Can Dying in Dreams Feel Real?

[Mattius_]

I have, very surreal... I was escaping some 'bad guys' with my dad and his truck... the terrain was very much like a arid desert that had chapped because of dryness, only magnified. Anyways, as we were crossing one of the cracks(several meters wide) in his truck(i was in the box)i fell off. anyways i had one of those 'falling' feelings and i had hazy tunnel vision. when i impacted i got a pulse type feeling, and everything went black. I then started to question whether or not this was possible, and humourously, i came back alive and we tried to cross again. Very much like a video game would do...

kinda weird... but i guess this defeats the old 'die in your dreams, die i life' myth, because I am still here.

so, have any of you died in a dream?

 

[Zero]

I do the whole regeneration thing...heck, it is MY dream, isn't it?

 

[Mattius_]

lol i think my steps of comprehension after death were as follows: 1. Did i just die? 2. No, that's incompatable, it has to be! 3. quick! start over like it never happened!

funny how the brain works...

 

[Iacchus32]

I once had a dream where somebody blew my head off with a shotgun but, that was just before I awoke?

 

[Ivan Seeking]

I've done just about everything else including inducing a few lucid dreams, , but I don't think I have ever died in a dream.

 

[Zero]

Originally posted by Iacchus32
I once had a dream where somebody blew my head off with a shotgun but, that was just before I awoke?

*Insert gratuitous 'shrooms reference here*

 

[Frequency]

All I can ask is, did it hurt when u died?

Really, the closest I ever remember being to death is when I suddenly slip on something and my leg jerks up waking me up in the process.

 

[Mattius_]

nope didnt hurt, just a pulse and black space... i guess you could define 'pulse' as a jolt in every realm of my conciousness... i suppose it jolted because it had never happened before.

 

[Iacchus32]

Originally posted by Frequency
All I can ask is, did it hurt when u died?

Really, the closest I ever remember being to death is when I suddenly slip on something and my leg jerks up waking me up in the process.

Are you referring to my dream? All I can say is I sure sensed something wasn't going to feel right if I stuck around long engouh. And, since I was close to being awake I decided it would best to wake myself up.

I also had a dream where I told someone to hit me over the head with a shovel, thinking I would somehow snap out of it but, about the time that I felt I was sinking face down into a dark swimming pool or something, I decided it was about time to wake myself up again.

Oh, I had another dream where a lion swiped at me at me with its paw and cut me in half at the torso, where I looked like a cartoon image cut in two. And, while I was still aware of myself in my dream, when I tried to move nothing would work properly. And it was at this point that I forced myself to wake up.

So you noticed I was able to wake myself in each instance. If I hadn't, who knows what would have happened?

 

[Zantra]

I had a dream once where I was beheaded. you know like in france, in the 1600's... very surreal. And I remember what it felt like when the guillotine came down on me... Not pretty...And for some reason I remember living past the beheading.. like I could see still as my head rolled from my body..Not for the faint of heart;)

 

[Mattius_]

wow zantra i think that scenario would be way to abstract for my mind to handle...

 

[steppenwolf]

like most people I've had heaps of almost dying dreams, like when you're acutally thinking after the event, or wake up when it happens, but a few weeks ago i actually died, like completely wholey returned to nothingness. it was the most beautiful experience, one of the most amazing dreams I've ever had.

i can't remember the situation exactly, i think i had been having some trouble with my mobiilty and control over body for a while, something wrong with my nervous system, then i was walking with a friend and just fell down, couldn't keep going. i lay there with my friend leaning over me and just started losing feeling everywhere, at the then the numbness started in my mind and i thought 'wow, this is it, everything comes to this one moment' it was sad but amazing, i mean it's a once in a lifetime experience! and slowly the numbness ate away everything left and i...died. i was in awe all day at the feeling, so hard to describe.

*sings* 'i find it kinda funny, i find it kinda sad, the dreams in which i'm, dying are the best I've ever had'

 

[BoulderHead]

Originally posted by Mattius_
so, have any of you died in a dream?

Many times when I was young. One of two things tended to happen; I’d either wake up immediately or my dream activity would abruptly stop for the duration of my sleep. In the second case I cannot know for certain how much longer I actually spent asleep but always felt as though it couldn’t have been more than a couple of hours at most.
In the first case I began to commit suicide (jumping off a cliff my favorite way to go as it would provide that special sensation in the abdomen) after learning through recurring dreams that being hacked, stabbed, shot, or killed in any other manner would result in awakening me. Experimenting with this I became aware, while dreaming, that in fact I was only dreaming. This led to some interesting times for a couple of years before I lost the ability, where sleeping was one of my favorite pastimes because I was aware within my dreams…

 

[Zantra]

Originally posted by Mattius_
wow zantra i think that scenario would be way to abstract for my mind to handle...

Well to put it another way. I fell a quick, sharp pain, and then instant nothingess, but I was still aware-almost floating you could say. But not in the "floating above your body sense. more in the sense that you could only imagine feeling if you had absolutely no feeling below your neck and yet you were still concious.

 

[Lyuokdea]

I never remember dreams, does anybody else have this problem? There are three dreams that I remember.

 

[Zantra]

Originally posted by Lyuokdea
I never remember dreams, does anybody else have this problem? There are three dreams that I remember.

It all depends on the sleeping patterns of the person. Dreams happen in the deepest REM state. Some people are slower to wake from that state than otherws and thus forget their dreams. At times I've been ableto remember several dreams in one night, others I couldn't remember anything.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Originally posted by Lyuokdea
I never remember dreams, does anybody else have this problem? There are three dreams that I remember.

I have a suggestion. When I first learned about lucid dreaming, I read that you can simply remind yourself to do it. So, before I go to sleep, if I really concentrate and force the thought that I will become conscious of the fact that I'm dreaming, sometimes I do. This does not come easily; which is I guess why I don't do this much...actually…I don't know why I quit doing this...hmmm. Anyway, I was thinking that you could try this for dream memory. As you fall to sleep, just concentrate on remembering you dreams.

What were your three dreams?

 

[Lyuokdea]

all three dreams are those really weird ones where the plot line doesn't even really make sense, objects are doing things their not supposed to and it looks like a scene from a fantasy movie, all the dreams come from when I was 7-10 years old. I think most of it just comes from me having a horrendously bad memory in some respects, for instance, while most people have first memories from being 3 or 4, I don't really have a first memory until I'm about 7. I have some memories from before that time, but I can directly trace them all back to either video or pictures that I've seen of the incidents after that.

Here is another question for people, this has happened to me a couple times too, you wake up and remember a dream, but then maybe a minute later you forget it even though you've run through it in your head while your awake. I even remember times when I've remembered the dream in detail and gone over it in detail consciously multiple times and still forgotten it, it must have something to do with the brain putting those recollections in dreams in a memory area that has to do with dreams and is forgetful or something like that.

 

[Jikx]

i found that happening to me too.. i believe i can't really remember things that have no impact on life - hence no need to remember it.

Also explains why i seemingly forget everything after exam periods


And yes, I've had a dream where I died. Oddest feeling in the world, to be sitting around talking with a friend, and suddenly an atomic explosion fries your existence. It was perhaps the first time in my life where my mind was completely blank - nothing except feeling that it was blank. Very odd.

 

[Pyrite]

Originally posted by Lyuokdea
all three dreams are those really weird ones where the plot line doesn't even really make sense, objects are doing things their not supposed to and it looks like a scene from a fantasy movie

Almost all my dreams are like that.

Yeah, I've died a couple of times in dreams. usually, i go on to some afterlife thingy i invent. It's entirely different every time. it's weird.

 

[Mattius_]

generally my dreams have a plot... prodominantly escape, exploration, or relationships with a woman... The plot does however evolve and twist as the dream continues...

 

[LURCH]

Originally posted by Lyuokdea


Here is another question for people, this has happened to me a couple times too, you wake up and remember a dream, but then maybe a minute later you forget it even though you've run through it in your head while your awake. I even remember times when I've remembered the dream in detail and gone over it in detail consciously multiple times and still forgotten it, it must have something to do with the brain putting those recollections in dreams in a memory area that has to do with dreams and is forgetful or something like that.

This brings to mind another technique advocated by proponents of lucid dreaming. For a brief period of time, try keeping a noyepad and pen next to your bed. When you wake up with a dream-memory, write down a brief description.

I've tried this myself and was pretty amazed at the resutls. Just reading the notes later in the day caused such clear recollection that it was as though I'd just come from the dream that instant.

Never died in a dream, but I have two friends who have, and I now see that several PFers have, as well. So the "die in rwal life" myth is well and truly fragged.

 

[Sonty]

I don't remember dreams usually. For me night is just a blank period. Nothing happened, I'm dead for reality. That's why it's really hard for someone to wake me up. It's in sleep that I get a lot of answers to my questions and solutions to my problems so probably my brain takes over my part of CPU usage and works better. It's kind of like turning the monitor off. The computer still works, but it doesn't ask anything.
Sometimes though I remember dreams like jumping of a cliff either for that feeling in my stomach or for a Matrix-like stay in the air if you can. The image is composed of a sharp cliff where I jump from after I gather some speed and a big pine-tree forested hill at the horizon. It's peak is at about the same height as my cliff and constitutes my goal. I usually fall short and crash, but sometimes I do a loop fly a little among a few clouds then go back to the cliff or end the dream. I've never reached the hill. After crashing I feel my body bouncing, I get up, I see my body lying down, turn around and somewhere before or during the flight back (NOW I can fly) to the cliff my body joins me. This is the "beautiful" version. There's also one where the cliff gets replaced by my window and the hill by the city. The sky is now the limit.
This is the recurrent dying dream. I wake up after a while from this one. The other one happened only once. I was in a car, I think I was in the back seat, and was reading something when a kid comes up to my window, draws a gun and shoots me in the head from the left side. I feel the bullet coming out the other side, I see the broken window and the kid leaving his arm down and having either an "I did my job" or a satisfied face. This is while I fall to the right. Then my body bounced again and I flew (without the body) through the cars roof undecided between watching my body that won't follow me and goind to see who the kid was and why he shot me. Then I woke up with a frightening feeling that I couldn't shake.

 

[FZ+]

Sure I have. I had plenty of lucid nightmares where is only way out is suicide. I also had a couple of reincarnation ones.

Then again, I am kinda weird.

 

[BoulderHead]

Let me guess; you reincarnated as a fanatical Christian conservative?

 

[cytokinesis]

I had a dream where I went up the stairs from my basement, looking for a bite to eat after a powernap, and as I was making some toast (or a grilled cheese sandwich, I can't remember what exactly... something with bread... anyways) when i felt a sharp pain in my back. I then saw myself from the kind of view you get in 3rd person video games like tomb raider and the sort, with this looming grey thing right behind me and I could feel the knife it had sinking in, and being pulled out over and over again. I remembered that when I had come up the stairs, I saw my sister sitting in the living room beside the kitchen. So I screamed and I screamed for her to help me, but nothing was coming out of my mouth. Even at that, I kept trying, but my efforts were in vain as the pain went away and everything went black. Then i woke up. It was ****ing scary. Especially because I was 8, and I've had a few 'encounters' with a looming grey thing within my house since then. None were violent, but this apparition made sure I was aware of its presence.

 

[cytokinesis]

lol it censored my curse word.