Oculus Rift & Vivid Dreams

I've had my Rift since Friday, and fittingly, the main word I keep using to describe the experience to others is 'surreal'.

I too have definitely noticed an increase in dream-recall and lucidity. Typically I recall very few of my dreams, and I've only had a small handful of truly lucid dreams in my 30 years. Last night involved a dream where my cat, an orange tabby, was as big as Falkor from The NeverEnding Story. I haven't had many that seemed to relate to a VR-experience specifically (aside from dreaming about the Rift itsself while it was stuck in Customs), but there has definitely been a noticeable change in dream activity.

Oculus Rift+binaural beats would be crazy :shock:

"DannySwish" wrote:
The whole point of sleep and dreaming is so your brain can analyze any new experiences you've gone through that day/recently..

I thought we still didn't know what the point of dreaming was. My brief research into this topic a couple years back yielded a bunch of "We don't know but here are some theories" articles.

You can have vivid dreams with almost anything you do for a long period of time. For example one time I was sketching for 14 hours straight, all i could see in my sleep was lines, pencil strokes and unfinished sketches. When I play a new great game and do nothing else that weekend I sometimes feel like i am still playing the game right before I sleep.

I just want to point out a few things and hope not to offend.

Carlos Castaneda did many fraudulent and unscientific things during his career, essentially starting a cult that he was the center of. He helped to bring down the law on the Yaqui people due to the hippies who wanted the peyote and mind altering qualities of the peyote, (Thus making Peyote illegal on both sides of the border). Whether he did have any great revelations or not in reality is besides the point, he did some devastating damage to a people, to his followers, to his family as well as anthropology and the scientific method.

As far as video games being some kind of magnifier for dreams and soul searching, well, I once interviewed a native American shaman for a research paper while studying for my M.A. in psychology on the subject of what native American spirituality can bring to Americans who are lost, and he laughed and said; Americans want a fast-food answer to spiritualism instead of the long hard work that you have to do to achieve any kind of enlightenment.

Video games can be fun, I'm not sure they should be the fast food path to false enlightenment.

Do I believe your dreams may be more vivid after the Oculus? Yes, I've experienced this playing Call of Duty, it's called sensory overload. Your brain may in fact be trying to incorporate everything you've "learned" during gaming, but that doesn't mean your brain will be working in a higher state necessarily, and it could actually intervene in what your brain should be doing when you sleep.

I think the Oculus is cool, and I'm onboard trying to take my games to VR, BUT I think that the addictive nature of many will be triggered and they will find this altered state far more preferable to our reality. We see it already in many game addicts.

The opposite is true for people really on the quest for enlightenment. It isn't about bombarding yourself but getting quiet within yourself.

As for vivid dreams, anyone can vivid dream and EVERYONE dreams each night, it is impossible not to dream. You may not remember your dreams, but they are there. There are many books on vivid dreams and how to achieve the ability to dream with awareness, I began this quest when I was 16, some thirty years ago, and got there with a little practice, no internet, and just a library card, not a game engine.

My point is that you might be dreaming more vividly after playing games for five hours straight, but that doesn't mean it's a good thing that is happening. The reason is that your unconscious should be integrating things from your life that are meaningful... "Should i ask her to marry me?", "Why did I lose my temper?" "How can i integrate that round-house kick?"

Our brains processing the pitfalls of video games, where to turn left or right, may not be the greatest thing for our lives if it takes over our waking life, and dream life.

Hey game on, that's great but as I've preached to my students a million times over, do it less than living your life. So if you play games and find yourself still attentive and awake in your real life that's great. If you find yourself increasingly distracted and spaced out, then you might consider a little less time in VR.

I already am a Lucid dreamer. Hopefully the OR will enhance that. My only problem with Lucid dreaming is that on the nights that my dreaming is really active i awake the next morning feeling like i did not sleep. As if i was up all night living this other life.
Oh man if i had the time i could start building the world that appears in my Lucid dream world into the UDK and start rifting in it while awake.

"daevfinn" wrote:
I just want to point out a few things and hope not to offend.

Carlos Castaneda did many fraudulent and unscientific things during his career, essentially starting a cult that he was the center of. He helped to bring down the law on the Yaqui people due to the hippies who wanted the peyote and mind altering qualities of the peyote, (Thus making Peyote illegal on both sides of the border). Whether he did have any great revelations or not in reality is besides the point, he did some devastating damage to a people, to his followers, to his family as well as anthropology and the scientific method.

No offense taken. Let me address a couple of your points to provide some clarity where you might have mistaken.

You say:

Carlos Castaneda did many fraudulent and unscientific things during his career, essentially starting a cult that he was the center of.

He did not start a cult. :lol: When curious people came to him he always told them to go away. He said he didn't want followers of any sort. He wrote his first book as a thesis and wasn't looking for anyone but was simply reporting what he had experienced.

He went to extremes to protect his identity to the point of turning down a million dollar offer from American Express simply because he didn't want the fame that came with it. When Time Magazine placed his photo on their cover they asked him for a photo and he provided them with one where he had his hand covering his face. They were irate when they later discovered that he had given them a fake photo. Afterwards he revealed the reason was that he didn't want to take the chance of being recognized because he didn't want followers. Any reports that he sought people to be in his cult are laughable. :lol:

He helped to bring down the law on the Yaqui people due to the hippies who wanted the peyote and mind altering qualities of the peyote, (Thus making Peyote illegal on both sides of the border). Whether he did have any great revelations or not in reality is besides the point, he did some devastating damage to a people

In his books he clearly states that Don Juan Matus is a Yaqui Indian but the knowledge he was teaching had nothing to do with the Yaquis. He also stated many times that the use of Peyote was only implemented because Carlos had a condition which made him incapable of learning and being bombarded with the Peyote and magic mushrooms was the only way to help him "stop the world".

Furthermore, he explained that it would be suicidal for a lay person to haphazardly use the psychedelics without proper training and guidance. For the hippies to storm Mexico in search of a Yauqi guru because they read someones doctoral thesis was totally insane and unsolicited on his part. The hippie movement was well under way with the influence of Timothy leary, Ram Dass, and R. Gordon Wasson work with magic mushrooms long before Castaneda arrived on the scene. And I assure you that the war on drugs did not happen because of Carlos Castaneda. :lol:

he did some devastating damage to the scientific method

This is the only point that you got exactly correct. ;)

In his books he mentions that the cognitive world of the shamans of ancient Mexico was so engulfing that he lost all focus on the scientific method. He was swallowed by the sorcerers world and failed to report it objectively but rather became a member and was left with no choice other than report what happened to him through his new world view. I don't see that as a bad thing. Do you really think that the scientific method is damaged? That would be impressive 1 guy wrote a book 40 years ago and the scientific method doesn't work like it used to! :lol:

he did some devastating damage to his family

How you arrived at this I won't even speculate. No one knows for sure who his family is even. He kept personal details confidential. To this day people don't know if his native country is Argentina or Chile so how you found out about the damage he did to his family is impressive.

Whether he did have any great revelations or not in reality is besides the point

I think this would make all the difference in the world! All the things you pointed out become totally irrelevant if indeed he did offer knowledge that could transform the way we live our lives and face our death. If the things he says is true then human beings are creatures totally unknown to ourselves and we hold such potential it would be a crime to dismiss what could be.

Wow, I love this thread! - I am a writer and have an extremely vivid imagination its hard for me to distinguish reality and imagination at times, and I already have seriously vivid dreams that I can recall from places I have never been or seen in my life... This makes me even more excited to see how the Oculus Rift might adapt to what I already experience.

Regarding some of the post earlier - the part where they mention the orb or light inside someone - this reminds me of an anime called Shakugan no Shana!

Anyhow - I wrote this piece a little while ago and I believe it is perfect for this thread! -

“Sometimes I wonder, is our history, our past real? Is this reality the true reality?
After watching an anime titled ‘Sword Art Online’, which involves a virtual reality your mind can properly submerge into and feel everything, I began to question even more. Despite this world being tangible, what if we are trapped inside it? And our true reality lies in another or even multiple realities?
Maybe we were meant to be able to travel between dimensions, and also when we sleep, what if that is us logging out and going back to our original existence? This could be justified by the weird dreams we sometimes experience where no valid explanation can be predicted as they contain scenes of a world we have never visited.
There are so many possibilities of the above notion that it is almost impossible to distinguish the truth. Just because this world is tangible, I often feel there is more to our existence than being trapped in this society, and living a life that many of us feel we have no choice to lead.
But what if we can escape this? What if we can unlock this barrier that holds us here? A force that maintains our captivity in this society and expand into something greater and fascinating, that we can only imagine in our dreams.”

(Copyright R. Mawby)

I have had some crazy dreams after spending a couple hours in the rift before I go to sleep at night:)

So many people on the Oculus Rift forum talking about lucid dreaming and the works of Carlos Castaneda. This is so freaking cool. I think it's pretty obvious that the Oculus Rift will be a lot more important to humanity than simply a video game accessory.

I'd like to point out that Carlos Castaneda had profound things to say, unfortunately people with profound things to say are often discredited and smeared in society for whatever dumbass reason. He had nothing to do with the cult other than the fact that they took the information in his books and did dumb shit with it.