Recently I have had extremely lucid dreams. If fact you can describe my dreams as being astral projection. I wonder now the nature of dreams and what causes them and if they can be described as real (as in I really had them?). I have also had a few nights of sleep paralysis.

My body was fully sleeping, my body was dead to the world but my mind was active and alive. I some how managed to crawl my "mind" out of "my body" , it felt very real, it felt normal. I rolled over and fell like a bag of potatoes onto the floor. I got up onto what I perceived to be my feet and managed to stumble across towards my bedroom door and went for the brass door handle. And just as I was about to turn it, a black shadowy arm reached around my neck and dragged me back and down. The last thing I remember was trying to shout, "no stop" there was no air to transfer the sound, there was no lungs it felt like as if I was under water.

Then last night something happened that was similar, again my body was fully asleep. I felt vibrations all over my body, a tingly acute electrically sensations like pin and needles but not as strong, like an electric shock but not as strong. I felt this presence over me and coming out of my body met this presence with a fight in me saying "I'm not afraid" and what I can only describe was a 1 degree push towards and against this entity/intruder, I pushed this thing back with what I can only describe as a positive thought "that I would not be scared"...and this presence which I could not see but only felt pushed back harder as if it had screamed, it screamed so hard (no sound) to push me back into my body.

Now I have had dreams before, but not in this detail because the room I was in was exactly the same, it felt real, I felt real panic and fear. I also felt like I had free will in the dream the same as in walking/waking life. And when I awoke I knew it was not a dream but as if there was another level or plane of existence above.

I researched this experience and found others had it (and called it astral projection).

Is there a scientific explanation for this?

Here is a starting point:

http://sploid.gizmodo.com/scientists...out-1538196076

Portion of above linked article:

Some people claim that they have experienced out-of-body experiences—aka "astral trips"—floating outside of their bodies and watching themselves from the outside. A team of scientists found someone who says she can do this at will and put her into a brain scanner. What they discovered was surprisingly strange.

Andra M. Smith and Claude Messierwere from the University of Ottawa described this subject's ability in their paper, published in Frontiers of Human Neuroscience:


"She was able to see herself rotating in the air above her body, lying flat, and rolling along with the horizontal plane. She reported sometimes watching herself move from above but remained aware of her unmoving "real" body. The participant reported no particular emotions linked to the experience."


This is the very first time that this type of experience has been analyzed and documented scientifically. Researchers know that out-of-body experiences can be induced "by brain traumas, sensory deprivation, near-death experiences, dissociative and psychedelic drugs, dehydration, sleep, and electrical stimulation of the brain, among others. It can also be deliberately induced by some." But this may be the first documented case of someone who can get into this state at will.

So is it real or not?

It is real in the sense that she's actually experiencing it. The brain scans show that she's going through what she's claiming. But that doesn't mean that her "soul" is getting out of her body. This is not an astral trip, like those described by mystics. There's no paranormal activity of any kind.

The fact is that, even while there aren't a lot of solid experiments on this subject except this research paper and a few others, scientists believe that these out-of-body experiences are a type of hallucination triggered by some neurological mechanism. The researchers of this paper speculate that this neurological mechanism may be present in other people too and that some people—like this woman—may train themselves to activate it. She told them that she first noticed this happening when she was a little kid, while taking naps.
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Hypnagogia, a wiki link below that is worth reading, again just as a start:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypnagogia

source

You can assume a lot of things about something no one knows, but the bolded may mean that the mechanism for perceiving a dream is the same a the mechanism for perceiving reality.

source

Hallucinations and dreams aren't always thought of as similar but it is at least suggestible that they are related in the mechanisms that produce them.

The more I type now the less I think I'm addressing the question.

To prove astral trip is a real you need evidence she can see part of her body that was changed while she tried to sleep without her (or any subject) knowing it (eg a painted surface or an object placed there or a big light your turned on in the side of the bed etc. That is all you need. And i bet it will never happen, lol.

I would be seriously disturbed as a physicist if it were to happen by the way and i would be shocked like never before. Of course i would study all possible loop-holes in the experiment but it makes no sense for anything to actually float and leave no evidence of existing as some form of matter or energy or field. (ok in principle though nobody prevents you to develop a system to see behind corners that intelligently studies the photons of the "walls" coming back to it to deduce details about the part of the body you cant see by observing integrated scattered photons until a true image is formed after cleaning out all the other photons as noise - brave new world soon available)

Also of course in the future i have no doubt you can connect a drone to your brain and drive it at will all around you or out in the city and experience things from its perspective. Obviously right now you can do it in a virtual reality sense that is actually virtual only in the sense you are not there (the visual part is indeed reality in another location) but all else is real with eg google glasses type interface and your hands as controls.

But imagine doing it entirely with your thoughts. That probably requires signals detected from your brain in some elaborate form of helmet you have been trained to use with your thoughts.Think about it, you think something and it moves the drone. You think it again and it repeats same motion. So you train yourself to think what you have to do to make that move happen until you learn like you did with a bicycle. They used such similar process to teach people (blind) to see with their tongue or even control/move advanced prosthetic legs, hands with thoughts (because thoughts change electric potential etc).

So yes its all electric type signals really that we have mastered to interact with.

I've described some hallucinogenic "trips" to be much like dreaming while awake, so it wouldn't be surprising to me if many of the same chemical reactions were involved.

In college, around the time I experimented with hallucinogens the most and also happened to be going through a very intense and traumatic relationship, I had a similar type experience, only it was audible not visual. I awoke from a deep sleep and was very conscious of my surroundings, could see my dark bedroom, but I couldn't understand where the music was coming from. It sounded great, but I couldn't place it, it was much like a Grateful Dead tune as I recall. It lasted a good 30 seconds until I finally decided to get out of bed to find where it was coming from, and it faded away rather quickly.

Unlike masque, I'm not going to rule out access to some other dimension our brain reaches during sleep, drugs or traumatic events. I'd rather believe that could be true, and it's nice not to be too smart keep that option open

Anytime I become aware I'm having a lucid dream my number one priority is to bang some chick.
Then some kind of fear it won't work or excitement or the too many thoughts of setting up the dream porno scene screws it up and my dream moves onto something trivial.

One thing i cant remember about my dreams with absolute certainty is if they are in color lol. (its vague and not a memory i recall vividly i mean)
Now tell me what dreams do blind people have and we will be into something interesting about the nature of dreams.

A dream of grinding my teeth until they crumble was a recurring nightmare. I googled it and many people report the same dream.

Or falling, I think is one of the most common ones we share. Perhaps it may be instilled in us from being primordial apes swinging through trees.

Running away from an attacker when the predator isn't clear but for some bastart reason can't seem to run quickly.

Lately I'm being chased but I have no fear because all I need to do is flap my arms and I fly away. My GF says she has the same dream.

It bothers me a bit that some people don't understand what "lucid" means.

@ masque, I am guessing that a significant percentage of your dreams are verbal (like reading a book or telling a story) rather than visual (like watching a movie based on the book).

I once dreamed that people were rational beings.

Liar.

I had this same question, and even made it a point to pay attention as I woke up. It seems I can remember my dreams well if I focus immediately after waking, but as soon as I begin thinking about real-life stuff the dream memory fades quickly, almost like it's evaporating. Anyway, I distinctly recalled dreaming in color. And why wouldn't we?

Yeah, I'd like to hear what a blind person's (one who has never had sight) dreams are like. They could be somewhat indescribable to us, much like ours would be to them.

My dreams are narrative only but they often describe visual scene. Do you weird people smell things as well as see things when you're asleep?

I dreamed that information might help this thread but I can't see it.

Are you blind, Chezlaw? I think I've experienced smell in a dream before, but I'm not certain of that.

no, just normal. You're all freaks

I have pretty much no visualization skills even when awake. It's why I can't do maths (sorry that last bit is a dig at psychologists)

Lol, that's crazy if you really don't see in dreams. That has to be some sort of condition. After you made that deadpan joke, and I was starting to think maybe you were blind, your writing style began to make more sense

I nearly made that joke but couldn't resist the dig at psychology and didn't want to violate my rule of exactly one joke per post.

I had tons of fully lucid dreams and sleep paralysis.

I researched and saw that people called it lucid dreams and sleep paralysis.

One thing that can happen are hallucinations during sleep paralysis as your brain try to make sense of what's happening, for you to flee or fight. This should have relation to hallucinations mechanism during psychotic breaks.

http://m.wikihow.com/Lucid-Dream

Guide on how to have lucid dreams. I got sleep paralysis when waking up from lucid dreams some time.

I had them naturally as a kid and figured out everything myself so I don't know if it will work for everyone but to wake up from lucid dreams I just willed myself out of it until my heartbeat was very high, same with sleep paralysis by trying very hard to get up. Good to when I was lucid and started having nightmares or when I got sleep paralysis. From sleep paralysis you can go back to dreaming a lucid dream if you stay calm and sleep again wich was good after I learned how to control my dreams a lot more.

I still have them but since I don't wake up and think about it I mostly don't remember.

You need to file a complaint with the cable company; you are getting terrible reception.

lu·cid, adjective

1. expressed clearly; easy to understand.
"a lucid account"


synonyms: intelligible, comprehensible, understandable, cogent, coherent, articulate; More
clear, transparent; plain, simple, vivid, sharp, straightforward, unambiguous;

"a lucid description"

antonyms: confusing, ambiguous

•showing ability to think clearly, especially in the intervals between periods of confusion or insanity. "he has a few lucid moments every now and then"


synonyms: rational, sane, in one's right mind, in possession of one's faculties, compos mentis, able to think clearly, balanced, clearheaded, sober, sensible; informal-
"he was not lucid enough to explain"

antonyms: muddled, confused

•Psychology
(of a dream) experienced with the dreamer feeling awake, aware of dreaming, and able to control events consciously.


2. literary
bright or luminous.
"birds dipped their wings in the lucid flow of air"
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Is the above lucid enough for everyone?

I did it on purpose once as a kid, and it was awesome. I made a point to just concentrate before I went to sleep on remembering that night I was just dreaming, and then take control. It worked. I was being chased by an army of enemies through a jungle and then I realized it was a dream, so I started mowing them all down with my huge machine guns in both arms. Then I ran and jumped off a cliff and woke up from the excitement of it all.

The potential seems awesome, but I've never done it since. For some reason I just don't feel like concentrating hard before I go to sleep.

Last night I dreamt I was listening to Fire Brigade by The Move with my late father.

And a bad one at that. I need to work on this. Lying is one of the most useful art forms there are.

Last night, I had a lucid dream. I was in a shopping mall and suddenly became aware I was dreaming. I read a wiki article on lucid dreaming since this thread, and it stated a point that time lapse is the same in a lucid than in real life. A lucid dreamer can count to ten and it would be as though the subject is counting to ten while awake.

To ensure I was able to control my dream actions, I remembered this and counted to ten in my dream while raising a finger through each count while looking at a female shop assistant like a mad man.
After that, my initial thought was excellent, I am a sort of solipsist, in a type of simulation that can do whatever he likes without any real world consequences. But I knew somehow anything I did must take place in this mall and I couldn't snap my fingers and change the environment.

My first thought was okay, time to get jiggy with a female philosophical zombie.
A brunette appeared my own age, wearing pink (making me believe I dream in colour).
I faced her and said, let's go somewhere private, not in English, but telepathically.

She looked at me and the look on her face said no thanks. Then, the line blurred between what world I was in. I knew I was rejected, by the girl of my dreams lol and there was nothing I could do about it. I asked to go somewhere private in a dream which makes no sense.

Maybe I'll give up on the idea of lucid sex dreaming, but I'm getting closer lol.