How does anyone decide what is real? the only way to decide this is how intuitively real something feels. There is no scientific test to find out how real a conscious experience is. Theres no scientific test to even determine what or where consciousness is. We wake up, and the waking world seems more real than dreams. So we presume the waking world is real and dreams are not.

People who have profound 'mystical' type experiences, like people on DMT or people who have near death experiences that change their outlook on life, swear that what they experience is more real than their normal reality. Since there is no way to test 'real', we have no choice but to believe them. Thats how I see it.


Recurring awakenings are a weird one too. I had one when I was younger. I woke up, got dressed, brushed my teeth, and set off to school; only to suddenly wake up again. So I must have dreamt it all. So I did all the above again, and went to my geography class. When it was over, I suddenly woke up again and appeared in my bed. The dream was so real it could have been my real life. So I repeated all the steps again, and I spent the rest of the day wondering whether I was dreaming and would wake up soon or whether this was finally my 'real' day. It tripped me out, big time.

I could still be in that dream today and never woken up from it. Maybe thats what life is, a big dream that you wake up from when you think you've died.

“Life is only a dream and we are the imagination of ourselves.” - Bill Hicks.


Physics and philosophy. I highly recommend anyone going to uni to study these. I did. What a combination

I once had a strange time, i was in bed and then i got the feeling of fear, so i tried to get up out of bed but couldnt, and when eventually i could i tried to open up my door but i couldnt and then i tried screaming but i couldnt, and i looked at my clock and it was 12 and then i eventually managed to open up my door, what seemed 10 mins later and it was 6 in the morning and the sun was rising - , i also had a strange dream once where i was just having one of them general daft dreams then all of a sudden in my head as if someone was shouting down my ears i heard the word SATAN , scared the hell out of me, neil.

the stuff about dreams really intrests me. ive had many dreams that seem real, but i have no idea why they occur or if they are real.
i can only guess from my own experiences.

vivid dreams can sometimes be so bizarre and have no relation to your reallife reality and your puzzled why you even dreamt such a thing.

some dreams seem real and seem like reallife with people you have never seen before in your life.

or they seem real and relate to everything you'd expect of your actual life.

if dreams were real surely there would be some kind of consistency, but from my experience every dream that seemed real was different in many ways. so i certainly would'nt say all vivid dreams are real or some alternative reality.

i do however believe in the soul/spirit, and i think dreams are some form of information given through thoughts, either meaning something or showing something, maybe even future events in some cases.

but mainly i think they are information, if you know how to understand them. all the vivid dreams i remember have always been about events
in my life currently or events that were yet to happen. apart from a few that seemed to be about the pastlifes maybe.

heres what happened to me and the dreams that came before and during turmoil in my life at the time.

i remember being chased through the streets at night, as though i was actually there, everything looked identical to reallife, i reached a alleyway,
and in the alleyway was lots of obsticles(hedge rows going across the alleyway a bit like what horses jump). i turned around to see the people who were chasing me catching up, so i had no choice but to jump the hedges which seemed impossible to jump, but i had to try, i jump them all somehow apart from the last one, my foot caught on the top of it and i fell to the ground but on the opposite site, i was clear but on the ground.
i saw a shadow of a person with a blured face shouting for me to get up!
i got up eventually and escaped the people chasing me.

this dream occured at a difficult time in my life, it had meaning. i made it through.

but before all that i dreamt my future, i was having relationship problems with my girlfriend, we had a daughter. i was desprate to make things work, because of our daughter, but she seemed to of lost intrest. we split up and i moved out, i had to start from scratch and was unable to be there everyday for my daughter, which hurt, but these things happen when things don't work out. it did'nt make the pain any easier to take at the time, so it was a stressful time.

but before any problem started to occur in our relationship, i dreamt about going to see my mum and my brother in their flats in derby(they had lived there a year or just over in reallife, but i had never been there myself, they use to come to visit me). anyway in the dream they asked me if i wanted to live with them, also on my way there i saw a bridge that i'd never seen before in my life, at the time when i dreamt it i had no reason to think it was anything, it was just a dream.

anyway when i split with my girlfriend i called my mum to see if i could stay there untill i sorted myself out. she said yes and got my uncle to fetch me. on the way to my mums house i saw the exact same bridge in my dream when we got into derby, and i had a deja vu moment. and the flats they lived in were the same(from the outside).

the dream about the bridge occured before any problem started to show in my relationship at the time, the second occured when it became evident.
it was as though i was being told what was going to happen and that everything would be ok in the end.

i since moved on, got my life back on track, my own place, met someone else, have two sons, and see my daughter most weekends etc etc. it was years ago now but i believe dreams have a purpose. and could be giving us signs and messages about ourselves, our lives, and possible future occurences.

Also..now that I've read the whole thread. I think that 'dreams' are us visiting different existances. I realise that there are many many mysteries in life however sleeping has always bothered me, maybe because I tend to do it a lot lol Seriously, why would we be created by someone/something and have a need to 'switch off' on a daily basis to stay healthy ? I think it's interesting to turn it on it's head and think about what if this reality really is the dream, what if 'dream me' is real and she's sleeping just now and that is why I get out to play but when it's time for her to get up and do her 9 to 5 that is when I need to sleep hahaha the implications are endless.

Imagine if we are really multi-dimensional beings one mind with many different coats that we wear at once and when we sleep in one reality we get a glimpse of our other existance/timelines.

When I dream about people from my past in this lifetime I often think I would love to call them and say hey do you dream about me sometimes, did you last night, infact next time someone I know is in a dream with me I'm going to ask if they remember dreaming the night before - haha don't wait about on my results as it will probably take a while!

I have had a recurring dream since I was a kid. I would look up at the sky and see the stars moving. 100s of them crisscrossing but not making a noise. After a while it becomes clear that they are fighting. One star against the other.

It always feels real and I feel so weird the day after I have the dream. The theme is always the same but I do get different details in each dream. Sometimes the UFOs land and take everyone away but sometimes they are just up there and a terrible sense of dread comes over me. A feeling that this will come to pass.

The weird thing is that I have seen stars moving this year while walking outside. Crisscrossing, following airplanes. Not only this year but actually this week. I am thinking they are, more than likely, satellites but I must say I have never seen so many (although not hundreds.. more like 5 or 6)in a few moments of time in the same airspace. The feeling of the dream and this was exactly the same but more 'normal'.

I am sceptical but I am feeling in my bones that something is set to happen. I posted a thread earlier on the prediction that Mass UFO sightings are predicted for the 14th October so I am marking it in my diary but also hoping that my sense of dread is misplaced.

I used to watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer re-runs every night on the Space channel before bed. Then I would have dreams fighting evil, demons, zombies, vampires, etc. Some of these dreams were extremely real feeling but still were only dreams.

I live in the UK. The woman who is the love of my life lives in Canada. One night I dreamt that I was at a party that she was at but couldn't get to her because she was surrounded my noisy and very camp gay men.

The next day I called her and told her about my dream. She went very quiet and said that she'd actually been to a publishing party that night and there was a large contingent of very noisy camp gay guys.

The fact that some people would try to tell me that's a coincidence makes me smile.

I also woke one day with a really burning urge to phone one of my closest friends. I was working abroad at the time (on a ship in fact) and had to walk miles through the port and buy a calling card before I could do that.

When I got through to him, rather than his usual cheery and enthusiastic greeting, I got a man who was in shock and could barely speak. One of his best friends (whom I didn't know) had just been killed in a cycling accident.

Whoa, somebody dug up this musty old thread of mine? Good times, good times.