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Post by KoNeko on Mar 31, 2003 6:49:39 GMT -5
Drego, where did you get that one from? I read something about REM and non-REM sleep in a philsophical journal so it might not be an authorative source, but still, that sounds about right. Not sure about the brain retaining bits of previous dreams though, but perhaps they are stored in the subconscious, or maybe part of your new dream involves the memory of a (fabriacted) "old" dream so you just vaguely feel that you've experienced it before.
Oh, and I heard that dreams only happen in the last 10 seconds of sleep before you wake, but I don't know how true that is.
*Grins* Guin, I get those dreams when I wake up mad at something really illogical too! (See my post above about working in a bookstore and getting fired for being too chirpy. ) you know, those dreams are actually kinda funny because they're so riddiculous that when you tell other people (read: rant about them) you make no sense.
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Post by coldmercurywitch on Mar 31, 2003 9:00:06 GMT -5
I don't know how true it is cos I've never really looked into it, but a friend once told me that it's when you dream that your brain cells regenerate the fastest. Like I said I don't know how true it is, but if anyone finds anything on it I would really like to read it.
I've said this before, but an awful lot of my dreams are what they call prophetic dreams. I realise not everyone believes in this, but I've dreamt about some really ordinary things and then experienced them for real. I've had some rather uncanny and disturbing dreams come true as well. It's always a deja vu feeling, but I can always tell if it's just plain deja vu or if it was because I dreamt it.
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Post by Balance on Mar 31, 2003 13:02:22 GMT -5
KoNeko, I remembered that from either Biology class or (more likely) psychology class. Actually.. I have an old Psychology textbook I can look in.. *gets old text, dusts it off*
The textbook is "Psychology and You", by Frank B. McMahon, Judith W. McMahon, and Tony Romano, ©1990, West Publishing Company, ISBN 0-314-47357-2. I'm using Chapter 6, States of Conciousness, pg ~143
Some interesting facts, as quoted from the book:
-Those in REM sleep are paralyzed... to protect the person from the dangers of trying to act out a dream. -The actual dream lasts as long as it seems to take -- roughly 5 to 40 minutes. Throughout the night, REM periods occur every 90 minutes with each REM lasting longer than the previous one. Note that REM periods come during times when we are not in deep sleep. Also notice that, as the night progresses, sleep gets lighter. The chances are that the dreams you remember are those coming closest to the morning since they are the longest, have occurred most recently, and you are the closest to being awake when you have them. -During this "non-REM sleep," the brain is still active, providing partial thoughts, images, or stories. But these do not have the organization of the "stories" found during REM activity.
There are three major hypotheses about why we dream: 1) Dreams are used to get the brain reorganized after a day's work of thinking and dealing with problems. 2) Dreams are designed to help work out unsolved problems left over from the day. 3) The third explanation comes from today's emphasis on the computer. It is possible that we get too much unnecessary material in our "files" from the day's tasks. The brain is trying to make sense of the bits and pieces of information that are appearing while we are cleaning out the material, so it makes up a "story" to fit them. This would account for why we so often put odd things together in a dream.
by the way.. just wanted to add to the littany of unusual dreams. Last night, my dream was this: I was somewhere (within driving distance) of my home, and for some strange reason, I came to be in a small pair of blue swimtrunks. VERY small pair. ("Night at the Roxbury" kind.) Anyhow, I went home, but my parents were throwing this big party (strange, because we never throw parties here), and the house looked completely different.. very elegant, a lot of remodeling and such. I did my best to hide myself from the crowd, but people kept seeing me, so I finally decided "to heck with it." and came out into the open wearing nothing but this small swimsuit, and made my way up to my room. On the way, I had to go behind a table where a good-looking girl was sitting, staring at me like I was crazy. I knew that I had a perfectly reasonable explanation as to why I was wearing only that, but I wasn't about to explain myself to her. When I got to my room, however, I found that it was also redone, and was merely an extension of the party, so there were people all over. Strangely, though, no one laughed at me; they just looked at me like I was insane.
Obviously, the weirdest part is the swimsuit. Reason being, I don't even go into a backyard pool without a T-shirt on.
Nierme, I get that a lot, too. In fact, I devised a whole theory of Time about it:
Time is a constant. Past, Present, and Future have already been determined. Our brains, however, are capable of processing only so much at once. But sometimes, our brains skip ahead in the data, and start processing something out of sequence. This is what we see in our dreams, and then later we realize that we dreamt it, only as the moment occurs, sparking the memory of it. Our "waking brains" have no knowledge of the rest of the timeline. This is what gives us the ILLUSION of Free Will and choice, while in reality, there is no such thing.
Basically, whatever's meant to happen does, you can't change anything, not even your own future..
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laci
3rd Year
Learning, without thought, is a snare; thought, without learning, is a danger.
Posts: 120
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Post by laci on Mar 31, 2003 22:38:05 GMT -5
haha but the illusion of free will is a powerful one, i mean how much of the illusion can we even comprehend? or what of the theory the our future is determined but how we get there is of pur own choice? its a great topic, free will and predestination, i love to watch/listen people discuss it. anyway, back to dreams had a real bizarro one the other day and i wanted to stay in bed and sleep so i could see how the dream turned out, but alas i had to go to school
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Post by KoNeko on Apr 1, 2003 4:01:42 GMT -5
Mmmm. I love philosophical debates. ;D I think that we have a limited scope of self-determination and free will, but the bigger scope of things are are predetermined. Because we're insignificantly teeny in the bigger world, maybe premonitions, dream and deja vu are like, little glimpses into the wide view and we may not always understand what we see. *shrugs*
Hey- I also heard that if you die in your dream you die in real life as well. That's why people always wake up before they get shot in the head or fall out of buildings or whatnot.
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Post by En on Apr 1, 2003 17:20:23 GMT -5
So I've been chewing on that secret passages / baby imagery, right, and you know what I think it is? It's my brain trying to get my novel finished in my sleep
Let's see what's behind Theory No. 2 from Drego's textbook, shall we? I often find that I've solved complicated things in my sleep, so sometimes I deliberately go to sleep to see what I come up with. It really works -- the best idea I've had for my novel in months came from a dream, and sometimes I figure out better ways to do my job while I'm asleep, only I don't know it until I get to work and suddenly I'm just doing things differently, and better. It's nice to know my subconscious is helping out around my head
Er, Koko, if that's true I'm so many kinds of dead... wait, as pale as I am... *tries to walk through a wall* OW! No, I'm alive.
Oo, free will. Can I play Alexander to your Gordian knot? I think it would be very silly to try to live as though you were predestined or fated; it would create all sorts of silly paradoxes of behaviour and cause people to act quite without reason, on the grounds that they "feel" they are "fated" to do that. Therefore let's all pretend we have free will even if we don't. (Yeah, I'm a pragmatist, you knew that )
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Post by Balance on Apr 1, 2003 19:43:18 GMT -5
Oo, free will. Can I play Alexander to your Gordian knot? I think it would be very silly to try to live as though you were predestined or fated; it would create all sorts of silly paradoxes of behaviour and cause people to act quite without reason, on the grounds that they "feel" they are "fated" to do that. Therefore let's all pretend we have free will even if we don't. (Yeah, I'm a pragmatist, you knew that ) Firstly, I had to search Yahoo for the meaning of that Alexander thing.. as far as I knew, Gordian Knot was only a program for compressing DVD's to fit on regular blank CD's using the DivX AVI codec. But anyways... You can do whatever you want to with this information. Personally, I believe this to be true.. I've stated my main evidence already. All I ask is for you to draw from your own experiences (particularly with dreams), and determine whether or not you believe in this. If you do decide that this is the truth, I then ask that you live as you normally would, but without any fear that you might have. Personally, me knowing that whatever's meant to happen does, doesn't affect my actions, but my responses to actions of myself and others. Like I said, it only changes your fear of the unknown. Knowing it'll happen the way it's supposed to, simply removes a great deal of this fear. Of course there are situations about which I'm afraid, but if I remember about this, I feel some of that fear lift. That's all.
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Post by KoNeko on Apr 2, 2003 3:20:04 GMT -5
En, you've died in your dreams? How? I mean, the thought of it boggles the mind... how can you experience death in your dreams? Do you see yourself dead or feel dead or something?
*tries to unboggle mind but fails miserably*
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Post by coldmercurywitch on Apr 2, 2003 5:48:54 GMT -5
I've felt dead in a dream before. I couldn't breathe and I felt cold and I couldn't feel my heartbeat or any energy. I just was. It was weird cos there was no feeling. I could will myself to move around adn I could think and feel emotions to an extent, but there wa no physical feeling. It was freaky.
I know that if you dream you're falling in a dream and you hit the ground you're meant to die in your sleep. It's also the same if you dream someone is pointing a gun at you then they shoot and you have he bullet hit you befoer you wake up. I guess that's where they got the thing in the Matrix where if you dided in the Matrix you died for real because the body can't live without the mind.
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Post by En on Apr 2, 2003 16:52:52 GMT -5
Oh geez, is that really so weird? I've died I don't know how many different ways. Hit by a truck, fed through a garbage masher, thrown through a window, disemboweled by a panther, knocked off a 125-story building, fell off a cliff, drank hemlock, *has a reminiscing expression on while s/he recalls them,* burned to death in a forest fire, drowned in a zoo shark tank (losing my leg actually didn't kill me -- weird), stung by jellyfish and drowned, stung to death by bees, vomited to death after drinking from a red tide, Bubonic plague, Ebola, dehydration in the desert, six dozen kinds of exposure, shot, stabbed, speared with the steering column in a car accident, tossed off a bridge with cement on my feet, pitched overboard from a caravel, trampled by horses... you name it, I've been there.
Usually there's an extraordinary cramping in my lower abdomen (if I still have one) and I feel very hot, and then I feel my muscles all go lax and usually become acutely aware of my surroundings for about 5 seconds; and then I just get tired and go to sleep. Sometimes I become conscious again in time to be aware of rigor mortis, and sometimes of having my lips sewn shut.
It is the one thing that consistently scared the crap out of my various roommates and significant others: I sometimes get very, very quiet when asleep and lie on my back with my arms crossed over my chest. I spooked the school nurse like you wouldn't believe doing that once. I'm so pale already...
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Post by Will on Apr 2, 2003 18:22:05 GMT -5
I guess it isn't that strange, but I have never died in my dreams. Oh sure, I always come close to dying but I always wake up before it happens. I have jumped into a shark infested ocean, monsters with their huge mouths open wide; just about to feast on my flesh, spaceship lasers blowing up my backyard, falling of a very high object…(I don’t remember what)…and more. However, in all of those dreams I never witness my own death. Maybe they are trying to tell us something…
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Post by En on Apr 2, 2003 18:29:44 GMT -5
...like what?
I also have dreams about the world ending. Once I dreamt that I was outside and looked up at the sky, and it went all pixelly (like a very old computer screen), and then people started running out of buildings because there was a roar of static and everything was just sort of... pixelling. Like everybody's perceptions were suddenly getting a bum signal. And this warm wind came and picked me up for a moment, and I thought it had come to save me from the end of the world; but then it put me down again and picked up my sister and took her instead
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Post by Will on Apr 2, 2003 18:45:57 GMT -5
Erm...I have no idea, but I'd like to think they are...
My, my, En... You have very frightening dreams. Rather depressing as well.
Sometimes I have dreams where I am desperately trying to go somewhere, however, I can't run properly. It's kind of like I'm a puppet controlled with strings. I can not move at all, but whenever I can...my movements are like a puppet's. Very... boxy, if you know what I mean. Then sometimes I'm running franticly towards somewhere, but my legs start to turn into jelly. Well, not literally. Have you ever pushed yourself, physically, to do something over the limit? For example, doing 100 pushups none stop, under one minute. Your arm gets so tired afterwards, that if you tried to hold yourself up...you just end up collapsing. Anyway, that's how my legs felt in the dream and to top it all of, I was along the highway...
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Post by Balance on Apr 2, 2003 21:43:38 GMT -5
I've died I don't know how many different ways. Hit by a truck, fed through a garbage masher, ... tossed off a bridge with cement on my feet, pitched overboard from a caravel, trampled by horses... you name it, I've been there. -"Ouch." -"That's not all.. just before his head died, it said 'Death is but a door, Time but a window, I'll be back.'" -"I'm A God, not THE God. Least, I don't think.." En, I have a one-word suggestion for you: Drugs. (j/k, of course)
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Post by coldmercurywitch on Apr 3, 2003 4:46:36 GMT -5
I scared one of my friends once. I was sleeping over her place and cos she had a double bed we would just sleep in the same one to save setting up another one. Anyway, I fell asleep before her and when I fall asleep my breathing becomes really shallow and silent, almost non existant and my body will suddnly go limp and stuff. So when she thought she heard me stop breathing and saw i'd gone all limp she shook me really hard and woke me up thinking I was dead. We stayed up half the night laughing about it.
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