Thread: Finding yourself in Other People's Dreams

Originally Posted by Sageous

By my second lap around the place, I came to call it PALM, which I assumed to be an acronym for something, though what, I couldn’t guess.

Personal Activities Linked Metaphorically?
People Almost Like Me?
Palace Accommodating Lazy Muses?
Perhaps Accessing Like Minds?

The kinds of activities shown seem to me to be done by a part of ourselves that is akin to what the palm is as a part of the body.

I had a dream with a palm tree in it a day or two ago by the way. An ambitious business woman would stash a child in the palm while she was busy with her transactions. She figured that she might need her kids some day, but she would need the money for sure. This dream was not about 'me' I don't think.

Palms are in my mind now because I have a few of them in my yard in San Diego, and am learning how to take care of them.

Thanks for sharing!

Originally Posted by shadowofwind

Personal Activities Linked Metaphorically?
People Almost Like Me?
Palace Accommodating Lazy Muses?
Perhaps Accessing Like Minds?

Those were fun, especially #3!

And this is an interesting idea:

The kinds of activities shown seem to me to be done by a part of ourselves that is akin to what the palm is as a part of the body.

There's something to think about in that, especially if I consider that all these other folks might be sharing a created metaphor meant to breech the walls for communication between consciousnesses. If that's the case, did they create it? Or was it created for them and they are simply attending, as the fair nature of the scene suggests? And where was my hobby? I didn't feel left out at all; perhaps my hobby is the dream itself? [and yes, in the back of my head is the notion that this was all just DC's messing with me, as they are wont to do, but that's not as much fun.]

I had a dream with a palm tree in it a day or two ago by the way. An ambitious business woman would stash a child in the palm while she was busy with her transactions. She figured that she might need her kids some day, but she would need the money for sure. This dream was not about 'me' I don't think.

Intriguing. This doesn't sound like something about you -- unless you really stretch it and see it as a metaphor for having a job that is a substantial distance from your family, and for now you must "stash" the family away while you attend the priority of making money to support them. That is a stretch, I think, and a weak one at that.

Palms are in my mind now because I have a few of them in my yard in San Diego, and am learning how to take care of them.

Which reminds me: my wife's father just gave him his old Palm Pilot and all its paraphernalia to play with the other day, and I was looking at it the day be fore the dream. So PALM might be just day residue, I suppose, especially because I consider these devices to be no more than expensive organizers... perhaps I was trying to organize this strange place I was visiting? That kind of sucks, though, both because I was sure during the dream that PALM stood for something significant, and because it's fun filling in the acronym, as you've noted:

Please Access your Last Memory
People for the Advancement of Lesser Machinations
Pavilion for Arranging Lost Memes
Path Among Latent Meisters

This thread had been hibernating since I starting browsing this site and I am sure I never read it but have read a lot of Sageous' other threads where I suppose it could have been mentioned. I had this entry in my DJ here a few months back that I even called "Someone Else's Dream:"
someone else's dream - Dream Journals - Lucid Dreaming - Dream Views

^^ Thanks for sharing, Fogelbise! It is an odd experience, isn't it?

Yes, definitely very odd and it just felt different and didn't seem like something I would ever dream about. Your PALM dream was interesting with such a variety of different things going on/people's hobbies.

Here's another one from this morning that I felt worth sharing:

At first I was in a fairly nebulous place, among a crowd of people (all wearing clothes in pastel hues), and I was in my usual semi-lucid condition (aware this was a dream, but remembering nothing and lacking any substantial self-awareness). I intercepted a rumor being loudly whispered from person to person that someone (who everyone but me knew well) was pregnant by a "waiter."

I quickly found myself seated in the restaurant where the waiter worked. I knew this, even though the place was patently unfamiliar to me, and all its patrons (still in pastels -- I have literally never thought much of those pale shades in waking life, BTW) were total strangers... well almost all of them: I recognized two couples being seated nearby, as DC's from a recent dream. The couples were each having affairs with each other (meaning that husband A was with wife B, and Husband B was with wife A), and they brought their infant children with them -- one set each of boy/girl fraternal twins (I could tell by the blue and pink pastels they wore)... I had no idea who really belonged to whom, but did smile at the puzzle. Also, I noticed then that everybody in the restaurant had brought a child, except for me (which was okay, and sort of made sense, I thought at the time, because it wasn't my dream).

Needless to say, this sort of crowded room made for quite a chaotic din of happy diners. I was beginning to enjoy the moment, more as amused observer than participant. After a moment I started tapping the beat of the Creedence song, "Down on the Corner" on my clean plates. I did this for no particular reason, perhaps because that song was used in a television commercial that I had seen repeatedly the night before, in waking life.

Soon others were tapping as well. Very shortly, everyone in the restaurant was tapping, then pounding, their plates; even the kids. In another moment, everyone in the room was singing "Down on the Corner" in excellent time and harmony. I was even delighted to hear a steel drum being played in the background. It seemed a moment of spontaneous joy, felt by everyone in the room ... very refreshing, even if an alien like me might have started it.

When the singing finally ended, a "wedding singer," who had appeared on a small stage off to one side, promised the owner that, if they could do all that once more, he would be sure to include it in his show. Everyone cheered; I just shook my head.

Suddenly the room was empty, and its scenery had shifted to a the (non-pastel) dining room of a restaurant with which I am very familiar. From their I drifted into more familiar dreams, which I don't really remember.

Originally Posted by Sageous

Here's another one from this morning that I felt worth sharing:

At first I was in a fairly nebulous place, among a crowd of people (all wearing clothes in pastel hues), and I was in my usual semi-lucid condition (aware this was a dream, but remembering nothing and lacking any substantial self-awareness). I intercepted a rumor being loudly whispered from person to person that someone (who everyone but me knew well) was pregnant by a "waiter."

I quickly found myself seated in the restaurant where the waiter worked. I knew this, even though the place was patently unfamiliar to me, and all its patrons (still in pastels -- I have literally never thought much of those pale shades in waking life, BTW) were total strangers... well almost all of them: I recognized two couples being seated nearby, as DC's from a recent dream. The couples were each having affairs with each other (meaning that husband A was with wife B, and Husband B was with wife A), and they brought their infant children with them -- one set each of boy/girl fraternal twins (I could tell by the blue and pink pastels they wore)... I had no idea who really belonged to whom, but did smile at the puzzle. Also, I noticed then that everybody in the restaurant had brought a child, except for me (which was okay, and sort of made sense, I thought at the time, because it wasn't my dream).

Needless to say, this sort of crowded room made for quite a chaotic din of happy diners. I was beginning to enjoy the moment, more as amused observer than participant. After a moment I started tapping the beat of the Creedence song, "Down on the Corner" on my clean plates. I did this for no particular reason, perhaps because that song was used in a television commercial that I had seen repeatedly the night before, in waking life.

Soon others were tapping as well. Very shortly, everyone in the restaurant was tapping, then pounding, their plates; even the kids. In another moment, everyone in the room was singing "Down on the Corner" in excellent time and harmony. I was even delighted to hear a steel drum being played in the background. It seemed a moment of spontaneous joy, felt by everyone in the room ... very refreshing, even if an alien like me might have started it.

When the singing finally ended, a "wedding singer," who had appeared on a small stage off to one side, promised the owner that, if they could do all that once more, he would be sure to include it in his show. Everyone cheered; I just shook my head.

Suddenly the room was empty, and its scenery had shifted to a the (non-pastel) dining room of a restaurant with which I am very familiar. From their I drifted into more familiar dreams, which I don't really remember.

I got a huge kick out of this! Thanks for sharing such a fun moment.

Maybe stating the obvious....I don't think the people in the dream represent real people. The symmetries between the couples and the twins are too striking, they must represent something else that is felt. It may however be "somebody else's dream" in the sense that what is represented and even how it is represented isn't entirely grounded in your own thought. I guess that is what you are suggesting.

^^ Yup.

Originally Posted by Sageous

I recognized two couples being seated nearby, as DC's from a recent dream. The couples were each having affairs with each other (meaning that husband A was with wife B, and Husband B was with wife A), and they brought their infant children with them -- one set each of boy/girl fraternal twins (I could tell by the blue and pink pastels they wore)... I had no idea who really belonged to whom, but did smile at the puzzle.

It seems to me that the two couples with children are actually one couple, or more likely just a single person, mirrored. The child is also mirrored, and may be an actual child, or more likely an inner child. I'm leaning towards the whole group being just one individual. For instance, desire (psychic, active) forces conscience (moral, passive), while fate (moral, active) creates experiences that act on feeling (psychic, active). The feeling of adultery is because the two emotional parts and the two providence-like parts are 'cheating', they aren't in balanced coordination with each other. Otherwise, if the relationships were paired the other way instead of crossed, the emotional part would be love, and the higher self would be justice, sort of. Whether this is a reasonable way to think about this or not, I got this description out of a book (Thinking and Destiny), so as long as somebody thinks about it that way it can be in a dream. Does this seem to fit? Even if you don't follow the logic, do the four DC's and their children seem like reflections of different aspects of a single individual, they feel like a single compound identity?

If this is "someone else's dream", and if I described it correctly, then I think my muse is probably involved here, because I guess only a handful of living people have read that book carefully enough and understood it well enough to remember that image. That might make sense in context of our recent discussion about sharing a dream and whether that would screw up your solitude. Also, it would fit with the 'point of alien identity that belongs' experience you described in the other thread, since this psychological model I described has more to do with intuition of self-knowledge that way, and less to do with particular people.

Originally Posted by shadowofwind

If this is "someone else's dream", and if I described it correctly, then I think my muse is probably involved here, because I guess only a handful of living people have read that book carefully enough and understood it well enough to remember that image..

To mention a few other minor connections of possible relevance....

I recalled no dreams last night, partially because I stayed up until 2am writing strange, strange posts to an internet forum. Nevertheless, the last time I can think of that I didn't dream was three years ago in my first "someone else had my dream" experience. That is the dream that seemed to respond to my criticism of the "higher states of matter" model found in this same book.

The post I made last night in which I tried to 'channel' my 'self', with mixed success, also connects to this same gendered, mirrored model that I described here. I didn't emphasize those characteristics last night, but that's the model I was working with 15 years ago when I first had that kind of experience. The feminine, angelic, 'feeling' aspect of that experience corresponds to the passive, psychic part of the 'self' in that decomposition. Its also relevant to my discussion with Belle about the nature of morality, as maybe you can see from my above description, and from how I related justice to vengeance-of-fate in my last response to her. I plan to post more on that topic later today.

For myself, from context, I'm pretty near to 100% certain that I've identified at least one aspect of the content in your dream, even though there are usually other valid interpretations also. I realize that my take on it won't be at all familiar or convincing to everyone else who looks at it though.

Originally Posted by shadowofwind

It seems to me that the two couples with children are actually one couple, or more likely just a single person, mirrored. The child is also mirrored, and may be an actual child, or more likely an inner child. I'm leaning towards the whole group being just one individual. For instance, desire (psychic, active) forces conscience (moral, passive), while fate (moral, active) creates experiences that act on feeling (psychic, active). The feeling of adultery is because the two emotional parts and the two providence-like parts are 'cheating', they aren't in balanced coordination with each other. Otherwise, if the relationships were paired the other way instead of crossed, the emotional part would be love, and the higher self would be justice, sort of. Whether this is a reasonable way to think about this or not, I got this description out of a book (Thinking and Destiny), so as long as somebody thinks about it that way it can be in a dream. Does this seem to fit? Even if you don't follow the logic, do the four DC's and their children seem like reflections of different aspects of a single individual, they feel like a single compound identity?

Sadly, no, this does not seem to fit. Aside from the two couples being relatively insignificant in the dream (I only mentioned them because I "remembered" dreaming about them before -- which may or may not be true; I cannot confirm), I "knew," as an established pretense in the dream, that they were having affairs with each other; it was a fact, not a feeling. And no, the four DC'a all seemed to be as defined as individuals as any other DC's in the room; aside from the curiosity of them all arriving together, I suspected no deeper meaning in their presence. That doesn't mean you, or Percival, for that matter, are not right; I could just be dense.

If this is "someone else's dream", and if I described it correctly, then I think my muse is probably involved here, because I guess only a handful of living people have read that book carefully enough and understood it well enough to remember that image. That might make sense in context of our recent discussion about sharing a dream and whether that would screw up your solitude. Also, it would fit with the 'point of alien identity that belongs' experience you described in the other thread, since this psychological model I described has more to do with intuition of self-knowledge that way, and less to do with particular people.

Hmm. So let's say this was someone else's dream, and I was a visitor. At the same time, the mirrored couples and their kids together formed another alien identity who happened to be shadowing my dreams (or perhaps an echo of my own identity). So this person's dream got crashed twice at the same time by strangers... I wonder if he or she noticed?

Originally Posted by shadowofwind

For myself, from context, I'm pretty near to 100% certain that I've identified at least one aspect of the content in your dream, even though there are usually other valid interpretations also. I realize that my take on it won't be at all familiar or convincing to everyone else who looks at it though.

And you may be right in your interpretation. It all may go far toward explaining some of this "other peoples' dreams" phenomena, so I do appreciate your effort...

Originally Posted by Sageous

So let's say this was someone else's dream, and I was a visitor. At the same time, the mirrored couples and their kids together formed another alien identity who happened to be shadowing my dreams (or perhaps an echo of my own identity). So this person's dream got crashed twice at the same time by strangers... I wonder if he or she noticed?

If I understand you correctly, I don't think this is what's going on. You're not "in someone else's dream". Its your dream, with ingredients that also have connections to the minds of other people. Their dreaming is only peripherally relevant, its who they are and what their thoughts are that relates them to you. Even if most of the elements in the dream are foreign to you, and even if someone else has the same dream, and its directly relevant to them, you're still the one who's dreaming it when you have it. Yes I think they must at some point experience at least a very slight and vague feeling of your identity, to the extent that you're in contact with their mind. But a dream isn't a real place or environment, and there's no reason why they have to have a similar dream in which they experience that connection. Though I agree that if they do have a similar dream, then that connection will be present in that dream, if they notice it.

I guess your subjective experience of dreams, and probably of waking life too, must be a lot different from mine or we wouldn't be describing this differently this way.

^^ So I guess then you won't say for a second that this was someone else's dream?

Originally Posted by shadowofwind

If I understand you correctly, I don't think this is what's going on. You're not "in someone else's dream". Its your dream, with ingredients that also have connections to the minds of other people. Their dreaming is only peripherally relevant, its who they are and what their thoughts are that relates them to you. Even if most of the elements in the dream are foreign to you, and even if someone else has the same dream, and its directly relevant to them, you're still the one who's dreaming it when you have it.

Though I've always liked this viewpoint, and I have a feeling it may best describe our routes into each other's heads, I still have to take an exception here: If, say, all of the elements are foreign to me (happens a lot, if not this time), how am I creating the dream? If someone else is dreaming the same dream, could they possibly have lent me their schemata for the night? And if they did, then which part of the dream creation is really mine? Also, keep in mind that I'm not talking about "classic" dream-sharing here; no one is coming to me the next day to tell me I was in their dream (so it doesn't matter if I they dreamed the same dream).

Yes I think they must at some point experience at least a very slight and vague feeling of your identity, to the extent that you're in contact with their mind. But a dream isn't a real place or environment, and there's no reason why they have to have a similar dream in which they experience that connection. Though I agree that if they do have a similar dream, then that connection will be present in that dream, if they notice it.

I believe the "other's" DC's usually do experience a clear feeling of my identity, often acting as though they know me well. I understand that a dream is not a real place, and again, I'm not saying these dreams felt like I was meeting others in a place separate from their and my dreams; nor am I saying that anyone else is having a similar dream to mine. What I am saying is that the feel of the dream is often completely alien to me, and all its images, themes, plots, and DC's are simply things about which I would not dream. That doesn't mean I'm not still dreaming the whole thing on my own -- indeed, that likely is the case, though it is a little disturbing that I've got sections of my unconscious that are perfectly unfamiliar to me or my life's experience.

I guess your subjective experience of dreams, and probably of waking life too, must be a lot different from mine or we wouldn't be describing this differently this way.

It sure must be! But that's what makes it all so interesting. Isn't it?

Originally Posted by Sageous

If, say, all of the elements are foreign to me (happens a lot, if not this time), how am I creating the dream? If someone else is dreaming the same dream, could they possibly have lent me their schemata for the night? And if they did, then which part of the dream creation is really mine?

You remember the dream, which seems to imply electro-chemical connections in your brain, which seems to imply that you dreamed it in your brain, since that would have been the formation of those connections, almost as a tautology. If the schemata is not yours (and I believe you when you say that it often isn't), then the schemata is formed somehow and transferred somehow. Does the formation process imply some other person dreaming? You assumed so, apparently, based on your experience, and I assumed not, based on my experience. Now I see its an interesting question though.

Back when I had a muse that was acting more like a muse, it would somehow set up the dream ahead of time, then it would play out in my mind, almost like a recording. I'm pretty sure that the actual design wasn't occurring during the dream itself. The design was at least already mostly implied by the nature of the 'thought' that came into my mind, with some of the details being determined during the dream by the nature of the 'instrument' that the dream was being played out on, which would have been my mind. Depending on how detailed the foreign thought was, the dream could still seem almost entirely foreign though.

Illustrating with a few examples....

I saw the muse in my brain once, as a globe of light, preparing a dream that would play out later in the night. Of course that 'seeing' was a kind of dream also, but I think it was intended to be representative of what was really going on. This was also an example of being able to 'see' from no particular standpoint, though is wasn't the clearest example of that.

You may recall the dream I related of being attacked by a demon, which allowed me to identify the karmic connection between my difficult life circumstances and my own anger. The demon started that dream, which was quite clear and lucid, then stopped it abruptly and let my mind wander through other dreams for hours, then started it again and finished it from exactly where it left off. It was like stopping and starting a film, except that with a film it takes at least an instant, and usually a bit longer, before you get emotionally into the feel of the story. You're sort of outside the movie until you get drawn into it. Here the whole mental and emotional experience was stopped and started like playing a tape, I didn't have a separate personal space or reaction that wasn't under that control. This is one reason I fear the demon in the sense of respecting it, and why I scoff when people think that their dream kung fu is going to help them. Its like being accosted by someone who points a gun at you, but instead of shooting you they say what they have to say then give you the gun. If the point looks fair, and their method looks fair under the circumstances, and if this continues to be the case as you continue to regard them skeptically, with them seeming to respect who you are and what you want, then you submit to their authority. Obviously what is acceptable in this regard is going to depend on you, but that's what I mean by fairness, you are the judge of it.

The setting of that dream was my childhood home, so it was constructed almost entirely out of my own memory, even though it was clear that it wasn't me who was doing the constructing. Or, now that I think of it, maybe it wasn't even constructed out of my memory, though it apparently could have been. Much later I had a lucid dream which I associate with that same demon which was in the same house, but it was from a visual perspective that no human could have had. So maybe it has its own memory somehow, stored in space set aside for itself in other people's brains, or elsewhere. This second dream would also be an example of a 'foreign' dream that nobody else is dreaming, foreign in the sense that it wasn't "me" doing it anyway. Its also an example of related dreams that were separated by several years, with no obvious connection to my external circumstances. The 'demon' has that kind of attention span, to present part of a thought, then add more of it years later when I'm in a better position to understand more.

In these examples the dream content was of clear personal relevance to me, but in the other cases the way it works seems to me to be similar, even though there isn't as much active involvement by a visiting spirit.

Here's an example where there is active involvement, but the content seems mostly foreign. I'm asleep and lucid, not dreaming, and a thought-like entity comes into my mind. This isn't the other demon I spoke of, its much smaller. Its as if the entity is a singing telegraph, and as if the light of my attention causes it to spill its message. It plays some kind of rapid and fancy piano ode to someone named "Anna", then after about a minute its done and that's it. Almost like a particle smacking into a detector, but with personality. Though the entity brought a creative element from outside of who I am, I think it was also qualified by or limited by who I am, and its song would have come out much differently in someone else.

Why did that particular particle smack that particular detector? Though I have no idea how this works, I see at least two connections. Years previously I knew someone named Anna, whom I had some non-romantic affection for, even though the thought-entity seemed to be almost completely from outside of me, and I don't think it was my ode. Secondly, I want to understand how the mind works, and this experience is a clue, left by the ever-patient entity that answers my other questions, and which seems to never present precisely the same clue more than once.

Your dreams seem to me more like this last example, though less point-like. More wave and less corpuscle.

I think its interesting that my interpretation of the twins missed so widely, and that this is also consistent with the differences in the way we think and dream. The metaphors in my dreams are heavily overloaded in a holistic and dyslexic kind of way. But the multiple meanings, at least the ones I recognize, mostly all tie into the same subtle theme. The connection is usually through the feeling. But in your dream, my interpretation was largely decoupled from what the dream means to you. Our thoughts were separated at the feeling level. Maybe that's part of how you will maintain a degree of solitude.

I see I lost my train of thought a little bit in my long response, and because I had two independent conclusions to make. When you did not create the schemata, is that done in a previous dream belonging to you or someone else?

I think we can probably eliminate the 'previous' from that conjecture, due to the very high rate of precognitive experiences in this kind of dream.

Does all subconscious thought occur during dreaming, such as when there is definite planning and design involved? I don't think so, we do some of this while awake also, the subconscious mind doesn't just totally shut down during that period. But maybe this does highlight an important purpose of dreaming. It is an important form of thinking, and not all of that thinking is directly relevant to ourselves personally, even though there's generally at least some tie-in or we wouldn't be involved. The dreams we remember are thinking that is shared with our conscious minds, but not all of it is shared so much.

Maybe your curiosity about identity and telepathy is almost adequate to support your experiences of 'finding yourself in other people's dreams', even though there are always synergies with your other interests also.

How the schemata gets transferred from one mind to another I still have no idea. I don't think its necessarily trivial though, because sometimes the dream seems to include an intuition of some aspect of that process. I sort of wander around lost in lusts and misunderstandings of context for a few moments before the channel is opened, so to speak, and that gets built into the dream metaphor partially.

Interesting stuff, Shadowofwind, and though it's all left me thinking, here are a couple of things that bear response:

Originally Posted by shadowofwind

You remember the dream, which seems to imply electro-chemical connections in your brain, which seems to imply that you dreamed it in your brain, since that would have been the formation of those connections, almost as a tautology. If the schemata is not yours (and I believe you when you say that it often isn't), then the schemata is formed somehow and transferred somehow. Does the formation process imply some other person dreaming? You assumed so, apparently, based on your experience, and I assumed not, based on my experience. Now I see its an interesting question though.

Very interesting, indeed. But I also remember things I did in waking life yesterday, things I had no part in designing (aside of course from witnessing them). Must the memory definitely correspond to a dream I constructed? Probably, but sometimes I'm not so sure. I think the answer to "Does the formation process imply some other person dreaming?" is not so clear for me: yes, the impression I get during the dream is that some other person is dreaming, but that might only be a consequence of context. The foreign thoughts could have come from anywhere, and my dreaming mind translates that influence as "dream," but it could be anything. On this particular note we might be close to agreement, I think.

Back when I had a muse that was acting more like a muse, it would somehow set up the dream ahead of time, then it would play out in my mind, almost like a recording. I'm pretty sure that the actual design wasn't occurring during the dream itself. The design was at least already mostly implied by the nature of the 'thought' that came into my mind, with some of the details being determined during the dream by the nature of the 'instrument' that the dream was being played out on, which would have been my mind. Depending on how detailed the foreign thought was, the dream could still seem almost entirely foreign though.

Though I really like this description, I'm not sure I can agree. I have come to believe that dreams are designed on the fly. Yes their schemata are drawn from a pool of available memory, recent day residue, and whatever emotions are currently fueling the system, but I think that draft is very much a "here & now" sort of thing. I believe this is the case for folks who program their dreams as well, as that programming is simply recent -- very strong -- memory. This matters here because if a foreign entity found its way into my dream (or my entity found my way into theirs), the resulting overlap of unconscious information might cause my dreaming mind to produce a dream relevant to my visitor, and not to me. Make sense?

I saw the muse in my brain once, as a globe of light, preparing a dream that would play out later in the night. Of course that 'seeing' was a kind of dream also, but I think it was intended to be representative of what was really going on. This was also an example of being able to 'see' from no particular standpoint, though is wasn't the clearest example of that.

This is an aside: I had to pause at "globe of light" for a moment, and, given that (as you know) I have a feeling that globes of light archetypically represent the soul, I had to ask myself: "Is Shadowofwind's muse actually his manifest soul, and is he therefore enjoying direct contact with it, long before the time when communion with our souls is supposed to be possible? If so, then that is a rare event indeed... " Okay, so maybe it was a mystical aside; I hope you'll forgive and indulge the pause. Now:

Yes, that "seeing" was very likely representative of what was really going on (as I sort of just said) at that very moment. I have to wonder though, if you were maybe adding too much responsibility to that globe: It may simply have been present, but not preparing an upcoming dream. Just a thought.

Here's an example where there is active involvement, but the content seems mostly foreign. I'm asleep and lucid, not dreaming, and a thought-like entity comes into my mind. This isn't the other demon I spoke of, its much smaller. Its as if the entity is a singing telegraph, and as if the light of my attention causes it to spill its message. It plays some kind of rapid and fancy piano ode to someone named "Anna", then after about a minute its done and that's it. Almost like a particle smacking into a detector, but with personality. Though the entity brought a creative element from outside of who I am, I think it was also qualified by or limited by who I am, and its song would have come out much differently in someone else.

Why did that particular particle smack that particular detector? Though I have no idea how this works, I see at least two connections. Years previously I knew someone named Anna, whom I had some non-romantic affection for, even though the thought-entity seemed to be almost completely from outside of me, and I don't think it was my ode. Secondly, I want to understand how the mind works, and this experience is a clue, left by the ever-patient entity that answers my other questions, and which seems to never present precisely the same clue more than once.

Your dreams seem to me more like this last example, though less point-like. More wave and less corpuscle.

Agreed, and that was an interesting example (they all were, by the way).

I think its interesting that my interpretation of the twins missed so widely, and that this is also consistent with the differences in the way we think and dream. The metaphors in my dreams are heavily overloaded in a holistic and dyslexic kind of way. But the multiple meanings, at least the ones I recognize, mostly all tie into the same subtle theme. The connection is usually through the feeling. But in your dream, my interpretation was largely decoupled from what the dream means to you. Our thoughts were separated at the feeling level. Maybe that's part of how you will maintain a degree of solitude.

It very well could be. I'll try not to consider that concept, though, lest it foul up my oh-so-carefully groomed paths to solitude! But yeah, I left close study of my dreams metaphors behind a long time ago, after deciding that the meaning I was attaching (which was very often multi-layered, and quite complex) had eclipsed the experience and memory of the dream itself -- which in the end is what I truly value in all this. So yes, once again we stumble over another loose root of our different approaches to the very same thing!

Originally Posted by shadowofwind

I see I lost my train of thought a little bit in my long response, and because I had two independent conclusions to make. When you did not create the schemata, is that done in a previous dream belonging to you or someone else?

I think we can probably eliminate the 'previous' from that conjecture, due to the very high rate of precognitive experiences in this kind of dream.

Agreed -- but for me not because of precognitive experiences, but because I see dreams as very much a here & now event... schemata are always being created on the fly, just as the waking world is constantly recreating itself before you (yes, memory is tapped to interpret and "correctly" form both, but that memory is an actual, um, thing, and not a schematic invention).

Does all subconscious thought occur during dreaming, such as when there is definite planning and design involved? I don't think so, we do some of this while awake also, the subconscious mind doesn't just totally shut down during that period. But maybe this does highlight an important purpose of dreaming. It is an important form of thinking, and not all of that thinking is directly relevant to ourselves personally, even though there's generally at least some tie-in or we wouldn't be involved. The dreams we remember are thinking that is shared with our conscious minds, but not all of it is shared so much.

Mostly agreed -- and nicely said. I think the unconscious is active all the time -- it literally must be active, because it is an integral part of our "Self" and its interaction with reality, as well as an active participant in thought and perception. But I'm not sure that the unconscious is doing things -- in healthy minds -- that ranges very far from conscious activity or physical experience. Aside from that, yes, I think the dreams we remember (at least those of later REM periods -- earlier dreams tend to get lost regardless) represent conscious-unconscious "conversations of greater significance... though I do still tend to ignore that significance!

Maybe your curiosity about identity and telepathy is almost adequate to support your experiences of 'finding yourself in other people's dreams', even though there are always synergies with your other interests also.

Funny, the word "telepathy" never crossed my mind when thinking about these dreams. But if they really are "Other People's Dreams," then they would be telepathic, wouldn't they? Hmm. I've always had some real problems with telepathy -- mostly in the "how" department, so it might be a little tough for me to come to terms with it. But then again, if telepathy is the vehicle, then here I am swimming almost daily in its proof -- a true skeptic's nightmare, I think!

How the schemata gets transferred from one mind to another I still have no idea. I don't think its necessarily trivial though, because sometimes the dream seems to include an intuition of some aspect of that process. I sort of wander around lost in lusts and misunderstandings of context for a few moments before the channel is opened, so to speak, and that gets built into the dream metaphor partially.

Not trivial at all, as the physics of this transfer would likely require a major rewrite of more than one textbook. And that's just the physics. The actual translation of one person's dreams to another's -- converting a metaphor to energy for the transfer, and then converting that energy back into a metaphor that resembles the original -- would imply that we all share an ability to manipulate, send, receive, and understand specific packets of energy; and that we may, or rather must, also share a set of universal standards for these manipulations and interpretations in order for the visits to carry any imagery or meaning at all (i.e., one dreamer's thought energy might appear as simple static buzz, if at all, to another dreamer, without some mutual agreement on settings).

Again, very interesting stuff, Shadowofwind, thank you! Now I'm tired...

Originally Posted by Sageous

But I also remember things I did in waking life yesterday, things I had no part in designing (aside of course from witnessing them). Must the memory definitely correspond to a dream I constructed?

Your memory of waking life was 'constructed' while you were witnessing it, in a process very much like dreaming. I haven't meant to suggest at all that you've been supplying the content.

I agree though that its possible to have memories that aren't consciously constructed that way. When I dream, often there is a context of fictional memory that supports the story which I don't think was built up in previous dreams. This goes along with what I was saying about the dream being constructed ahead of time. In this case, the 'fictional memories' are already in place at the outset of the dream. Sometimes the whole dream was already there though. I'm not saying this agrees with your experience, but I'm pretty much 100% sure that this correctly characterizes my experience. For two or three years I typically had one dream like that a night that showed fairly clear evidence of pre-planning. Now my experience is more like what you describe. Its known though, when making choices while awake, the actual choice precedes the conscious awareness of it by a short time. (Assuming they're interpreting their brain scan data in a non-fallacious manner, I haven't read the actual studies, which are probably paywalled.) In what I'm describing, the content is just a lot more complex and the lag a lot longer.

Because of the time-transcendent nature of the content of many of these dreams, I'm not saying that the content itself was formed ahead of time. That distinction might not even make sense. But at some point it gets turned into chemical reactions in my brain, and I'm saying that part of that process gets physically prepared ahead of time, before the experience of the dream plays out.

Even though I dream pretty much continually, my ability to lucid dream lucidly in a highly visual manner is fairly limited in duration. After about a minute something runs out and I can't do it anymore. In these other dreams I'm describing, in which the dream is mostly constructed first, this seems to greatly enhance the duration, clarity, and metaphorical complexity of the dream.

Originally Posted by Sageous

I think the answer to "Does the formation process imply some other person dreaming?" is not so clear for me: yes, the impression I get during the dream is that some other person is dreaming, but that might only be a consequence of context.

I would tend to trust that impression to a fair extent if it persisted after I questioned it. But of course subconscious thinking or even passive thinking can be a lot like passive dreaming.

Originally Posted by Sageous

I have come to believe that dreams are designed on the fly.

I think its clear that there's an actual difference in the way we dream some of our dreams, its not just in our interpretations of how it works.

Originally Posted by Sageous

This is an aside: I had to pause at "globe of light" for a moment, and, given that (as you know) I have a feeling that globes of light archetypically represent the soul, I had to ask myself: "Is Shadowofwind's muse actually his manifest soul, and is he therefore enjoying direct contact with it, long before the time when communion with our souls is supposed to be possible?

If it was my soul I'm fantastically schizophrenic, it didn't feel like me at all.

I'm fairly sure that globes of light represent a lot of things besides souls. We use light to visually model everything. If what we're representing is juxtaposed from outside the surrounding context, and is self-illuminating so to speak, rather than an outward shell that we see reflected light off of, then it looks like a luminous form. And if its round, which is pretty much the default shape in three dimensions, then its a globe of light. As I'm pointed out previously, a cylindrical tube in four dimensions has a globular cross section. A lot of things could look like globes to us.

Originally Posted by Sageous

I have to wonder though, if you were maybe adding too much responsibility to that globe: It may simply have been present, but not preparing an upcoming dream.

The impression of the activity of the globe was part of the content of the experience, every bit as much as the visual. I didn't project that onto it myself. And I trust the muse to a fair extent, in hundreds of experiences I'm not aware of it ever having lied to me.

Originally Posted by Sageous

I left close study of my dreams metaphors behind a long time ago, after deciding that the meaning I was attaching (which was very often multi-layered, and quite complex) had eclipsed the experience and memory of the dream itself -- which in the end is what I truly value in all this.

I agree that no interpretation or collection of interpretations ever adequately captures anything close to the full meaning of a dream. But many of my dreams were clearly intended to be interpreted, they were parables. Consider the story of Jonah for instance, or read it if you only remember the Sunday-school version, its only a few pages. Its true that no interpretation can adequately capture the full impact of the myth. But I think that if a person never thinks about the meaning at all, then that also tends to preclude grasping it with much depth. Again, I think we're talking about different kinds of dreams here. But generally speaking, I don't think that the limited and superficial nature of our thinking is a good reason not to think. We just need to keep it in its proper place and perspective, not confounding the symbols too much with what they represent, and not suffocating our ability to do other more subtle, less intellectual kinds of thinking.

Originally Posted by Sageous

But I'm not sure that the unconscious is doing things -- in healthy minds -- that ranges very far from conscious activity or physical experience.

Well, make of my experience what you will then. Objectively I think my mental health is pretty good.

Originally Posted by Sageous

The actual translation of one person's dreams to another's -- converting a metaphor to energy for the transfer, and then converting that energy back into a metaphor that resembles the original -- would imply that we all share an ability to manipulate, send, receive, and understand specific packets of energy; and that we may, or rather must, also share a set of universal standards for these manipulations and interpretations in order for the visits to carry any imagery or meaning at all (i.e., one dreamer's thought energy might appear as simple static buzz, if at all, to another dreamer, without some mutual agreement on settings).

Yeah I agree its a big problem. But we can't just pretend its not happening because we don't understand it. Or I guess we can, but then that would make us more rather than less delusional I think.

I think that the whole idea of sending and receiving information in signals is the wrong paradigm, and this is why we can't understand it. I don't know what to replace that idea with though.

As usual thanks for the thoughts. I guess I'd better try to work a bit now.