Remember those old racing games at the arcades where the car stayed in one spot and the track flowed beneath it? And then 3D gaming picked up and you actually moved around the computer-generated environment. It got me thinking… in a lucid dream, do you believe that we move around the dream, like a conscious entity tracing our neural pathways, or does the dream move around us? I’m writing a blog on this and would love to hear your experiences.
I’m reminded of a line from the Star Trek NG movie First Contact. Data asks the Borg Queen - “Do you control the collective or are you a part of it?” And her reply is “You imply a disparity where there is none.”
A very good point. The dream and the dreamer are indeed one. But what is your experience? Do you FEEL as if you are moving around the dream, or do you feel as if you are in one spot, and the dream revolves around you?
Looks like we have two threads that could easily be combined, so I’ll simply link to a couple posts where I introduce the work of Dr. Mark Solms Ph.D. which relates to your interests. If you are not familiar with him, I bet you won’t regret the time you spend learning about his work.
One way to look at it would be that things in a dream don’t exist until you dream them. So there is no full Dream Scene for you to move around in. So it would be that the dream moves around you …no?
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@mrmhead: It’s funny, as this is exactly what I would expect. Yet I definitely feel as if I am moving around the dream, even while lucid. Despite the fact that - as you say - since we dream the scene, surely it would move around us!
Another “hybrid” approach might be analogous how some video games are designed.
Your brain may already have a general framework built from memories and experiences, but the full rendering doesn’t occur until your dream enters that space.
Maybe your experiences within the dream can modify the framework you don’t see before you get there.
I have dreams that are in the same “dream place”, but it’s a different story, and the places aren’t always necessarily exactly the same.
There are actually a number of dream-locations within a dream-city that recur for me. And I think that could lend to lucid dreaming, or at least somewhat directable within the dream.
Once in a while I do recognize when I am in a dream.
‘There are actually a number of dream-locations within a dream-city that recur for me’ - Same here. I think we are definitely on the same page here, @mrmhead, these ideas make a lot of sense to me. Thanks for sharing.
Consider that you are not really moving at all. Your brain is hallucinating (creating) the entire scene, but disconnected from the body except for the unconscious homeostatic control functions.
In your dream, often you may be walking or running, but are not going anywhere. A kind of unconscious check by the homeostatic control machanism, on the physical orientation.
This is what Anil Seth calls an "uncontrolled hallucination’ where your mind is free to roam and create imaginary scenes and situations, as compared to a “controlled hallucination” where your mind is aware of your physical environment and responds in a specific way based on “informed” (memory) considerations.