Dreaming a "Century of Time" During one Night of Sleep.

Dreaming a "Century of Time" During one Night of Sleep.
By Ian Wilson (2010) Public Domain No Copyright

Definition
Psychological Time[1] or "Duree" coined by French philosopher Henri-Louis Bergson[2] is a sense of time[3] that cycles beyond what is expected from normal clock time. The perception of time[4] in certain altered states such as dreaming and drug use can create a longer vertical of time or shorter sense of time then how the normal passage of clock time would allow for.

The Kappa Effect
When traveling long or short distances in real life, the sense of time can feel different. This is also as the Kappa effect[5] or Tau Effect[6] caused by a form of temporal illusion. The focus of this article is to explore what potential stems from dreaming and how the perception of time can greatly exceed clock time.

Perception of Time during Dreams
When our body sleeps, there is potential for time in dreams to last longer then the time we sleep. This is another self-evident experience that you may already have had experience with. You nap for 30 minutes and have a dream which appears to last several hours. The potential can even create a perception of time that lasts weeks and even months. Some people have reported months of vertical dream time and others have reported living entire lifetimes within the span of one dream.

These extreme claims share a similar re-orientation to waking up as in some cases people who have had the sense of time span many years say it can take a couple of weeks to readjust to the life they left when they went on this epic vertical of time during dreams. Anthony Peake[7] writes in his book "Is there life after death?" about "Maury's Dream" where a student entered a 2 hour trance and relived in minute-by-minute detail 20 years of memories from the age of 6 to 26.

The longest period of time I remember experiencing during a dream occurred within a 30 minute nap where in the dream state I was consciously aware I was dreaming and just allowed the dream to continue. The passage of time spanned into what felt like two weeks of conscious dreaming. I have had others spanning what seemed like a week and some spanning days. It is a rare observation in my experiences but when it occurs; the potential for acquiring more time through dreaming is certainly worth investigating.

I spoke with Tom Campbell, author of "My-Big-Toe" on his forum[8] regarding this phenomena. He is far more advanced in consciousness during sleep than I and he reported experiencing 3-2 months of extended dream time as his personal record.

The longest account I have read was posted on a forum unrelated to this topic where the poster with the username Ubasti[9] described nearly two centuries of time passed in four generations of lifetimes that he lived in one dream.

Ubasti wrote, "A couple of years ago I had a very strange dream. It was not precognitive as much as plain weird. From the time I started dreaming to the time I woke up, it seemed to me that the lifetime of four generations passed.

I was dreaming about four generations of people - birth, lifespan and death, and I was very disoriented when I woke up. It took me about two weeks to adjust to the fact that I found myself back in the "normal world" after being present in the "dream world" for about 2 centuries.

It was the most strange experience I ever had."

Other online forum examples of people claiming extended periods of time can be found here on Anthony Peake's forum as Anthony and I along with other members discuss this phenomena. link

In drug culture Aldous Huxley[10] reported a trip lasting an eternity. It is not uncommon with psychedelic drug use to have temporal illusions and experience Duree. That said, there is a very strong debate on Tom Campbell's forum on how drug use retards spiritual development and can cause far more harm then good. link

My Theory
Where clock time is cycling out a 1000 microseconds a second; psychological time allows for a much faster rate of computation to take place exponentially affecting the increment of time. We can assert that everything we experience in a dream is virtual including the space we see and the time we experience.

The answer to why we have psychological time that can exceed clock time may be linked to the research of Takaaki Musha[11], who expands on Penrose and Hameroff's[12] "Orch Or model" of quantum computing in his publication, "Possibility of High Performance Quantum Computation by using Evanescent Photons in Living Systems".

Takaaki suggests that the use of evanescent photons by the brain allows for the possibility of faster-than-light speed in the quantum tunneling within microtubules. He provides mathematical theorem in his article.

If consciousness and perception are linked to brain function and how the brain processes information; then it is suggestive that these faster than light computations could greatly accelerate our sense of time if we are not longer focusing through our five physical senses.

As discussed, we know that certain psychoactive drugs like LSD and Mescaline can cause an experience of prolonged psychological time where the user feels like hours have passed in minutes. The interference in their perception may allow for the FTL computations to start cycling out more psychological time.

A Simple Formula (Ian Wilson)
If clock time (ct) cycles out at 1000 milliseconds and psychological time (pt) remains in sync during normal waking perception; then we have a simple formula:

ct = pt

If FTL computations are affecting perception this high-performance we would have to introduce a multiplication factor based on an "uncertainty principle" that could affect psychological time represented by U.

ct*U = p

Increasing the Clock Time interval in Psychological Time
Based on this formula: ct*U=pt, if U is a factor of 2 our psychological time interval will be 2000Ms vs 1000Ms of ct.

If 30 minutes pass in ct while we are asleep and dreaming, we have the potential to experience 60 minutes of psychological time as a result of this theoretical effect of high performance computation by the quantum evanescent photon.

How this affects a much longer duration that spans into days/weeks/months and potentially years may depend entirely on your Memory, Awareness and Perception (MAP) and beliefs during these anomalous cognitive principles affecting the perception of time.

This is a self-evident phenomena to anyone who starts to become an avid dreamer. You may already have some experience in this field of anomalous cognition thanks to naturally occurring awareness of your dreams.

In my opinion, this represents potential that we may with skill and focus be able to improve and control. In some cases when I have had a fully conscious dream and ignored the signals to wake up; I have managed to allow myself several more hours of conscious awareness during sleep.

Take my two week excursion and apply it to this formula to see how this extended PT affected the uncertainty principle U by a factor of 627 ( or two weeks in 30 minutes of sleep). If we look at Tom Campbell's potential 3 month record and assume only that it happened in 30 minutes we would have a U factor of 4,368, Ubasti's epic would be well, epic if we knew how long he slept for.

An impressive feat of consciousness to produce this much perceived time during sleep. This phenomena in my experience happens more when I am consciously awake during sleep. This may have a profound effect on people who believes that when they die; there is no more existence of their self.

Cheat Death by Prolonging Life through Consciousness
If there was one theoretical way to prolong your life and stretch out time; this potential to affect time and increase a longer experience of self-realized consciousness during sleep adds to our total conscious experience pool (TCEP, Ian Wilson) which could be the summation of what our life is.

If you could add 20 more years of conscious experience to your life thanks to being able to consciously dream; wouldn't that in effect allow you to experience a longer life through high performance computations? This is certainly something I try to take advantage of. I will break down why you may want to harvest consciousness during sleep if you are seriously considering excelling at this gift. Looking to get an extra few minutes of experience in before you cease to exist forever?

Lets say you will live a nice long life until 80 years old. However, you develop Alzheimer and are cognitive unaware for the remaining 3 years. You sleep an average of 8 hours a day. You do not practice mind awake / body asleep techniques and don't care about your dreams so have no MAP realized.

The Alzheimer has stripped 3 years of your total conscious experience pool reducing your conscious life to a potential 77 years. You lose 8 hours a day to unconscious sleep, leaving you with 16 out of 24 hours by which to be conscious. 16 / 24 = 66.7% of your life being lived consciously; thus reducing the 77 years rounded down to: 51.

Out of a potential 80 years of conscious experience; you in fact have only lived 51 years of that time consciously aware. 29 years of existence has been lost to unconsciousness.

Taking this same formula but factoring in conscious dreaming during this time. Let's say that you have an average uncertainty factor of 20 as you manage to enjoy a lot of consciousness during sleep. During sleep you have 30 minutes of conscious dreams.

30*20 = 600 minutes or 6 hours of consciousness through the passage and perception of psychological time regains you 6 hours from the 8 hours you lost to unconscious sleep to add to your total conscious experience pool: 22/24 = 91.7% thus only reducing your total conscious time lived to: 71 years with only 6 years lost to unconscious sleep.

If there was ever a fountain of youth or a way to slow down the passage of time; taking a conscious interest in dreaming is an investment where you gain the one thing you value most; the ability to exist. Even without the extremes in PT "Duree" you will still recover years of consciousness that otherwise is lost to unconscious sleep.

I think this is a good argument for the people who are convinced death is final; skeptics and atheists alike can benefit from consciously participating in their dreams. We know people dream and can be fully awake and conscious when the body is asleep. This has been scientifically proven since the 1980's through Stephen LaBerge[13] at Stanford University.

Lucid dreaming provides an excellent means by which to slow the passage of time by adding additional conscious awareness during sleep. Lucid dreaming is a learned skill and nearly anyone who takes an interest in learning how to do this can have some measure of success. Here is a link to a tutorial I wrote that references laboratory tested techniques known in dream culture to be very beneficial in helping a person achieve lucidity during sleep. link

Stretching time into extreme moments of "Psychological Time" is not a belief; it is a potential experience that waits for your own personal exploration of the dreams you already have. Although I cannot guarantee you will experience prolonged time such as described in this article, you can at least learn to harvest more time through your dreams.

Lucid Dreaming is a skill that takes passion, dedication and commitment. There is no easy way to achieve the acquired knowledge through practice and repetition. If there was ever a reason to take dreaming more seriously, knowing it can add more years of conscious experience to your life is a very rewarding positive along with all the other great positive potential that exists from dreaming: seeing the future, sharing dreams, having epic adventures. The limits on dreaming are self-imposed limits. It's best to leave those limits at the doorway to your dreams.

Author
Ian Wilson
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References

1. Richard A. Block (1990) "Cognitive Models of Psychological Time"
2. Henri-Louis Bergson (1888) "Time and Free Will: An essay on the Immediate Data of Consciousness"
3. Sense of time (wiki)
4. Zimbardo, P.G., & Boyd, J.N., (1999). "Putting time in perspective: A valid, reliable, individual-differences metric. Journal of personality and Social Psychology"
5. D. R. Price-Williams (1954) "The Kappa Effect"
6. Bruno Berberiana; Jean-Christophe Sarrazinb; Marie-Dominique Giraudoa (2007) Tau and Kappa Effects: The Case of Space-Like-Extent Frequencies"
7. Anthony Peake (2006) "Is There Life After Death? The Extraordinary Science Of What Happens When We Die"
8. Tom Campbell (2005) "My Big Toe"
9. Ubasti (2010) Above Top Secret Forum
10. Hal Bridges (1969) Aldous Huxley: Exponent of Mysticism in America"
11. Takaaki Musha (2008) "Possibility of High Performance Quantum Computation by using Evanescent Photons in Living Systems"
12. Penrose-Hameroff (1998) "Quantum Computation In Brain Microtubules?"
13. Stephen LaBerge (1990) "Lucid Dreaming: Psychophysiological Studies of Consciousness during REM Sleep"