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Have you ever died in a dream?


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Poll: Have you ever died in a dream? (82 member(s) have cast votes)

Have you ever died in a dream?

  1. NO (27 votes [33.75%])

    Percentage of vote: 33.75%

  2. YES- dying but never experienced dream-logic post-life (31 votes [38.75%])

    Percentage of vote: 38.75%

  3. YES- fully died and experienced dream-logic post-life (22 votes [27.50%])

    Percentage of vote: 27.50%

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#1 kent23

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Posted 15 August 2006 - 07:09 AM


I've always wanted to ask a lot of people this question. I've maybe asked ten in my life so far- too small a sample size. I've always idly wondered whether it might represent a litmus test of unknown differences in brain function. It's a question I want to pursue seriously after aging is cured.

One of many intense dreamworld deaths I've experienced goes as follows (remaining concise because other peoples' dream are boring):

Drowning in the bottom of a pool. An overwhelming peace. I feel the universe going away one word at a time. The last word is "love".

At the time I had the dream (late teens) I think I had read somewhere that drowning is supposed to be a "peaceful death". (I have no idea whether this is bullshit or not.)

#2 Live Forever

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Posted 15 August 2006 - 09:02 AM

I have died in dreams before (although not frequently). I do no experience any type of "afterlife" or anything, if that is whay you mean by "post-life". Actually, I usually wake up right after I die in the dream.

#3 maestro949

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Posted 15 August 2006 - 09:54 AM

I usually wake up right before. Sometimes I don't. Two nights ago I was blown to smitherines by a large canister of chemicals.

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#4 AdamDavis

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Posted 15 August 2006 - 10:03 AM

I have died in my dreams too...in some dreams I have been killed by members of my family. I am passionate about dreams (oneirology), they mean alot to me, and I hope that future technologies will give us the ability to record our dreams and fully-immerse ourselves in them (except for the ones where you die...unless you want to of course!). I have also experienced many "emotions" in my dreams which I have never experienced in the real world...has anybody else encountered this? I keep a log of my dreams (well, the ones that I do not forget ;))), which is now quite expansive!

#5 Live Forever

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Posted 15 August 2006 - 10:08 AM

Zoolander is a mack daddy at dream interpretation. (knowing what certain things mean, and how they relate to the person having the dream) He is in China/Japan for a couple weeks though, unfortunately, but I would like to hear his take on this subject as well.

#6 garethnelsonuk

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Posted 15 August 2006 - 10:11 AM

I can recall one dream I had in high school which went something like this:

I walked into an english lesson, at my desk was a big coffin which I got into and lied down. The lesson then continued as normal and nobody took any notice of the big coffin.

Other than this I cannot recall any specific dreams of death and I believe this one was more to do with fears of being ignored or similar at the time.

#7 MichaelAnissimov

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Posted 15 August 2006 - 11:07 AM

Google 'dream interpretation' and you'll see that the whole idea is utter crap, plagued by a thousand charlatans with conflicting definitions. No better than the equally unscientific field of astrology. We don't know what dreams 'mean', if anything - what they mean to you is whatever you take them to mean. Religions start because people have dreams about angels and then take them to mean that they are selected by God.

Not to say that Zoolander is propagating pseudoscience maliciously... if he thinks that there is such a skill as 'dream interpretation' and he has it, this only means that he is good at making up fun-and-reasonable-sounding explanations for events in dreams, not that he is really burrowing into the 'true dream interpretations'.

In the real world, events can objectively mean something because everything is linked together by the laws of physics. In dreams, it's just our human psychology creating fantastic scenarios artificially, using some pseudorandom process that we have yet to discover the structure of.

If you're being chased in a dream, it might mean you're paranoid, or it might not. If you see a long lost love in a dream, it may be that you want to get back with them, or you might not. If you experience fearful death in a dream, it might mean you want to defeat death, it might not. It's really only dictated by whatever you say.

#8 maestro949

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Posted 15 August 2006 - 12:23 PM

Agreed. It's crap. Some biological process to reorganize information using imagination for optimal survival of the species or something of the sort. Impressive is how the body is paralyzed during sleep to prevent you from acting out your dreams. This probably evolved as a defense mechanism to prevent you from being spotted by predators while you sleep.

Interesting examples you point out Michael. Most people experience these and they are all important to the survival of the species.

Long Lost Love = Reproduction, desire to return to 1st mate to rear young
Being Chased = Fight or Flight
Death = Loss of ability to eat hot dogs.

#9 AdamDavis

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Posted 15 August 2006 - 12:27 PM

Alot of the time, shards of dreams are reproductions of things that have happened in real life already, or something you think about alot also in real life.

#10 Live Forever

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Posted 15 August 2006 - 06:46 PM

Hmm, well I don't know. I know that I tend to have certain types of dreams if I am stressed out, or am anticipating certain events, or a number of other things. Perhaps it is different for everyone, though, I don't know. I do find the whole idea of lucid dreaming (which was briefly discussed in this thread) to be quite interesting. I would like to get into dream manipulation at some point.

#11 FunkOdyssey

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Posted 15 August 2006 - 06:56 PM

I used to have this recurring dream where I would fall from some great height in the sky and then hit the ground. Usually that is where most people's falling dream would end. In mine, I hit the ground, and then lay there all f*cked up and paralyzed, still looking out at the world from that point of view there on the ground, but without being able to move (I suppose my neck is broken or something). I just remain there like that for quite some time. Its really weird.

#12 Live Forever

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Posted 15 August 2006 - 07:42 PM

I think that means you are homosexual, Funk. I know that is going to be hard to break to your girlfriend.

#13 ikaros

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Posted 15 August 2006 - 08:30 PM

When I was a kid I used to have dreams where I died through some wierd death such as being sucked to death by a vampire. Now I dominantly have only dreams where I fall from a high building and then followingly wake up bit jumpy, so to say. I guess Freud would say there's some bad neurosis creeping under my subconscious, but Freud thought a lot about a lot of things, so I'm not going to trust him on this one. I tend to think that dreaming is just like thinking only that our mental monitors which make sure everything is logical and consistent are offline (though there is that phenomenon called lucid dreaming) resulting in bizarre state of mind.

#14 MichaelAnissimov

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Posted 15 August 2006 - 08:39 PM

I think that means you are homosexual, Funk. I know that is going to be hard to break to your girlfriend.


My classmates told me this when I was 12 and told them that I didn't dream about sex. I thought about sex pretty frequently, but didn't have dreams about it till a couple years later or so.

#15 garethnelsonuk

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Posted 15 August 2006 - 09:10 PM

Surely homosexuals dream about same-sex partners? Well, people are strange....

On the subject of dream interpetation I have a few thoughts:
All the concepts that turn up in dreams have a source somewhere in your mind. Ever dreamt about something that happened the previous day? It happens to me constantly.

Of course the idea that an event in a dream has a universal meaning for everyone is new-age crap. Interpreting a dream requires knowledge of the person's psyche and background. The same symbol in one person's dreams may have a totally different set of emotional connections in someone else's dream.

#16 John Schloendorn

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Posted 16 August 2006 - 02:49 AM

The night after I first "learned" about Jesus in a religion class, I got glued to a crucifix with superglue and died an instant later. Black, featureless void.

#17 stephen

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Posted 16 August 2006 - 03:15 AM

Agreed.  It's crap.  Some biological process to reorganize information using imagination for optimal survival of the species or something of the sort.


Dreaming is the mind's way of defragging.

#18 icyT

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Posted 16 August 2006 - 12:55 PM

Yes, normally it goes black, or I wake up afterwards. Or maybe I start some other dream I never remember.

#19 quadclops

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Posted 16 August 2006 - 07:18 PM

I've never died in a dream, but I went to Hell once. It was an overcast, burned-out urban wasteland. Shattered buildings, half buried cars, and completely devoid of people except for screams in the background. There was an overpowering sensation of EVIL all around me, and the feeling that I was about to be jumped by something horrible at any moment. Still creeped me out for awhile after I woke up.

#20 Live Forever

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Posted 16 August 2006 - 09:42 PM

It was an overcast, burned-out urban wasteland.  Shattered buildings, half buried cars, and completely devoid of people except for screams in the background.  There was an overpowering sensation of EVIL all around me, and the feeling that I was about to be jumped by something horrible at any moment.

Are you sure it wasn't Texas?

[wis]

#21 quadclops

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Posted 17 August 2006 - 04:34 PM

[tung]

#22 rhakshasa

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Posted 17 August 2006 - 08:02 PM

Didn't experience the afterward death. I have had dream where I was already in the post-death state tho. Once it was similar to an bliss state other it was the opposite, apocalypse (even with the knightrider of doom!)

#23 kent23

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Posted 18 August 2006 - 01:25 PM

Surely homosexuals dream about same-sex partners?


This made me remember an irony I read about in some psychology textbook: the dreamworlds of gay men are disproportionately populated by women. Some kind of survey of gender in dreams showed that gay men have more female characters in their dreams then straight men do. (I don't remember what the study said about the dreams of straight women versus lesbians, if they looked at that...)

#24 niner

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Posted 09 December 2007 - 06:22 AM

My dreams rarely if ever have people in them. That must mean I'm asexual. No, wait... Hypersexual! Yeah, that's it. I've never died in a dream, or even had sex. (Almost did a few times, but always woke up, dang it.) I did have a grand total of three flying dreams in my life. Two when I was little and one recently. Flying dreams rock.

#25 zoolander

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Posted 09 December 2007 - 01:24 PM

LOL. I just spotted this

I don't use any technique or method apart from just applying my own understanding of my dreams which I believe range from simple to extremely profound manifestations of my subconscious. Most of the books out there on dream interpretation are crap. Those who interpret dreams with profound explanations with twists and turns are just compounding the problem. IMO, the subconscious does enough of that to confuse the hell out of anyone.

I'm more in favour of discussing the possible meanings of dreams and letting the dreamer themselves relate to the discussion as they wish

For starters

I have died in my dreams too...in some dreams I have been killed by members of my family.



In this situation it suggests that members of the family are trying to kill a part of the dreamer. Something that the dreamer is doing. A decision they do not agree with. Perhaps they are trying to suppress a part of you that you believe is a part of your true self. I could see a dream like this being common in a young male homosexual coming out to his Christian Family.

They're just my thought though. I related this to a dream I had a few years back when I was studying the buddha dharma. I would always have a buddhist text of some sort with me and would be very very serious, perhaps a little too serious, about meditation. Anyway....I had this dream where I killed a clown. I murdered a clown and this really disturbed me. Why? Well because the seeds of karma are sown through acts of mind, speech and body. I came out of the dream thinking that I had just violated one of the lay precepts by an act of the mind i.e thought that I killed a clown

After sitting on this for a few days I had the realisation that the clown was a manifestation of my humorous side. My non-serious side. The dream I had was my subconscious telling me that I was becoming more serious about life and I was. I was sacrificing my own humor to become this more serious person. That's like chopping off your own arm to lose weight. You will lose weight but you will lose the function of your arm just like becoming more serious for some means losing the function of humor, which to me is essential characteristic. You don't need to be funny you just need to be able to see the lighter side life. I still read buddhist texts but not as much as I used to.

In short, i am really fascinated by dreams. Some might say that I am infatuated. I've shocked many people with my interpretations, which in turn has shocked me because I was just sharing the way I would interpret the dream for myself. Understanding someone else through understanding yourself has really driven home the existence of a universal quality that I believe that all human beings have. ....I'm going off on a tangent.........dreams.....right!......I voted for

YES- fully died and experienced dream-logic post-life

I can't remember dying though. I do remember watching myself die in dreams. The act of watching myself die in dreams usually results in me imaging myself dying in the dream. For example, in the dream I first watch a car crash into the wall. I am in the car and I watch myself die and then I have (still dreaming) a vision of myself in the car as it drives into the wall.

A while back I was going to write a short story about death in dreams. In this story the people who die in the dreams die in real life. They die in real life and their spirit/conscious mind or what every you want to call it, enters the mind of a dreamer. The dreamer is having a dream that they are dying or just died in dream. The dreamer relates to this death as themselves because they have the dying memories of the person who just died. Anyhow....I never wrote the story or haven't written it yet because I could quite work out where the empty vessel i.e the dreamer, came from?? The only thing that I could think of is that we live in more than one dimension. We have 2 dream dimensions/planes each with their seperate realities. The dreams I have in my reality now is one dream dimension/plane. These dreams are my other reality and when I dream in this other reality it is my reality now. Does this make sense?? The 2 dimensions cross over and flow together. Each time I die in one reality I simply wake up in the next reality and visa versa. Hence I never die. I just wake up in my other reality thinking that I just died in a dream.

I just read the last paragraph and think I need to go to bed. I'll read it in the morning again to see if it makes any sense

#26 zoolander

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Posted 09 December 2007 - 01:42 PM

Just quickly

My dreams rarely if ever have people in them. That must mean I'm asexual. No, wait... Hypersexual! Yeah, that's it. I've never died in a dream, or even had sex. (Almost did a few times, but always woke up, dang it.)


Fascinating. There still may be people in your dreams but your subconscious either cannot/does not see them because your too focused on yourself. So ask yourself niner, are you the sort of person that is always concerned about what "you" are doing and therefore not concerned in what "other" people are doing?

This is perhaps a little too personal but ask yourself anyway..have you ever had sex with yourself in your dreams then? Perhaps with someone that looked like you? This is not as kinky and F**cked up as it sounds IMO.

#27 zoolander

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Posted 09 December 2007 - 01:45 PM

this is to all the people who can lucid dream.Unfortunately I can't lucid dream at the moment because of the sleep apnea but I'll do it again some day.

For those can lucid dream try this. It's pretty boring but I would like to see what comes out the other end.

Try to fall asleep in your lucid dream. Which way do you think you will come out. Go into another dream or lose the lucid dream?

#28 caston

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Posted 09 December 2007 - 01:59 PM

I don't think i've ever died in a dream. I tend to dream about massive environments like an assumement park the size of a large suburb and get really lost in them.

I have dreams where I have something or find a nice place but then I can never find that object or place again. A similar thing happens with women. I have them for a few minutes but then if I go somewhere and come back I can't find them again.

I have dreamt about sexual encounters with both genders and sometimes I am even the other gender but it is usually a very confusing realisation. You might tell me this means I'm gay but I think my genes are in conflict and the conflict is unresolved.

I didn't used to dream about computers and I spent so much time wondering about this that I managed to introduce computers into my dreams by going looking for them and eventually finding an ancient analoge machine in an old abandoneded shed. Since then I regularly dream about computers.

I'd like to do a similar thing with synthetic biology and dreaming about the potentials for tweaking gene functions in my body at will.

#29 Luna

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Posted 09 December 2007 - 03:53 PM

Died and became a ghost, was kinda fun :)

#30 forever freedom

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Posted 09 December 2007 - 05:42 PM

Yes i have. Never experienced post-life, though. At least i do not remember experiencing it.



I used to wake up as soon as i died in the dream. Now i've smartened up; when i detect that i'm about to die or that something isn't right in the dream, i usually figure that i'm dreaming and i wake up. I won't allow myself to die anymore, in dreams or in real life (if there ever is a real difference between both :biggrin: )




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