The Dream State

IF we can experience every emotion... every sensory feeling (aside from one) within a dream...

This gives us a glimpse into spiritual reality

Who hasn't experienced laughter and tears... visiting old friends long gone... even parents, and grandparents!

Your deepest darkest fears come to life in terrifying moments of confusion and emotional despair... only to wake up and realize it was only a dream... yet you remember them for years... as IF you were there in that moment of chaos

One thing we don't experience in dreams is Pain

I've fell from a mighty height... blew up my kitchen (which was wild btw)

I've been shot... stabbed... hit by a few cars... and baseball bats...

Didn't feel a damn thing.... obviously because it didn't happen in reality

Thus... pain defines reality... without which we wouldn't know the difference between reality and a dream

Remove the pain receptors from the body... and we live in a dream...

with all the crazy bullsh!t and pain in the world... no wonder we all self medicate


Except...


There is something experiencing this reality

Without the physical body we still experience... every emotion... every feeling...

Laying there dead to the world... it all happens, without pain

I've also jumped over skyscrapers btw... and i can fly on occasion... LOL

Lucid dreamin Love!!

So.......... when there is no more pain... no more electrical signals sent to your brain...

Do you really believe theres nothing...

Sure... everything experienced was a product of said "electrical signals"...

But IF all reality is comprised of is electricity... due to our experience...

Where does empathy come from?

Or shame for that matter...

Loss of loved ones...

All due to electrical signals in the physical brain... yet somehow there has been cases of people without said signals... still experencing

Without the meat.... we are still...

Discussion open.....

Shhh...

Just a little add on

Fear of pain is an excellent motivator....

Even if we can't experience it without a body

Sorry! Emotions are things you Think not feel.
so pain is not a emotion.

it as bad to have nightmares, you wake screaming!
I think we would go mad if we could Feel pain in dreams.
sex dreams would be grate with felling.
but some people would try to sleep ALL the time!

I fly so much in dreams I think I am mesing up the dreams.
I keep flying off.

I think the brain stors memorys moving all the time.
a bit like a computer hard drive that is
doing defragmentation all the time.
that way they dont get lost. ok it does not work all the time.

and wen you sleep, you can see this.
but its all over the place and crazy.
so your brain make up a story from it?

a reply to: Akragon

Akragon, I'm sorry but I have to nitpick and disagree with you on this one.

I have definitely experienced 'pain' in dreams. Now, it may not be the same physical pain that I experience in the waking world, but there is a kind of 'dream pain' that I've dealt with.

It's weird but, I often have dreams that cats or small mammals are clawing at me (and sometimes in some very sensitive areas.)

Trust me I feel this dream pain and it HURTS.

Perhaps pain has an emotional/ memory link we're not totally aware of yet. Need I get started on things like phantom limb pain?

Sorry to be contrarian, but I think pain can be felt in different ways, and it need not always be a paper cut.

Being the guru of sleep, I still find all things fascinating about the dream realm.

a reply to: NarcolepticBuddha

dude.. physical pain doesn't happen in dreams...

Emotional pain isn't physical

originally posted by: Akragon
a reply to: NarcolepticBuddha

dude.. physical pain doesn't happen in dreams...

Emotional pain isn't physical

What the brain interprets and how it responds, yes I would call it physical pain in dreams. What is pain for again? Oh yeah, to tell you to take your hand off the hot stove because it hurts, it is damaging.

Just gonna leave this here fo yo considerations:

neurocritic.blogspot.com...
www.vice.com...

I will have to respectfully disagree with you at this point, but I won't make it a contest.

Carry on.

a reply to: NarcolepticBuddha

physical pain tends to leave scars..

a reply to: Akragon

S& F
One of the best threads I've read in a long time

originally posted by: Akragon
Just a little add on

Fear of pain is an excellent motivator....

Even if we can't experience it without a body

"Pain" is an indicator...sometimes indicating something's wrong

a reply to: [post=25415306]Akragon[/pos
I disagree with you. If you have ever experienced a broken heart, you feel actual physical pain.
"Takotsubo Cardiomyopathy is the medical name for a syndrome that can be caused by heartbreak, or more accurately, the stress of a heartbreaking situation.

Acute emotional stress, positive or negative, can cause the left ventricle of the heart to be ‘stunned’ or paralysed, causing heart attack-like symptoms including strong chest, arm or shoulder pains, shortness of breath, dizziness, loss of consciousness, nausea and vomiting".
Also
Studies show that your brain registers the emotional pain of heartbreak in the same way as physical pain, which is why you might feel like your heartbreak is causing actual physical hurt

a reply to: Akragon
I very rarely dream....or at least remember dreaming or the dream.
However I had a very long dream last night.....at one point I was carrying some heavy bags that were cutting into my hand and really hurting my arm as well. I even remember that I exclaimed in the dream 'this is really hurting'.

So strange that this thread is here speaking about pain in dreams.

I do not have any sense of smell in dreams....or at least no reaction to things that I know smell really bad.

Edit:
Just remembered that I woke up during the dream and my hand and arm were hurting where I had been sleeping on it funny.

originally posted by: Akragon
a reply to: NarcolepticBuddha

dude.. physical pain doesn't happen in dreams...
Emotional pain isn't physical

If I can experience pleasure in my dreams, I can experience pain. It's all in the mind, just like dreams.

Although, I'm starting not to believe in dreams. I've never seen any solid evidence of them.

a reply to: Akragon

The damnedest thing happened to me yesterday. I will call it The Rip van Winkle Effect, sort of like a Mandela Effect.

I watched two videos from NASA-Science; one about gravity's effects on space-time and another on quantum foam. When I thought about the fact that I had no idea what the hell was being discussed I woke up the the fact that I was 20 years out of the loop on current information, much like Rip van Winkle.

Sure I remember being told by my 5th Grade teacher that pain is not remembered. It made sense at the time, because I couldn't actually feel the physical pain from my past painful experiences. Only remember that I felt pain at that time.

But, in the intervening years, researchers who investigate the issue of chronic pain have discovered that pain memory actually is chemically/neurologically stored in the spine and brain just like other memories.

I would hazard to guess that most people, like me, can't bring up a memory of pain in such a way that the sensation of pain is reenacted and re-felt as if duplicating the original. That may not be the case however for people who suffer from chronic pain.

So I remember a dream of being dragged to death behind a horse. I remember that I felt intense pain of my face making contact with a large rock. I remember that the pain from the tooth getting knocked out was quite pain-full. And the fine dust sticking to the inside of my mouth and throat were quite discomforting, and the choking and suffocation on that dust.

As I remember the pain in the dream, it is no different from memories of actual pain in my past. I remember that there was pain, but can't re-experience it as it was at the time.

I'm pretty much on the NarcolepticBuddha side on this issue.

a reply to: Blue Shift

Although, I'm starting not to believe in dreams. I've never seen any solid evidence of them.

What about quantum foam?
Seems to me that no one will ever see any solid evidence of that either.

I read people flinging quantum this and quantum that around as if they know what the hell they're talking about. I haven't seen any evidence that they do know what the hell they're talking about. Then they reach unreal conclusions about what quantum foam proves, to wit, "There is no reality".

So when these "There is no reality" people experience "non-reality" in the deepest sense, are they standing, sitting, or curled in a fetal position? I suppose though that position wouldn't matter seeing as no matter is real.

a reply to: pthena

I've never felt pain in a dream personally... perhaps its different for others

As mentioned in the OP... I've died, or was in the process of dying many times while in dreams

One i remember so vividly... i left the stove on... and i have a gas stove...

I started to smell it, and as i turned quickly to turn it off the kitchen exploded throwing me across the room... i was suddenly paralyzed burning to death... and i gave up trying... put my head down and accepted the fact that i was going to die

in that moment i felt the most intense, relaxing calm i've ever felt in my life... as if it was over, yet there was no worrying about it... it was natural... i woke up in drenched in sweat in a panic... which was the direct opposite of how i was feeling in that dream

i'll never forget it

I dont remember many of my dreams but I had one where someone had stolen money from my credit card. Woke up at 3am thinking that was kinda surreal. So turned on my computer, looked up the account, and it was indeed stolen. The bank eventually retuned the money.

So I strongly believe that dreams can interact with reality. It might also suggest that reality itself is a dream. That awakening from one dream only takes you into the next higher dream etc etc.

a reply to: Akragon

I've felt pain in a dream, only to wake up and realize I was laying on my arm. For example, getting burnt on your arm in a dream.

I feel fear in dreams pretty regularly, getting attacked, having to defend myself. I can say I killed someone in a dream lastnight. I was on a bus headed to some themepark or tourist thing but I was on my way to work. It was derailed, kinda like a subway train, and the people taken hostage in a nearby building. I was on the roof when it derailed and hopped off, then saw inside the door of the building. While I was walking away, some guy tried to chase me one on one and we had a combat. I ended up stabbing him with a broken piece of wood in his chest and felt it go between his ribs.

All of this just to make it to work on time so I didn't get in trouble. That's how much pressure is put on being late. Anyways..

That makes me sound morbid and weird, but the last time I killed in a dream, it was an alien or demon. My dreams are typically filled with an underlying theme of anxiety to get somewhere, to live up to a responsibility with obstacles in the way. It's a reflection of my life, because that's what everyday typically is.

We generate these movies in our minds to process our daily emotions. If our lives are relatively stress free and open, we think up all kinds of cool things based on whatever input we've had recently. If we're busy and have to deal with alot of obstacles and negative energy regularly, it reflects in our dreams because it affects our psyche.

That's what dreams are for and why they exist.