Why do we wake up when we die in a dream? Is this merely because the dream-experience of dying is a sign the brain interprets as “the end of…” and terminates the dreaming process? But why then is not only the specific dream itself terminated? Why do we not merely move to a new dream, or resurrect again moments after the dreamed dying? What is fascinating to me is how a dreamed-experience communicates so forcefully to the “over-dreamed” experience, the waking self. It makes sense that dying in a dream, being only one more dreamed-experience out of many, would affect only the content of the dream itself. Rather it seems puzzling that the dreamed-experience of dying is different in type, or so it would seem, from other dreamed-experiences.
Why is dying interpreted by the mind as a signal to end not just the specific dream itself, but the entire dreaming process as a whole? I have had several dreams where I died, and each one jolted me awake. However, not all of the dying experiences were traumatic; at least one I can recall was peaceful, but still followed by waking.
And does this relationship between dying inside a dream and waking from dreaming itself tell us anything about death in “the real world”? In so far as perceptive experience, in the mind, is the same whether one is dreaming or “awake”, what might this reveal about the nature of dying, at least in terms of how death is understood and experienced (anticipated) by the (unconscious-structural) mind?
I don’t usually wake up when I die in dream.
I have been dead intentionally (as I’m often very aware in my dreams and I can change them as I wish), and unintentionally in dreams.
And it’s like getting out of the person I was in the dream (as I might be living/feeling as different person in my dreams), floating around, and then I may continue to dream in a different person, situation, awareness, etc.
I was curious about what causes me to wake up from dreams, and it has been external event (especially the sound), internal senses (like I want pee, etc), but most often the sense of contradiction in the plot/situation/perspective in the given dream.
I also think that we may wake up from any crazy delusion of ours if we feel the acute enough sense of contradiction/incoherence in it.
In other words, I don’t think we can maintain our (waking and dream) perspectives unless it appears as normal/coherent/logical to ourselves.
As I said earlier, my “waking self” is often pretty aware and experiencing the dream. So I don’t feel that something is forcefully trying to communicate with “waking self”. I mean, you might be feeling this way because of the barrier between your waking self and dreaming self.
Maybe you can ask why you have the fixed perspective that makes you interpret in this way (even in your dreams).
I guess the imagination of the death triggers strong reaction in you that you wake up of inner sensation, or it causes the sense of contradiction such as why am I still aware after the death (right after the death but just before waking up).
Lastly, I don’t really think about what happens around (and potentially after) the physical death. I’ll try to see what happens, when it happens.
Thanks for the reply-- I cant say I have ever had a dream experience of dying where I did not immediately wake up after. Maybe its only me
You seem to have attained a degree of lucidity while dreaming; do you have any tips or methods you can share with me in how to attain this? I have practiced some with lucid dreaming, but usually it happens without my intention, I cannot make it happen at will, and it only lasts a short time.
I don’t know. Maybe it’s common.
I do think I woke up after the death in my dreams at least a few times, as well.
I learned that I can control my dream when I was a kid and I was scared in my dream because there was a monster or something running after me.
I made up a rule that the monster can’t catch me, and it didn’t.
Then, I learned to get out of dream (for peeing or whatever the reason) and come back and continue paused dream (when the dream was interesting enough.
This is very convenient when I was enjoying a dream but I had to wake up for some reason. I don’t have to worry about loosing the ending of the dream.
But I don’t know how I gained these (and other features).
It just happened without much effort nor practice.
One thing I almost always did was thinking about many things in the bed as I relax the body (and the body going into sleep state).
For someone watching me, I may appear to really sleeping in this state, yet I’m fully aware of my thought stream and also outside noise, etc. And i can wake up instantly if I wanted (and surprise people around who thought I was sound asleep).
If it has any relation to retaining awareness in dream, practices to let the physical body while being fully awake, mentally speaking., may work.
But I don’t really know.
Also, I’ve experienced different kind of awareness in both awake and dreaming situation. And dreaming state isn’t something foreign or very different from so-called waking state, to me. Waking state is just another kind of awareness in which many other people (fanatically) believes that physical stuffs are absolutely rock solid, all the time and forever (without much reasoning).
I use dream state for things like simulating and experiencing things I can’t do repeatedly during waking state, such as dying or anything too scary for physical body or damaging for others. And I learned a lot about how body, emotion, and thought react in certain situation. It was very interesting.
Also, sometime, I’m thinking about some problems I wanted to solve in waking state, and I often find it in dreaming, excited and wake up for a while to take a note (although I do retain dream, I may forget just like in waking state. So, it’s safer if I took a note), then go back to the dream to continue thinking.
But some dreams are different and they can be like a trip to other dimensions.
In on kind of dimension, it’s motionless, arid, and usually I end up waking up after a while, because there is nothing much going on, although I usually try to stay in that dimension as long as possible. It’s a boring dream as far as the contents is concerned, but it’s interesting to me because of the simple nature of the dimension.
There are many kinds of dream.
PS. I think there is one negative aspect of being aware in dream.
We can get tired because of dreaming activity just like daily activity.
So, after waking up, I usually stay in the bed and rest without much thought for 30 minutes to an hour. And I do the same before to sleep after the activity of “waking” state.
Also, I think it’s probably better/easier to bring dream state into your lucid/waking state, rather than try to regain lucidity in messy and unclear dream state.
Great advice, thank you So I am correct in that you do not use any sort of meditative mental focusing or breathing practices while beginning to fall asleep, you just relax and observe your thought process, in a hyper-aware sort of way, for a while until you naturaly fall asleep?
I have heard that focusing on certain images or ideas, as well as certain breathing techniques are supposed to assist in bringing conscious awareness into the dream. I also like what you said about bringing the dream state into the waking state, rather than the opposite - really, when you get right down to it, its all dream state anyway, whether we are sleeping or ‘awake’.
This is interesting. I always wake up before I can die, though. This does not happen very often. My dreams often have a lot of different people in them, and usually center around an odd conjunction of rooms in a house or building. I think house dreams are basically about the state of the unconscious as it reflects the world around me and my place in it.
I’ve only skimmed through the other posts, but here’s my simplified take on it -
Generally you have much more chance of remembering a dream if you suddenly drift into consciousness from it. And by definition death is experience of nothingness, or ceasing to experience to put it in a better way. So you can’t experience being dead in a dream because…there’s nothing to experience. If you think you are dead, you aren’t. It’s a bad interpretation, like when people wake from comas wondering if they are in heaven. If you think you are about to die in a dream, it can be quite traumatic and/or elucidating so you are likely to wake.
I think it’s probably more physically/biologically related. It would be interesting if you could measure your temperature, heart rate, etc. and see if there are physiological changes happening right before you wake up that may, just may, lead you to dream of dying so that you can wake up (it’s possible). I remember dreaming of being shot point blank in the forehead that jolted me awake sweating and with a sharp headache in the same place, so it’s possible that physiological changes during sleep may influence and be responsible for your dream material.
(I guess no more eating chocolate for me in the middle of the night.)
In all my dreams in which I woke up just before dying, I was overwelmed by a sense of panic. I always assumed it was the panic that did it. But if it’s true, as you say 3XG, that you have woken up even after dreaming of a peaceful death, maybe it’s because the brain just doesn’t know what to do once your dead. Maybe it’s the fact that your brain is sitting there idle, the dream being over, that triggers the waking state.
Not sure what you are trying to prve with that quote. Death in general would be more like the second quote, but death from a first person perspective would be exactly my definition.
When I was a kid, I did anything other than remembering things happened during the day and thinking about many things before to sleep.
I do have experiences with different meditation techniques, later on, and it might have enhanced my awareness in dreams.But I didn’t do them to fain more awareness in dreams.
I’ve read/heard about these. Never really tried, as I don’t really need them.
So, I don’t know if they help.
For last few days, I was doing a little heavy energy adjustment (a sort of stretching for both physical and energy bodies), and I was doing that even in my dreams. Then, I noticed some shifts in my awareness state, and remembered this thread.
From what I have observed during that sleep, i think our dream state is related to “remembering/recalling” and also to imagination/visualization.
Notice that both are dealing with information coming from somewhere else than usual physical (and supposedly real) sensory inputs.
When I noticed the shifts of the awareness in my dream, I noticed that the focus of awareness was shifting from dreamy information to some of physical sensory inputs. And it made me feel that I was closer to waking state. Sp, I placed my focus of awareness back to dreamy/imaginary inputs, and then I was more in dreaming state. I did this while in dream and never came out into full waking state during the exercise, and found it interesting.
So, remembering your dream and tune into how you felt in it, may bring you into the dream state, and you may retain more of self-awareness (depending on the level of self-awareness you have in waking state), I guess.
My explanation, it should be clear by now is in regards to the experience of death not what death is from a secondary perpective. So put your little wikipedia quotes away Duality.
