Im sorry I’m new to all this… just last week I figured out that you can control your dreams. I’ve always been able to remember my dreams, and last night I managed to control my dream. Well, the question is: ¿Is the perception of time in a dream the same as the perception of time when you are awake? For example, you have just been dreaming for 2 hours of real time. ¿Is it possible that your dream seems to have lasted more than the 2 hours?
Thanks!
Hi javiconthe,
I’m afraid your question is not in the right subforum. 
[mod]that’s why I moved it 
[/mod]
Two possibilities:
1° most often, you dream in real time, then the perception of the dream time is quite the same than the real time (LaBerge made this experiment).
2° there are “rhetorical figures” in your dream, that is ellipses, flash-backs, voice-over resumes, etc. that will give you the feeling that more time has ellapsed, just like in a movie when they summarize a whole life in two hours.
You can’t dream for two hours in real time, the maximum for a REM sleep period is about 50 minutes.
Hm, what i’ve heard some people say is that time is something that was just made up by man, and that the only real time that exists is here and now. Dreams have no real concept of time and can last as long in your head as you want. Then again, this isn’t exactly what i’ve heard, i’m just trying to remember it. I’m not sure which theory is true.
Well, this may not be what you had been asking, but within dreams there can be a great deal of variability in how one experiences time, that is, in how many moments of experience go into any single unit span of time. Let me explain… normally we can say that per every unit span of time, let’s say 5 seconds, we NORMALLY insert about 100 moments of experience. Our sense of the SPEED of time going by is governed by this 100 moments per 5 second arrangement that we are grown used to. But sometimes time seems to go quickly, and then sometimes it seems to go on forever. When time seems fast, then there are LESS moments per every 5 seconds. When time drags, then MORE moments are going into the actual time units.
Yes, it is boring for Time to seem Slow, but it is much more useful and safe for us. When time seems slow, we are actually experiencing more things. We notice more things per second than we do when time flys by.
How does this relate to dreaming? Well, remember those dreams where we are trying to run away but it feels like our feet are made of lead. Well, actually we are probably running like gazelles, but it is because time SEEMS SLOW because we are fitting in many more moments of experiece than usual. This happens in dreams when we have an adrenaline rush. Indeed, it happens in waking when we have an adrenaline rush. If one becomes accustomed to one’s state of consciousness while within an Adrenal Rush, then it is much like a dream of being in SLOW MOTION. Indeed, the great secret to the Marshal Arts is to voluntarily will a rush of adrenaline and then to ride it out while in one’s fights or competitions. It all seems like a flash to the spectators, but to the contestants… the good one’s… the fights are rather like chess matches – one throws a punch that one knows that the other fighter sees coming, and plans for the response, and endeavors to finally throw a punch or a kick that the opponent simply finds impossible to block or dodge in time, even while he sees it coming the whole time. Its not the slap-happy crap that now parades as the Martial Arts.
Once I had such a dream. Oh I had many dreams before, running AWAY from the danger, but in running away, one does not see that time has SLOWED DOWN, that is, that one is experiencing much much more per every second. It just seems slow. But when I faced my enemy, then I saw that they were slow too. OH! Then I suspected that if my sense of the EXPERIENCE was unique, then I would be able to fight them all with a great deal more AWARENESS than they could fight back. And that is how it happened. Seeming to take forever, I charged at them and beat up a gang of five big bruising thugs, simply because it was so slow to me, but to them it was all a blur. All they knew was that I had dashed at them in a sprint and before they knew it they were all lying down with their asses kicked.
Now, what you were wondering about was the phenomena of having a lifetime of experience in a few minutes. Well, that was idea was popularized by one whom we should all be a little bit familiar with – Mohamed. He reported that he had gotten his complete Revelation from the Angel Gabriel in the time it took to accidentally knock over a glass of water while he fell into his Visionary Swoon, but was able to catch the glass before it had even halfway spilled, after getting hours, or even days of Experience.
There had been others to report such things. But what is actually happening here is that these Angels are implanting memory packets, or memory clusters.
Indeed, this is how I suppose many people believe they have had Past Lives. They had been given other people’s Memory Clusters, as a kind of blessing or a gift, so that they would know of other people’s lives and experiences. And they make the assumption that it must have been them. This is the delusion of the “I” consciousness, of thinking in the First Person. If we perceive another person’s memory, but it is ringing with I, I, I, me, me, me. Well, the normal person comes out of it thinking it was himself.
So, if you have a huge dream in a very short time, then you should rather suppose that you did not actually experience that entire dream, but rather that you were given in an instant, the Memory of that long experience.
Oh, that reminds me. One time I awoke with a very vibrant aura, and suspected I had just had a very intense dream. But I couldn’t remember anything. So i besought my various angels and saints, and then in a split second I remembered this dream in which I was in the presence of this remarkable Guru who told me that he was about to tell me the most important story, but that if I did not remember every single word, sylable, even comma, then he would have me forget the entire thing. Well, apparently I had forgotten something, and so I forgot it all, but upon appeal it was given to me, the situation surrounding my loss… I would get to know what I had missed.
Leo, I agree with the idea. But I feel compelled to comment. Firstly, If you get used to the higher input of experience it will seem to be normal time. Not slowmotion. It’s only when the input is different from what were used to it seems relatively slower or faster.
Also it does not correspond with boredom and fun. When we’re having fun out mind is engaged and active, and usually we have some sort of experience. While when we are inactive the mind is not nescessarily engaged. and the experience is not stimulting. Hence there is no need for the brain to speed up to take in all the activity around us. And time seems to go slower when were bored.
Secondly. and this is just a comment. But the secret to martial arts is to get an adrenaline rush? I think not. Nost martial arts filosofies say that to win you need to keep a cool mind. Adrenaline may speed you up, but it inhibits higher brain functions. To play a chess game in an adrenaline rush would be impossible beacaue you can’t think straight, you act more on instinct. Needless to say, this is off topic.
But still. As I said. I agree with your idea. I have had lucid dreams that seemed to last a long time. And when I have written them down I see that the events that took place don’t seem to equal the time It felt like it was. I wouldnät say the answer is simply that time seemed to go in slowmotion. because it didn’t. And I wouldn’t say that i was simply tricked into thinking time had passed by movie style techniques. Because I didn’t THINK… I FELT… Even after I had written it down it still felt like it took longer than you’d think. I don’t know about you but I am never tricked by movies when I watch them I know full well that only one second passed when they went to bed and then it’s the next day. Though I don’t notice such effects in dreams until after waking up, there is no filler illusion. I think that it helps to create a story, but I think there is more to it.
Well, there are no absolutes.
As we all know from our practical experiences, high intensity experiences don’t last. Adrenaline Rushes don’t last. There is no High that we do not come down from. We wake from every dream. Believe me, nobody has ever gotten used to Happiness.
Those of us who have had many Lucid Dreams can testify that there seems to be a quantifiable intensity… we can feel just how vivid they are. There is a power that ebbs and flows, waxes and wanes. This phenomena with time is no different. If it is anything like everything else, then it cannot be sustained.
As in my example about the Martial Arts Masters, I would suspect that the losers are the first ones to come out of their adrenaline rush.
Okay, go back and read what I wrote. People need to get used to adrenaline. It is not the speeding up but the SLOWING DOWN that needs to be appreciated. Go back and read what I wrote.
If it was easy, they’d all be doing it. But, again, like I said, they are all a bunch of slap-happy juveniles nowadays.
For a while during my mid-life crisis I was into sport motorcycle riding. I had several accidents. there is nothing like a motorcycle crash to give one a good adrenaline rush. Now, perhaps in a dream I could have followed the action consciously, but as it happened, all I could remember was the moment of the first impact and then coming out of the rush moments afterward. Witnesses to the accidents said that I did some fairly athletic contortions to escape from harm. It is true that the first thing I remember afterward is running down the road ahead of where the accident had been. Apparently I had fallen into that state of consciousness and it had done its thing.
Does that sound like I lost my cool or got all speedy?
What Adrenaline does is that it increases that amount of Conscious Moments per unit of Time. That can ONLY HELP. Less consciousness is never better… or, if you think so, you are ready for suicide.
I’m not sure about the discussion here. I thought the focus was on dream-time in relation to the time spent sleeping 
The way I saw it the question was; if you sleep for 2 hours, can it be longer in the dream? I haven’t done it personally but I know people who say they have spent a week dream-time in just a normal nights sleep. So I thought the answer to that question would have been yes. 
In a dream I think the world around you slowing down would only happen if you wanted it to. If your mind was just running faster then the world [being totally constructed by your mind] should also speed up to match.
Leo I meant that In order for tiem to seem to slow down, your brain needs to speed up. That’s exactly what happens with adrenaline. That is the reasong “tie” seems to slow down. Liken it to a highspeed camera, they produce slow motion imagery when the tape is played at normal speed. And a camera that records slower than then playback speed, the events will playback fast.
Yes you can do things quickly in an adrenaline rush. But the drawback is that the brain goes into a panicked mode “fight or flight response” And in that state of mind procued by adrenaline, you are still conscious, but you are acting more like an animal than a rational thinker. Wich is what most martial arts values that you do. To be in control rather than out of control. If you reflect on your adrenaline rush, did you even realise what you were doing while doing it? Time may seem to go slowly but you don’t gain any “time” to THINK. But again… it’s off topic.
Dragon73. You’re right, this is about dream-time. But this discussion has had many theories, and it seems logical that if the dream is longer than realtime the brain must be working faster to fit in more experiences, that seem to the dreamer to go at normal speed, but to an outside observer would seem to go very fast.
Some people say they spent such long times in dreams. The problem is that the rest of us have not had those experiences, some find it hard to believe it possible. Especially with LaBerges experiment showing that time seems to go at the same speed in dreams. I take the reports of those long dreams for what they are. Another’s account that I can’t prove or disprove. What’s left is to wonder and ponder until I might have such a long dream myself.
I personally don’t care what explanation there might be to such accounts, if you experience that you dream for that long that is all that matters.
I completely agree with you, Dragon73. Whenever a beginner comes on the forum and asks a simple question about how time works in dreams, it sounds like people prefer not to answer the question but talk about how it would be possible to extend dream time infinitely. It seems to me there are dedicated threads about those sci-fi theories.
Such opinions are perhaps vulgarized on the forums by some people but they do not correspond to the facts. Dreams have the same concept of time than reality, hence you have to work on oneiric beliefs and make efforts in order to modify this perception. Or else everybody would experience any sort of dream time and Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche wouldn’t give modifying time perception as a goal that could possibly be reached in LD’s. By the way, I’ve not read for the moment any serious account of experienced LD’ers in which the feeling of time was deeply modified.
Now Leo Volont is true when he says that some neurotransmitters like adrenalin (and serotonin, I think) may modify the feeling of time. It’s true IRL hence it must be true during dreams. But your sensation of modified time is unlikely to exceed what you can experience IRL. And if you’ve a too great adrenaline boost, you’ll wake up by the way, that’s what you say here.
By the way, I don’t think that there is a slowing of time in dreams when you can’t run, cause the people who chase you are still running fast. 
Anyhow, the general experience about the feeling of time in dreams is summarized by this quote. It’s an excerpt from LaBerge’s EWLD:
This corresponds to my own common experience and the common experience of most of the dreamers.
Yes, time is an invention.