (blah blah), though your experience makes me wonder a bit… :meh:

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This sounds amazing. A two year dream is the perfect breeding grounds for a story. This is what I hope to achieve through lucid dreams. I want to be able to conjour novels from just a night’s sleep! And it has happened to you, with no preperation!If dreams really are the children of idle brains, than this would have never really happened!

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“This sounds amazing. A two year dream is the perfect breeding grounds for a story.” = Togro This is a very good point and that’s why I’ve skipped over the storyline so much. Some day i would like to write a book about it.

As for Don’s questions.

  1. Can you remember those “dream-days” like your normal RL days ? Can you remember certain actions one after the other ?

Yes I do remember it like normal days, but it has been five years going on six since this happens so i really only remember the key events especially the first two weeks. The first two weeks i remember very well because everything was so unbelievable. One other thing i remember too is a game that I played several times with a kid in the house that was couple years younger than me. I have all the rules written in a note book that i wrote in shortly after having the dream.

  1. How real did it feel compared to RL ? Do you know realize some strange feature which occurred during that dream which were abnormal ?

Everything felt as real as you or me right now. The only strange feature was like i said i had a lot of extra brain power. I could just look at things and know how they worked. For example say i had never seen a car before. I could look at the car see it run and just understand the principles that it takes to work: ie mixing air with gas putting it under pressure and causing combustion with a spark and so on. It was sorta like just having to look and a page in a book in order to read it, rather than having to look at each word individually and in order.

  1. Do you recall any special achievements in these two years of dreaming ?

Yes, I figured out a mathematical equation that allowed me to move a planet through time and space along with creating the blue print for the device that did it. This would probably be the other treat.

  1. How vivid do you recall the experience to have been ?

Most of it now just seems like a dream, excuse the pun, but anything so unreal would. At the time though it was all right there. It was like RL.

  1. Were there really 2 years, talking about the ‘time’ measurement like IRL, or where there “dreamyears” (you only remember them being 2 years from the dream) ?

Time passed just like everyday. I remember several times just being in the living room in the evening writing in my journal, or just sitting there thinking, and near the end of the dream i had my own lab that i remember spending countless hours banging my head against one of those chalk boards you can flip over. I also took the time to go through a lot of books as well, once i realized how easy things came to me in the dream.

Most of all what i missed in the end were the people. I remember saying good bye and everyone one standing there waving at me like they were going to take a family photo. That’s the part that has stuck with me the most. I can still tear up thinking about it.

Once again excellent questions. I’ve never really talked much about this before because it is so crazy. Thank you.

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Could you teach us this dreamgame?

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One word for all of this… SWEEEET XD
I guess the universe thought it was your time to learn something, so you had that experience. Keep trying getting back and good luck. :smile:

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Thank you for being so straightforward and detailed. It definitely helps us believe you, especially since you’re a newcomer. Given the other anecdotal evidence I’ve read, I have little to no reason to think you’re lying, though I still have many more tests I need to run for myself before I am convinced of whether dreams can last that long. It is definitely comforting that you’re able to clearly and candidly answer our questions, though; it adds one more piece of evidence leaning towards the reality of time dilation and away from it being a trick of the mind, a compression of false memories.

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this sounds amazing, thank you for telling this to us. but i can’t help but feel jealous about it :meh: hahaha. i bet you woke up as a different person indeed.
if i were you, i would consider it as a very important gift, because you got to live an extra 2 years of life that you wouldn’t have had if you just lived your normal life. you prolonged your life without actually doing it :tongue: that’s kind of what i was going for initially as i started lucid dreaming. but i guess not everyone can do this.

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Really amazing experience. It really makes you wonder what’s possible in dreams and RL. Thanks for sharing. :smile:

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Thank you very much for your responses, Kyoshiken and sorry that I read it so long after you posted. :shy:

I believe I understand your ‘extra brainpower’ that you had during the dream. Sometimes when I talk to a DC, they say something abstract and strange but I myself understood what they were talking about.

It looks like there isn’t any 100% clear proof do prove it was a dream, when you said it yourself it felt so real. In that case, there’s only one thing which could lighten up this hopeless situation: a RC, for example the nose RC where you keep your nose closed with your fingers and try to breathe. Well… that could also fail as you could hold your breath IRL while you do this or wake up because of the focus on your real lungs. :meh:

Did you do a RC ? What surprises me most is the ‘other’ life you lived there. It was clear and made sense, not like most dreams or LDs where you can clearly tell it is a dream.

Hey, perhaps you can get on with your ‘dream-life’ and thus have two identities a the same time :wink:.

Cheers and good luck with more year-long experiences !
Don

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That’s really awesome! I’ve never even come close to doing something like that myself, but if there’s anything I’ve learned LDing over the years it’s that the mind is a pretty amazing place.

I’m interested to hear if you did an RC as well! Your dream seems like it was way more stable than anything I’ve ever experienced. Out of curiosity, what kinds of things did you read about when you looked over those books? I’ve tried to read before in LDs but the text changes around and garbles up all the time. I bet you read some really cool stuff!

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This is incredible. So how long IRL were you asleep for, one night?

The fact that you couldn’t manipulate your environment (and the fact it lasted 2 years!) makes me think this was more than just a dream. I have no explanation for it. If I were you I’d try explaining it to people who are very experienced in the realm of dreaming and projection, such as Erin Pavlina who was mentioned earlier.

If you ever write a book about this experience, I’ll be sure to read it.

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im starting to wonder if somehow… just maybe… you entered some sort of parrallell universe some sort of other dimension… Something probably never to be explained for hundreds and hundreds of years… makes me wonder…

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Time dilation is a wonderful thing in dreams.I’ve fooled around with it in my dreams a lot and I too have been in these ridiculously long dreams. However after the first few months the dream tends to lose stability. Unless of course your not lucid. In which case it could go on for as long as your Rem transmitters (I forget the proper name) can move fast. This is something I wish do experiments on soon. I’ve actually been on several forums hearing this very same story so this isnt anything unnatural. Assuming the dreamer is a natural LDer.