Take a look at kabamur_taygeta on twitter. He had some really interesting posts on dreams about a week ago.

Try lucid dreaming...seems like what you are looking for.

Lucid dreaming is the key

Can't remember who exactly said it, but I read a quote from a Tibetan monk saying something like, "if you cannot retain lucidity in your dreams, how do you expect to retain lucidity after death?"

my biggest fear

There is also a great movie about it called The Good Night, came out maybe a decade ago starring Danny Devito & Martin Freeman

Here are the best books I've read on lucid dreaming:

Carlos Castaneda, The Art of Dreaming
Beslebuub, A Course in Astral Travel and Dreams
Stephen LeBarge, Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming
Robert Moss, Conscious Dreaming: A Spiritual Path for Everyday Life

Each books takes a slightly different approach. I think Castaneda's book is the most interesting, while Beslebuub's books provides the best actual roadmap for what you'll encounter in lucid dreaming and astral travel.

That said, here's a super-easy way to start lucid dreaming very quickly: before you fall asleep at night, hold your hands in front of your face and tell yourself that if you see your hands in your dreams, you'll realize you're dreaming. Do this every night and even sometimes during the day. Soon, one night while you're dreaming you will unconsciously raise your hands in front of your face, and seeing them will trigger the memory from waking life that this is the signal to realize you're dreaming. It's a very simple and effective technique.

Good tip. I'll try that. Also just loaded up on B6 and 5HTP. Time to Fly.

dreams are perception of a different reality which is why they don't make sense and we don't bother to remember them because we think it's just gibberish.

Have you read about the gateway program by the monroe institute?

Ralph Abrams, Terrance McKenna and Rupert Sheldrake collaborated on a decent book called "chaos, creativity and the collective consciousness" It talks about a "morphenogetic" field that we all are a part of, like an internet of sentient consciousness ( accessible in dream state/ psychedelic experience) good read. Also a good book I just finished called "dreaming wide awake" by David Jay Brown does a great job bringing most of the dream research ever done into a concise (yet kinda text booky) read. I recommend both. Not crazy long laborious reads either

There have been reports but anecdotal of course, which science isn't a big fan of. I myself have had shared dream experiences, (another anecdote) but I believe that when we have better ways to measure these phenomena we'll have a better understanding. There's allot more to this field than there is interest unfortunately. It may come from some kooks garage before big money science comes up with something

I'll do my best cliff notes here. Basically, back in adolescence, I had a very vivid dream I started to relay to my good friend, and very quickly he said he had a very similar dream, well after going back and forth for a while we realized it sounds like we had different personal experiences of the exact same dream. This got both of us into some pretty esoteric ideas, but we discovered that we could share this state with enough concentration. We've recorded volumes of both failed and successful attempts at "meeting up" in dream state. We'll publish someday if we can get it into comprehensible form. We got into adulthood, experimented with psychedelics(mildly at best, neither of us are big on drugs but realize that psychedelics are more than meets the eye) and got even further into conscious connectivity. It's as close to scifi as you can get while remaining scientific, but the results are unbelievable. Sorry to be vague but we do intend on publishing someday, and there's still a ton of work to do, not to mention convincing hospitals to let us use thier very expensive equipment lol. But the day that hits the shelf, I'll be pumping it here on this sub haha! If it's still here that is.

I suggest reading Carl Jung.

I can't agree with you more here. His study of human consciousness and the myths we as humans have created throughout history separate cultures with so many similarities is fascinating. He's a psychologist but the way he goes about his studies borders on history/anthropology.

There are several collections of Jung's works that deal directly with dreaming. But I would start with something like The Undiscovered Self (Present and Future) to get an idea of Jung's larger philosophy.

Memories, Dreams and Reflections is his autobiography and an excellent read. If it resonates with you there are volumes of his work to absorb.

:)

In my expiriance the more in touch with shemselfs a person is the more they dream and the more vivid the dream. I'm an artist and love mushrooms and have crazy vivid dreams. People I know with let's say "simpler" mindsets often tell me they dream very little if at all.

I have always wondered if this had something to do with dreaming the person or just your brain.

Me as well, although I can’t link that cause together since I’ve been an insanely vivid dreamer ever since I was a child.

I agree, this is why I believe the more "aware/awake" (whatever you want to call it) the more in touch you are with 3rd eye = more in touch with dreams which could potentially be some kind of meditative state. My dad isn't exactly "simple minded" but definitely isn't spiritual or religious or has any really deep thoughts about life and he claims he never dreams or remembers them if he does.

What does the third eye have to do with dreaming?

Third eye means the same as being "red pilled" or "woke". Being aware of yourself and the reality of situations. Aka not fake.

I know almost nothing about dreams. I'm trying to train myself to lucid dream but it's still a work in process. However I've developed a theory about what dreams are over the last year of research into the history of the Human Race.

As a short summary, I believe that as a result of a celestial cataclysm humanity, or the earth and us by extension, lost consciousness for a period of time. During that time various bargains were struck with extradimensional entities for the safe guard of the collective human/earth conciousness. This turned out to be a poor choice, as it resulted in millennia of slowly coaxing our species into forgetting its true nature as energetic, multidimensional beings. The end result was a species that forgot what it was.

What does that have to do with dreaming? Dreams puzzled me for the longest time, still do in many ways. I always wondered why everyone would nightly have experiences that could seem real, that could involve people or places we rarely see, even be premonitory? Why was there no explanation for them, modern science had nothing, still has nothing. It's because they are looking in the wrong place, deliberately, but that's another topic. Dreams have been a mystery to all of us for a very long time. Now this is just a theory, but I believe dreams are the natural state of human consciousness. The human being exists in a world of illusion, constantly attacking our subconscious, the split of consciousness caused by the cataclysm. However when we sleep, when the physical body shuts off as is required of it, that illusion no longer affects it. We revert back to our default (to a degree) conscious state. Since our consciousness is split we still have little control over this state which is why our dreams are unpredictable and uncontrollable (for most people).

Like I said this is just a theory, I have very little proof for this. And that's due to modern science making proof of such things impossible, which I think is kind of the point of modern science in the first place. It would take me too long to go through all the sources that have built into this theory, but one of the strongest ones was the Australian aboriginies. In their mythology the beginning of things is called the Dreamtime. Now, that had always been casually brushed off as them being theatrical but I don't think it is anymore. Theirs is the oldest continuous civilisation on the planet, and I think they remember a time before this era of civilisation, before the cataclysm, when humans lived in their natural state of consciousness. A state between different planes of the physical, astral and beyond. And that all existence was that of dreams, completely moldable by the consciousness experiencing it. Magic, in the pure sense of it. Visualisation and will forming reality around you. Imagine it.

tl;dr - It's just a theory, but I think dreams are us experiencing reality how we are supposed to, free from the grand illusion that has been placed over all of us.

I was just thinking this exact same thing in the shower five minutes ago no bull shit. Dreams/a state of unconsciousness is the default/natural state of our being.

I've been having the craziest dreams lately. I guess they're not fully lucid. Because I'm only fully aware and decisive of what I'm doing, but not what's going on around me, only what I do can I control. But I just had one this morning during my really light sleep that I've never had before. Where I was somebody else. (I was a guy and I fucked Hillary Duff in a toilet, it was super weird and random. Then we got in a taxi with some Romanian guys who were driving on the wrong side of the rode, drove right into someone then turned the car so oncoming traffic would hit me and Hillary, I made us jump out and they'd swapped my phone for theirs then I woke up when I shouted "FUCK" and threw his phone on the floor) Was totally totally way more random than any dream I'd had recently, and I remember more of it but wont go into it, but that's the first time I've ever dreamt I was somebody else. This was during extremely light sleep, where I'd wake up and fall back asleep and instantly be in the same dream again. Totally trippy!

I like the ideas that your dreams are a collection of all things you've seen or even thought about recently without being aware of it. It makes sense because I've had dreams where I've made connections like that. But sometimes, I do feel like some dreams are being put into your head somehow by higher powers or certain energies that are trying to tell you something. It's hard to say because I notice with myself things like, no matter what if I've been drinking when I sleep that night 9/10 times it'll be a sex dream. If I dont smoke weed for a day or so, my dream will be incredibly trippy. (last night I didn't smoke and had that crazy Hillary Duff sex dream?!) IMO it's got so much to do with what state of mind you're in when you sleep, just out of my own experiences. I can think really hard about something before I sleep and dream about it. But all in all, I have no idea what dreams REALLY are.

Glad you posted this, I've been looking for some good book recommendations on dreams

Hey I like joe rogan too but if you are truly interested I would suggest like actually reading from psychology professors and textbooks.

There's no evidence to believe that DMT is released during REM sleep. Sleep is your conscious brain working while your body is in a paralyzed state. In the different phases of sleep your brain accomplishes different things (like problem solving) and just random dreams I guess.

I'm no expert either I just took a psychology course in university

I'd say eventually because u dream pretty much every day and u can dream several dreams per night (I've heard average is 4-6) and your mind is racing through all the little memories and thoughts in your brain, eventually it's going to strike something that might seem weird to your conscious mind.

And yeah a lot of stuff about sleep and dreaming is a mystery for the most part. No one even knows why humans need sleep.

I don´t get why this would be useful. Was there an evolutionary benefit to dreaming that enhanced this ability? If so, why?

Think about your peripheral vision. You're aware of what's in your peripheral vision but you're not looking at it. You don't even need to receive photons from the objects in your peripheral vision to continue to see them, because vision happens primarily in your mind. Most of the model of the world you're keeping in your head is informed by the inside of your brain, not the outside.

When you're awake, you're wearing out some of your neurons when you're walking around and collecting new experiences. It's like how everyone's house has a smell but you're not aware of it after a while; the neurons responsible for sensing that smell get tired.

Your brain is active all throughout the night, it's just that the parts responsible for connecting it to your motor neurons that control your skeletal muscle are less active. And it has to be active: it regulates your breathing and heartbeat, prevents you from wetting the bed, and it wakes you up if you need to avoid danger in the middle of the night.

It'd be weirder if dreaming was IMpossible; it's something that all mammals and some birds do. By what mechanism would you go from conscious, to so unconscious that your brain would be unable to experience ANYTHING (while still keeping you alert enough to avoid danger), to conscious again? Our brains are big and complex and messy. They're gonna fire in weird patterns as we transition from awake to asleep, and as we transition between different phases in our sleep cycle. If any of those neurons are associated with something, and you successfully recall it, you've dreamed.

It's unfortunate that so many people associate the brain with the mind. The brain is just the connection of the mind to the physical world. The mind is a collection of past experiences from previous births. The subtle and gross bodies are distinct ontological things. Dreaming just means the mind is creating sense objects from past experience. They call them "samskaras" in sanskrit. When you wake up, you create more samskaras. The goal of life is to eliminate mundane samskaras. When this is accomplished, eternal life is achieved since one is no longer attached to transient forms of existence.

Anyone interested in this should study sankhya-yoga, the authority on metaphysical understanding of the relationship between the psychic and the physical.

One of the most interesting things I find about dreams is how real they are when we're in them no matter how unusual, bizarre, or completely off the wall they seem to be after we awake from them.

Another thing is the people or equally unusual and unpredictable things that they may do, say, of tell us and yet there's no one to produce the script or create that presentation but ourselves.

If you learn to get into a state of true lucidity in your dreams, you will quickly realize that there is far, far more to dreams than we ordinarily think. I saw true lucidity, because many people, including casual lucid dreamers and people who have never tried to have a lucid dream, have experiences where they realize, in some sense, that they're dreaming. However, the level of lucidity in these experiences is usually weak and fleeting. In other words, the level of lucidity is far from the level of lucidity we have in waking life. It's still a magical experience, but it's sort of like the perception you have in waking life when you're really drunk.

A truly clear lucidity is another animal altogether. When you "wake up" in your dream with full consciousness that is the same level of consciousness you have in waking life, the experience is akin to nothing else. In that moment you see the whole dream world as clearly as you see the world of waking life.

Sure. As I mentioned in my other comment here, use the hand technique (no, not that hand technique). Every night before you fall asleep, spend a few minutes looking at the palms of your hands held if front of your face. Tell yourself that when you see your palms in a dream, you'll realize you're dreaming. If you do this for about a week, you're likely to have a lucid dream. What will happen is you'll be in a regular dream and your hands will unconsciously rise up in front of you, and when you see them it will trigger you to realize that you're dreaming. It's so simple and bizarre, but it works for pretty much everyone as far as I know.

I would like to experience this but based on my research it takes a lot of practice and dedication. Do you have any recommended techniques that have worked well for you?

Learning to have ordinary lucid dreams (with weak lucidity) is pretty easy. The hand technique that I've described elsewhere in this thread works for most people in a short period of time. If you want to get to the point of true lucidity, you just have to keep at it and have a real determination every night and even during the day. Eventually it will happen.

I if you're a pet owner, you'll know animals have dreams too.

Where do you get your ideas from?

I agree, this is why I believe the more "aware/awake" (whatever you want to call it) the more in touch you are with 3rd eye = more in touch with dreams which could potentially be some kind of meditative state. My dad isn't exactly "simple minded" but definitely isn't spiritual or religious or has any really deep thoughts about life and he claims he never dreams or remembers them if he does.