Dream Control
Dream #1
I was having a really nice dream Friday morning. I was in an udipi restaurant at lunch time and had ordered Idli, Dosa and... Upma. Almost every udipi I've been to in real life does not serve Upma for lunch as they make it only for breakfast. In this particular Udipi the guy was kind enough to check with the kitchen and told me "milega" (you will get it). I was ecstatic. Upma for lunch! Unbelievable... I was about to take a seat, already savouring the upma in my mind when.. "ANSHUL".. I was woken up.. at 11:20 a.m. - couldn't they have let me sleep for like 10 minutes more then I'd have had my upma and eaten it too!
Just shows how much I'm missing my desh ka khaana.. can't wait to get back and go on a vada pav, paav bhaaji, dosa, delhi durbar eat-fest. Of course, home cooked food too.. (in case mom is reading this :))
Dream #2
While I've been listening to Queensryche's "Silent Lucidity" since the 7th grade ('91) I never really knew what lucid meant in the context of the song. A year ago I was looking it up and found out what lucid dreaming is. For those who don't know - it's basically a dream in which you're aware that you're dreaming. "What good does that do?" you say... Well, knowing that you're dreaming allows you to change the dream according to how you see fit.
My chachi had been complaining I was growing too thin and needed to put on weight. I took this challenge to heart and stuffed myself till I felt sick - both at home and a birthday party in the evening. Returning home I finished putting together the Grasketball / grassketball commercial (right-click save target as.. it's around 10 MB) and went off to sleep at around 5 a.m. - maybe heavy eating and sleeping early in the morning promotes lucidity :)
This is what I remember...
In the first dream I was living in a rundown house with friends from school. We're attacked by a rival gang.. they're shooting at us from outside.. bullets tearing up the place. Someone apparently is trying to enter via the first floor.. all my friends look at me and ask me to go to the first floor and check it out... I'm shit scared.. Anyway, I go upstairs and the first floor starts resembling a videogame interior.. I realise I'm dreaming and try changing the environment into a beach - The scene starts splitting up (center split transition from final cut pro :)) and starts revealing a sandy + pebbly shore below... just when this started happening I woke up.. and I was like "DAMN!" It was 7 a.m. Obviously, too early to wake up..
So I tried sleeping again.. I don't remember the exact details from the second set of dreams (I couldn't recall them even when I had just woken up) but this is the best approximation..
I'm in the front five ROWS of students waiting to get into an unknown institution to collect admission forms. We've been made to stand, facing away from the door. Someone tells us to turn around and we're allowed to enter into this grand institution. Enter is a mild world - everyone rushes in like mad... I find a shorter route to the library than everyone else.. and when I enter the tables are filled with admission forms which I grab 5 of.. (should have grabbed more and sold them on ebay).. now i'm not sure when the next part happens - i think it happened when I stepped out of the institution..
There are tigers (presence can be explained because I watched "Kaal" two days before) loose on the campus who are not causing a great deal of joy... People running helter skelter.. Anyway, something causes me to recognise that this is a dream.. So with the power of my mind (ahem) I start changing the environment.. the entire scene transforms into a field of green with flowers.. you know like a field with the wind blowing.. all the people around me start cheering and start throwing small glowing orbs into the air.. apparently, the more I collect - the number of lucid dreams I have increases.. I'm collecting, flying around the place.. but don't manage to collect too many..
Now I'm in a lecture room. The lecturer is speaking in French and the rest of the students can understand (apparently) - I can't understand a thing. The way the lecturer is speaking seems familiar and I remember identifying the voice as Kenny from South Park (of course, on waking up I realised that Kenny doesn't speak - he just mumbles). I raise my hand and ask "Does anyone in the class speak English?" The lecturer looks around and questions "Can anyone answer his question?" And around five-six people raise their hands. This was such an absurd response to my question that I asked, "I'm dreaming, aren't I?" The professor said "Yes." Then he proceeded to explain on his whiteboard how to identify that one is dreaming - he even used an impressive quote by someone (yes, very helpful, I know - I WISH I could remember) to start his discussion.. I can't remember any of that..
Next I wake up in the house from Dream #1 again - no firing happening this time.. Just people lying / sleeping about the house.. Then I'm standing in a line outside an institution (very similar to the one in the beginning of this dream sequence)... I strike up a conversation with the dude in front of me.. I was telling him something like "I've been dreaming for almost a year now - is it still 2004 or is it 2005?" He's confused.. Nobody there seems to know the year.. And the dude points out something to the effect of "Time is unimportant in dreams - I use dreams for time travelling".. I think this was the point where I woke up.. It was 10 a.m. - just 3 hours.. but it felt like a LONG time had passed..
I've had lucid dreams before but never for such a long period and definitely nothing as bizarre as this.. A French dream university into which students are desperate to get admission into - and advanced students are time travelling in their dreams!
Anyway, if you want to read more on lucid dreams check out: lucidity.com, ld4all.com, film wise you can probably check out Linklater's Waking Life (my lecture dream is definitely influenced by it) and musicwise - Silent Lucidity.
I was pretty excited at this episode.. Hope I can lucid dream more often now.. :)
I was having a really nice dream Friday morning. I was in an udipi restaurant at lunch time and had ordered Idli, Dosa and... Upma. Almost every udipi I've been to in real life does not serve Upma for lunch as they make it only for breakfast. In this particular Udipi the guy was kind enough to check with the kitchen and told me "milega" (you will get it). I was ecstatic. Upma for lunch! Unbelievable... I was about to take a seat, already savouring the upma in my mind when.. "ANSHUL".. I was woken up.. at 11:20 a.m. - couldn't they have let me sleep for like 10 minutes more then I'd have had my upma and eaten it too!
Just shows how much I'm missing my desh ka khaana.. can't wait to get back and go on a vada pav, paav bhaaji, dosa, delhi durbar eat-fest. Of course, home cooked food too.. (in case mom is reading this :))
Dream #2
While I've been listening to Queensryche's "Silent Lucidity" since the 7th grade ('91) I never really knew what lucid meant in the context of the song. A year ago I was looking it up and found out what lucid dreaming is. For those who don't know - it's basically a dream in which you're aware that you're dreaming. "What good does that do?" you say... Well, knowing that you're dreaming allows you to change the dream according to how you see fit.
My chachi had been complaining I was growing too thin and needed to put on weight. I took this challenge to heart and stuffed myself till I felt sick - both at home and a birthday party in the evening. Returning home I finished putting together the Grasketball / grassketball commercial (right-click save target as.. it's around 10 MB) and went off to sleep at around 5 a.m. - maybe heavy eating and sleeping early in the morning promotes lucidity :)
This is what I remember...
In the first dream I was living in a rundown house with friends from school. We're attacked by a rival gang.. they're shooting at us from outside.. bullets tearing up the place. Someone apparently is trying to enter via the first floor.. all my friends look at me and ask me to go to the first floor and check it out... I'm shit scared.. Anyway, I go upstairs and the first floor starts resembling a videogame interior.. I realise I'm dreaming and try changing the environment into a beach - The scene starts splitting up (center split transition from final cut pro :)) and starts revealing a sandy + pebbly shore below... just when this started happening I woke up.. and I was like "DAMN!" It was 7 a.m. Obviously, too early to wake up..
So I tried sleeping again.. I don't remember the exact details from the second set of dreams (I couldn't recall them even when I had just woken up) but this is the best approximation..
I'm in the front five ROWS of students waiting to get into an unknown institution to collect admission forms. We've been made to stand, facing away from the door. Someone tells us to turn around and we're allowed to enter into this grand institution. Enter is a mild world - everyone rushes in like mad... I find a shorter route to the library than everyone else.. and when I enter the tables are filled with admission forms which I grab 5 of.. (should have grabbed more and sold them on ebay).. now i'm not sure when the next part happens - i think it happened when I stepped out of the institution..
There are tigers (presence can be explained because I watched "Kaal" two days before) loose on the campus who are not causing a great deal of joy... People running helter skelter.. Anyway, something causes me to recognise that this is a dream.. So with the power of my mind (ahem) I start changing the environment.. the entire scene transforms into a field of green with flowers.. you know like a field with the wind blowing.. all the people around me start cheering and start throwing small glowing orbs into the air.. apparently, the more I collect - the number of lucid dreams I have increases.. I'm collecting, flying around the place.. but don't manage to collect too many..
Now I'm in a lecture room. The lecturer is speaking in French and the rest of the students can understand (apparently) - I can't understand a thing. The way the lecturer is speaking seems familiar and I remember identifying the voice as Kenny from South Park (of course, on waking up I realised that Kenny doesn't speak - he just mumbles). I raise my hand and ask "Does anyone in the class speak English?" The lecturer looks around and questions "Can anyone answer his question?" And around five-six people raise their hands. This was such an absurd response to my question that I asked, "I'm dreaming, aren't I?" The professor said "Yes." Then he proceeded to explain on his whiteboard how to identify that one is dreaming - he even used an impressive quote by someone (yes, very helpful, I know - I WISH I could remember) to start his discussion.. I can't remember any of that..
Next I wake up in the house from Dream #1 again - no firing happening this time.. Just people lying / sleeping about the house.. Then I'm standing in a line outside an institution (very similar to the one in the beginning of this dream sequence)... I strike up a conversation with the dude in front of me.. I was telling him something like "I've been dreaming for almost a year now - is it still 2004 or is it 2005?" He's confused.. Nobody there seems to know the year.. And the dude points out something to the effect of "Time is unimportant in dreams - I use dreams for time travelling".. I think this was the point where I woke up.. It was 10 a.m. - just 3 hours.. but it felt like a LONG time had passed..
I've had lucid dreams before but never for such a long period and definitely nothing as bizarre as this.. A French dream university into which students are desperate to get admission into - and advanced students are time travelling in their dreams!
Anyway, if you want to read more on lucid dreams check out: lucidity.com, ld4all.com, film wise you can probably check out Linklater's Waking Life (my lecture dream is definitely influenced by it) and musicwise - Silent Lucidity.
I was pretty excited at this episode.. Hope I can lucid dream more often now.. :)
posted by AnshulJ at 6:21 PM
4 Comments:
Hey Anshul,
Interesting concept, this lucid dreams one. Isn't it what most of us experience just before waking up, u know, when u remember just a few details of what you dreamt.
Also, what do you know, you did actually sell the forms on E-Bay..... and I bought one at an exhorbitant price (you ripped me!!). It was L'Universite pour Les Paresseux Supremes (Paresseux = Lazy). Of this grand, prestigious institution, you are the Vice-Chancellor.
No.. waking up and remembering a dream is not lucid dreaming.. being aware that you are dreaming while you are still in your dream constitutes lucidity.. I'm sorry you have failed in your interview and we cannot grant you admission into LPS University.. Best of luck with the future and I have turned on Word Verification now as you recommended.. Cheers mate..
"What is real? How do you define real?" - Morpheus, The Matrix
By the way, the name Morpheus was chosen by the Wachowski Bros for a reason. Morpheus is the greek god of dreams. I just wanted to start this comment with a random tid-bit of information. And yes, I am quite familiar with the concept of lucid dreaming. I had this wonderfully hot dream about my pants blazing in flames and I could not get them off. But I was not scared due to the infenitisimal fact that I knew I was dreaming. helloo. So I summon up this amazing ability to eliminate the flames from the visual spectrum(the flames become invisible, but they are there mind you) and I snap the buckle of my pants and get them off. ( The strange THINGUH is I could have extinguished my flames by wishing it). So I wake up naked in bed with my pants at my ankles. On an ending note, check Calvin and Hobbes. Lot of funny "day" dream sequences. hehe. And some real funny ideas.
When you said hot dream I was put onto a tangent.. :) that's a weird way of putting out flames... :D Calvin (is mine) and Hobbes are great...
Morpheus.. I love you, Morpheus..
"Morpheus: Zion, hear me!
Spectator: I've heard that he's having a huge orgy at his place later tonight.. at least that's what some of us have heard..
M: It is true, what some of you have heard..
Spectator: YES!!!! What can we expect at this orgy, Morpheus?
M: Machines!"
- Matrix Reloaded Parody from the MTV Movie Awards, 2003
This copy of the video has French subtitles.. and my Dream University was French as well.. coincidence? I think not... ( :D - just wanted to use that phrase)
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