Are we more linked with everything when we dream?

I recall one dream in particular where I was standing in front of a chair in first person view and the chair was slowly tilting back at first then fell quickly backwards to the floor. The EXACT moment the chair would have made the slamming sound in my dream, lightning struck right outside the house and woke me up instantly. There have been other similar instances happen, but I remember this one the best.

How could I or my subconscious have known that the lightning would strike before it even did, and use it as the sound of the chair crashing to the floor?

reply to post by NotApplicable


I've experienced similar weirdness in dreams too. Actually, it happens all the time. But I don't think it's the subconscience knowing lightning is going to strike before it happens, I think it all happens at the same time. You know, you hear the sound and as the sound enters your ears, the brain includes it in the dream. Remember, the passage of time in a dream is way faster than the passing of time here in reality, so the brain is able to assemble the outside influence in real time and the dream projects that.

Just a thought. Great question tho! Dreams are interesting things....

maybe at the moment lightning struck what you remember of your dream changed to fit your hearing of lightning.
i've experienced things like this in the past, wierd one was when my friend walked into my room as i was sleeping, instantly he was in the dream then i woke up and realized he was there. i think its kinda like dejavu when your memory and senses get confused making you think you've just experienced the present.

Possibly you saw the flash of lightning through your closed eyes, which provided enough information for you subconscious predict when the thunder would strike.

reply to post by The Cusp


thats good, i think your right.
when ever i see a flash im instantly aware that the thunder will follow.

I see what you are saying. Nothing else was in the dream, I saw the chair begin to fall well before the initial clap of thunder. I didn't wake up feeling scared or freaked up but amazed. Could you elaborate some more? I have dreamt I was awake and carried on conversations with people and actually see them in my dream. They would keep telling me to "open your eyes" or "get up!", to which I would reply "they are!" and "I am!"

I'm wondering if the moment before lightning strikes there is some kind of change in the atmosphere that we may not be able to pick up on consciously, which may have been how they synchronized. Just a thought too, please let me know what you think!

reply to post by The Cusp


That would be impossible because the strike was right outside the house and shook everything. At so short a distance the light would have reached practically the same time the thunder did.

Originally posted by NotApplicable
I recall one dream in particular where I was standing in front of a chair in first person view and the chair was slowly tilting back at first then fell quickly backwards to the floor. The EXACT moment the chair would have made the slamming sound in my dream, lightning struck right outside the house and woke me up instantly. There have been other similar instances happen, but I remember this one the best.

How could I or my subconscious have known that the lightning would strike before it even did, and use it as the sound of the chair crashing to the floor?

Last night during a dream I placed a cardboard box on the roof of the car. I reminded myself in the dream not to drive away leaving that box on the roof as I was putting things in the back seat too. Sure enough later on in the dream someone is hollering and I see a shadow of this cardboard box getting blown off the roof.

I woke up thinking how much like real life dreams are. We have our waking moments of course but sometimes I think during our sleep we are living a whole 'nother life.

reply to post by newcovenant


I know what you mean. I work 40 hours a week and often times find myself working in my dreams lol.

In highschool I used to sleep with my music on a low volume. Sometimes while dreaming I would try to turn the volume down, turn the music off, or even unplug it but the music would keep playing. It kinda freaked me out until I woke up and realised why the music wouldn't stop.

Massive off topic tangent: More recently I had a series of lucid dreams:

The first was very short, I was walking down stairs into a dark basement when I suddenly realised that I was dreaming. The lights turned on in the basement and went extremely, blindingly bright and shocked me awake.

The second was longer and had a detailed plot, most of which I don't remember. I do remember that I was living in a run-down apartment building in a slum, my neighbours were crack-heads and were constantly stealing my stuff, and there was a restaurant in the ground floor of the building next door and one of my friends worked there. At one point I was walking down the street from my apartment building when suddenly I was no longer wearing any pants. Confused, I turned back to my apartment building. I looked into the window of the restaurant and saw my friend serving coffee, she saw me as well and waved, apparently not noticing my lack of pants (this is a common thing in my dreams actually). When I entered the apartment building I saw my pants lying on the floor like right beside the door on the ground floor. As I put them on, I realised the absurdity of the situation and concluded I must be dreaming. I stepped outside again, looking around in amazement at the cityscape. The street I lived on was incredibly detailed but was like no place I had ever been to. Buildings in the distance seemed detailed enough in my peripherals, but when I focused on them they appeared blurry and uninteresting. I remember wondering if they were blurry because I was used to having poor vision, or because my subconscious couldn't quite keep up with the level of detail my conscious mind was demanding. Then I blacked out, struggled to stay in the dream but that only made me fall further from it, and woke up.

After waking up I told myself that if I ever became aware of the dream again, I would try doing something physics defying like flying, and sure enough the next time I became aware I did it...

In the third dream I used the principle of a dream within a dream from Inception, though completely by accident. In the initial dream I was in a strange house that I supposed was my house because my dad and step mom were there. My room was odd in that there was a window to the living-room...but anyway, skipping to the good part, I shut the blinds on my living-room window and went to sleep within the dream.

I found myself walking down a long industrial-looking corridor, pipes running overhead and the like. I was with a group of friends (though I don't recognize any of the people from real life) having usual dream conversations; jokes that were hilarious then but hardly make sense in the real world. This part is quite silly, but this is exactly what happened; I walked past a pikachu, paused, and looked back. The pikachu was wearing a pikachu hat. So I walked up to it, pulled the hat off, and laughingly told my friends that the pikachu was wearing a pikachu hat. Their faces came into focus, and I saw that they were shifting and changing, turning into characters from Pokemon. Bizarre. And just a disclaimer, I haven't watched Pokemon for about 8 years.

While my friends faces were morphing I became aware of the dream, so I told them "Guys...this is a dream. You aren't real" and they gave me a puzzled look. They vanished as I suddenly started accelerating down the corridor, my vision blurring from the speed I was gaining. I was approaching the wall at ludicrous speed, and right before impact I was shocked awake...into the first dream.

Lying in my strange room once again, I opened my blinds to the living room and saw my parents watching TV. Then I decided I wanted to try to go back to that dream, so I closed the blinds and went back to sleep. It worked. I was in a warehouse now, with similar architecture to the corridor from before. I found that I was able to fly with only a thought, but couldn't control my speed and had no idea how to stop. But whenever I was about to crash into anything, I would simply think about phasing through it and it worked... up until I accidentally accelerated upward too fast and hit my head on the ceiling, shocking myself awake (into the real world) through both layers of the dream.

It was exhilarating. I definitely recommend trying it, but it is not something you can force yourself to experience. The key, I think, is to pay close attention to details. If you suspect you may be dreaming, focus on something like a clock; they never behave like they're supposed to. Once you become aware, it may take a couple attempts to remain in the dream while in control.

I've obtained information in dreams before I see/hear/read it. Often times it's something as mundane as an idea in a television show but I'll experience it in a dream the day before. Also on many occasions I've experienced what the OP has: external sounds integrate into a dream but it was as if the dream knew the sound was coming and created other dream events which led up to it (in one case it was a countdown to an earthquake).

There seems to be some sort of information bridge which we can cross during dream-time. I've been trying to figure it out for years. Sure there are the mundane explanations, but they're only sufficient to a point.

Hey I just thought of a really weird idea... maybe when we wake up we experience (in reverse) the information we just experienced in the dream. The information is flipped and we perceive it in accordance with our preconceptions.