[Hans]

Most dreams people have are normally fantasy type of dreams (can fly, etc).

Well my question is, is there a dream you have had that stands out from them all, that you are totally absorbed in?

There is one dream I had when I was little, though I can't remember it hardly. I have only a vague image of the dream, which I have for many many years tried to remember but I just can't remember. BUT I can remember what that dream had made me feel.

I felt I was in a place that was too beautiful to describe, a place which was so peaceful, an adventure, discovery, so - It's too hard to explain it, and its even more frustrating for me not being able to re-dream that dream again.

All I can remember from the dream is that there where clouds you could walk upon, buildings so beautiful (Maybe looking a bit like the Ruins on the cover of Tad Williams Dragonbone Chair (UK), the way he describes it yet more beautiful.) And I was there, having an adventure which I can hardly remember, that this memory stays in my mind, and the feelings, if to compare this dream to another is meaningless.

Have you had any such a dream, which cannot be compared to any other, one which you may not even hardly remember, but you remember those feelings, wantings?

[azaz]

Hans, There is one dream like that I have had which I can hardly remember, but the feeling towards that dream I had were very powerful. I had the dream when I was a small kid, and it is frustrating as you said not to be able to re-dream and be there.

who knows, maybe this place, this adventure I had, this dream was a glimpse into what heaven may be like. There place in the dream was undescribable. The creatures, and building so mixed with its surroundings, was just beautiful. I remember having to jump from one places to another, trying to hold on as the building shook, and each step I took up, the follwing fell down. I remember just searching (For what I can't remember), and meeting people and creatures so great. I remember flying (can't remember if on an creature or just myself). It was a place and adventure I had that will always stay with me. And I do try to dream as dream like that again, but it's no were near to what that other made me feel.

[Bardos]

Well, truth is I have seen many strange dreams. Most nightmarish...

Visions of Hell -- Savatage http://www.sffworld.com/ubb/wink.gif

[Erebus]

Really, Elan - wash your mouth out! http://www.sffworld.com/ubb/smile.gif

[Shehzad]

Isn't this the same Elan who couldn't stand sex in fantasy books? Is it safe to say he can only stand sex in fatnasy?

[Lord Soth]

I do not know if this was a dream or hallucination but i can remeber once when i was very young having this vision of a fair on my bed.

I had been trying to go to sleep but suddenly I sit up and there was a fair at the bottom of the bed. But all made from different coloured points of light. Like when you squeeze your eyes really tight shut.
But it was there for ages and i can remeber being totally fascinated by it. But i don't remeber being a sleep at the time. It was a very strange experience. But one i would love to relive. http://www.sffworld.com/ubb/biggrin.gif

[Gamlemshagen]

Not fantasy but..
I remember being a kid and seeing a spaceship flying slowly over my house and down the street. This I unconsciously belived in for 20 years. Then one day the subject came up and I told a friend about it. When I heard myself talk, I suddenly realised that this never happened, it must have been a dream I had when I was younger that stayed with me or something like that.
http://www.sffworld.com/ubb/smile.gif

[Penumbra]

Dreams are supposedly a human anomaly and few have been able to interpret them satisfactorily. You've undoubtedly heard how ancient kings valued those who could interpret their dreams, men like Joseph and Daniel in the biblical histories. Many prophecies are directly related to "visions" or dreams such as Ezekial and John.

Most of mine center on wishful thinking and that categorizes them as fantasy because they will probably never be realized. My latest: one in which all the terrorists are captured and sent to the moon.

[Sojourn]

On the subject of dreams, I have this theory, or hypothesis more like. I believe that the images we 'see' in our dreams are not entirely 'made up' on the spot, so to speak. I think that our dreams consists of images that we have stored in our conscious and subconscious mind. So, no matter how 'wild' our dreams may be, I believe that the images are either from our past that we remember (consciously or subconsciously), or images that we have conjured up very vividly from other sources of stimuli, such as from books.

The reason I think this is so is because whenever I actually try to recall a dream that I've had and analyse it, I can almost always trace the images, strange or otherwise, back to something I may have seen before, or imagined in my mind from a given text in a book. Of course, the images are often mixed up, hence comes the feeling that everything we 'see' in our dreams is 'fantastical' or 'really strange'.

For example, in your dream you might 'meet' a person with large elephant ears and a trunk, who somehow reminds you of your uncle, except he looks 20 years younger. That image could actually be, IMHO, an amalgamation of your subconscious memory of an old photo of your uncle in his youth that you've seen before, and a riveting documentary on African wildlife you watched last night before you went to bed.

Well, what do you think? Crazy huh?

[matthewajg]

The human mind and the dreaming mechanism is a little too complex to be oversimplified into easily-identified imagery. A mistake, that even psychiatrists are guilty of today, is to apply meaning and real-life connections to all events and images in dreams. If your mother is in your dream, and then she is suddenly Tony Danza, is that because (1) you caught five minutes of a rerun of WHO'S THE BOSS at bedtime, (2)your mother somewhat resembles an Italian American man, (3) you often fantasize that you are Alyssa Milano, (4) your associations of nurturing are tied closely to sit-coms and wish your mother was more like the character Tony Danza played in the show, or (5) it is some complicated amalgam of images which have no specific link as nuerons are firing away during REM sleep. As even the big man, Freud, said himself...sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.