Extremely detailed, continuous dreams
 

.. and I've just woken up from one.

Let me describe this weird phenomenon. You know how you only remember the last few minutes of your dreams, when you wake up? It seems that, at least for me, if something is disturbing my sleep enough to semi-wake me, but not enough to stop REM, I am not only aware of the dream I've had before the interruption, but also am aware of the dreams afterwards. If the interruption occurs more than once, even more amazingly detailed dreams can be strung together my memories, and most of the time are closely related to each other.

In fact, everything past that first point of interruption is much more detailed and momorable, as I never actually fall entirely back into sleep. I feel like I am directing the dream, with whatever's on my mind happening before my eyes, instead of me just going with the flow. I can consciously put my mind back on track in the dream - ie:"This is what was happening before I got woken up - lets see what happens next."

Hope that makes some sense.

Anyway, with this latest dream, I think I've just received a serious dose of inspiration to write a sci-fi novel. Almost everything I need is in my head, memories of what I saw and "directed" - the characters, the setting, small chunks of the timeline, including a mind's eye view of several important locations.

I think I can make good with just that. It will take alot of work to fill in the holes, but part is already there, free of charge! This whole phenomenon is really, really weird, and extremely cool.

Anybody else experience something like this?

(PS: If Tilted Living is not the right place to put this, feel free to move it)

heh, I had the same thing happen with a few of my dreams, good sci-fi stuff, but I suck as a writer, so never really worked it out. Still have the sheets with the notes on it though..

What you described is a known way of dreaming, for the life of me I can't remember the name, but it is as you describe it, just barely conscious enough to realise you're dreaming and "steering" your own dreams. It's quite fun and I believe entirely harmless.

edit: gotta love Google. It's called lucid dreams or lucid dreaming

edit-edit: http://www.xs4all.nl/~pasquale/TTM/

http://www.lucidity.com

all the info you could want about it :)

I've had that happen too. If I'm in the middle of a good dream and I'm interrupted and woken up, I somehow coax myself back into that dream when I go back to sleep.

I have this happen from time to time. Fortunatly the dreams tend to be good, so I don't mind.

Thanks for the links, Nisses! This is EXACTLY whats happening. I'm really surprized to read there that this can acually be used to "rehearse" things before they happen, by laying down neural pathways pre-emptively.

I wonder how hard it is to train yourself up to be a true master of dreams... I am seriously interested in making use of those pre-emptive neural pathways which will be needed once I wake up. Its just too bad I can only try once every 24 hours :D

I guess the human mind is way more complicated and mysterious than anything science can throw at us.

Yeah I've written a small book about one of my dreams.. not much.. available online if you want to look just PM me :)