On The Nature of Shared Dreaming

The Nature of Shared Dreaming -- a Loose Theory That Might Work

There are a gazillion threads discussing shared dreaming on this forum, and yet another one might not make a difference, but I had a thought this morning regarding an explanation of its physical nature -- and a rationale for it being “real,” that I thought might be worth some discussion.

I was actually thinking about bubbles at first -- you know, the ones kids blow through a wand, basically spheres of soap held together by surface tension. I don’t even know why I was thinking about bubbles; probably a forgotten dream, as I had just woken from a late-morning nap. But then I started imagining the shape of bubbles, and their necessarily cohesive surface. And for some reason then I started thinking about thought energy.

I’ve written many times about thought energy here and elsewhere, so most of you likely know the tune, but here it is again [this is all conjecture based on no more than wishful thinking, BTW, so please hold off on the physics lectures! ;)]:

Thought energy is the energy created by conscious, sentient, thought. It is an actual form of energy which, because it is completely new and unrelated to the physical world, does not conform to the currently known laws of physics -- it is not electromagnetic, and does not contain known units of energy. Also, thought energy is not to be confused with the electromagnetic energy of brainwaves produced during the physical act of thinking -- that is something else. Thought energy is unique in form to each person generating it, sort of like fingerprints, but it likely would tend to be drawn to the same locale as other thought energy…which, finally, is where the bubbles come in.

Here’s the theory itself: Thought energy is created by individuals and tends to be attracted to other individuals' created thought energy, as well as itself. This dual attraction, when combined with the billions of actively sentient beings these days, has formed a “bubble” of coherent thought energy that encompasses our entire planet. So what we have is an energy sphere of connected thought pools (each pool representing an individual), and that energy is not under the jurisdiction of Newton’s laws.

When we dream, we enjoy a direct connection with our personal pool of thought energy, which in turn is connected to all the rest of the world’s pools through the surface tension of the thought energy bubble. From this position we have an opportunity to “transmit” to all the other individuals’ pools simultaneously, and also to listen to any recognizable transmissions that might be coming from other pools. If we can manage to recognize and understand these exchanged transmissions, then we are dream-sharing.

A couple of corollaries:

First, your transmission goes to the entire sphere of all the billions of pools at once; there is no directed communication. However, if you know the individual whose thoughts you are looking for, and they know you, you should be able to spoon out a conversation from the general ocean of thoughts you are experiencing simultaneously, simply by recognizing a moment of order (your known individual) from the overall chaos of the sphere.

Also, this theory still doesn’t answer the question of how we would convert incoming thoughts into symbols or images that make sense to us, and vise-versa. I imagine/hope there might be some sort of “universal translator” built into our minds that can convert thought energy to usable metaphor. This could be similar to Jung’s collective unconscious, and his theory of universal archetypes.

So that’s what I have so far. I know it’s pretty rough, and probably totally wrong, but it does at least offer a partial answer to the problem I have always had about the “physics” of shared-dreaming: How can two people communicate in a dream instantly, without regard for time or space, and how do they find each other at all?

So, if anyone would like to discuss, upgrade, query me for details, or trash this theory altogether, then go for it… This for a change is a dream-sharing thread that asks how it can work, rather than just assume that it does, and thoughtful discussion about the “how” might get us a little closer to creating techniques for more easily and/or accurately practicing the art of dream sharing. .


In case anyone wants to start a conversation: I hope you won’t mind if I include a few ground rules for discussion that I urge you to follow:

* What I want to avoid on this thread is an “Is not, because I said so! / Is so, because I said so!” argument, as these sorts of conversations are pretty much useless and tend to lead to angry, if heartfelt, exchanges… let’s not go there!

* I am not asking if you “believe” in dream-sharing, or asking you to assume that I believe in it. I really don’t care what people want to believe; perhaps nobody should.

* I don’t care at all about how good you are at shared dreaming, or that a friend of your cousin’s uncle is a master dream-sharer. This is not a thread about belief, anecdotal proof, or how cool dream-sharing might be. It’s about the “how.”

* And, of course, if you’re inclined to post with something like “dream-sharing just exists, and we can never understand why,” don’t bother. Though that is likely true, it will do nothing for the conversation.


Any thoughts?

While I don't (currently) believe in dream sharing, this theory does seem plausible. Though hoe we'd prove the existence of thought energy, is anyone's guess. A theory I've had cooking for a while (well, thought about once on a long bus trip), is that quantum entanglement could have something to do with it, but I don't really know.
As an aside, considering some of the disturbing things in my mind, I'd rather they stayed private.

A thought energy... in higher dimension it creates things...
Collective unconsciousness could be superconsciousness, something like higher intelligence made of everything thinking on planet. It would be named unconsciousness, only because we are not aware of its existence we do not observe it...
I would be cautious about believing in something immeasurable. :) I believe in existence of higher dimensions even if I can't measure them, it is because I found a few things which correlated with this reality. But I need much more than a few before my belief will become an reality for me.

Nice theory Sageous! From all of the current ideas and theories currently out there regarding dream sharing I think this may be one of the most competent ones. Based on the experiences I have had I would say this helps to explain (my own experiences) very neatly. Are you proposing that in order to receive others dreams we first need to tune in/transmit? In which case what is protecting the dreamer from incoming dreams from others? Our individual pools seem to help us stay primarily contained within our own dreaming (proven by looking at the majority of our dreams which seem to be populated by our OWN characters based on people we know and our OWN self created places based on places we have been) so why is this? Does this mean that each person has their own set of symbols and 'language' which, on one hand would help to ensure that we are more or less protected within our own personal pools from a barrage of other peoples thoughts, but on the other hand language then gets muddled when entering another person's dream, making it difficult to read and possibly impossible to match the the person sending the dream?

I also had a thought regarding shared dreaming which would fit nicely into your current hypothesis - in order to share a dream we would first need to 'tune in' (as you previously proposed) but like tuning into a distant radio station there may be static and interference from other stations, but the more we tune in the better the connection gets until we have 'clear reception' This would help to explain why people find it so difficult to dream share straight away, and why persistence is necessary in order to get clear and concise results.

Another idea to help get 'better/stronger' results would be to plan meetings and exercises using symbolically neutral places and ideas. Using symbolically neutral (or alternatively symbolically agreed) places to meet would help the 'translator' perform at a better rate

sorry if this does not make any sense, just throwing ideas around!

Maybe the place is irrelevant... maybe it is enough if we try to communicate... I tried to call... to yell for target person. So he/she would appear. Once someone appeared, but that wasn't person I called, it was some crazy looking old man He spotted me and started to cackle... when I started to come to him to communicate, he ran away and disappeared. I try it quite often.
I believe the communication needs right tuning. To be on the same "wave length" And tuning is something I don't know how to do easy. Persons I met in astral seems not to see me... Or they see me but they are unresponsive. The best results I had was with my brother, even then we didn't communicated fully, only partially. And many, great many communication efforts were absolutely failed.

I remember, I met once a friend in astral, and she waited on bus station. I was naked. And I wasn't concerned about it, that was irrelevant. Some people who went by told me that I'm naked, and I told them that that is not important. I went to that women and started to speak. She didn't answer. I sat down next to her and took her hand. I started to try to tune her(because of my problems to tune myself I thought that it would be simpler to tune her). As I concentrated lightnings danced from my hand into her... I felt as I transferred energy... but... I didn't succeed. She remained unresponsive to end of experience.

Or I went from bedroom where I left my body down to kitchen. I found there my wife, standing, not moving. She wasn't reacting on me. I put my hands into her body. And she started to speak that she feels something in her stomach, head... and so on. I told her later about my experience and she didn't know about it. So... fail too.

I dragged my wife to LD as I was falling to sleep with help of WILD method. And then I made guide to her during whole experience... I tried to make her awake... I failed.

It will take time.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Sageous

Also, this theory still doesn’t answer the question of how we would convert incoming thoughts into symbols or images that make sense to us, and vise-versa. I imagine/hope there might be some sort of “universal translator” built into our minds that can convert thought energy to usable metaphor. This could be similar to Jung’s collective unconscious, and his theory of universal archetypes.

---

About this, just like we just know how to interpret certain wavelength into specific colors we could interpret these energy thoughts for what they are. I assume most of us see the same thing when we see red, that a mother sounds the same to all her children. Then, most of us would interpret this thought energy in similar way. Some people might be different and interpret them wrong. The daltonians of dream-sharing.

This is an interesting theory but I still have trouble imagining how bubbles are all linked outside of space. I'm imagining like a thousand beads in a flask. They touch the other beads beside them. But no other. Are you saying the whole surface of the bubbles creates a whole?

This reminds me of something from physics... :P Apparently, protons interact with neutrons through field particles called gluons. In fact, all of the fundamental attractive forces are caused by particles. Perhaps thought energy is similar. It can travel through space and create a connection between two consciousness (the two nucleons).

Thanks for the excellent responses, guys; you've really got me thinking now! I hope you don't mind my lazily jamming all my responses to you on one giant post (I hope I don't contradict myself too much! ;):

floatinghead:

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by floatinghead

...Are you proposing that in order to receive others dreams we first need to tune in/transmit?

---

I suppose I am. In a sense, everyone's energy -- everyone's thoughts, their pool, their individual presence -- is united with the "bubble," universally and timelessly. All those billions of different presences being "broadcast" simultaneously would imply that an individual would need to know how to tune in to the specific broadcast of their chosen sharing partner -- which is why it is extremely helpful to know your dream-sharing target well.

Quote:

---

In which case what is protecting the dreamer from incoming dreams from others?

---

Nothing. But that bubble -- that ocean of other pools of thought energy -- is vast enough to be perfectly chaotic (is that an oxymoron?), and that chaos, would, I imagine, read like little more than background noise. Perhaps this is where bizarre imagery, completely alien schemata, and totally strange DC's might come from?

Quote:

---

Our individual pools seem to help us stay primarily contained within our own dreaming (proven by looking at the majority of our dreams which seem to be populated by our OWN characters based on people we know and our OWN self created places based on places we have been) so why is this?

---

The thought energy comprising our personal pool is, obviously, our own, and the energy of own creation is more attracted to itself than to other people's energy. So our own identity, memories, and feelings have priority, leaving little room or attention for stuff overlapping from the general bubble.

Quote:

---

Does this mean that each person has their own set of symbols and 'language' which, on one hand would help to ensure that we are more or less protected within our own personal pools from a barrage of other peoples thoughts[?]

---

I think it is less a unique set of symbols or metaphor than it is that our own thought energy is unique to our individual identity, and more a part of us, of that pool, than is the general energy of all thinkers. Did I just say that a second ago? And yes, because our pool is rich with our own essence, we are indeed "protected" from the accidental or intentional invasion of other people's thoughts.

There may be a couple of exceptions to this: First, a person with a weak mind, or, rather, a person who limits their level of thought -- of real introspection, wonder, curiosity, compassion, etc -- in waking life for whatever reason might find their pool of thought energy weak and poorly formed, perhaps open to some intrusion. Also, given the billions of permutations, there may be other pools whose energy is very similar to yours, and you may find yourself bumping into each other in each others dreams, though possibly without any real communication (more in a sec). Indeed, I started a thread a long time ago that considered this, though I hadn't yet thought of the bubble or pools yet -- that thread was Finding Yourself in Other People's Dreams, if you're curious.

Quote:

---

...but on the other hand language then gets muddled when entering another person's dream, making it difficult to read and possibly impossible to match the the person sending the dream?

---

Yes, and this is a critical point that I hope earns more discussion on this thread.

Quote:

---

I also had a thought regarding shared dreaming which would fit nicely into your current hypothesis - in order to share a dream we would first need to 'tune in' (as you previously proposed) but like tuning into a distant radio station there may be static and interference from other stations, but the more we tune in the better the connection gets until we have 'clear reception' This would help to explain why people find it so difficult to dream share straight away, and why persistence is necessary in order to get clear and concise results.

---

Agreed.

Quote:

---

Another idea to help get 'better/stronger' results would be to plan meetings and exercises using symbolically neutral places and ideas. Using symbolically neutral (or alternatively symbolically agreed) places to meet would help the 'translator' perform at a better rate

---

I'm not sure that would work, because even the metaphors that seem so obvious in waking life (like agreeing to meet on the moon) become something else altogether when individual minds are independently producing them -- in other words, even the moon might look very different to me than it does to you. However, that is probably a good start for experimentation -- testing that translator -- and might just work; especially if the dreamers know each other well or, better yet, intimately.

Psionik:

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Psionik

Maybe the place is irrelevant... maybe it is enough if we try to communicate... I tried to call... to yell for target person. So he/she would appear. Once someone appeared, but that wasn't person I called, it was some crazy looking old man He spotted me and started to cackle... when I started to come to him to communicate, he ran away and disappeared. I try it quite often.
I believe the communication needs right tuning. To be on the same "wave length" And tuning is something I don't know how to do easy. Persons I met in astral seems not to see me... Or they see me but they are unresponsive. The best results I had was with my brother, even then we didn't communicated fully, only partially. And many, great many communication efforts were absolutely failed.

---

Good point. Keep in mind that, according to my hypothesis, you may actually have connected with your target person, and that cackling old man was as close as you were able to "tune." Something to think about, anyway! Makes sense that you had better results with your brother, for reasons I mentioned above... it also makes sense that you would fail many efforts, because just trying to communicate might not be enough; you might need something to trigger that translator, to construct metaphors that make sense to both you and your target dreamer.

Quote:

---

I remember, I met once a friend in astral, and she waited on bus station. I was naked. And I wasn't concerned about it, that was irrelevant. Some people who went by told me that I'm naked, and I told them that that is not important. I went to that women and started to speak. She didn't answer. I sat down next to her and took her hand. I started to try to tune her(because of my problems to tune myself I thought that it would be simpler to tune her). As I concentrated lightnings danced from my hand into her... I felt as I transferred energy... but... I didn't succeed. She remained unresponsive to end of experience.

---

Interesting... it seems as though you were right there, constructing a metaphor for communication (first having only speaking to her as a priority, then intuitively manipulating that lightning); or perhaps (forgive me for saying) it was just a dream? I'm guessing there will be a next time when you will be better able to sort all this out?

Quote:

---

Or I went from bedroom where I left my body down to kitchen. I found there my wife, standing, not moving. She wasn't reacting on me. I put my hands into her body. And she started to speak that she feels something in her stomach, head... and so on. I told her later about my experience and she didn't know about it. So... fail too.

I dragged my wife to LD as I was falling to sleep with help of WILD method. And then I made guide to her during whole experience... I tried to make her awake... I failed.

It will take time.

---

Yes it will, but your efforts -- and apparent path for exploration -- are fascinating!

Occipitalred:

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Occipitalred

About this, just like we just know how to interpret certain wavelength into specific colors we could interpret these energy thoughts for what they are. I assume most of us see the same thing when we see red, that a mother sounds the same to all her children. Then, most of us would interpret this thought energy in similar way. Some people might be different and interpret them wrong. The daltonians of dream-sharing.

---

Interesting and agreed; and here is why it may be important to know your sharing partner well.

Quote:

---

This is an interesting theory but I still have trouble imagining how bubbles are all linked outside of space. I'm imagining like a thousand beads in a flask. They touch the other beads beside them. But no other. Are you saying the whole surface of the bubbles creates a whole?

---

Yes. Think less of liquid beads than complex molecules (the pools), all joined in a coherent pattern (that sphere or world-spanning "bubble"). Now that I think about it, those pools are more metaphor than I thought; I think the cohesive thought energy -- the complete bubble -- would likely permeate all the pools, though, due to being focused on the nature of our personally generated energy, don't really notice it. So the whole, that bubble of cohesive pools, is really just one great (non-sentient!) entity, and we the pools are both factors comprising it and entities separate form it ... that sounded better in my head!

Quote:

---

This reminds me of something from physics... :P Apparently, protons interact with neutrons through field particles called gluons. In fact, all of the fundamental attractive forces are caused by particles. Perhaps thought energy is similar. It can travel through space and create a connection between two consciousness (the two nucleons).

---

It could be similar to this. But if making such a comparison, I would term thought energy as something more like Higgs particle, with the general sphere being comparable to a Higgs field ... if anyone cares to correct me on this I'd appreciate it, as I'm very bad at quantum mechanics!

I hope some of this made sense, guys, and I also hope you'll let me know if it didn't, or where I went wrong...

I have thought about this a lot. Not just for shared dreaming, but visiting someone/someplace via Astral travel and RV. I think the black"Delta" state is important as it seems to come up in most of the phenomena that we talk about here. I really have not thought too deeply about shared dreamig though Th ere. has to be a common

thread that allows for us to find certain energies while in "altered states.

There is one problem I have in astral when it concerns with communication, and that is shortage of entities capable of communication. My astral is nearly empty of animal life(I assign humans and other entities like angels, devils, vampires to animal life :) )
Most populated place I found was hell (I recognize it as low level astral). I was there two times, once I flew by only, and I wasn't recognized, second time I was there as guide... And from the horde of devils only one was capable of communication, all others were like programmed robots, not capable of doing something what needs creativity. Astral I regularly visit is more or less devoid of animal life... Only trees, plants... and things created by humans... and occasional "automated, not responding" human here or there...
In mental dimension I found none animal life.
Budhic dimension was different- there were stars/souls but very far from me and each other. I tried to fly to one(inner feeling told me that I had to merge with one particular) But I didn't manage to hold concentration, to hold the level of detachment needed and was thrown back to my body.
Therefore 3-4 months ago I started to explore communication possibilities through lucid dreams as in dreams I often communicate with other entities. DILD generated dreams are like regular dreams in therm of animal life... But I found that my LD generated by WILD are similar to astral... only the feeling is different(feeling like this is a dream and I'm aware of it) And possibilities to exact my imagination give it more possibilities to explore. Nowadays I follow both routes- OBE and LD. I like OBE more as there is distinct feel of super reality.

Does someone here similar observations in regards of animal life populace?

The thought 'bubbles' would be in a 'space' defined by the relationships between the thoughts. Within that space, I don't think that communication can be instantaneous, because that would mean all points are equidistant, in which case the thoughts don't have surfaces, or any other relational dynamics.

The 'space' isn't our physical space though, since those aren't quite the same relationships. So I think there must be a kind of time in that other space, though it's not the same as our time. And it connects or projects to 'physical' time in a way that's not possible to understand if trying to think exclusively in terms of that time.

Psionik, It seems to me that your astral realm would be defined largely by who you are then you are in it. So if you are alive and open in an animal way, then there will be animals in it. But you probably close that part of yourself, because otherwise you don't know how to stay in your 'astral' state without your passions pulling you out of it.

Our 'immortality' thread seems to have been a study in using logic to draw almost arbitrary conclusions from flawed premises. From some of the same logic, for instance, it follows that what is real is only what you're aware of, and destroying something is wrong only if you get caught. No doubt my premises and conclusions here are messed up too, so I can only hope it's a tiny step in the right direction.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by shadowofwind

Psionik, It seems to me that your astral realm would be defined largely by who you are then you are in it. So if you are alive and open in an animal way, then there will be animals in it. But you probably close that part of yourself, because otherwise you don't know how to stay in your 'astral' state without your passions pulling you out of it.

---

I closed my animal side? Hmmm... An interesting idea... I really don't know. It had to be closed since I was around 12-13 years old, because even my first astral travel was similar to present ones.

Hmmm I remembered while contemplating about this problem, that there were some experiences before that. I don't have them written. I can't remember whether it was lucid dream or OBE. I was much younger, I was ill, had high temperature 39°C+, and I remember floating around lamp in room... and then around house. I remembered how still everything was. Peacefully still. No animal lifeform(no domestic animals, no humans)... only house, and plants... nice sunny day. There were maybe two others similar experiences induced by high fever together with relaxation during "perspiration threatment". So I was closed that way even when I was around 8 years old???
Now comes other memory. I was around 13 years old and I had my first experience with allergic asthma. It was very strong asthma seizure. Physicians of that times, in Czechoslovakia at least, weren't as aware of hay fever. My doctor let me take antibiotics because it looked for him like infection. A few days later I started to have problems with breathing. At night I passed out on WC and I remember some walking around house. It was night in astral like it was in physical dimension. Everything was realistic. But there weren't my parents in house nor siblings. And outside there weren't animals or humans. I remember that I was also in observant and passive state. Mother found me and she used cold water to bring me back... and then I was with my father to visit some of his friends who was physician. I got big injection of antihistamine and I was in a few minutes all right. My brush with death :) If there wasn't for that father's friend, maybe I would die that night.

I don't know... Am I doing something wrong? I tried to find guide in astral in past, but I wasn't successful, it would help if I have someone who could help me there... Nobody didn't come on my calls. Therefore I had only one way- to try and to figure things by myself. I have many experiences... but not many references of similar experiences. Things I read on internet are often not similar to my experiences. Sometimes they are contradictory. Either my detached state of mind is necessary because I do something different than "normal" OBE or I'm doing an astral projection but different then other people?

I think it isn't really very important, but I would still like to know what is "wrong" with me :)

Spoiler for For Sageous:

Sageous, I just read your short with Noah and I enjoyed it wholeheartedly, I think it's the best short I've ever read! Every sentence made me laugh and feel happy! I could live in a world written by you until the end of times!

:)

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by shadowofwind

The thought 'bubbles' would be in a 'space' defined by the relationships between the thoughts. Within that space, I don't think that communication can be instantaneous, because that would mean all points are equidistant, in which case the thoughts don't have surfaces, or any other relational dynamics.

---

I hadn't thought of that. I was speaking metaphorically about that bubble; not really picturing it as a physical thing encircling the earth as much as a cohesive collection of energy existing outside of the physical realm. So the points, to me, would have all been equidistant, and the thoughts had no surfaces or any other relational dynamics. But they must have those things, mustn't they? Even if thought energy exists outside our known physical parameters, it must still exist somehow. So you make a good point. I was using the bubble and pool imagery metaphorically, with no concern for the actual form of these thought forms, but I suppose I should have. Or not... do you think a novel form of energy like thought energy as I described it could exist without surfaces or other relational dynamics?

Quote:

---

The 'space' isn't our physical space though, since those aren't quite the same relationships. So I think there must be a kind of time in that other space, though it's not the same as our time. And it connects or projects to 'physical' time in a way that's not possible to understand if trying to think exclusively in terms of that time.

---

I'm not sure I understand this. Does this answer my question above, saying that thought energy must have dimension, even if that dimension is unrelated to ours? Well, not unrelated, because it comes from ours and we, by being the creators of thought energy are necessarily connected to it; but unrelated in terms of physical law. So maybe there are surfaces and other relational dynamics after all, but they are different enough from ours that its dynamics might allow for communication that we would interpret as instantaneous. Or am I just babbling?

Quote:

---

Our 'immortality' thread seems to have been a study in using logic to draw almost arbitrary conclusions from flawed premises. From some of the same logic, for instance, it follows that what is real is only what you're aware of, and destroying something is wrong only if you get caught. No doubt my premises and conclusions here are messed up too, so I can only hope it's a tiny step in the right direction.

---

Not so much flawed premises as thought-experiment-level imaginary premises. I suppose this thread's premises are in pretty much the same boat, but I would very much like to avoid arbitrary conclusions based on beliefs, hopes, or anecdotal proofs. I would much rather have this idea of mine shredded with valid rationale than supported or opposed with dogmatic presupposition. In other words, we don't need to follow the route of the immortality thread (or the matter can't be destroyed or created thread, for that matter) here, as long as we remember that the premise is just some shit I came up with that might be that first step toward understanding how shared dreaming could work -- even if the next 50 steps lead away from that premise.

I completely disagree with the words timeless and spaceless. I don't believe anything that doesn't exist in space or time. If it's nowhere and nowhen, then it's naught. Time is just not an illusion, it's just the timeline of events. The future does not yet exist. Well, that is what is intuitive to me. I don't understand people who try to say time or space are illusions. Anyhow, this doesn't prevent weird space physics. According to new physical theories, there might be more dimensions (as in instead of living in a 3D world, the world is actually 10D). I don't know if you'll all saw the ant-paper experiment. An ant walking on a piece of paper is like a 2D entity walking in a 2D world, but us, living in the 3D world, we can bend that paper so that the ends touch and the ant will disappear from one end of the 2D world to the other end. In such a way. maybe thought energy can use these bends to travel through the 4th dimension or what you call it and therefore reach someone that is much further in space.

About cohesiveness... I'd like to share one of my metaphors for united consciousness. Sometimes, I like to think that there is only one consciousness which I represent as a big sphere of water. Below, there are a few empty glasses side by side, those are human bodies. Then I imagine the sphere of water slowly flowing down until it hits the cups and the water fills them, the rest spilling to the sides. I imagine this is us now, only aware of our body, our cup. but one day, when we die, when the cup breaks, the water will spill and join the rest of the spilled water and be united again and the cycles goes on like that. This metaphor makes me feel connected to all the other beings of this world. Anyways, I can just imagine, if the cups are full and the water is just above the side and touches water from other cups, then, it can be reconnected with any of the other bodies.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Occipitalred

I completely disagree with the words timeless and spaceless. I don't believe anything that doesn't exist in space or time. If it's nowhere and nowhen, then it's naught. Time is just not an illusion, it's just the timeline of events. The future does not yet exist. Well, that is what is intuitive to me. I don't understand people who try to say time or space are illusions.

---

Well that's good, because I don't think anyone here (at least not me) is talking about spacelessness or timelessness. Though I would argue (and have argued here) that time might not exist, the perception of time certainly does, as does the apparent directional progression of events and change that drives that perception. The same goes for space. Indeed, I think Shadowofwind just got me to take it a step further and expand my original concept to assume that thought energy must exist in some cooperation with space and time, even if we do not yet understand how it might do so.

So no worries; I think we're trying to stay within the realm of reason here -- or at least somewhere near its borders! Even if thought energy and this bubble of cohesive energy we're discussing might exist independently of, or in a state of exemption from, the known laws of physics, it doesn't imply timelessness or spacelessness but rather that there may some new,as yet unknown laws that need to be written into the physics texts to define this new energy.

Plus, to me it would be much better if the nature of thought energy and shared dreaming nestled neatly within the Standard Model itself, because that would only make it easier to establish techniques for shared dreaming that work every time. I have no interest in chatting about some mystical thing we mortals could never understand that exists completely outside reality itself. That invites a more religious than practical solution, which, though it causes fun conversation, doesn't further our understanding of, well, anything.

Quote:

---

Anyhow, this doesn't prevent weird space physics. According to new physical theories, there might be more dimensions (as in instead of living in a 3D world, the world is actually 10D). I don't know if you'll all saw the ant-paper experiment. An ant walking on a piece of paper is like a 2D entity walking in a 2D world, but us, living in the 3D world, we can bend that paper so that the ends touch and the ant will disappear from one end of the 2D world to the other end. In such a way. maybe thought energy can use these bends to travel through the 4th dimension or what you call it and therefore reach someone that is much further in space.

---

Agreed, and good example! Thought energy might even occupy its own dimension that disregards the ant's paper altogether. Or not, of course; we simply don't know yet.

Quote:

---

About cohesiveness... I'd like to share one of my metaphors for united consciousness. Sometimes, I like to think that there is only one consciousness which I represent as a big sphere of water. Below, there are a few empty glasses side by side, those are human bodies. Then I imagine the sphere of water slowly flowing down until it hits the cups and the water fills them, the rest spilling to the sides. I imagine this is us now, only aware of our body, our cup. but one day, when we die, when the cup breaks, the water will spill and join the rest of the spilled water and be united again and the cycles goes on like that. This metaphor makes me feel connected to all the other beings of this world. Anyways, I can just imagine, if the cups are full and the water is just above the side and touches water from other cups, then, it can be reconnected with any of the other bodies.

---

That's a great metaphor, one which truly makes its point clear. I myself would flip it around, though, and say that we, the cups, are filling ourselves with the "water" of sentient thought energy, and that water is overflowing the cups in a cohesive manner that forms that sphere. That might sound like a totally opposite perspective, but I'm not so sure. After all, whether the united consciousness existed before us and we spilled from it or that we created it from the spillage of our conscious activity really doesn't matter that much, because either way there's still a united consciousness.

Now, how do we make this discussion practical?

If we say thought energy is cohesive and touches all other touch energy or is a mode of communication between all entity, what is it that directs this thought energy? Is it simply a random event where we are forced to enjoy are shared dreams with all the other conscious entities of this world randomly or can we "tune" ourselves to specific entities? And what does it mean to tune yourself to some other person? Does it mean to think of that person or to objectively feel what they are feeling at that precise moment?

What about Sorcer's post about ephemeral entities who like to spend time beside people of similar temperament. Would these entities, trying to stay closer to people of similar temperament cause the attraction of people with similar temperament. I personally have a hard time intuitively believing in such entities but maybe thought energy or whatever might exist could create a stronger bridge between people that are more similar, that resonate more in their inner experience of the world.

This would imply that when dream sharing, you should not focus on thinking about the person but thinking and feeling what that person is probably thinking and feeling at that moment? Or just being the same type of person.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Occipitalred

If we say thought energy is cohesive and touches all other touch energy or is a mode of communication between all entity, what is it that directs this thought energy? Is it simply a random event where we are forced to enjoy are shared dreams with all the other conscious entities of this world randomly or can we "tune" ourselves to specific entities? And what does it mean to tune yourself to some other person? Does it mean to think of that person or to objectively feel what they are feeling at that precise moment?

---

Good questions all, and for now questions which can only be answers with guesses and experimentation, not hard knowledge.

I have no idea what directs thought energy after it is produced, or if anything even can direct it. It could be that thought energy remains unattended as it accumulates through your lifetime, and only becomes "directable" after you die and your self-awareness migrates from your dead physical body to that accumulation... But that's definitely not what we're discussing here, so I think, in the name of making shared dreaming work (or explaining why it does work), we must assume that thought energy can be directed, or at least tapped by us. I think it might be wise to look at thought energy in terms of broadcast and reception, where we all are always broadcasting something to everyone, and the sharing becomes a matter of reception. That way we don't have to imagine ways to target individuals directly, or how to aim our thoughts in particular directions, both of which seem impossible to me.

So, in the context of attempted shared dreaming, the intentional broadcast of thought energy could be considered as not random at all, even though you are sending your message to everyone, and to virtually everyone that message will seem like so much more (unnoticed) random background noise. But if your dreaming partner, who is receptive to your thought, catches and understands it, then suddenly things aren't so random, I think.

So yes, I suppose a concept to consider here is how we "tune" our attention to our partner's broadcast.

I think what it means to tune yourself to another's broadcast has yet to be determined. I would assume it must be done on a metaphoric level, perhaps infused with emotion, empathy or compassion. I don't know. But I do have a strong feeling that you cannot tune yourself to someone simply because you shouted for them -- thought energy (indeed, no energy) speaks your language, so just saying commands or pronouncing desires would have little effect.

Again, what it means to the tuners to do this tuning still remains to be seen (or defined), but that is an excellent base question for figuring all this stuff out. Being intimately aware of what your partner is thinking about or feeling at the time of the sharing would indeed probably help the tuning process, I think; if a specific technique were ever developed, I have a feeling that these aspects would be very high-profile.

Quote:

---

What about Sorcer's post about ephemeral entities who like to spend time beside people of similar temperament. Would these entities, trying to stay closer to people of similar temperament cause the attraction of people with similar temperament. I personally have a hard time intuitively believing in such entities but maybe thought energy or whatever might exist could create a stronger bridge between people that are more similar, that resonate more in their inner experience of the world.

---

I don't think you have to worry about ephemeral entities. If they exist (and I'm obliged to suppose they could, given my note above about consciousness-activated pools of thought energy: poorly activated, or very weak pools of energy activated by inattentive individuals could be "wandering" the bubble with little guidance or self-awareness), they are there now, and would have about as much influence on you now as when you are "tuning." At worst, I suppose you might meet some new souls in your dream-sharing searches, which doesn't seem a great obstacle to me.

And yes, a corollary of all this might be that people of similar dispositions, emotions, or thought patterns might find it easier, perhaps unavoidable, to merge their pools and share their dreams. Who knows? This might already be happening, and we're just not aware of it (so be nice to those DC's, as they could be "real" people! ;).

Quote:

---

This would imply that when dream sharing, you should not focus on thinking about the person but thinking and feeling what that person is probably thinking and feeling at that moment? Or just being the same type of person.

---

Yes, it would.

It also implies that, if you can create a metaphor or feeling that aligns with your partner's or target's broadcast, you ought to be able to receive it. So, even though I think intimacy seems the primary route for sharing, you probably can still do it on an intellectual basis, as long as both sharers have a mutual image or feeling on which to key. For instance, two people who, say, went to school together years ago, but barely know each other now, might be able to assemble enough mutually similar energy to recognize a broadcast -- indeed, an individual might be able to receive meaningful broadcasts from folks who had no intention to share, simply because those broadcasts carried meaningful, tunable, energy.


Interesting questions, Occipitalred -- I especially like the ones that raise more questions, especially because this is one field that is still very much in the asking phase.

I think time exists, otherwise there would be no freedom, and no reason for the experience of time. People get stoned and experience timelessness, and lack the perspective to reconcile the two experiences. Or they recognize that our experience of time is a projection or simplification of a more subtle reality, and so call it illusory without understanding what it is an approximation of. People do that with choice too, and I've made that error with astral experiences.

More later.

What you said about the fact that we affect all other entities and it is only a matter of receptivity rather than focused broadcasting makes much sense.
It reminds me of suns and planets, how their field of gravity affects every other planet in the universe even those at a distance of infinity (although the value of their effect are similar to 0.000000000000000000000 … 00000000000001 Newton). But if the “force” that thought energy causes is stronger than the force of gravity, we could potentially even broadcast to extraterrestrial life… but surely broadcast to anyone on the face of the earth.
Now, I’d like to bring something more tangible to prove this. A while ago, I began to wonder about thoughts and what they were. Were my thoughts limited to thoughts of language? If I didn’t know language, could I still think? And talking to this with others, I soon realized that we also think in pictures and such. So I started thinking of each and every sense I had. I would imagine pictures. They would always appear in front of me and whatever I did, I could not see thought imagine behind myself unless my thought eyes were behind my body but that is cheating. Whatever you do, thought pictures are always in front of you. Thought odors are in your nose and thought tastes in your mouth. If you move your arm in your thought, you will feel it where your arm would be. Now, the interesting part. Sounds. I tried to imagine sounds and I soon realized that they all existed in my mouth. I tried hearing these thought sounds but they were all spoken thoughts. My conclusion was that any sound that is a sound, is felt in the mouth. Try this and tell me what you experience. However, in dreams, you can hear sounds in your ears and not only from your mouth. This destroyed my theory that dreams were just thoughts made very vivid because of the absence of stimuli. If dreams are not thoughts, then, they are stimuli. What causes these stimuli if not our own thoughts? They could be activated by these thought energies coming from ourselves and all other sentient beings in the universe, where mostly those that “Tune” with you are received.
Now, in practice, someone that wants to have a shared dream with another person, according to my opinions and what has been brought forward would be that:
1. The two people concerned (or more) decide on an event, a place, a thought that they all shared. For example, two friends could decide to choose a park and say they would focus on the swings. So when they would be ready to share dreams, they would have to be in that park, walk around there, especially around that swing. Also, they should choose an opinion they both had there. Let’s say they both were talking about their love for painting, and then they could think about that emotion beside the swing. Furthermore, they should imagine they were the other person in a way to create a sense of empathy and compassion.
2. These two people would have to do this exactly at the same time. This means, they would both have to be great lucid dreamers who lucid dreamed every night, in most of their dreams. Once in the dream they would have to go to the park, beside the swings, think they are the other person and think about their love for painting.
3. Most likely, it wouldn’t work because it wouldn’t be at the same time. But if they were good lucid dreamers and they did this frequently, it would most likely happen and having that experience would most likely strengthen their empathy given they would both have been in the same dream.
This seems complicated but it explains why barely anyone can ever really do it.

Just to add to all these thoughts, I cannot imagine that all DCs are actually true people because I often dream of people I know, and I know it's not actually them. So at least some DCs must be soulless... unless they are other people that take the appearance that I give them...

I think when trying to share a dream, some people focus too hard on trying to synchronize their thought and activity with the other person. Maybe this is desirable if you can already easily share a dream, and you're trying to learn to control it better, but otherwise it imposes unnecessary and mostly unnatural constraints that make it harder. You're not trying to send or receive a signal. That would be how things work in the temporal world where people are separated by space and you can't share dreams.

If your mind is open, you are truly naked, you can't hide anything from other people or from yourself. If you're not comfortable with that, then you're trying not to share a dream, even while you try to share a dream.

I think the existence of minds that are not tied to particular bodies follows as a consequence of contact between our minds. If there were no contact, then your mind would be completely contained within your body. If there is contact, then there are semi-collective, semi-subconscious minds that move and change, incorporating aspects of individual human minds. If you are open, these minds will coordinate the shared dream, if you care about something they care about.

For me, identity is centrally important. When you think of another person, they feel some way to you. Think about that feeling. If they feel like they want you to stay out of their mind, stay out. Otherwise, accept the limited opening they give you, in relation to what they care about, and become them a little bit, real empathy. The shared dream is incidental, a side effect. It doesn't matter what they are doing when you are dreaming, you're not trying to send or receive a radio signal. Time matters in the sense that there's a 'when' to their openness to you, otherwise it is peripheral. What matters is if there's something to share that both people want shared. Aim for what is real, what you really care about, behind the things you pursue as you try to satisfy those deeper cares. What the other person is thinking at the moment matters less than what they are thinking in their heart of hearts. Temporal, mundane stuff gets shared too, which is part of what objectively proves the experience, but it's more incidental. You have to engage the part of you who knows how to share directly, and that's deeper.

Maybe this isn't quite the right approach for you, but it's one approach that does work, at least for me. I said this as a 'how to share a dream' rather than as a 'how does shared dreaming work', but obviously the two questions are closely related.


Three dimensional Euclidean space is a mental model of reality, things aren't 'in' that space. It models some important aspects of reality well, but other's not so well. Hyperbolic geometry helps when modeling gravity for instance. Even the idea of a fixed, integer number of dimensions is a simplification. As we recognize this sort of things more, it opens the door to new experiences.

I think when trying to share a dream, some people focus too hard on trying to synchronize their thought and activity with the other person. Maybe this is desirable if you can already easily share a dream, and you're trying to learn to control it better, but otherwise it imposes unnecessary and mostly unnatural constraints that make it harder. You're not trying to send or receive a signal. That would be how things work in the temporal world where people are separated by space and you can't share dreams.

If your mind is open, you are truly naked, you can't hide anything from other people or from yourself. If you're not comfortable with that, then you're trying not to share a dream, even while you try to share a dream.

I think the existence of minds that are not tied to particular bodies follows as a consequence of contact between our minds. If there were no contact, then your mind would be completely contained within your body. If there is contact, then there are semi-collective, semi-subconscious minds that move and change, incorporating aspects of individual human minds. If you are open, these minds will coordinate the shared dream, if you care about something they care about.

For me, identity is centrally important. When you think of another person, they feel some way to you. Think about that feeling. If they feel like they want you to stay out of their mind, stay out. Otherwise, accept the limited opening they give you, in relation to what they care about, and become them a little bit, real empathy. The shared dream is incidental, a side effect. It doesn't matter what they are doing when you are dreaming, you're not trying to send or receive a radio signal. Time matters in the sense that there's a 'when' to their openness to you, otherwise it is peripheral. What matters is if there's something to share that both people want shared. Aim for what is real, what you really care about, behind the things you pursue as you try to satisfy those deeper cares. What the other person is thinking at the moment matters less than what they are thinking in their heart of hearts. Temporal, mundane stuff gets shared too, which is part of what objectively proves the experience, but it's more incidental. You have to engage the part of you who knows how to share directly, and that's deeper.

Maybe this isn't quite the right approach for you, but it's one approach that does work, at least for me. I said this as a 'how to share a dream' rather than as a 'how does shared dreaming work', but obviously the two questions are closely related.


Three dimensional Euclidean space is a mental model of reality, things aren't 'in' that space. It models some important aspects of reality well, but other's not so well. Hyperbolic geometry helps when modeling gravity for instance. Even the idea of a fixed, integer number of dimensions is a simplification. As we recognize this sort of things more, it opens the door to new experiences.

Shadowofwind,

I'm not sure I understand exactly what you said but I will address the points I think you brought up.

What I think you said:
To share a dream, you just have to think about what a person is to you and to be opened (not feel affected by the breach in privacy).

My problem with that:
This sounds like a super power, where you just will things to happen. I just will to fly and I fly. I just will to communicate with a person through dreams and it happens. I personally need a theory where we are less in control with the experience, where it is nature that brings the tuned minds together versus us reaching for each other. I just can't imagine that we are powerful enough to do telepathy given our obvious mental limitations at this present stage of our evolution. I think that if dream sharing is possible, there must be a natural force making it easier for us or else it would not be achievable. Given this, I can't imagine thinking of what a person's identity is to you will connect you with them because your experience of them is very different than their own experience of themselves. If you think of someone as a confident person, they might actually be very self-conscious, just really good at appearing confident. That's why I think it is more powerful to put yourself in someone's shoes than judge them if you want to create a connection that some natural force will match.


What I felt like you said but I think you wanted to say something else:
Time is not important with shared dreaming except for the part where the person must be open at that time.

My problem with that:
Here, I just want to talk say why I think time is crucial with dream sharing. If you think that dream sharing is timeless, you're technically saying that you can time travel. Let's say I dream share at 9:00 and you dream share with me 6 hours later. In the dreams, we are together at the same time, so I can wake up before your dream share and then tell you about it before you even do it which could cause any of the time travelling paradox. It doesn't work. If you're going to dream share, it has to be at the same time. Now, maybe it is true that you do not need to be tuning exactly at the moment of dreamsharing. Perhaps just frequently tuning together will naturally bring you together in a dream as long as you dream share at the same time.

Sorry if I sound rude. That was not my intention. I'm just writing all of this really fast. :P

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Occipitalred

cause any of the time travelling paradox.

---

Actually, if you think about it, time traveling through dreams in this way does not create many time traveling paradoxes because the nature of time inside the dream is seperated from the time-space continuum in our universe. You can't actually make any physical changes on the earth or cause deaths. Robert Monroe ran into a lot of trouble with time travel though, he describes doing OBEs about meeting his past/future self and some force stopped him and made it impossible to come into contact with his own self. His guide interestingly remarked on that as well and said that a true paradox simply cannot occur in real life.

I think shared dreaming may rely on acceptance of another persons energy and an agreed joining of energy. That along with energy frequency and things like that. An example of what I mean would be a town where everyone has a passworded safe house. The only way to get into that other persons safe house would be to be allowed in or break in which wold be a lot harder. When I shared a dream it was with my best friend. We have an intense bond and seem to be in a similar mental sate all the time and have the same thoughts as well. That bond may be something that helps energy connect. We were sleeping in the same room and went to sleep at around the same, that might have helped help too if the proximity has anything to do with how quickly the energy interacts.

O-Red: I don't mean that the person has to be open at the moment I have the dream. They just have to be open at the time of their side of the experience, which doesn't have to coincide with mine. Yes there is a pre cognitive aspect to the experience, in that I most often get my dream the night prior to first encountering the person externally. This is part of how I know the experience is real. I don't think calling it time travel is the right idea though. I don't travel anywhere, I shift my vantage point to experience the thoughts, with less direct reference to the events they're connected with in the physical world. The thought of 'time travel' is more from a standpoint of objects and events, and what I'm trying to describe seems impossible from that standpoint. If you need a good theory first, you can't do it because we don't have one. If you want a magic feather, then maybe when I have the dream I am becoming entangled with a future in which the other person has the other half of the experience.

I'm not doing it by force of will. It happens for reasons I don't understand. Gotta go.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Dthoughts

Actually, if you think about it, time traveling through dreams in this way does not create many time traveling paradoxes because the nature of time inside the dream is seperated from the time-space continuum in our universe. You can't actually make any physical changes on the earth or cause deaths.

---

I guess that's a good point but when you think long enough, you come to realize that a person could use information given to them from the future to do things in the physical present and that would then make paradoxes possible. No, the thing is I just don't understand why people make time more complicated than it has to be. There is the now, everything before only exists in memory and the future is to come. It's not really a line, it's the just that things change so the now always looks different. The rest doesn't exist. You can't go in the future and come back because it does not yet exist. I don't like my tone right now, to myself, I sound like an old man telling kids that such and such is not right when I'm really not knowledgeable about these things at all. :P Anywho, perhaps, whatever is out there can make an estimation of what is most likely to happen in the next day and show that to you.

Shadowofwind:

Good enough. It's hard for me to imagine such things as clearly as you do given my lack of experience. I can say though, that I often find myself seeing someone for the first time in a long time and then realize I had a dream about them for the first time in a long time. And as an LDer, I know what I dream about so it's not like what non-dreamers say it is, just a false memory. It could be a coincidence but it's always impressive nonetheless. Is that what you experience? Do these people you then meet claim to have experience this also?

Well, I'm getting out of topic. Sageous didn't want this to be about experience but about theory so I'll add a theory just to make our defiance justifiable. If we dream of the future and the past and not only of the present, then, maybe we are just connecting with a superior objective consciousness which sees what has happened in the past and what is most likely to happen in the future and we just make a weird interpretation of that.

^^ You are correct, O-Red; I really didn't want to see this become a testimonial thread, as that often degenerates into either an echo-chamber or else a "Is not!" - "Is so!" thread, neither of which are very helpful, though both types of threads are plentiful of these forums! A little anecdotal stuff is unavoidable, however, and honestly to me there hasn't really been too much yet.

What is odd is the shift toward discussing time-travel; now there's a place I was not expecting this thread to go! Can we maybe switch back to shared dreaming, and maybe save the time-travel applications of the Thought Energy Bubble Theory for another thread? If not, I guess I'll survive, as this is interesting stuff!

The nature of shared dreaming.. It's just such a hard one to think about without resorting to anecdotal evidence and just plain conjuring of ideas. Ur explanation sounds very lucid though, it makes sense in relationship to my dreams. So, I have my own personal anecdotal evidence. I find remarkable the fact that you probably base this theory on ur own experience of dreams and it happens to concur with my dreams. I think u might be right about it, it fits and explains some of my own dreams I am just wondering how much of it is placebo.

As for what triggers these connections with people that cause shared dreaming. I am inclined to say that the "Dhamma" which basically translates as "The state that things are in NOW". I interpret the Dhamma as basically the accumulation of past karmic influences that affects things such as our mental state our social connections. It is this simple concept of social relationships that motivates our dreams to shift into certain directions. There's a deeper spiritual layer to it, but i think it is appropiate to assume that shared dreaming also has deep spiritual meaning to it. That probably holds up mostly for lucid shared dreams. Atleast, that's probably more of an eastern interpretation. I guess what we are doing here is trying to conceptualize shared dreaming in a western framework of mind. Because according to Sageous' theory here, if i interpret correctly; some shared dreams are accidental in the way that thoughts and mental states cause different people to align in accidental matter. I just like to think that thoughts and mindstates are not accidental in nature and there's a certain faith/goal to it all that we simply aren't always aware of. Such goal could be as simple as finding new friends in shared dreams or something. Either way, I don't think that it is safe to assume that karmic causes for shared dreaming means that we shoulden't cultivate our skills. I have fallen into the trap of thinking that. Cultivation could very well be the karmic trigger that allows for shared dreaming to happen. Nice word Karma. i like it! haha :)

Haha, right! (Time travel...)

Well... I'd just like to summarize things because that's what I like doing. How dream sharing works (given thought energy exists):

We broadcast thought energy equally in all directions sending to everyone in the world a bit of our experience.

I want to talk about color. Light has all the frequencies. When the light of the sun reaches an apple, the apple absorbs all the color but red. Red bounces back and we see red. In a similar way, perhaps, the thought energy we send has a frequency which can only be absorbed by someone that absorbs this frequency and will let any other frequency pass through them or bounce off of them. A person's frequency depends on their experience of the world, who they are, their thoughts, emotions, behaviour, etc. Also, I'd like to add a bit of my own worldview to make things more logical. I believe that in this world, there is matter (particles), energy (allows matter to do work), and souls (allows matter to be conscious and have will). Perhaps thought energy is only transmitted by souls and received by souls and that is why soulless detectors scientists use cannot see this energy.

As I said earlier with my experiments, how thought sounds are only in the mouth but since we can hear in our ears in a dream, dreams are not thought but true stimuli, where does this stimuli come from? Our dreams are our perception of thought energy. During the day, physical stimuli is too strong to allow us to perceive thought energy but at night, we can. Because these thought energies come from so many other people, we have strange and illogical dreams.

To share dream, you must have good chemistry with another person so that your frequencies are similar. But really, as humans, we have many similarities so the limits are small. Probably, your position in space also helps because there is less interference.

Anyways, that's what I've gathered up to now but I still I'm feeling iffy about this.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Occipitalred

Haha, right! (Time travel...)

Well... I'd just like to summarize things because that's what I like doing. How dream sharing works (given thought energy exists):

We broadcast thought energy equally in all directions sending to everyone in the world a bit of our experience.

I want to talk about color. Light has all the frequencies. When the light of the sun reaches an apple, the apple absorbs all the color but red. Red bounces back and we see red. In a similar way, perhaps, the thought energy we send has a frequency which can only be absorbed by someone that absorbs this frequency and will let any other frequency pass through them or bounce off of them. A person's frequency depends on their experience of the world, who they are, their thoughts, emotions, behaviour, etc. Also, I'd like to add a bit of my own worldview to make things more logical. I believe that in this world, there is matter (particles), energy (allows matter to do work), and souls (allows matter to be conscious and have will). Perhaps thought energy is only transmitted by souls and received by souls and that is why soulless detectors scientists use cannot see this energy.

---

Interesting suggestion there. I like the connection drawn there between colour spectrum and thought frequencies.. Nothing more to add really. I guess i think of matter as souls so in my view i thought the broadcasting of thought in shared dreaming is like electron transfer in a chemical reaction. The whole dream plane of where it takes places i've thought of as a gaseous solution of people all bumping into each other. Like nebulas in the universe, you find groups of chemicals that have shared properties and thrive at same conditions like temperature, pressure etc. :)

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Occipitalred

Perhaps thought energy is only transmitted by souls and received by souls and that is why soulless detectors scientists use cannot see this energy.

---

We might be able to find this energy, we could have found it already, who knows. Electrical signals in the brain might be a good candidate for that.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Occipitalred

As I said earlier with my experiments, how thought sounds are only in the mouth but since we can hear in our ears in a dream, dreams are not thought but true stimuli, where does this stimuli come from? Our dreams are our perception of thought energy. During the day, physical stimuli is too strong to allow us to perceive thought energy but at night, we can. Because these thought energies come from so many other people, we have strange and illogical dreams.

To share dream, you must have good chemistry with another person so that your frequencies are similar. But really, as humans, we have many similarities so the limits are small. Probably, your position in space also helps because there is less interference.

Anyways, that's what I've gathered up to now but I still I'm feeling iffy about this.

---

Y'know, It does give us a good explanation as to why dreams are so illogical and gives us a lead to what pattern they do form in dreams! :)

Distance doesn't seem to be much of a problem in shared dreaming, that is one of the things that is hard to explain about it. Because, if distance matters or not, how are we tranversing space in the first place?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Dthoughts

Interesting suggestion there. I like the connection drawn there between colour spectrum and thought frequencies.. Nothing more to add really. I guess i think of matter as souls so in my view i thought the broadcasting of thought in shared dreaming is like electron transfer in a chemical reaction. The whole dream plane of where it takes places i've thought of as a gaseous solution of people all bumping into each other. Like nebulas in the universe, you find groups of chemicals that have shared properties and thrive at same conditions like temperature, pressure etc. :)

---

The reason I add this, is just because scientist have already found hundreds of subparticles but none supposedly relates to consciousness so that is why I think they can only be received by consciousness. Think about it, you cannot observe something without affecting it. You cannot smell something without taking in the chemicals into your nose meaning other people can't smell those same chemicals, only those that remain. When you see light, no one else can ever see that same light photon, This is the case for everything. In the same way, for someone to receive a thought energy, they most have a way of absorbing it in a way that it ceases to exist. Only something that is conscious can experience an experience and consume it.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Dthoughts

Distance doesn't seem to be much of a problem in shared dreaming, that is one of the things that is hard to explain about it. Because, if distance matters or not, how are we tranversing space in the first place?

---

Well, gravity acts on very big distances. Why not thought energy.


:)

I tried to add a post last night, but I see it didn't go up. Summarizing:

Don't worry about being rude O-red, you're not, and I have the same challenges in any case.

Time travel is implied in the original stipulation of 'instantaneous' communication. I think its not the best way to think about the issue though. The key to shared dreaming seems to be shift one's standpoint of identity to one where the interrelationships between minds are primary, and the changes that physical objects go through are secondary. The thought of 'time travel' is from a standpoint of changes of physical objects, so its hard to share dreams or make sense of it from that perspective.

O-red, I agree that the future doesn't exist, and physically I don't think the past exists either, except insofar as its defined by the present. Physically all histories that lead to the present state would be equally real. And yet, premonitions that can't plausibly be extrapolated from past experience happen, and a few people have a lot of them. So for those people, this has to be accommodated somehow. The false memory rationalization doesn't work: I know when I'm having a premonition in a dream, and have written such dreams down and shared them with other people prior to the corresponding event.

One way to account for the premonition, even though the future isn't real yet, is the foreseen event is caused by some unseen fate, and we're just seeing what providence intends. But I don't think this is quite right, for the same reason I said that thinking about time travel isn't quite right.

A few months ago another guy argued that when we have the premonition, we're entangling ourselves with a corresponding future. So we're not really seeing the future or causing it so much as selecting one. I think this is probably right. However, its sort of like saying that the reason a stone sinks in water is the water molecules are moving out of the way for it. Its true, and it describes part of how nature accommodates the premonition, but its not really causing it.

Out of time again. Thanks for your thoughts.

Shadowofwind:

So you're saying that when dream sharing, our consciousness is located in the interaction of two people rather than in the brain? Is that what you mean by standpoints? Although this perhaps makes sense, I have difficulty imagining consciousness without a physical body to receive stimuli. I feel like for this to happen, your consciousness or soul would at least have to move to some sort of surrogate, or a dream body with a brain and receptors that would receive dream stimuli rather than physical stimuli... So like, the duality view where there is a physical and an idea world where the physical world exists before consciousness hence why we can't use our mind to affect it and there is an idea world that is created by all of our consciousnesses.

About fate and such, I'd like to share an idea that goes with one of my theories I might of shared somewhere. I think that our consciousness is associated with the group of cells that interact together in our body. Each cell isn't conscious, but the city of cells is. It's us. Why can this not be true at a higher level? Just like cells, we interact together. Could the whole of human and animal beings in this world that interact together also create a consciousness, which would be what people call God or the greater power. This entity which is simply the sum of its cells (us, living being, where all the inanimate matter is like our interstitial fluid, the fluid between our cells). This entity could think, just like we do. It could think of the past and think of the future. It would be all knowing, or at least know a lot if it is knowledgeable about its body. I can choose to move my arm and therefore my cells will respond and will have no free will to change this. However, as with deterministic views, some, at least, of our movements are automatic and are not affected by our free will. In a similar sense, the higher consciousness could move us in a direction, and we could move It in a certain direction. We call whatever this entity does as Fate and whatever we use our free will to do, this entity perceives it as a reflex.

I don't think our consciousness must travel outside of our body during dreams... At least I don't feel it. If there us superconsciousness consisting of consciousnes of all thinking entities, then we are somehow connected through it.
In OBE I feel my consciousness(or soul?) travels out of body... I feel it like something is trying to hold it inside body. Maybe ties to body. It grows weaker as I distance from body further. It is also weaker hold if my relaxation of body and concentration is better.

Timetravel- it has not much meaning to preserve timeline, when you are above time. Time is simply only one of dimension of 11 dimensional universe. Matter can't travel through time. Information- maybe, maybe not. Rigid scientific opinion is: it can't. BUT... Information is transmitted by material medium- either solid mater, or electromagnetic waves. Using immaterial medium, such as soul(which is not scientifically provable) could make for faster transmission. Causality will not be disturbed by this. Changing something because of knowing of future events will cause only choosing different timeline. Only one changing timeline would probably know that events were changed.

My own experience are only from OBE, dreams are too imaginative...- I knew some future events some even 20 years before they happen. But because I didn't know time they will happen, nor turning points making the future events happen I couldn't change any undesirable outcome. From this it seems, that even if I know of some future events, I couldn't change them. Therefore it is either entirely impossible to change timeline, or it is possible but I don't have enough training and experience to know why, when and how...

I'm now in experiment(3 months now). I got quite complicated illness. It seems like I have found in it turning point and did something I originally didn't want to do... There were timelines where I was dead in close future. There is at least one where I lived much longer, maybe till 70-80. I did the change of events, I went to seek physician before by illness initiated autoimmune reaction wasn't started fully. Now I have to wait... I will see whether it can be done. BUT EVERYTHING CAN BE MY IMAGINATION ONLY.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by shadowofwind

Time travel is implied in the original stipulation of 'instantaneous' communication. I think its not the best way to think about the issue though. The key to shared dreaming seems to be shift one's standpoint of identity to one where the interrelationships between minds are primary, and the changes that physical objects go through are secondary. The thought of 'time travel' is from a standpoint of changes of physical objects, so its hard to share dreams or make sense of it from that perspective.

---

No, it isn't. I implied that communication was done in the absence of time, or, rather, without regard for it. The absence of something by no means implies travel through that something. How can you travel in something that is not there? And no, just because you can make the semantic stretch that since "instantaneous" means you crossed space without time, then you must have time-traveled, please don't... because then we'll spend ten posts discussing why you never crossed space, either, because space may be absent from this formula as well... and yet we are still not talking about timelessness and spacelessness; just about a phenomenon that might occur without physical regard for the known rules governing those concepts.

So enough about time-travel, guys: it was never intentionally implied, and if you got that impression, well, consider un-impressing yourselves. Plus, all implications aside, time travel is utterly irrelevant here... please save it for another thread, lest this one get even more muddled.

Fine. Now you have me talking about time travel!

I think if we want to talk about a theory for shared dreaming, the subject of time paradox unavoidably comes up, just like the question of 'where' consciousness is. Even if the answer is 'nowhere', we still have to address the misconception, because its central to understanding whatever is going on.

I think that in some sense consciousness doesn't really have a location. We're conscious of things that have locations, and we imagine locations for things that we are conscious of, but its the non-locality of consciousness that makes the sharing possible. So to answer an earlier question, for me physical proximity seems not to make any difference, just as proximity in time only makes a difference in terms of relevance of relationships. And I don't think of my consciousness as 'traveling', though there is a sensation of movement as the context I have my attention on changes.

O-red, many of the ideas an experiences you're describing are similar to mine, I've been ignoring them due to a lack of time, not because I don't find them interesting. Your description of being an arm of fate is like what I experience for instance, and changing the scope of what I think of as 'I' is key to the shared experiences. Similarly, if I recall correctly you described feeling the sound of a thought in your mouth. This is also an experiment I've done, and it shows that the experience of one's thoughts being 'in' one's head is similar to the reason sound on stereo headphones seems to be in one's head. I presume that my thoughts correspond to brain activity, but my association of the subjective experience with my head is nevertheless somewhat of a projection. In a dream I've assumed the activity is in my brain, and to some extent in another location if there is extrasensory perception. But this raises a good point, because often the images the dream incorporates are from the following days experience, not the previous days. So if the images are forming in my brain, maybe this implies that I'm in some kind of superimposed state, where I'm using my brain not just in the present moment. I think that all people do this to some extent all the time anyway, that their subjective momentary experience is actually smeared out slightly over a few milliseconds, and over closely similar physical states, and they wouldn't even be conscious without that. Actually, consciousness aside, nothing would work without that kind of ambiguity, its essential to physical existence and chemistry.

The capacity to feel seems to me to be the same as cognitive consciousness, but the content is different.

Maybe this answers my questions from past threads about 'astral' matter. The stuff that I'm concerned about doesn't have a physical location, except insofar as its connected with things that do have a physical location. So we won't find it or understand it if thinking about it that way.

Shadowofwind:

I don't have the time to read all your post right now but I'll just make a fast comment about "consciousness not having a specific location."

If something does not have a certain location, it has no boundaries, and without boundaries, it is omnipresent and it makes no sense that there would be more than one consciousness in this world. For there to be more than one, they need to be seperated somehow. If they are spaceless, they are not seperated and must be the same. That is a flaw I see with being spaceless and having seperate selves.

Also, the issue of time does not have to be discussed if we agree that we can only share dream in the present moment (I only mentionned it because I had seen threads where people shared dreams in different time zones and said that time was irrelevent. I just don't think you can share the same experience at different times. Although someone that is awake can probably send thought energy to sleeping people. Only one person is receiving a dream from another person. The sender is not dreaming.

However space must be discussed. As of now, I think there are three theories, either we experience shared dreams in our own brains, in a parallel universe or in a spaceless world. I don't like the last one personally.

Just rushing by... :P

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Occipitalred

If something does not have a certain location, it has no boundaries, and without boundaries, it is omnipresent and it makes no sense that there would be more than one consciousness in this world.

---

I think it makes sense because what we are conscious of, such as our own brain activity, or feeling in our own nerves, has a location and boundary. But it seems right that the consciousness is without boundary, that's why we can have these other kinds of experiences also.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Occipitalred

Also, the issue of time does not have to be discussed if we agree that we can only share dream in the present moment

---

But we can not agree on that because its not true. The only 'shared dreams' I have any experience with to talk about at all are not like that, and this is core to how it works.

^^ Is it core to how it works, Shadowofwind, or, based on your own anecdotal experience, is it core to the specific personal conclusions you have drawn about how it works?

This may seem trivial on its face, but I think the difference is significant... it is okay, in my mind even recommended, to consider things based on more than just your own experience. There may be more from which to draw for investigation of these things than just an individual's experience. That you experienced something does not make your take on that experience more or less "true," Shadowofwind, though it does add valuable evidence to a greater investigation. To define truth only from your own experience seems a bit short-sighted to me. To dismiss as false something that wasn't included in your personal experience seems just plain wrong.

This, by the way, is why I was hoping this thread would spend more time discussing theory than anecdotal "proof." We've all got personal stories that explain everything; its the general info we can exchange, sans anecdotes, that might get us to workable conclusions.

Of course that's just me. If "It's true because I said so/because it happened to me" is the accepted currency here, I'll submit to the popular notions and quietly let the thread go where it goes.

Sageous,

There seems to me to be a fairly simple logic problem here....If someone claims to share a dream in the present moment, I'm not dismissing that at all. In fact I believe that other people have such experiences, and that their experiences are interesting and relevant to this discussion. But when someone suggests that its only possible to share a dream in the present moment, yes I can correctly call that false without dismissing anyone else's experience. A counterexample disproves a statement, and I have many counterexamples. Of course you don't have to believe me, but then you're the one that's dismissing something as false because it wasn't included in your personal experience, not me.

Of course I can not "agree that we can only share dream in the present moment", and I don't think its reasonable for you to agree to that either, since you know of my experience. Moreover O-red's statement wasn't even based on his experience with shared dreaming, it was more of an expression of a philosophical preference.

In any case stand by what I said. If you want to form a good theory about something, I think you have to try to accommodate the evidence you have. Otherwise, its like the so-called scientific researchers who consistently find no evidence of paranormal phenomena, because they define what they think it should be like and test for that, rather than considering what people actually say they experience. But if you think you've got enough data about simultaneous shared dreaming, and can "agree that we can only share dream in the present moment" without losing anything important, then go for it, and there's nothing more I can contribute.

^^ All apologies, Shadowofwind. In retrospect, I should have addressed my post as equally to O-Red as to you. The point wasn't that you were wrong or right, but that the conversation seemed to be at risk of becoming an anecdotal exchange that I sensed would take us away from the topic and lead us rapidly down an unwanted and unhelpful "Is so because I said so/Is not because I said so" path. Taking such a path is unwanted by me and unhelpful to me, and perhaps to me alone, but as OP'er I figure I'm allowed an opinion.

That OP, BTW, said nothing about sharing a dream in the present moment, and for good reason: if this bubble exists absent of the rules of time and space, then concepts like "present moment" are meaningless -- just as concepts like "precognitive" are meaningless. My point here is -- and always was -- that things like "present moment" just do not matter in this conversation; making them matter removes us from the original idea, and sets us down a road paved solely in personal experience that leads in as many directions as there are people posting -- and not to a place where much is learned, though much is certainly argued! Yes, anecdotal evidence is valuable, especially when accumulated with other anecdotal evidence from other individuals; but for me allowing it to become the only source for answering questions like that posted by my OP seems just not the right way to go.

I hope you understand. If you think I am wrong, and that this is the route threads like this must take, then say so and I will bite my tongue and say "So be it." This is, after all, not my world; what in the end do I know?

Well well… This thread feels like so many of my dreams, where I faithfully cross invisible limits and end up in forbidden regions very unintentionally to the exasperation of the inhabitants. :)

So I came up with an idea, what if we continue the time and space discussion in spoilers and keep talking about the theories at the surface of the thread. Two conversations at once. And perhaps the time and space conversation will one day submerge to help the sailors that navigate above the waters. ;)

Spoiler for Of Space and Time:

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by shadowofwind

I think it makes sense because what we are conscious of, such as our own brain activity, or feeling in our own nerves, has a location and boundary. But it seems right that the consciousness is without boundary, that's why we can have these other kinds of experiences also.

---

What I mean is, if something is spaceless, it has no boundaries. Without boundaries, you cannot count them. For example, I can count three rabbits. I know there are three because they are obviously divided in three different entities. If consciousness does not have a spatial location, it cannot be counted and you cannot say: I see three people, there must be three spaceless consciousness. There is just one. If I have to bring a metaphor, I would say it's like a sea (although it's not). The sea is only one because you cannot separate a section of water from another so it's all one. This is not actually a problem if you think we are all the same consciousness only experiencing different bodies at once. But if you believe that we all have different souls, then, souls must have spatial parameters.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by shadowofwind

But we can not agree on that because its not true. The only 'shared dreams' I have any experience with to talk about at all are not like that, and this is core to how it works.

---

I must ask, though, are these shared dreams or premonition dreams or whatever they are called?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by shadowofwind

Their subjective momentary experience is actually smeared out slightly over a few milliseconds, and over closely similar physical states, and they wouldn't even be conscious without that.

---

If this was true, than we would not have free will in the present moment because the future would have already happened. Our free will would only exist in the sense that we can plan our future actions but not our immediate ones.

Now, to steer the conversation back to its purpose, this was the initial question:
How can two people communicate in a dream instantly, without regard for time or space, and how do they find each other at all?

Now I see how time and space were taken out of the question just as well as the credibility of thought energy... :eek:

1. How can two people communicate in a dream instantly?

Please answer me and tell me if this is the general agreement right now (given thought energy exists). Thought energy are products of consciousness and they are broadcasted in all directions and absorbed or not by other consciousnesses that are in tune with the broadcasting one. And that all dreams are formed by us but also by the million of thought energies that strike us from the millions of other people and animals (if they have consciousness) around the world. Obviously, animals are less in tune with us. This means, we don't only share dream with one person but millions. That is why if two people ever share a dream, they both experience a different dream, because they are also sharing dreams with other people at the same time. I think this would explain a very big problem of dream sharing. Anyways, do we agree with this?

Please anyone, state the flaws of this theory and what is missing to fully explain dream sharing? 'Cause I feel like it's pretty complete :)

2. how do they find each other at all?

That's probably the biggest missing part of our theory. Obviously, there is the possibility that it is impossible to do that. But let's say it is, since we are trying to explain what so many people claim to do. I guess, it just comes down to what we said before, the two people must be quite similar, be good lucid dreamers, have good chemistry, understand each other on a deep level, not necessarily know each other...

Anecdotally, based on my experience....To have a weak shared dream, the two people don't have to be very similar, there just has to be some kind of intersection of intentions. Also, one person can have the experience even if the other person doesn't dream lucidly. Again, its 'shared' in that the other person's thought is identifiably in the dream, not because they have the same dream.

Yes I agree a large number of people influence the dream, which both enriches it and confuses it. But the interaction with one person can out from the rest. For example, a few nights ago I dreamed of a science or engineering student who had remarkably neat handwriting who reminds me somewhat of someone I knew 35 years ago named Donovan. Based on past experience, I think this is probably a real person, and that this person probably has an older sister. The dream would be influenced by me and by other people too though. The thing that clinches it as a shared dream would be if there were a fairly unique element to the dream that the other person recognizes as theirs. For example, the next night I dreamed of having a hexagonal grid of black bug-like spheres on my chest and stomach. And the next night I dreamed of a realization involving the chain rule in a calculus class. If someone else had the same dream the same night, and neither of us has been watching TV or other popular media, they might find that convincing. Whatever their standard of evidence, I think its generally possible to satisfy it if they're interested in pursuing it. Personally I had to have a lot of dreams like this before I accepted it as real.

Sageous, I know we're going off topic, but like I mentioned earlier, I think its very hard to form a theory except by fitting it to the evidence we have, and its necessary to describe the evidence, which in our case is pretty much all anecdotal. I don't think that O-red is being unreasonable at all, or that we're arguing at each other instead of talking to each other, even though the conversation has been a bit choppy since neither of us has much time. Though his outlook is different from mine, I think the experiential underpinning is actually remarkably similar, at least potentially, and I don't feel like the communication has broken down. It just takes a little bit of time since we're starting with some different assumptions.

You say, a connection of empathy and similarity is not required for shared dreaming? Only just intention is needed?

So you're saying telepathy is real in the dream medium. By the power of your own will you can connect with someone else outside of space and time. My problem with this is how easy it seems. There is not even a process of learning how to become a telepathy master in which you would, for example, need to learn how to empathize with the people you want to communicate on a deep level. That would explain why so little people can do it. But then, if it's only will that is required, why has shared dreaming not been proven yet? Anything that you can do by just willing it, I have a problem believing it. The reason is, I spent all my childhood and early teens believing in magic and making great efforts to do anything magic or find magic people. In vain. It's not that I am saying that it can't be real anymore but let's just say I don't intuitively believe in wizards anymore.

But, I will share a theory that explains how it could possibly work. :) (Ain't I nice)
I thought about this theory wondering how would saying a specific word and making a specific wand gesture could ever make something levitate. It just makes no sense that the universe would have such universal rules and that wizards, to do magic, would have to say random words, use the right wood, do the right hand motion to find new spells. How would spells work? So the only way it could work is if there was such a thing in this world as "symbol energy" (again, like thought energy, it has nothing to do with energy). Symbol energy works by giving powers to symbol. For example, if frogs are a symbol for the night, you could make a magic potion with frogs that could give a night-themed effect. Obviously, such symbol energy is very scarce in our world, despite all the symbols that we have. I mean, placebos could be an example of symbol energy, but as a kid, I once drank an invisibility potion (a very true one, it was the grossest thing I have ever tasted and I will never know what was in it). Anyways, I did not become invisible. Since the symbol energy theory does not work, I don't understand how anything magical could happen.

So my question is, how can you will a shared dream to happen? Explain it in terms of thought energy or another theory.

As I said before, its not 'by the power of my own will'. I don't 'will a shared dream to happen'. Its totally uncontrolled, except for my openness. I don't even choose the other person, and don't choose what I learn about them. I can ask a question ahead of time, and will get an answer if its the right kind of question, but what question occurs to me to ask is mostly fated anyway.

Some people believe in karma or providence. However something like that works, it works the same way. My subconscious 'higher self' coordinates the interaction with the other person's subconscious higher self. There's an affinity at that level. Its like what you said about being a small part of a larger god-like self. To the small extent that I'm aware of the process at all, I shift my sense of identity into that larger self a little bit.

As magic powers go, this is pretty weak stuff. Its strong enough and consistent enough that I can be sure its real, but not strong enough that I can really do anything with it beyond that. So your search for magic people has been answered! But as is often the case with such things, the answer is a bit of a farce.

Yeah I know this is the thread for theory, but I don't have a theory for it. There are a lot of other things that I could do long before I had any hope of developing a theory for it, like building proteins or defending my body against infections. It would be funny for a person to say "I'm not going to eat until you can explain how digestion works!" If you want to do the same kind of thing with dreaming that I do, I guess its probably within your reach, if you persistently strive in that direction. Then you'll be in a better position to build a theory, since you'll have more actual data to work with. If you exercise your ability to think with feeling, particularly on 'spiritual' subjects, and you explore the nature of identity, somewhat in the manner of jnana yoga, that points in that direction. It sounds like you've already done a lot of that.

Okay,
I thought you said you could choose with who you talked. Then, that's reasonable. You just sort of ask to this higher nature to allow you to experience shared dreaming and it just plans the rest for you. This makes more sense to me, the way I understand what you said, not the way I wrote it down here. A lot of these things make more sense in our heads than on paper (or on screen). It's just weird to convey such abstract ideas but I get it.

Yes, for sure, that would be silly if a person starved themselves until they knew about the mechanisms of digestion. However, it is interesting to theorize about how digestion works while digesting a good meal :)

And obviously experience of my own would come in handy. Although I have none. It is not a priority yet. I am very busy and have little time for lucid dreaming which I would like to master before thinking about attempting such things as shared dreaming, OBEs and such (I have no opinion about them right now, although I like theories). I really see it as if there are two main things I have to work on right now and these things are my Will Strength and my Mindfulness. They are both weak (although stronger than most people who don't think about it). I've come up with good methods to improve them. I've just got to make them into habits. :)

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Occipitalred

Okay,
I thought you said you could choose with who you talked.

---

I might have some choice about it. But then there's the question about the extent to which my will is really free, or whether my subconscious has already suggested the choice before I think I'm making it. More often than not, if I have one of these weak shared dreams, it will be with the person I have the most philosophical interaction with the next day. In any case, the how of it is all left to providence, and I'm not doing anything with my will besides the simple choice of what I'm interested in. Similarly, I don't control my dreams, I'm lucid only in the sense of being aware of and thinking about what's going on. I prefer it that way, because it leaves my subsconscious/higher-self more freedom to do what its going to do. I'm generally disinclined to mental discipline for the same reason. Of course it makes sense to focus when working on a problem, but I think we're way too ignorant about what matters and how things must work to just decide what's important and try to keep our minds on that all of the time. I think this is a limitation of systems like raja yoga.

So....just a thought about the physical mechanics of shared dreaming, not so much the nature of it.
I was reading about homing pidgeons and then wondered about magnetite in the human brain. It seems that magnetite or biomagnetite, forms in certain directions and in a chain pattern in the brain. It is found to be an electric conductor on the cellular level so maybe the common thread is the magnetic attraction of a fellow dreamer. Maybe humans have an innate ability to connect and locate each other in a similar way that homing pigeons navigate electronic magnetic fields.

I would be very cautious to use physical fields(like magnetic or electric- electromagnetic) as way to connect to someone. I read also about experiments where they tried communication on very long distances and they did it from Faraday cage. Even though it was for telepathy. This should be in my opinion similar, only experimenter uses dream state for communication.
I'm more inclined to take in consideration karmic bonds, or other bonds between people(souls). If they know each other they have bigger chance, if there are feelings between them then the chance is even bigger. Thought is not in my opinion some energy bubble or something... it is more like limb. We are using thought as a way to interact and manipulate our surrounding.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Psionik

I would be very cautious to use physical fields(like magnetic or electric- electromagnetic) as way to connect to someone. I read also about experiments where they tried communication on very long distances and they did it from Faraday cage.

---

Your Eternal Self Drafts . Thought this might be of value. It mentions those studies with Faraday cage and some more interesting articles. Haven't checked for sources but some things I read on that page are really intrigeuing.

Quote:

---

Charles Tart, MD, instructor in psychiatry in the School of Medicine of the University of Virginia and professor of psychology at the University of California at Davis, had two graduate students at the University of California, Anne and Bill, mutually hypnotize each other. He had Anne hypnotize Bill and after he was hypnotized, he had Bill hypnotize Anne. In this state, Anne and Bill experienced the same fantasy images, without attempting to create the fantasy. This is the account of what they said after they had just had the experience with their eyes closed:
When they opened their eyes they reported that everything seemed grey. Then the greyness was replaced by the vision of a beach whose sand glowed like diamonds, whose rocks were crystals pulsating with a beautiful internal light, and whose waves were great bubbles of unearthly beauty. . . .

Tart quickly realized that Bill and Anne were actually experiencing the same "hallucinated" reality. They found themselves together in this Paradise, walking hand in hand, or swimming together in the marvelous sea, exploring their new world.

They had stopped talking for a while, and when Tart questioned them about their silence he found that in their shared reality they were talking to each other; in Tart’s reality they weren’t. Their communication was paranormal as far as Tart's experience of it.

In session after session, the two constructed and shared various realities, all involving all five senses, and all as real as the world in which they left Tart behind. They discussed details of their shared experiences for which there was no verbal hypnotic stimulus. They felt that they must actually have been in the places they experienced together.27

---

Also found one shared dreaming account ^^

This is the article that I was reading
Biomagnetism
Biomagnetism and Bio-Electromagnetism:
The Foundation of Life

by H. Coetzee, Ph.D.

[Originally published in Future History, Volume 8]

Throughout the past 30 years, scientists have been extensively researching organisms that have the ability to produce the ferromagnetic mineral magnetite. Magnetite is a black mineral form of iron oxide that crystallizes in the cubic or isometric system, namely all crystals which have their crystallographic axes of equal length at 90 degrees to each other. It is a mixed Iron (II) Iron (III) oxide, Fe3O4, and is one of the major ores of iron that is strongly magnetic. Some varieties, known as lodestone, are natural magnets; these were used as compasses in the ancient world.

The discovery of a biogenic material (that is, one formed by a biological organism) with ferromagnetic properties and found to be magnetite was the first breakthrough toward an understanding as to why some animals have the ability to detect the earth's magnetic field. Searches for biogenic magnetite in human tissues had not been conclusive until the beginning of the 1990's when work with high-resolution transmission electron microscopy and electron diffraction on human brain tissue extracts of the cerebral cortex, cerebellum, and meninges (membranes surrounding the brain and spinal cord) identified magnetite-maghemite crystals.

Magnetite Crystals under Low Magnification
Magnetite Crystals under Low Magnification

These magnetite crystals were found to be organized into linear, membrane-bound chains a few micrometers in length, with up to 80 crystals per chain. Furthermore individual crystals have their {111} aligned along the length of the chain axes (the "easy" direction of magnetization). The {111} crystal alignment has been interpreted as a biological mechanism for maximizing the magnetic moment per particle, as the {111} direction yields approximately 3% higher saturation magnetization than do other directions. This prismatic particle shape is also uncommon in geological magnetite crystals of this size, which are usually octahedra. The crystal morphology was found to be cubo-octahedral with the {111} faces of adjacent crystals lying perpendicular to the chain axis.

All the magnetite crystals that have been examined to date are single magnetic domains, which means that they are uniformly and stably magnetized and have the maximum magnetic moment per unit volume possible for magnetite. Elemental analysis, by energy-dispersive X-ray analysis, electron diffraction patterns, and high resolution transmission electron microscopy lattice images, showed that many of the particles were structurally well-ordered and crystallographically single-domain magnetite. This means that the production of this biomineral must be under precise biological control.

Ferromagnetic crystals interact more than a million times more strongly with external magnetic fields than do diamagnetic or paramagnetic materials (deoxyhemoglobin, ferritin, and hemosiderin).With this finding researchers were posed with a fundamental question for biology, namely: What is the mechanism through which the weak geomagnetic fields are perceived by organisms that are able to precipitate crystals of a ferromagnetic mineral such as magnetite (Fe3O4)? Could these crystals use their motion in a variety of ways to transduce the geomagnetic field into signals that can be processed by the nervous system?

The presence of membrane-bound biomineral magnetite, which has been shown to have a biological origin, and the implication that some kind of mechanical coupling must take place between each compass magnetite particle and a mechanoreceptor, or at least a functionally equivalent mechanism allowing the position of the particle to be monitored by a sensory organelle in the body, is unique. Research has also found that the magnetite is produced by the cells of the organism when needed. Forms of advanced physical intelligence can directly tap into this information if they have a crystalline network within their brain cavity.

Scientists are now asking the fundamental question: What is magnetite doing in the human brain? In magnetite-containing bacteria, the answer is simple: Magnetite crystals turn the bacteria into swimming needles that orient with respect to the earth's magnetic fields. Magnetite has also been found in animals that navigate by compass direction, such as bees, birds, and fish, but scientists do not know why the magnetite is present in humans, only that it is there.

We have also seen in research done in the late 1980s that proteins, DNA, and transforming DNA function as piezoelectric crystal lattice structures in nature. The piezoelectric effect refers to that property of matter which may convert electromagnetic oscillations to mechanical vibrations and vice versa. Studies with exogenously administered electromagnetic fields have shown that both transcription (RNA synthesis) and translation (protein synthesis) can be induced by electromagnetic fields and furthermore that direct current in bone will produce osteochondrogenesis (bone formation) and bacteriostasis, as well as affect adenosine triphosphate (ATP) generation, protein synthesis and membrane transport.

Single Magnetite Crystal in the Human Brain
Single Magnetite Crystal
in the Human Brain

In the human brain, pyramidal cells are present and arranged in layers in the cortex of the two cerebra. The pyramidal cells act as electro-crystal cells immersed in extra-cellular tissue fluids, and seem to operate in the fashion of a liquid crystal oscillator in response to different light commands, or light pulses which, in turn, change the orientation of every molecule and atom within the body. Biogravitational encoded switches present in the brain allow a type of liquid network to release ions that induce currents to the surrounding coiled dendrites. Electron impulses from a neuron, on reaching the dendrite coil of the abutted cell, generate a micro amperage magnetic field, causing the ultra thin crystal, or liquid crystal in the pyramidal cell to be activated --- in a very unusual way. On flexing, this ultra thin crystal becomes a piezoelectric oscillator, producing a circular polarized light pulse that travels throughout the body, or travels as a transverse photonic bundle of energy

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Dthoughts

Your Eternal Self Drafts . Thought this might be of value. It mentions those studies with Faraday cage and some more interesting articles. Haven't checked for sources but some things I read on that page are really intrigeuing.



Also found one shared dreaming account ^^

---

I think that most if not all shared dreaming has a component of suggestion. Maybe not hypnotic suggestion, but suggestion none the less.

Nice finding that article Kadie, thanks, that is a good one! Plants also carry electric signals, ATP and some well known neurochemicals. If you ask me, photons have become entangled with material and have become quantum entangled systems. Drawing connections from that article; Earth's iron core has a function in that system as well. And i have been told that there's an iron core (atleast, partly?) responsible for magnetic field and upholding our biosphere.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by kadie

I think that most if not all shared dreaming has a component of suggestion. Maybe not hypnotic suggestion, but suggestion none the less.

---

Maybe sleep is just a form of hypnotic trance. However, i find it remarkable how easy it might be to share dreams if you know how to hypnotize each other.

Sorry kadie - you found something completely unscientific there - I can't leave that stand - better I don't read further back in the thread..

Quote:

---

In the human brain, pyramidal cells are present and arranged in layers in the cortex of the two cerebra.

---

Yes.

Quote:

---

The pyramidal cells act as electro-crystal cells immersed in extra-cellular tissue fluids, and seem to operate in the fashion of a liquid crystal oscillator in response to different light commands, or light pulses which, in turn, change the orientation of every molecule and atom within the body.

---

This is bullshit on different levels.
There are no crystals in nerve cells - neither is there magnetite in the human brain. We are not birds.

Then - there are no light-signals being transmitted whatsoever - that makes no sense* - the only light sensitive receptors are in the retina. And nope - not even in the infamous pineal gland are light-receptors - at least not in humans.
Information transport works per differences in electrical potential over the cell membrane.

What happens, is that an oncoming electrical signal acts on an actively maintained electrical potential difference over the cell membrane.
The inside of the cell is slightly negative - pumps transport the ions across the membrane to keep that up.
Then comes an electrical pulse - electrons, not photons - and depolarizes the membrane - if that transgresses a certain threshold - ion-channels open and lead to an action potential - a big depolarisation - a signal, which gets furthered on like in an electrical capacitor - there are isolating sheets around the nerve cells, so that it jumps over them and again keeps triggering these spike potentials.
That goes towards the end of a nerve-cell - then comes a synapse, and usually the signal is then transmitted by vesicles with neurotransmitter getting triggered to empty themselves out into the synaptic cleft.
By binding to receptors on the next neuron - many things can come about - mostly the next electrical action potential gets triggered - or the generation of same inhibited.

Plus - neither are there light signals - nor do or even would these change the orientation of molecules.
An MRI does change the orientation of the spin of electrons in water molecules - and lets them "snap back" - that's probably what they try to muddle into here.

Quote:

---

Biogravitational encoded switches present in the brain allow a type of liquid network to release ions that induce currents to the surrounding coiled dendrites. Electron impulses from a neuron, on reaching the dendrite coil of the abutted cell, generate a micro amperage magnetic field, causing the ultra thin crystal, or liquid crystal in the pyramidal cell to be activated --- in a very unusual way. On flexing, this ultra thin crystal becomes a piezoelectric oscillator, producing a circular polarized light pulse that travels throughout the body, or travels as a transverse photonic bundle of energy

---

No - ions are transported per pumps or let through pores, which open from oncoming electrical currents.
There are no piezoelectric phenomena in the brain!
Neither biomagnetism nor "biogravitational" forces - what that is supposed to mean, is beyond me anyway.
Electrical currents flowing can always be called electro-magnetical - fine.
That is not what they are getting at here, though.
Oh - and dendrites are not coiled - they are branching out like tree-branches - they try to invoke electromagnetic coils there.
Nope.
This is bullshit on so many levels, while going into some detail on the other hand - I suspect right out fraudulent motives here.


I will not mix inside this beyonder discussion any further - but reading this hurts my brain!
Oh - and I do know, that there are no pain-receptors in the brain - don't you worry..;)


*you can actually make that possible with gene-manipulation you can introduce light-sensitive receptors newly and artificially for science.
Light at them - they will do something - completely off topic here, though..

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by StephL

Sorry kadie - you found something completely unscientific there - I can't leave that stand - better I don't read further back in the thread..

---

Please feel free to read back further in the thread, Steph; the OP has little to do with Kadie's post (indeed, it contradicts it -- sorry Kadie!), and much of the other stuff written is most interesting. I think we would welcome your opinion; and I have a feeling it would be most interesting!

So, if you're still out there, and willing to consider or critique some seriously out-of-the-box stuff...

Steph, the article states that they have found the crystals in human brain tissue in 69 or something. And.. Unscientific? Ye.. Interesting.. Hell yea! About those Electrogravitationalmagnetic energies circulating brain and bones, To be honest, non of us have any idea where they are coming from. The author probably needs to either do a better job explaining his motives or use correct words atleast. I still think it is interesting non-theless.

Sorry for going Off-topic, Sageous. :roll:

The author probably smoked some strange things.
Or he tried to describe some futuristic genengineered human or android...

Thanks for the thought kadie. I think we can rule out electromagnetics, since its possible to interact with people in dreams even if they are far away and you have no idea where they are. Although we're all in a big electromagnetic field, there would be no way to sort out the information. To use my previous analogy, it would be like trying to see someone's face from the reflection on a carpet. Electromagnetics is just light, so electromagnetic telepathy would be a vastly harder version of the same problem.

For whatever it may be worth....Last night I dreamed of being in an observatory-like capstone of a mountain-like building. The sky was spinning by, thousands of times faster than the usual rate. I glimpse something that catches my attention, two moons in my field of vision instead of one. I also see the sky shift as if the earth's rotational axis has tilted, while the rotation speed increases, as if we're experiencing some kind of 'earth changes' catastrophe. But I should feel the change in momentum associated with the sky shifting, and I don't feel anything. I see the second moon pass near the first a couple more times, then I see it partially eclipse the first moon, and I can see the first moon through the second moon. This seems to make sense if the second moon is actually a projection from the observatory, not actually something in the sky. Likewise for the catastrophically rotating star-field.

The second moon is a metaphor for my experience of the muse that facilitates the 'shared dream'. The second 'moon' is some kind of human reflection of a deeper moon-God principle. I've experienced this before. And it doesn't just feel temporal and human, it feels artificial or unnatural somehow.

I think the second moon is also a metaphor for the 'parallel world' or 'alternative timeline' impressions that we get. In some sense they're not real, they're some kind of reflection.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by StephL

neither is there magnetite in the human brain. We are not birds.

---

Could be a funding opportunity for a follow-up study involving human subjects....

Frontiers in Zoology | Abstract | Dogs are sensitive to small variations of the Earth¿s magnetic field

[This is a joke - read the synopsis.]

wow StephL, Im surprised this brought such a visceral response from you. The article that I posted used preliminary findings from a Cal Teck geologist. Let me ask how can electricity be conducted without trace mineral? I mean if you have some other studies that repute the notion that there is magnetite in humans, then by all means. Anyway, more in line with the OP's "nature" of shared dreaming....I was just bringing up something that could make sense as to how we find each other in dreams, or telepathy or how we can zero in on places far away that we have never seen. As far as getting this thread off track, well sorry OP, that was not my intention. I don't pretend to be the know all, end all, one stop encyclopedia of the "supernatural" portions of dreaming and other phenomena, but I find it almost comical that a few here can hypothesize with a straight face with some of the bullshit, flimsy completly devoid of scientific explanation and then shite on a simple comment and link from me.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by shadowofwind

This is a joke - read the synopsis.]

---

I'm not sure I get the joke.But Idon't think jokes are commonly succesfull if you have to point out that it is a joke in the first place. (that was a joke,btw :P)

Either way, are you suggesting we look to see if we are more inclined to piss out crystals when we are facing the northpole more often than not? :P

I see three classes of people:

1. Those who believe everything is nonsense unless it has either been "explained" with a combination of modeling and hand-waving, or else "proven" with a published and repeated Analysis of Variance study. The existence of 'Class 2' people is regarded as evidence that 'Class 3' people are wrong.
2. Those with real or phony credentials who sell things to 'Class 3' people, and from a naive standpoint seem to have satisfied the requirements of 'Class 1' people. They don't care what's right or wrong.
3. People who believe in strange things from personal experience or for other reasons. The existence of 'Class 2' people is commonly regarded as evidence that 'Class 1' people are wrong.

And so we have a kind of gridlock. The people in Class 1 won't make use of the experiences of people in Class 3 because its an affront to their vanity. The people in Class 3 can't make much progress in their experiences because they lack the understanding that would otherwise come from people in Class 1.

I'm overgeneralizing with the classes of course.

Some people are remarkably sensitive to electromagnetic fields, and seem to be able use the earth's electromagnetic field for orientation. (My mom is like this.) So do respected scientists identify and study such people, to see what they can find out? No, such people are by definition crackpots, because there is no known mechanism for such sensitivity in people. But science lurches forward by paying graduate students to collect massive amounts of data on the directions dogs face while shitting. Maybe someday they'll figure out a way to study people.

In any case, I think we've argued conclusively in other threads that electromagnetic fields can't account for shared dreaming.

StepL, thanks for providing your insight about brain function, on behalf of myself anyway. Maybe I have some questions about color later, since you seem to know something about the subject. Kadie, I don't think her criticism was at all aimed at you.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by kadie

wow StephL, Im surprised this brought such a visceral response from you. The article that I posted used preliminary findings from a Cal Teck geologist. Let me ask how can electricity be conducted without trace mineral? I mean if you have some other studies that repute the notion that there is magnetite in humans, then by all means. Anyway, more in line with the OP's "nature" of shared dreaming....I was just bringing up something that could make sense as to how we find each other in dreams, or telepathy or how we can zero in on places far away that we have never seen. As far as getting this thread off track, well sorry OP, that was not my intention. I don't pretend to be the know all, end all, one stop encyclopedia of the "supernatural" portions of dreaming and other phenomena, but I find it almost comical that a few here can hypothesize with a straight face with some of the bullshit, flimsy completly devoid of scientific explanation and then shite on a simple comment and link from me.

---

Relax, Kadie! Even though it doesn't agree with it, your post was one of the few in this thread that was actually on-topic and trying to offer information that might help answer the questions raised by my OP. I for one welcome that wholeheartedly, and don't feel you've been shit upon here, at leas not by me.

Now, the reason your post disagrees with mine is that my main problem with shared dreaming is that the transfer of information between dreamers cannot occur using known rules of physics. Even if we have something like a magnetite gland in us, the energy it produces or senses would still not be adequate to cross substantial amounts of space instantly (electromagnetic energy -- from whatever source-- is still governed by the speed of light, plus the amount of energy needed to send and receive information to a specific faraway target probably surpasses anything our brains can generate, gland or no). The whole reason I came up with this "thought energy bubble" nonsense was to present an idea that would allow for dream-sharing to actually work, regardless of distance, time, and those pesky laws of physics... I honestly think that someone offering such a bat-shit-based-on-nothin' hypothesis would be a bit hypocritical if he poo-pooed your idea. I will offer reasons why I don't think the presence of magnetite in a brain would help shared dreaming much, but I wouldn't tell you you were wrong to present it.

I personally like Steph's abrupt style, because she is not afraid to say what she wants, but I'll leave it up to you two to sort out any differences there, or perhaps to wisely choose not to care.

So don't worry Kadie, your opinion is as valued as anyone else's here -- perhaps even more so because you chose to stay on topic.

[As long as I'm here, I'm pretty sure that electromagnetic energy, at least when traveling as light, does not need a trace mineral to move through space... this would also include radio waves and microwaves, among others.]

Sageous, I posted on my own dream journal the links to California Technical institute and the Full professor who made the discovery in 1992. Also a PDF version of his work. It is not the work of a grad student like shadow of wind claims. This professor is a leader in magnetic geology and bio-magnetite studies. I posted it on my own journal in case anyone wants to look and I did so to NOT clog this thread further.
My extension of the magnetite idea was my own and not something I read and took as my own. It was just an idea and nothing more. A HMMMM moment and a crap load of drama to boot. Im not that upset, but I do feel like anything I have to say to this group on this thread is a waste of time. You all seem to have your nich and past experiences of group discussions that I am unaware of so I do not understand some of where the attitude is coming from. I do however get the reference that Shadow made in regard to someone wanting shared dreaming experiences for a scientific experiment. I saw that thread yesterday and how that dude was shut down. NO shadowofwind I have nothing to do with that "experiment" and I think it's shameful for you to make such an assumption. I don't play politics on forums, all I was doing was contributing to the thread. I had an idea that bounced off of this idea of the magnetite in relation to the bubbles theory, but it's not worth bringing up for the sake of a peaceful forum thread.:cheers:

Kadie,

You seem to have almost totally misunderstood what I was saying. My reference to graduate students has nothing to do with the paper you linked to. It refers to the paper I linked to. I also made no assumption about you being linked to that experiment. I believe no such thing. I guess I communicated poorly. I also have no problem at all with the idea that humans are sensitive to electromagnetic fields. To the contrary, I've said I think they are. And most of Steph's criticism wasn't directly related to that or the CTI paper either, it was other stuff about coiled dendrites and whatnot.

The only thing that I said is that electromagnetic can't account for shared dreaming. I say that as a scientist and engineer working for many years in electromagnetics, and as someone with extensive experience with a weak type of shared dreaming. I've explained this at length elsewhere, and I don't believe anyone with at least a basic understanding of light and signal processing would disagree. Except maybe for Steph, nobody has a problem with your contribution, and she has other issues with shared dreaming that would add a clearer context to her response. This conversation goes back many months, and we don't spell out everything carefully because we don't have much time to post. I don't think anyone is saying what they have appeared to you to be saying.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by kadie

wow StephL, Im surprised this brought such a visceral response from you. The article that I posted used preliminary findings from a Cal Teck geologist. Let me ask how can electricity be conducted without trace mineral? I mean if you have some other studies that repute the notion that there is magnetite in humans, then by all means. Anyway, more in line with the OP's "nature" of shared dreaming....I was just bringing up something that could make sense as to how we find each other in dreams, or telepathy or how we can zero in on places far away that we have never seen. As far as getting this thread off track, well sorry OP, that was not my intention. I don't pretend to be the know all, end all, one stop encyclopedia of the "supernatural" portions of dreaming and other phenomena, but I find it almost comical that a few here can hypothesize with a straight face with some of the bullshit, flimsy completly devoid of scientific explanation and then shite on a simple comment and link from me.

---

Bioelectricity is not electricity like in electric net. Electric current is moving of charged particles. Bioelectricity rather uses ions of salts, Ca2+, Mg2+ Cl- Na+, K+ are in body common.... Moving charged particle creates magnetic field(very, very, very weak).
Electromagnetic wave is also gama rays, X-rays, UV rays, visible light, infrared waves (heat), microwaves, radiowaves, ...
No mineral is needed. Electric charge flows freely in electrolytes too. You can try it. Dissolve a little amount of kitchen salt in cup and make electrical circuit composed of two wires battery and light bulb(or led diode). If you connect two wires together bulb will shine. now, if you submerge that wires into salt solution, the bulb will shine too. Maybe weaker, since conductivity of solution is dependent on salt concentration, and also there is second effect, as are ions of Na+ and Cl- moving, they are moving in opposite direction and in water. Since ions are much larger than electrons they have much larger resistance for movement. If current is strong enough, then it will be possible to measure heating of solution.

I found examples of how it works in body on internet.
For a specific example of this sort of thing in action, one of the most commonly mentioned electrical currents created by the body is our heart rhythm. Our hearts contain a grouping of cells that reside in the upper right portion known as your Sinoatrial node or SA node for short. The cells within the SA node (pacemaker of the heart) contain electrolytes both inside and outside the cells. Some of the most common electrolytes within the body, as mentioned previously, are sodium, potassium, calcium, magnesium, phosphorus, and chloride. Sodium and calcium generally reside outside the SA nodes cells and potassium lies within. These specialized cells allow much more sodium to enter the cell than allow for potassium to leave it. The result is a continually growing positive charge. Once that charge reaches a certain point, calcium channels open up in the cell membrane and allow for calcium to enter as well. This makes the interior of the cell extremely positive, known as an action potential. Once that potential reaches a certain point, it has enough “power” to discharge down the nerves of the heart. Ah the wonders of chemistry in action!

In brain it is very similar.

If shared dream or astral travel is really possible, then there should be something completely different in action. Something science can't measure. If there is soul, then that is something what could this all make possible. If everything we experience is only result of chemical reaction in brain, then the soul is nonexistent, and shared dreams, OBE(astral travels,etc.), mystic experiences... are only illusions, something like fault or deficiency of brain.

Thank you Sageous - I might take a look! :)
Also thanks shadowofwind - it's true - I was just and only going against the last paragraph of H. Coetzee's, PhD.

I first thought, the above post would come from you kadie - uups - and was already concluding, that this exchange has lead you to look it up and see, how it really works.
Now this post is in disarray - but I will leave it at what it is now, with slight turnings abouts.
Okaay - thank you Psionic - that's exactly what I tried to say - thank you for expounding on it further and so well understandably too!

No piezoelectrics, no metals, no coils, no light-signals, no molecules changing their orientation according to light signals, ...
It's about ion containing solutions with a gradient in voltage over the membrane. And pores and pumps etc. - same with the heart.

It wasn't at all against you, kadie - and emotional - well yeah - I am a bit emotional, when it comes to people - not you, your source - bending around facts about the brain. Making it worse by presenting them under the credibility-hat of being a "real professor" - if only off-topic in geology.
If he tried to talk to a neuroscientist about it - he should soon see, that he can not uphold his claims.
But I wouldn't have been expressing myself like I did, if I thought, that he is not aware of that.
I guess, he is fully aware of that, and tries to reach an audience, which is not.
Or he lost contact with reality, and refuses to learn about neuroscience anything, which would go against his pet-hypothesis.
Could be - sure.
I am sorry, if that came in at your end as an attack - I should have made that clearer - I tried taking you out of it with wording it along "you found something" - and I wasn't even aware, that you had built a personal view on top of it.
Just been jumping in the thread with no intention to post - and then jumping at these clear falsities.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Psionik

If shared dream or astral travel is really possible, then there should be something completely different in action. Something science can't measure. If there is soul, then that is something what could this all make possible. If everything we experience is only result of chemical reaction in brain, then the soul is nonexistent, and shared dreams, OBE(astral travels,etc.), mystic experiences... are only illusions, something like fault or deficiency of brain.

---

... which nicely clarifies -- or at least gives an excuse to reiterate -- the purpose this thread, I think: We can argue elsewhere about the existence of shared dreaming (or AP/OBE for that matter, and for similar reasons), but let's assume here that it does exist. So, since it happens, how does it happen?

Since this thread has strayed a bit, I urge anyone coming on now, or who is here but has not read it, to have a quick look at the OP. Be assured that other ideas are welcome (though subject to as much scrutiny as I expect mine to be), but they must address how we can communicate instantly across great distances, and how we can find each other in the process. Tales confirming that you did it really don't help -- unless you were somehow aware of the process as it occurred, which would be most helpful.

Also, this is not a religion thread: you can believe in shared dreaming or not, you can require scientific proof or not, or somewhere in between, and that shouldn't matter. Say what you think, but don't require someone else to agree with you... this stuff is far enough out there that any such requirement is baseless (at least on this thread!).

Okay, that's the last I'll say of this, I promise. If we are all truly locked in the Three Classes stalemate that Shadowofwind mentioned above, then this thread is likely moot. But I for one like to think that we are all able to move among our classes (and perhaps temporarily adjust our own), just by paying some respectful attention to each other.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by StephL

Thank you Sageous - I might take a look! :)
Also thanks shadowofwind - it's true - I was just and only going against the last paragraph of H. Coetzee's, PhD.

I first thought, the above post would come from you kadie - uups - and was already concluding, that this exchange has lead you to look it up and see, how it really works.
Okaay - thank you Psionic - that's exactly what I tried to say - thank you for expounding on it further and so well




understandably too!

No piezoelectrics, no metals, no coils, no light-signals, no molecules changing their orientation according to light signals, ...
It's about ion containing solutions with a gradient in voltage over the membrane. And pores and pumps etc. - same with the heart.


It wasn't at all against you, kadie - and emotional - well yeah - I am a bit emotional, when it comes to people - not you, your source - bending around facts about the brain. Making it worse by presenting them under the credibility-hat of being a "real professor" - if only off-topic in geology.
If he tried to talk to a neuroscientist about it - he should soon see, that he can not uphold his claims.
But I wouldn't have been expressing myself like I did, if I thought, that he is not aware of that.
I guess, he is fully aware of that, and tries to reach an audience, which is not.
Or he lost contact with reality, and refuses to learn about neuroscience anything, which would go against his pet-hypothesis.
Could be - sure.
I am sorry, if that came in at your end as an attack - I should have made that clearer - I tried taking you out of it with wording it along "you found something" - and I wasn't even aware, that you had built a personal view on top of it.
Just been jumping at the obvious falsities.

---

That was Psionic not me.

The part of the paper that I was interested in was the formation of magnetite crystals in the human brain. And yes there are magnetite crystals in the brain. If you look at the linnks in my DJ, you will find the pictures of them. Anyway, no harm no foul.


@ psionic and Sageous,

I made the comment about minerals needed for conduction because I know very well that there is calcium, magneseum and other minerals in the human body, so why is it so hard to believe that there is biomagnetite?

My full idea was that with magnetite in the human body, and ferrous-like crystals that orientate in the direction of for simple terms....a magnate (hypothetically) speaking (This is my what if question) Couldnt it be POSSIBLE for other humans with a similarly oriented magnetite/ferrous crystalline makeup to be drawn to one another in a sense that we might call telepathic. Like the bubble idea, but with a different spin. 2 or more people with similar crystalline makeup being drawn to one another, not by the earths magnetic field, but by our own magnetic fields with the earths magnetic fields filling in the gaps of the distance between dreamers or the bubbles?

So anyway, I really was not disputing anything other than the presence of magnetite in our bodies.
Also, I know that how I think about something does not translate well when I type. It's a learning disability or something and I have said as much on another thread.
So it's back to the drawing board for me since it seems that I have a non starter anyway.

Kadie - there are pictures of magnetite in the olfactory cells of fish (trout).
I do know - as I said above "we are not birds" - that birds and also other vertebrates do indeed have said magnetite - and a lot more interesting electro-magnetic special effects.
That is long established.
But that's not the human brain.

Quote:

---

So it's back to the drawing board for me since it seems that I have a non starter anyway.

---

^^ Well, not entirely back to the drawing board, Kadie.

Your magnetite idea -- or the concept that there is some sort of physical receiver, even if not specifically magnetite -- could go a long way toward explaining the "how" of the reception end of dream-sharing. Perhaps we do have some physical process that allows for reception of other people's conscious thoughts/dreams -- or, rather, perhaps one of our physical processes has evolved a bit to include that ability in its retinue.

Still, though, this leaves the transmission part in question, as it does the ability to separate a particular individual's thoughts from the general ocean of thoughts being "transmitted" all the time (though I think we're coming to a conclusion that some personal intimacy between sharers is most helpful). Also, given that our personally emitted magnetic fields are simply too weak to "transmit" on their own, there must be something beyond just that emission.

Still, if there were a physical (and not just a consciousness-based, effectively non-physical) process involved at some point, that would give us a jumping-off point.

... would that science gave a crap about this stuff!

here is the link to the pdf with the image of the magnetite taken from a sample of human brain tissue.

http://www.gps.caltech.edu/~jkirschv...Finalwfigs.PDF

look at page 8 as you scroll or page 146 on the pdf header for the page number.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Sageous

... which nicely clarifies -- or at least gives an excuse to reiterate -- the purpose this thread, I think: We can argue elsewhere about the existence of shared dreaming (or AP/OBE for that matter, and for similar reasons), but let's assume here that it does exist. So, since it happens, how does it happen?

Since this thread has strayed a bit, I urge anyone coming on now, or who is here but has not read it, to have a quick look at the OP. Be assured that other ideas are welcome (though subject to as much scrutiny as I expect mine to be), but they must address how we can communicate instantly across great distances, and how we can find each other in the process. Tales confirming that you did it really don't help -- unless you were somehow aware of the process as it occurred, which would be most helpful.

Also, this is not a religion thread: you can believe in shared dreaming or not, you can require scientific proof or not, or somewhere in between, and that shouldn't matter. Say what you think, but don't require someone else to agree with you... this stuff is far enough out there that any such requirement is baseless (at least on this thread!).

Okay, that's the last I'll say of this, I promise. If we are all truly locked in the Three Classes stalemate that Shadowofwind mentioned above, then this thread is likely moot. But I for one like to think that we are all able to move among our classes (and perhaps temporarily adjust our own), just by paying some respectful attention to each other.

---

My working theory is, the LD (shared dream) is a form of fantasy where are maybe sparsely strewed pieces of true information. It comes from our soul... but is filtered and watered down through our senses and imagination which is trying to fill out perceived holes...
In OBE there is low amount of imagination. So there is strong feeling of reality... But even then there are holes in perceived information.

I'm not sure of function of biomagnetite nanocrystals in body(maybe they are rudiments of times when animals humans evolved from needed extra orientation senses... Or they are waste of metabolism or reserve of iron in body? But body needs Fe2+, not Fe3+), but I don't believe that they have function such as telepathy, shared dreaming, extrasensory perception. Those mystic abilities must go outside of physical world as we know it in presence.

Biomagnetite shouldn't be very magnetic... Otherwise anyone going through fields like in MRI would be in serious health risk(I think it would be life threatening since reorientation of crystals would damage brain tissue, and strong field wouldn't do only reorientation, it would attract anything ferromagnetic at least on inner side of skull), as the fields there are reaching 7 Tesla.

Other question, why would some people attract because of magnetic field orientation? If I take in mind that earth field is maybe 100000x stronger than magnetic field of brain, then it would mask it. It simply wouldn't be detectable. Next part is a thing of orientation, it is simple thing of changing physical orientation of magnet and two of them would attract.

Magnetite interacts over a million times more strongly with external magnetic fields than any other biological material, Dr. Kirschvink said, including the iron in red blood cells. If only one cell in a million contains magnetite, he said, magnetic fields could exert an effect on the tissue,
sorry I cant help myself. I think it has merit.
I don't live too far from Cal Tec, maybe I could just ask the guy what he thins right? Lol yeah, just mosey on down to the lecture room and ask.
also his wife is Atsuko Kobayashi - Kirschvink a neurobiological electron microscopist.

@ Sageous, I think if you take what I found by these Cal Teck scientists and actually read their findings, it is reasonable to imagine the crystalline nature and imagine if you will the movement almost like sillia in the digestional track moving and swaying to different pulls of magnetic whatever-energy? In a sphere around any one person, there are many more impressions from other magnetic sources so those little crystals that i imagine as wavy cillia become oriented in all kinds of crazy directions as an effect of the world environment, and on to the next person and so on...etc. maybe the "Collective Conscious" that you mentioned in the OP is an extension of these little teeny tiny particles of magnetite and ferrous crystalline particles that become changed with every contact we make until there is at the same time a melting of experience and sense and yet an individual orientation of each person?


Also, here is an article Called measuring the magnetism of light.
http://physics.aps.org/story/v26/st13

Maybe this is what the article that i origionally posted was eluding to and not so much about the way StephL was talking about?

Oh God... Why I'm not dead? I was in MRI and I felt nothing... !!! Maybe I'm dead! that's why I didn't felt nothing. I was dead in fraction of second!

Iron in chemical molecules such as hemoglobine is nonmagnetic. It is only one atom per molecule.

Another observation....Shared dreaming is largely a matter of empathy. Get enough empathy to do it well enough to start finding some real answers, how do you handle being able to feel the suffering in the world, and feeling your relation to it and your part of the master mind it belongs to? I think we will have to make more progress with this issue before we can get much further figuring out technical details. Yes this comment is off-topic, but I think it comes up unavoidably. None of us have the knowledge to speculate on the original question in a non-farcical way while staying on topic.

In regard to the 3 types of people post by shadowifwind, I am also having adifficult time even accepting my own previously held beliefs on such matters. To me it just was. AT, OBE, RV, telapathy etc. It is all unknown to science, but experienced world wide among so many. .however I find snarky comments unnecessary afterall we are all fools until science says otherwise.

Sorry if my comments felt "snarky". I just have some sets of knowledge(I have PhD in inorganic chemistry and I'm working in research of ceramic(mainly) ) and even if I don't know enough about human biology to know this things for sure, I know at least basic and I know what I have to look for. Therefore if I'm believing in reality of OBE it is because of my own experiences. And because I know a little about biology and physic I must either look for nonphysical(that means immeasurable by today's means) reasons, or dismiss all of this as my imaginations and hallucinations. But what to think about things that came true after minutes to tens of years before they happened? If this is possible then also sharing of thoughts(through dreams, OBE, telepathy...) should be possible... Now... I too wrote off topic :)

Continuing with trying to figure out how the shared dreaming stuff works....

I suggested that I move my sense of identity to partially include some aspect of the other person's identity. It seemed that these identities are defined by a collection of thoughts and feelings and memories, and that maybe the sharing is possible because the 'self' is the same beyond that. Now I'm not as sure about that. I've had dreams where I'm partially in or on the periphery of someone else's "house" of thoughts, and feeling uncomfortable about whether or not I belong there. I've also had dreams where I'm in a world of thoughts and resting in a place that doesn't at that moment belong to anyone, but its not really mine either. Its sort of like being in a big kaleidoscope-like sliding block puzzle of thoughts, with various selves being in temporarily in residence in particular parts of it, like hermit crabs. As times change, I have to move. Maybe I can't reconcile this experience with the idea of there being one undivided universal self, distinguished only by the thoughts. In other words, there's at least one more level of distinction between individuals, we have our own souls or something.

Somewhat separately, last night I had an astral experience that seems to confirm that the 'astral' that I experience is not a 'parallel world' or 'different dimension' or 'higher plane'. Its an imaginative representation of my experience of this world. It can seem different than this world because of the way I'm emphasizing or distorting different aspects of this world. And this 'imaginative representation' is less rigidly constrained than a physical body, so for instance I might feel and relate things that are not physically connected to each other. This isn't to say that other people don't experience other actual physical worlds or dimensions or higher planes. But I think we're taking our best ideas about what such an experience can be and subconsciously building the experience around that. In other words, the ideas involve assumptions that are projected into the experience rather than being inherent it. I think my 'astral experiences' are in a different space in a figurative sense. But its not a scientifically undiscovered realm or dimension in nature. Its more like a radically different way of organizing our perception of what is already known, and that different understanding makes new powers and experiences possible. Probably this 'different organization' is facilitated by undiscovered properties of nature, but some of those are only indirectly revealed by the paranormal experience. I'm having trouble saying what I mean here.

Shadowofwind, are you sure you had an OBE last night?

I'm not suggesting that during OBE I must be projecting into parallel dimension, astral dimension should be above of that. Time is creating parallel dimensions by dividing timelines by every action done or not done in all universe... but time is fourth dimension... and astral should be five dimensional dimension. Problem is interpretation of dimensions which we can't normally comprehend. I have feeling, that seeing of diffusiveness of things in my OBEs means something... Maybe as I look from astral point of view, I see probability of existence of things in the space-time continuum.
My last projection a few days ago, I saw my wife with youngest child (Petra) on her lap and speaking with oldest one. I couldn't hear her but I saw her speaking. I tried to touch her and Petra but my hand went through them. (Everything I saw had diffuse borders... and it was as if I feel even that diffuse borders of things...) Then I went away through wall. Going through wall ended me being a some hundred kilometers away from my house. In reality my wife was doing what (I described her) I saw. It is the small things that makes reality of being out of body believable. Now, scientific part of my mind is telling me that it could be coincidence... I need much more of such experiences to draw conclusions.
Now, mental dimension is different, it is for me as if disconnected from reality. Things are somewhat more substantial and sparkling... Air is sparkling too... everything there seems to be pristine. But again, I don't see there anything connected with my memory, or with any problems I have in physical reality. It is like world of its own.

From what I've seen, most English speaking physicists consider it misleading to regard time as a dimension, they say "ten spatial dimensions plus time" or similar. But it is crudely a degree of freedom which can in many contexts can be measured. I don't see that what you describe as astral is like that. You have three spatial dimensions, which you can represent a location in using three values. Now you add a fourth value for 'astral'. As you increase and decrease that value, this corresponds to what? In space, if I increase 'x' I'm moving in one direction, and if I decrease it I move the opposite way. What happens as you change your 'astral' value that describes your change in astral place? What are you measuring in the way a line can be measured? If you can describe this, then I can understand how it can be thought of as a dimension. Otherwise, I have to think its not a dimension, that you've been calling it a dimension without thinking about what that means.

Yes of course my 'astral' experience may not capture everything that yours does. But the descriptions seem the same in essential ways, and even if my experience is deficient somehow, I think you can guess and point out what that is. I hope its clear that I'm not doubting that there's something 'real' and supernatural in your experience. I'm just questioning the 'fifth dimension' paradigm because I want to know what's really real. And if your astral experience contains something that mine lacks, which I think is probable, since we're different people, then maybe I can get you to examine that for me.

As I wrote, comprehension is the key. I have problem to grasp a picture of tesseract (four dimensional cube) Tesseract - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia ... But sometimes I feel while in OBE something like time flow. It may be that I can't see four dimensionaly, But I feel somewhat that fourth dimension. It can be that that is an illusion. I have yet to learn conscious walk through time into future and take some information to confirm later in real time. Well also proofs for real time walking is so sparse that I can't say for 100% it is real thing. My little proofs are indications that there could be reality in OBE but I have no definite proofs. It is only enough to believe in it.

I think, the key could be the detachment of mind... Could you describe your mind state while you are out of body, walking?

I found a few weeks a song with video on youtube Schiller Feat - Maya Saban - I've Seen All. - YouTube first part of it may depict dream or lucid dream, there is feeling of passion, fear, desire... It could be also very low astral... but I can't function there with as strong emotions as I feel from the first part. Then when that woman opens door at 2:45 she goes to land very similar to what I perceive as mental dimension- pristine nature, everything is sparkling... Then there is a woman with very calm look... Look on her face... her eyes... it is as if I see myself walking. She holds in her hand a ball of fire, but it doesn't burn her- It is as if her emotion are that fire, but she is calm and observing. When I see this I feel similarity, I feel it related to me when I'm walking(traveling).

Maybe we are all one organism and connected no matter what or when.

Maybe :) but very disorganized one.

These things are fun to speculate on but we shouldn't pretend we're developing a scientific model. (Not saying you are Sageous but there is this temptation)

If shared dreaming exists then my crackpot theory is that dreaming occurs in a different dimension independent of our three, and maybe independent of time as well. That would be cool, sharing dreams with people in the past and future :shadewink:

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Whatsnext

These things are fun to speculate on but we shouldn't pretend we're developing a scientific model. (Not saying you are Sageous but there is this temptation)

---

No, Whatsnext, I don't think we are pretending that here, by any measure... I personally wouldn't know the first thing about developing a scientific model, and would likely quickly doze off if someone else tried... no, this thread is purely about the fun of speculating -- and possibly gaining some insight toward the "how" of shared-dreaming.

Quote:

---

If shared dreaming exists then my crackpot theory is that dreaming occurs in a different dimension independent of our three, and maybe independent of time as well. That would be cool, sharing dreams with people in the past and future.

---

That's a fine crackpot theory, with potentially more elegence than my own. Have you considered the "how" of it yet? How sharers actually communicate? How they find each other? What might the interface be between dreamers' brains/consciousnesses and the different dimension itself?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Sageous

The Nature of Shared Dreaming

-- a Loose Theory That Might Work

(...)

I was actually thinking about bubbles at first -- you know, the ones kids blow through a wand, basically spheres of soap held together by surface tension. I don’t even know why I was thinking about bubbles; probably a forgotten dream, as I had just woken from a late-morning nap.

But then I started imagining the shape of bubbles, and their necessarily cohesive surface. And for some reason then I started thinking about thought energy.

(...)

Thought energy is the energy created by conscious, sentient, thought. It is an actual form of energy which, because it is completely new and unrelated to the physical world, does not conform to the currently known laws of physics -- it is not electromagnetic, and does not contain known units of energy. Also, thought energy is not to be confused with the electromagnetic energy of brainwaves produced during the physical act of thinking -- that is something else. Thought energy is unique in form to each person generating it, sort of like fingerprints,

but

it likely would tend to be drawn to the same locale as other thought energy…

which, finally, is where the bubbles come in.

Here’s the theory itself:

Thought energy is created by individuals and tends to be attracted to other individuals' created thought energy, as well as itself.

This dual attraction, when combined with the billions of actively sentient beings these days, has formed a “bubble” of coherent thought energy that encompasses our entire planet.

So what we have is an energy sphere of connected thought pools

(each pool representing an individual),

and that energy is not under the jurisdiction of Newton’s laws.

When we dream, we enjoy a direct connection with our personal pool of thought energy, which in turn is connected to all the rest of the world’s pools through the surface tension of the thought energy bubble.

From this position we have an opportunity to “transmit” to all the other individuals’ pools simultaneously, and also to listen to any recognizable transmissions that might be coming from other pools.

If we can manage to recognize and understand these exchanged transmissions, then we are dream-sharing.

A couple of corollaries:

First, your transmission goes to the entire sphere of all the billions of pools at once; there is no directed communication. However, if you know the individual whose thoughts you are looking for, and they know you, you should be able to spoon out a conversation from the general ocean of thoughts you are experiencing simultaneously, simply by recognizing a moment of order (your known individual) from the overall chaos of the sphere.

Also,

this theory still doesn’t answer the question of how we would convert incoming thoughts into symbols or images that make sense to us, and vise-versa. I imagine/hope there might be some sort of “universal translator” built into our minds that can convert thought energy to usable metaphor.

This could be similar to Jung’s collective unconscious, and his theory of universal archetypes.

So that’s what I have so far. I know it’s pretty rough, and probably totally wrong, but it does at least offer a partial answer to the problem I have always had about the “physics” of shared-dreaming:

How can two people communicate in a dream instantly, without regard for time or space, and how do they find each other at all?

So,

if anyone would like to discuss, upgrade, query me for details, or trash this theory altogether, then go for it… This for a change is a dream-sharing thread that asks how it can work, rather than just assume that it does, and thoughtful discussion about the “how” might get us a little closer to creating techniques for more easily and/or accurately practicing the art of dream sharing. .

(...)

Any thoughts?

---

O o o kay ...

brilliant.

From Buddhism, the (I, me, self and) ego don't exist. It is an illusion caused by judging the objects of the senses.

Senses exist.

When I can live without judging,

for example,

what I "see" as in,

"That's nice / that's yuky,

then the skin of the bubble no longer exists and I am liberated into

Totall oneness "subtly" with all things reality .

As soon as the judging starts-back-up, the skin of the bubble reforms. And I'm stuck back in the illusion of being a "me" (I, self, ego).

UMmmm. I really want to address this:

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Whatsnext

These things are fun to speculate on but we shouldn't pretend we're developing a scientific model. (Not saying you are Sageous but there is this temptation)

If shared dreaming exists then my crackpot theory is that dreaming occurs in a different dimension independent of our three, and maybe independent of time as well.

That would be cool, sharing dreams with people in the past and future :shadewink:

---

Yesss

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Sageous

No, Whatsnext,

I don't think we are pretending that here, by any measure...

I personally wouldn't know the first thing about developing a scientific model, and would likely quickly doze off if someone else tried...

no,

this thread is purely about the fun of speculating -- and possibly gaining some insight toward the "how" of shared-dreaming.

That's a fine crackpot theory, with potentially more elegence than my own.

Have you considered the "how" of it yet? How sharers actually communicate?

How they find each other?

What might the interface be between dreamers' brains/consciousnesses and the different dimension itself?

---

I got mixed-up with a mean troll in 2008. But to me he/they were wonderful people. My share-dreams and amazing synchronicity with them were of such a tingling-high nature that I took their meaness to be a sort of evil sense of humor (or something).

But they hammered and hammered and hammered me till I had to do a rethink.

It was then, after 3 years online with them that I had an epiphany. It happened on 03-27-2011*
(27-March-2011)
09:38 PM

right here on Dreamviews.

On that day I posted on a big (now locked) thread. Hahaha the tread was locked immediately after my post. Here is the later half of that epiphany post.

Post #540:

***

[b] ... last couple of days I thought that this might be happening when I “merge” with mean folk like you (username).

I hook up in dreams and merge with U.

In this present incarnation U are tooooo mean. But I don’t accept that.*

And

I push into folk’s future and find them (U) in their future Buddha State.*

Then

I only relate to them from that perspective.

What will be, IS, and always has been.

***

In my case I am sure that is true. My mind skidaddles deep into the future where we all are perfectly matured (in every way) and we are all friends.

And we all love communicating, in a childlike, playful manner with ourselfs from long ago.

Remember time-is-not-linea.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Psionik

As I wrote, comprehension is the key. I have problem to grasp a picture of tesseract (four dimensional cube) Tesseract - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia ... But sometimes I feel while in OBE something like time flow. It may be that I can't see four dimensionaly, But I feel somewhat that fourth dimension. It can be that that is an illusion. I have yet to learn conscious walk through time into future and take some information to confirm later in real time. Well also proofs for real time walking is so sparse that I can't say for 100% it is real thing. My little proofs are indications that there could be reality in OBE but I have no definite proofs. It is only enough to believe in it.

---

You spoke of five dimensions. Here you're talking about a fourth dimension. What about the other one, what is it and in what sense is it a dimension? I don't think any of us here are arguing that there is no reality in OBE, that isn't at stake. We're trying to understand what it is. And I think that this is the most directly on topic issue in this thread, because if we understand what it is, then we have our answer for how shared dreaming works.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Psionik

I think, the key could be the detachment of mind... Could you describe your mind state while you are out of body, walking?

---

Its the same as my usual mind-state. Most of my experiences don't resemble yours closely, but I consider them equivalent to the experiences I have had which do more closely resemble yours. I'll get back to this eventually.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Psionik

Then when that woman opens door at 2:45 she goes to land very similar to what I perceive as mental dimension- pristine nature, everything is sparkling

---

I think you're using the word 'dimension' here in a way almost completely different from its scientific and mathematical meaning. You're using it more like a synonym for 'real but radically different kind of experience than waking life sensate perception'. I guess I'll give up on that line of questioning.

Shadowofwind- we live in 3D world where we can't use or feel time. I thought that while in astral we would be in 4D world, where the 5th dimension is not directly measurable (which would be similar to physical world as fourth dimension (time) is also not possible to measure directly). I'm not sure if we are meant to be able to understand more than three dimensions. I can feel in astral more, but here not. The difference is profound enough to feel it. Shared dreams (in my opinion) could be possible only through higher dimensions, because otherwise we would be able to measure something... and our brains would need to be very strong emitters and very sensitive receivers of physical fields(which they are not). If we take as working hypothesis that a soul exist, it must be existent on higher dimension too, because again we can measure nothing. If soul exist in higher dimension and we as souls extension can't comprehend our souls senses, it means there is something like incompatibility issue... maybe same kind of block on either our souls senses so it could perceive signals only through body senses??? Or it is all made because of illusion of EGO? I'm not sure whether I understand a concept of EGO fully. Is there possibility of feeling myself if there wouldn't be EGO?

Mental dimension should be also in 5D dimension. But the feel is little different as is perceived state of mind too. It is harder to maintain that state of mind than state of mind needed for astral dimension. I'm not sure about using word dimension too. But I was able to find those classification on internet and according to that I was able to project into astral(95%+) mental(less than 4%) and budhic (1or2 times) dimension. There were others mentioned, but I think I didn't reached them. Many times when I fail to project out of body I end up in the black void, where there is nothing, there is no frame reference... There is no time... it feels like I'm point and at same time I'm everywhere... Without any perceived body, without thoughts... I'm... I feel... Nothingness. And fullness.
I think there is no possibility of scientifically measure something out of physical dimensions as we know it. Maybe in future, but I don't think it would be ever sensitive and fine enough. You were in astral and you are saying that your experiences are similar to mine enough. Therefore you probably can relate to what I feel when I try to describe it. But because our background is different our opinions on what we see is different. That is OK :)

I don't do natural AstralProjection or LDing very often i'm not good at it, I usually resort to psychedelic substances to explore the mind. I base my views of shared dreaming and paranormal on these experiences, atleast i use them to explain the nature of shared dreaming. Since you guys started sharing experiences i don't want to be left behind and thought i'd share mine so you guys have an idea where i'm coming from as well. And why I lean towards certain arguments and explanations for shared dreaming.

I once met an entity on Salvia which seemed to imply having a conversation with my soul in different reincarnations. It struck me that somehow this entity must be outside of time.. What happens on salvia is a weird sort of folding of reality. I have speculated that the body could be multidimensional. The chakra points represent metaphysical system of existence. The throat for example is a system for creating objects into existence. Or something, because i carried my throat with me but it is slightly different in this other form of existence. Salvia engages all 5 senses in a really strange way. It is so strange that even I can not conceptualize it or even remember how it happens.

I've seen a thread of light linking from my third eye which forms a connection with a white light. For me, there was a blue jade crystal shining through this light. I interpreted it as Budhic dimension. I was able to produce this experience by meditating on 'love' after ingesting DMT. What happens is that my perspective shifted to a slightly higher angle (literally, i feel myself floating up slightly) and when this happens, it's like i'm in space and you see stars and stuff and weird looking organisms/parasites with bright colours become attracted to and attach themselves to what feels like my skull. Very far in this space you see this bright shining light that looks like a star and this sci-fi looking beam is in direct contact and gives a weird feeling in the spot between my eyebrows.

Once it took me to another brightly coloured non-physical space which when in that space i'm struck with the peculiair realization that this place HAS to and obviously is outside of time.

And last but not least i have experienced the peculiair sensation of having my consciousness literally feel expanded as if it is a bubble and comes with sensation of much higher processing power and the ability to think in higher dimensions. Now, I have difficulty understanding the mathematical form of dimensions and the implications of such a system. So i can't say too much about that. However, i have enough personal evidence to be convinced that consciousness is able to transcend itself to much higher levels of function. It is a very distinct feeling. When it ends, you feel your consciousness shrink to it's normal size and suddenly you are unable to process what just happened and you have a hard time recalling what happened just one minute ago. This recall problem is very similar to what happens when you just wake up from a dream but you just can't bring it back. There's a link here..

At one point there felt to be a swarm of fireflies surging through my body. It pointed my attention to my jaw which has been locked for years. The fireflies moved to my jaw and affected my receptors in such a way that i feel my jaw literally being fixed. The problems with my jaws disappeared over the following weeks and is now completely healthy. For this reason i base that mind is able to influence the physical in a currently unknown fashion to scientific knowledge.

I opt for EM explanations because i have met an elf once on Ayahuasca and it came to sit on my right shoulder. I perceived a weight felt on my shoulder and it talked to me in a spoken language which is a auditory sensation. For this reason i kind of suggest the 'elf' in this case radiates soundwaves and magnetic waves to produce these sensations in my brain. Ok now the very last speculation, one time i put on Delta brainwaves after ingesting DMT and communicating with perceived entities. What happened is that all the hallucinations became fractalled. The entity screamed in panic for a moment and when i 'asked' whatsup. It said, it's okay. I didn't know. But somehow these delta brainwaves put the entity in trouble cus it said it had to now navigate through a maze and i somehow messed with his mode of existence. Same thing when i say i feel entities sucking on my skull.. There are no entities on my physical skull.. That is for sure. Yet i feel like there is a weight there repulsing the magnetic force that touched my pain receptors?

So eh, i'll probably come back to this. I think ill investigate electromagnetics in sensual receptors first. Sageous, what do you say? Is it on-topic to discuss electromagnetics as a possible mechanism for shared dreaming/telepathy?

I'm not sure we're even discussing this anymore, but I thought of a revision for my OP's [metaphoric!] construct of the thought-energy bubble and figured I would share:

Instead of pools of thought energy, creating the necessary image of countless little puddles coalescing into a great sphere, what if we stole a string-theory image and considered our accumulations of individual thought-energy not as pools but as threads, and these threads spread in all directions, intertwining with all the other threads created by all the other individual thinkers?

These threads would follow the same rules as the pools. The threads may intertwine with many others without ever noticing them, because their thought energy doesn't quite match, and those that do almost match have an ability or tendency to communicate.

I just thought I'd throw this in, because an image of billions of intertwined "threads," each comprised of the unique thought energy (and thoughts) of a sentient individual, seemed to fit here. Also, given that the threads have the potential to come into contact with all the other threads, perhaps simultaneously, such a bundle might make dream sharing (and telepathy) possible.

Though I still believe thought energy would need to exist outside the known rules of space & time, this thread thing might sidestep the need to transcend space and time, and the metaphor might welcome some constructive ideas about how to get the threads to connect.

Now this is weird!

I thought you already made that post, Sageos.. Are you repeating yourself? Because i swear it is not a lie that i remember reading your post before.. In fact, i had exactly the content of ur current post in mind while i was writing my post on 12:30 today..

Either way, it is not relevant to the thread except to add in discussion about Precognition and Time.. I asked if it was okay to talk about EM as a courtesy because i REMEMBERED exactly the words "sidestep the need to transcend space and time" while i was writing my post..

Weird.. anyway.. I did remember you vaguely mentioned strings.. About an hour ago i happened to stumble on string theory and apparently my thoughts connected itself to string theory.. From Electromagnetics to String theory.. It kind of makes sense.. It will take long to formulate a proper sentence about this though, so i will have to come back to it.

I think if i do manage to formulate my ideas in proper sentence we will have a workable starting-point for a workable theory on shared dreaming. Just like you suggested in the original post, how ur post is a start in the right direction. I have the same ideas about my franctic theorizing the last couple of days. It's a good start. Even though it has loads of holes. And don't worry.. I believe everything discussed here is related to the OP although it may not be obvious at first glance.

^^ You caught me, Dthoughts!

It appeared that my post had been lost behind a series of new posts and, still feeling it a relevant update to my OP, I figured it worth moving up a few spaces. And, of course, I moved it before reading your post above.

I'm glad you noticed, and look forward to your "starting point," should you find those proper sentences!

Speaking of that:

Quote:

---

So eh, i'll probably come back to this. I think ill investigate electromagnetics in sensual receptors first. Sageous, what do you say? Is it on-topic to discuss electromagnetics as a possible mechanism for shared dreaming/telepathy?

---

Sure! Even with this entangled threads idea in place, I still have trouble with electromagnetism working as a force for transferring thoughts, both from energy-level and communication interface perspectives, but I could certainly be wrong...

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Psionik

I'm not sure about using word dimension too. But I was able to find those classification on internet and according to that I was able to project into astral(95%+) mental(less than 4%) and budhic (1or2 times) dimension.

---

Psionik,

As I see it, these internet classifications must have some element of truth or they wouldn't work as well as they do. But I think that to some extent they are thoughts of what might be real, and you're projecting into those thoughts. If the thoughts were different your experiences would be different. I've been trying to find or build a better collection of thoughts, because I feel limited by the other ones.

When I had my first out of body experiences, I interpreted them in a conventional New Age way, and assumed that I was out of my physical body in my astral body and seeing and hearing astrally. Then I did some math graduate study of geometry and topology, and started thinking of the experience more in terms of projections and transformations. While awake, I have a tactile and visual mental model of my surroundings that I incorporate sensate information into. If I intentionally manipulate that model so that by sense of where my body is no longer corresponds to where my body actually is, then I have an out of body experience. But nothing is going anywhere, I'm manipulating a model. Superficially, this seems to account for the sensate aspects of the astral experiences, without the existence of any additional dimensions. However, I also get a lot of premonitions and synchronous and telepathetic kinds of experiences. So if other people say that something is going on when they're astral projecting that goes beyond warping an experiential model, I believe them. But I still question how real their interpretation of the experience is, because most people don't seem to have thought very much about the differences between objective reality and the experience of one's representation of it. And I see this as an essential step, even though I'm missing other essential steps.

So your answer, as I understand it, is that a time-like dimension is experienced in a less limited way during your astral experience, and the existence of at least one additional dimension is implied by that experience but not experienced directly. Thanks for putting some thought into that and sharing.

Regarding the ego....Some people think that the capacity to feel is not a part of the ego, that its a part of the 'true self'. Other people put it with the ego. I disagree with both of them in that I think the ego is less illusory than they make it out to be. But in any case, thinking about this sort of thing seems to be a part of what makes it possible to have these more expansive experiences. And I agree with those who identify the development of feeling and thinking with it as being important.

In most of my dreams I don't generate the experience of having a body, I'm nowhere and thinking about thoughts. So I have out-of-body type experiences rarely. But I think a lot of what I'm aware of is the same as what other people are aware of in their astral explorations, even though they're projecting a spirit-body representation into some kind of multidimensional space and I'm not. I think if we talk about feeling, or identity, we're talking about the same things.

I'll have my phone turned off for the next ten days after tonight, but I might find some time to read or post again, we'll see. Thanks for your thoughts. I still haven't replied to everything you said to me earlier, but its still on my list of things I want to get to.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by shadowofwind

Psionik,

As I see it, these internet classifications must have some element of truth or they wouldn't work as well as they do. But I think that to some extent they are thoughts of what might be real, and you're projecting into those thoughts. If the thoughts were different your experiences would be different. I've been trying to find or build a better collection of thoughts, because I feel limited by the other ones.

---

It is so even if I found this classifications years after I had started to do my OBEs? I didn't use outside source to be motivated by OBEs, nor I had any sources available(communist regime in Czechoslovakia at the time). And later also wasn't possible to obtain informations... I found it on internet much later, maybe around year 1998. Even my accidental OBE time travels happened much sooner than that. I don't feel limited by any information obtained, I try to confirm them if I hadn't thought of them sooner. Those dimension I found sooner to be existent, I only didn't have interpretation for it. I didn't have names for them too. I only knew that there are OBEs(I name it walking or traveling, before I knew name OBE) of different kind of feeling, different requirements on mind state for existence in them.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by shadowofwind

When I had my first out of body experiences, I interpreted them in a conventional New Age way, and assumed that I was out of my physical body in my astral body and seeing and hearing astrally. Then I did some math graduate study of geometry and topology, and started thinking of the experience more in terms of projections and transformations. While awake, I have a tactile and visual mental model of my surroundings that I incorporate sensate information into. If I intentionally manipulate that model so that by sense of where my body is no longer corresponds to where my body actually is, then I have an out of body experience. But nothing is going anywhere, I'm manipulating a model. Superficially, this seems to account for the sensate aspects of the astral experiences, without the existence of any additional dimensions. However, I also get a lot of premonitions and synchronous and telepathetic kinds of experiences. So if other people say that something is going on when they're astral projecting that goes beyond warping an experiential model, I believe them. But I still question how real their interpretation of the experience is, because most people don't seem to have thought very much about the differences between objective reality and the experience of one's representation of it. And I see this as an essential step, even though I'm missing other essential steps.

---

My first accidental OBE I thought I'm dying. Then I thought that walking out of body is a very special kind of dream. Then when I saw some glimpses of future, of present... while walking I thought that, that feeling of super reality must be something more than feeling. Since then I'm trying to find more proofs... but proofs are very sparse. I try to learn to have more control during OBEs, but it is quite hard to be at the same time passive and active. On the other side, as time goes it becomes easier. Only proofs are not to come by easily. They are sparse and unclear till I found connection. It could sometimes take years till I have confirmed vision.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by shadowofwind

So your answer, as I understand it, is that a time-like dimension is experienced in a less limited way during your astral experience, and the existence of at least one additional dimension is implied by that experience but not experienced directly. Thanks for putting some thought into that and sharing.

---

Well we don't have physical sense for time flow, therefore in astral it is probably thing of habit from physical dimension... But I can feel sometimes time flow.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by shadowofwind

Regarding the ego....Some people think that the capacity to feel is not a part of the ego, that its a part of the 'true self'. Other people put it with the ego. I disagree with both of them in that I think the ego is less illusory than they make it out to be. But in any case, thinking about this sort of thing seems to be a part of what makes it possible to have these more expansive experiences. And I agree with those who identify the development of feeling and thinking with it as being important.

In most of my dreams I don't generate the experience of having a body, I'm nowhere and thinking about thoughts. So I have out-of-body type experiences rarely. But I think a lot of what I'm aware of is the same as what other people are aware of in their astral explorations, even though they're projecting a spirit-body representation into some kind of multidimensional space and I'm not. I think if we talk about feeling, or identity, we're talking about the same things.

I'll have my phone turned off for the next ten days after tonight, but I might find some time to read or post again, we'll see. Thanks for your thoughts. I still haven't replied to everything you said to me earlier, but its still on my list of things I want to get to.

---

EGO... maybe there is only one part of it negative, the part which is dealing with "volition"(not sure of word as I'm not an English speaker), fear... But part which makes as feel as thinking and feeling entity is real... maybe. When I'm hovering in black void, in thoughtless state of mind, when feelings are substituting thoughts(my definition of meditation)... I have feeling of identity. That identity is only feel of existence of my entity... there is no fear, no "volition", no passion... there is peace, stillness, being... I don't know whether it is possible to repress that feeling of identity(repress is a bad word, I don't know what word to use... to forget would be even worse)
I have OBEs rarely too... sometimes only a few times in month, sometimes only a few times of week :D I want them as often as I need and because it isn't the case, for me it is rarely. And more than 90% of my travels are so uneventful that they don't seem to have meaning. I traveled this week 3 times. I maybe saw into real world- my wife was holding youngest daughter on lap while sitting in children room and speaking with older one. At least she told me so(after my travel). Then I observed again diffusion of material from things. It seems like diffusion is grater around things that could be moved more easily. That would imply that I see possibilities of existence of thing in the place I perceive it? Walls were nearly solid nearly none of diffusion. Maybe I can't often see things which are often moved from one place to different place because probability diffusion makes it invisible? Walking through wall was easy, but I found myself some 100km from my house.

yoyo, Psionik. What do you mean with Diffusion of material? It sounds peculiar and interesting but i can't quite picture it.. Can you please go more into it?

It is like dust surrounding things. Particles hovering around things... they are less concentrated as they are further from things... There is solid mater then it goes firstly through very thick dust then it gradually lowers its concentration to nothingness... Is that more clear?
I think I see connection of that with probability of things being on that particular place. I can be in an error, of course. But it is not first time I saw that.

Yes, that is very detailed. Thank you :)

A glow kind of behaves the same way. It has a thick core but it gradually fades into nothing.

I do not think that probability is a real law of nature. I thought it was just a way of expressing something we don't understand. Hence i do not agree with you. But I agree that it does have a lot of thing in common with Wave-like properties, which is really small particles behaving in a way we don't yet understand.

Remember how Shadow said it is shaped by our expectation? Well.. When i had my first lucid dreams i didn't even know about Probability or Quantum physics.. I just knew about waves. It lends weight to shadow's words on how we shape things. I think it is possible that this mechanism is abolished if you travel with DMT. Presenting a space that is more true to objective reality than Natural Astral travels. Not implying that one is better than the other, they are just different. I'm pretty sure natural travels are much more rewarding in the long run. It just helps to take DMT sometimes so you have some sense of direction and don't have to be stuck in places that have no significant meaning for you. :P

Ur right on the money mate. Glad you brought it up. More fuel for me to find a physical explanation for AP/Shared dreaming.

Probability of thing being at some place in that particular time means for me, at least in light of those experiences, that either I see something like location in 4th dimension(time, like stretched in timeline) or I see it multidimensionally (it could be located in different but adjacent dimensions a little differently)... I mean maybe I see location of thing in many parallel dimensions. I'm not sure why it doesn't have other look, I would take fog form as better fitting than very small but visible particles. But besides first tries to replicate accidental traveling(OBE), I don't try to extent control on things around me with imaginative part of my mind. I keep that part of mind "sleeping". I found long time ago that that is disturbing "reality" of astral, it tends to throw me out, back into my body... or into dream, even if lucid... From time to time people are suggesting doing sex in astral. Very disturbing experience in terms of maintaining balance of feelings, and relaxation of body. I must say, I managed a few times to hold in astral by such activities, but it was because I managed to retain detachment. Such sex is then weird :) At least for me. Because detachment from what body feels, from what mind thinks normally in such emotional activity leads to something close to indifference... It is close to lack of interest in what I'm doing(sex)... When someone asks me about it, I maintain the standpoint that better is not to try such things. I'm not trying to go through such experiences too. It shortens my stays in astral, and I feel that pity.

I don't take any drugs to travel. Relaxation and concentration into right physical and mental state is enough... even if not as reliable as I would like. But mind altering drugs do in my opinion much more than only alter function of brain so you have a trip. I think, the control of imaginative part of mind could be impossible...

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Psionik

It is so even if I found this classifications years after I had started to do my OBEs?

---

Yes, definitely, in my experience. It works the same way as with any other premonition or telepathetic sharing, but is especially likely here. I see this as a major fallacy or trap in religious thinking, that people assume that if they had an experience first before they read or heard about it, that this validates it. In my experience, if I will in the future have contact with some cult or religious idea, I will always have an experience of what they teach first, whether its true or not. I'm not saying that the classifications aren't fundamentally real somehow, I don't know, I'm just saying that to evaluate this you mostly have to ignore the order of events.

It is not important how it is named, it is important that there are differences. And that we can go there and observe that. We can look on those "dimension" as not made by religious groups or individuals, only someone found it sooner. Like for example Niagara falls exist in reality even if I wasn't there. If i travel there, I would find them. Its existence is independent of everybody.

I can't imagine someone creating the surrounding I'm finding while out of body. I would rather believe that I created it... subconsciously. Well that is possible and that is why I try to introduce as little imagination and will into my travels.

I wonder how much is related OBE and NDE... I read that they are closely related... But I dont have my own experience with NDE to know for sure.

Psoinik,

Hi. Apologies again for my short replies. I only have internet access for a few minutes.

I think the astral realm can't be understood as being either objectively real like the Niagara falls or else as made up or pretend. Those ideas sort of apply to physical things, but not so much to 'spiritual' things. I think there is certainly a reality to what we experience astrally, but the way we experience that and divide it into different planes is highly dependent on esoteric religious group-thinking.

Maybe there are other points to be discussed that are more interesting than this one, but that's the one I had time for. Gotta go.

You don't need to be sorry :)

What about looking on astral from point that many things are there relative in comparison to physical world? If it is possible to observe more dimension that in physical world, maybe even see parallel universe at once, and our mind tries to understand or if it cant comprehend things, maybe it is clouding what we see there... As to not to be overloaded with chaotic perceptions...
Maybe, the most stable thing there is mind, which can have only relatively narrow window of state which are compatible with existence in there? Maybe that narrow window is only there because there is living body to which we are connected. When I differ from certain state of mind it throws me back... because I have a place where I can go back. Than there would be question, if my body is dead, where would changing of mind state throw me? :D Into grasps of imagination? Into something like LD as I experienced a few times? It would be sad to be incarcerated in dreamlike environment for who knows how long. Even worse, dreams can make me forget things I know(for time I'm in dream) which can mean I would be there for eternity if there is no reincarnation... and if there is reincarnation, it may be the reason that I must start new life without remembrance of last one.
For me dividing is not thing of religiosity or belief, for me it is just description of different places(dimensions) which have different properties, different mind set needed for existence in them. We can discuss it for very long, but we will not come to truth in many things like this one. That is because we don't have possibility to objectively see things as they are, if they are out of physical realm.
I'm not trying to create belief from what I see while doing OBE. I try to understand. I try to have things proofed. It would be much better proof if there is possible communion through OBE, through other dimension than physical ones.
Just an afterthought... I asked one of my acquaintance, a man about 65 years old what he thinks about this type of things... His opinions was very materialistic... there is nothing after death. One needs to live before he dies. Question "why" or "what for" has not meaning for him. For him it is strange to try to do things like I'm training and experiencing... and he wouldn't invest a iota of his time even if it could be done during sleep time...

Sageous linked this "his" thread
In my Dream Remote Viewing, today

16 Feb 2014 is the last post to date

I think we are one being in billions of different bodies
Like this amazing anthem says.

Thats how Dream Remote Viewing works so well
Because we are one

But we can experience it first hand
in experiments like this

↘️↘️↘️

https://www.dreamviews.com/beyond-dr...ml#post2233188

↗️↗️↗️

I like to believe that dream sharing is possible. I had a dream character come up to me and tell me that I'm dreaming before and made me lucid. But meeting real people in the astral doesn't seem likely, I mean the other person would have to be out of body at the same time as you and you would have to meet up. More luckily to meet real people in regular dreams. You see people you know in the astral but I don't believe it's really them.

^^ Ah, but there is where my theory kicks in, if I remember it correctly (it's been a while)!

If it can exist at all, dream-sharing among people who are not sleeping within a few feet of each other must defy the known rules for space and time; so there really is no need for you and your SD'ing partner to be asleep at the same time. Also, there is no need to be out of body to meet in the astral, or even any need for an "astral" at all. The trick, according to my OP (I hope!) is recognizing the dream your partner is signalling you (and every other dreamer) to join.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by AntiDash

I like to believe that dream sharing is possible. I had a dream character come up to me and tell me that I'm dreaming before and made me lucid. But meeting real people in the astral doesn't seem likely, I mean the other person would have to be out of body at the same time as you and you would have to meet up. More luckily to meet real people in regular dreams. You see people you know in the astral but I don't believe it's really them.

---

A good place to start is just finding the astral in general and look around a bit. It is full of entities and at first communication and interaction will seem difficult and hard to understand. I have interacted far more with entities that live there as opposed to entities who claim to sleeping in say France or Canada. I would say the ratio is 20 astral natives for every 1 that claims to be dreaming like me. I have seen no proof that two people could get to the same place and interact, but I think each of them would have to have high level lucid/astral skill sets. 30+ years into this and it is still crazy and very hard to understand. Perhaps monks who grew up doing this as there main goals in life could do it.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by AntiDash

I like to believe that dream sharing is possible. I had a dream character come up to me and tell me that I'm dreaming before and made me lucid. But meeting real people in the astral doesn't seem likely, I mean the other person would have to be out of body at the same time as you and you would have to meet up. More luckily to meet real people in regular dreams. You see people you know in the astral but I don't believe it's really them.

---

Unless you are able to woke people to perceive astral.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by AntiDash

You see people you know in the astral but I don't believe it's really them.

---

I agree with this. I have dozens of times in my early days been in contact with entities that I am seeing as my friends or family. They were not. Did they disguise themselves to fool me? I do not think so. Almost everything you see in the beginning will be beyond your understanding so you will fill in with dream imagery until the things takes a form you can understand. The astral entities may have been trying to project something like, "you do not need to fear, we are very alike and you can be relaxed around me." Not understanding how the telepathic communication happens and not actually having eyes (instead using a new sense) you simply have to guess what you are experiencing. You feel trust and likeness and comfort coming from this thing. You fill in with a crazy good rendition of your mother.

When I dream of something I don't have an image for, I usually use the closest image I can come up with. I think that our 'astral' experiences are crude and mostly inadequate sensate metaphors for something that would seem quite a bit less comprehendable than what is usually described as 'astral'. Essentially I'm saying that 'astral' is made up, but there's something beyond it that probably can't even be thought of spatially the way we think about our other experiences.

I view minds sort of like nodes or servers on a potential network, running on similar hardware and different software, and separated by vast void/abyss/event horizon. For at least some servers, it may not be possible to communicate directly, but some severs might could communicate with each other, and a potential workaround could involve bringing the network online one node at a time.

I think this may go well with the ideas in the OP. Structure wise, I can see the dreamnet being housed within the bubble surrounding the earth which you described. Though on another level, I also see the individual bubbles/servers as being separated by a vast relative distance, with nodes occasionally interacting with each other naturally in a way similar to how neurons interact, similar to how Occipitalred described a thousand beads in a flask. The structure feels more like eternal inflation/bubble multiverse, as described here: [Is there any way to bypass this? "An error has occurred ZenithofThings! You must be a registered member for at least 7 days in order to post links. You are a registered member since 0 days."] On a deeper level the structure feels sort of like Jeremy Bearimy, as described in this short clip from the good place: [Will edit these 2 placeholders when I'm able to post links.] though much more convoluted. Not those actual letters but a very similar idea.

I have ideas on how to spark the creation of such a network. If anyone can succeed at 1v1 SD, then the connection could potentially be strengthened/stabilized, the source code for software capable of allowing multiple users to interact within a shared operating system within the dream environment could be downloaded. From there, more connections could be added, upgrading the available processing power/resources like plugging new parts into a computer, sharing/spreading the evolving OS and reinforcing the overall robustness and capabilities of the network with each new connection.

If this were to succeed, it would spark the creation of a sort of internet v2.0, where any mind connected to the dreamnet can login simply by falling asleep. I've been working long and hard on creating such an OS, though unfortunately I've never been able to share the source code. I've only had one brief verified success with SD amongst a maddening amount of failure. It happened spontaneously a long time ago, during a time after I had stopped trying to force it, and was verified using a secret email which I only ever handed out during my dreams.

After much consideration, I'm not even sure if the OS should be shared if it is possible. If such a thing were to actually happen, I don't know where opening this Pandora's box could lead, and once opened I doubt it could easily be closed. Combine the risks and benefits of a massive SD network, with the ability to warp subjective perception of time to extremes, and you have the ultimate can of worms.. For one thing, you potentially have pocket dimensions birthing pseudo-god hive minds with nigh eternal lifespans and the ability to interact with the world we live in while "awake".

I'm new here and still catching up on this thread, but wanted to share some old thoughts. Would really like to hear more thoughts on these topics. I'm glad to have found this place, and have a lot of reading to do.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by ZenithofThings

I've only had one brief verified success with SD amongst a maddening amount of failure. It happened spontaneously a long time ago, during a time after I had stopped trying to force it, and was verified using a secret email which I only ever handed out during my dreams.

---

The above is very interesting to me. Could you share the message that was sent and/or the email address?

If you don't want to mess up the privacy of that email address, just give an example that's of similar form. For example, if the address was "[email protected]", you could say it was "similar to [email protected]". (Really though, the message itself is the most important part.)

I'm interested in shared dreaming, but most people who have done personal experimentation on the topic don't seem to like sharing their results that often... :(

I don't have access to the account anymore, but it was short and easy to remember: ____dreams at ____. [Seems like I'm unable to post anything even vaguely resembling a link..] It was a very short dream. As soon as I felt like a connection had been made with something potentially external, back then I would try to make them lucid, and failing that I would get a little scary, repeatedly blast my email at the target with instructions to wake up and immediately email me about the dream, and then I would jump scare them awake. May have involved some level of threat/demand to send the email. Was kind of a messed up thing to do in hindsight.

Perhaps not the most polite thing to do, I didn't enjoy it, but frustrated with getting nowhere otherwise, I did this for a short while in a sort of shotgun blast aimed at everything I came across, in an attempt to connect with someone, anyone. It was never successfully aimed at any particular individual, just any random stranger I could possibly connect to, so there was a sort of lack of consent. I also wanted verification that SD is possible, even if just on a personal level, I wanted to cut out the bias. It wasn't meant to convince anyone outside of the dream of anything.

I stopped using this scum-tactic after the first verification, because it felt icky. The email was a brief description of the dream, wanting to know wtf they experienced, some not so nice words, stay out of my head, etc kind of thing. I sent a reply back, apologizing and filling in a little missing detail, and I guess that maybe creeped them out or something because I never heard back.

The idea was that a brief moment of terror followed by a sudden forced wake up would help make the dream more memorable, lessen chances that the SD target would continue dreaming for hours after the connection ended, and increase overall chances of actually receiving an email. Tbh, part of me doesn't regret the scummy tactic, because it appears to have produced some level of results, though another part of me regrets the whole consent issue, so it's not something I really want to continue doing either. In my defense, at the time I still wasn't sure if true SD was even possible.

I've had a few other potential SD since then which were unverified, also spontaneous events which happened when I wasn't trying to force it, after a long period of trying to force it. The other few suspected SD may or may not have actually been SD, but for whatever reason I never got more than the single email verification.

ZenithofThings:

Sending an e-mail address in a dream seems to me to be very difficult.

I think that 'hive minds' already exist, and all people are a part of them, though they're muddled and mostly subconscious.

I agree that sharing dreams with strangers is icky under most conditions, and generally ought to be avoided, even though it is also the easiest way to be objectively sure that the phenomena is real.

As I've described elsewhere, all of my telepathetic and premonitory dreams have been at least partially triggered by an external source.

Assuming you're sane and objective (not always a safe assumption on this site), you've managed to prove to yourself that telepathy is real, but not in a way that allows you to prove it to anyone else, aside from your one victim who would rather not know. So where do you go next?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by ZenithOfThings

I don't have access to the account anymore, but it was short and easy to remember: ____dreams at ____.

---

Okay, well let us know if you end up remembering the email and/or password. I'd be very interested in reading the raw contents of such an email. :)

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by shadowofwind

ZenithofThings:

Sending an e-mail address in a dream seems to me to be very difficult.

I think that 'hive minds' already exist, and all people are a part of them, though they're muddled and mostly subconscious.

I agree that sharing dreams with strangers is icky under most conditions, and generally ought to be avoided, even though it is also the easiest way to be objectively sure that the phenomena is real.

As I've described elsewhere, all of my telepathetic and premonitory dreams have been at least partially triggered by an external source.

Assuming you're sane and objective (not always a safe assumption on this site), you've managed to prove to yourself that telepathy is real, but not in a way that allows you to prove it to anyone else, aside from your one victim who would rather not know. So where do you go next?

---

The icky part wasn't SD with strangers, but utilizing terror to increase dream recall and wake them up.

As far as the next step, I think it should be asking if I should proceed at all. If I shouldn't then I simply drop it. If I should, then I continue looking for a way to expand the dreamnet, by getting those first crucial connections set up and stabilized, and expanding from there.

Though even if those connections can be made, I'm not sure if they can be stabilized. Then I'm not sure if the OS can be shared. Even if the OS can be shared, I'm not sure if all of its' features will be usable, the OS would likely require tweaking. Then there are concerns with security, privacy, safety, ethics, etc.

Ultimately, the mass SDnet may not be feasible in its' current form, and may require future tech to bring about. Things like advancements with brain/machine interface could eventually end up hosting the shared OS which allows our minds to communicate and unlocks SD networks.

Mind rape is still wrong even if you do it gently.

I think a limitation of your computer networking analogy is it gives the impression we're designing something that can be controlled, and it makes the connection seem less emotionally intimate than it is really. You're not constructing a machine that other people will use, you're deciding how far you want to be inside someone else's skin, and how open you are to that yourself. We don't have any power over the principles governing how that works.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by ZenithofThings

I don't have access to the account anymore, but it was short and easy to remember: ____dreams at ____. [Seems like I'm unable to post anything even vaguely resembling a link..] [...]

The other few suspected SD may or may not have actually been SD, but for whatever reason I never got more than the single email verification.

---

By the way, I thought of a way you may be able to recover the email address and login. On Gmail and some of the others, you're able to enter a "recovery email" when you create the address. If you did so, it will have sent an email to your "recovery" address mentioning that a new account was created. That will let you find the address, at which point you can then use the "password recovery" option to recover the login.

So, what I suggest is to use the search function in your main email-address that you had around the time you created the dream email-address, and search for an email that mentions the creation of your new dream email-address.

If your email address was created on Gmail, just search for an email that contains the text "new Gmail address" (make sure you put quotation marks around it when you search). If it's a different provider (like Yahoo), you could maybe search for keywords like "new", "address", "dream", etc.

Anyway, this is what one of those full emails looks like (for Gmail, when I created a second account in 2011):

Quote:

---

Congratulations on creating your brand new Gmail address, [email protected].
Please keep this email for your records, as it contains an
important verification code that you may need should you ever
encounter problems or forget your password.

You can login to your account at http://mail.google.com/

Enjoy!

The Gmail Team


Verification code: XXXXX


If you didn't create this Gmail address and don't recognize this email,
please visit: http://mail.google.com/support/bin/a...y?answer=62400

---

And this is what it looked like when I created some other accounts from 2013 to 2017:

Quote:

---

Welcome to Gmail! You can login to your account at http://mail.google.com/.

Here are a couple of tips to help you get started:

Use Gmail's import tools to move mail and contacts from your other email accounts to your new Gmail address.
Download the mobile app for Android or iPhone and iPad
to stay connected on the go.
Should you ever encounter problems with your account or forget your password we will contact you at this address.

Enjoy!

The Gmail Team

If you didn't create this Gmail address and don't recognize this email, please visit: https://accounts.google.com/AccountDisavow?adt=XXXXX to unlink this account.

---

If searching for it sounds inconvenient, I'm willing to send you $20 (over PayPal or what-not) in compensation if you manage to recover the login and email in question. ^_^

(I'd really like to see an example of a shared-dreaming verification! I'm pretty skeptical of it personally, but I'd be very interested if it were real, and an "in my hands" email verification from years prior would be pretty compelling!)

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by shadowofwind

Mind rape is still wrong even if you do it gently.

I think a limitation of your computer networking analogy is it gives the impression we're designing something that can be controlled, and it makes the connection seem less emotionally intimate than it is really. You're not constructing a machine that other people will use, you're deciding how far you want to be inside someone else's skin, and how open you are to that yourself. We don't have any power over the principles governing how that works.

---

What exactly do you mean by mind rape? Ideally everything done to bring about the SDnet would be done with mutual consent between everyone involved. Though if the SDnet were brought online, I doubt it could be controlled for long, and humanity has a tendency to weaponize whatever it can. This is one of my concerns preventing me from putting my full effort into moving forward with the project.

One of the things I incorporated from the psions is a system for programming constructs, which can be quite useful as a tool for dream control. Many things in my dreams are intentionally programmed. I often create and play dream rpgs with functional rules, npcs, etc all working just as designed. Of course, I'm able to bend the rules if I want, so unfortunately I don't see why other dreamers wouldn't be able to do the same, and don't know how I would go about preventing such a thing. Assuming any of this is possible, and is also something I decide I want to attempt, I'd want to do extensive testing during the first few connections before going further with attempting to bring the network online.

I use a lot of code in my dreams. The OS has a lot of built in features such as voice commands, customizable HUD, etc and is meant to act as a sort of dev kit to allow even novice lucid dreamers to easily manipulate their dreams and design their own worlds via an easy to use interface.

But yea, we may or may not have any power over the principles governing how SD works, because I don't think we know how it works.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Venryx

By the way, I thought of a way you may be able to recover the email address and login.

---

Sorry, but this was over a decade ago, and I've tried but failed to access the account a few times over the years. It's possible I have the password written down somewhere but I haven't been able to find it. Also, it was never intended to work as verification for anyone other than myself. I'm not really sure what a system intending to verify the existence of SD to outsiders would even look like, though I haven't put much thought into it because it isn't something I'm particularly interested in.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

If you guys could just flip a switch and the shared dream network I've described would suddenly go online, after which anyone falling asleep would see a login screen with the option to enter the SDnet, and could stay for as long as they want, meet up with other users who are logged in, etc, before waking up.. Would you choose to flip the switch or not? Why or why not?

This is a question which has haunted me for a long time, and I'm still undecided, but leaning towards not flipping the switch. Personally despite having similar concerns and its' own sets of pros and cons, I think it might could be safer to pursue replicating the SDnet with true deep dive VR tech capable of accurately mimicking LD experiences, though it could take quite a long time before such a thing is developed.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by ZenithofThings

Sorry, but this was over a decade ago, and I've tried but failed to access the account a few times over the years. It's possible I have the password written down somewhere but I haven't been able to find it. Also, it was never intended to work as verification for anyone other than myself. I'm not really sure what a system intending to verify the existence of SD to outsiders would even look like, though I haven't put much thought into it because it isn't something I'm particularly interested in.

---

The approach I mentioned, though, would let you recover your dream account without having to remember your password -- assuming you did have a recovery email connected.

Isn't it at least worth checking your main account from that period, to see if it's linked with your hidden dream account?

Anyway, assuming you didn't have your main account and dream account connected, I'd still be pretty interested in:
1) Knowing what the exact email address was for the dream account. (Who knows, maybe someone else remembered one of your attempts, and I could find a second verification posted to a forum or something through Google. If you'd rather not broadcast the address, I'm open to a private-message!)
2) Reading an early account of the dream you're aware of, from your dream journal or something. I know you've already described the contents, but reading a "closer to the time it occurred" record could provide details that could have otherwise been forgotten over the years. Were you writing to a dream journal at the time, or some other written record?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by ZenithofThings

If you guys could just flip a switch and the shared dream network I've described would suddenly go online, after which anyone falling asleep would see a login screen with the option to enter the SDnet, and could stay for as long as they want, meet up with other users who are logged in, etc, before waking up.. Would you choose to flip the switch or not? Why or why not?

---

I would obviously want to think about that some more, but I think I probably would, yes. The concerns you mentioned, while valid, I think are better to face head on as a society, instead of potentially having just some rogue group somewhere find out about it and start exploiting it without the rest of us knowing. At least if we "flipped the switch" and enabled it globally, the "good guys" would have a chance to know about it and start setting up safeguards, to prevent a "subtle takeover" or manipulation campaigns by smaller groups that are in the know.

(It's similar to the concern about advanced, general AI. There are groups seriously worried about a rogue group being the first to achieve it, and causing a catastrophe that we can't recover from due to the AI outpacing us and making us unable to "pull the plug". It might not even be a "rogue" group, but just a group that wasn't careful enough. Anyway, the reasoning is that if the state-of-the-art AI development is done out in the open, we'll have time to realize when it's getting too close to the point of no return, and thus be able to carefully inch our way up to it while minimizing the chance of it becoming destructive.)

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Venryx

I would obviously want to think about that some more, but I think I probably would, yes. The concerns you mentioned, while valid, I think are better to face head on as a society, instead of potentially having just some rogue group somewhere find out about it and start exploiting it without the rest of us knowing. At least if we "flipped the switch" and enabled it globally, the "good guys" would have a chance to know about it and start setting up safeguards, to prevent a "subtle takeover" or manipulation campaigns by smaller groups that are in the know.

(It's similar to the concern about advanced, general AI. There are groups seriously worried about a rogue group being the first to achieve it, and causing a catastrophe that we can't recover from due to the AI outpacing us and making us unable to "pull the plug". It might not even be a "rogue" group, but just a group that wasn't careful enough. Anyway, the reasoning is that if the state-of-the-art AI development is done out in the open, we'll have time to realize when it's get close to the point of no return, and thus be able to carefully inch our way up to it while minimizing the chance of it becoming destructive.)

---

Interesting response. Another thing to consider is that if it's possible to create such a network, it is likely to happen sooner or later without my help, so the choice becomes whether to flip the switch or delay someone else from flipping the switch.

A big problem though is that we don't exactly know what we a dealing with. If we could get multiplayer dreaming working at all, on a small scale, then perhaps we could learn more, but even then if combined with the TPD (Time Perception Dilation) abyss things become much more unpredictable. Even if the first few nodes on the network were somehow vetted careful "good guys" I doubt a headstart would mean much when dealing with such massive potential timescales. I mean, if anyone could have the option to sleep for an hour but dream for billions+ years, there's no telling what that could do to human minds, or what could return once the body wakes up.

Venyrx,

I don't think that anyone can provide you with any "proof" that can't be faked. I have some e-mail evidence that I know I didn't fake, but there's no way to demonstrate that to someone else. So I think if you want proof, you have to have the experiences yourself.

A few years ago, I used to taunt skeptics a little bit on this point. It seemed to me that a lot of people's skepticism came down to fear, since they were willing to argue endlessly about shared dreaming, but not willing to try it. Now I think that it is important to respect that fear, and not try to push someone's buttons until they decide to try something that they don't really want to do.

Here's a possible experience to try: Ask yourself a question, something you care about fairly deeply, like the answer to a philosophical or psychological issue. Be open, in other words willing to not control your own dreams. Write down what you dream afterwards. I'll make note of my dream and send it to you. If my dream contains imagery or other details from your life that I could not have known otherwise, then there's some evidence. Since I share my dream first, you'll know I'm not faking it. Then if you share your dream, I might be able to provide some additional explanation. My dreams tend to be fairly metaphorical, so there will probably be enough subjectivity in interpretation that you wouldn't be sure that its not just a coincidence or reading stuff into it that's not there. But once you get a small sense of the experience, if you keep pulling on that string and wanting to know, you may get clearer experiences later. That's how it went for me anyway.

The reason I suggest asking a philosophical question, is that's the kind of thing the 'shared dreaming' part of me cares about. It has no interest in trading passwords or predicting lottery numbers or other such things. I don't control it, and I don't make any attempt to influence my own dreams, it just happens or it doesn't. I almost don't even dream now, so I don't know if anything will happen if we try this, but its easy to try. Previously, I seemed to be about 50% successful with this sort of thing. In one case I don't know if it was real or if the other person was making up his dream afterwards to make it match mine. In another case the sharing was objectively real. In another case or two I believed it was real, and so did the other person, but it was subjective, without objective evidence. In one or two cases the other person did not dream at all. Here I'm only talking about deliberate attempts to do this on this web site. Most of my experiences have been spontaneous, not deliberate like this.

As I've explained elsewhere, probably even in this thread, it doesn't matter if we're both asleep at the same time, it doesn't work that way. Just pick the next sleep after you read this, if you decide you want to do it, so we know which dreams we're trying to compare.

ZenithofThings,

In some countries, if you lie to someone about your feelings and intentions, and as a consequence they have sex with you, that's legally considered rape. The encounter is "voluntary" on both sides, but one or both people didn't really understand what they were getting into. And even when it doesn't meet any useful legal definition of rape, one or both people can still get hurt that way, even when there is a lot of grey area. And even when there's full consent on both sides without deception, its still not always a good idea. Many people who are sexually promiscuous are able to act like that because they're really not very open emotionally, they have other internal walls that they keep raised.

With shared dreaming, there are still walls, but there also has to be a lot of openness at a fairly deep level or it likely doesn't happen. And consent with shared dreaming is problematic in that you open yourself up to things that you can't fully anticipate at the outset, particularly if you're new to attempting to shared dream. Most people really don't want other people in their minds that way, whether the other person intentionally scares them or not.

I agree with you that you have some ability to construct a miniature thought-world in which some dream experiences are easier for other people to have. But its a bunch of thoughts around the subject, its not really the underpinnings of how the sharing really works. So there's still a lot built into it that is the way it is that you can't change. By way of analogy, you can build a wheelbarrow to cart some stuff around in, but you can't change the rules of gravity, leverage, and friction.

I think our idea and ideological thought-weelbarrows are somewhat important, but a lot less important that I used to suppose they are. To push the analogy a little further, the tool may say "Essential To Your Yard Job (TM)" on the side, or essential to salvation, or whatever, but its really just a box sitting on a wheel with two handles forming a Type II lever. Get rid of any part of it and you can still probably find a way to get the job done if you want to.

So how about hosting the OS in a neutral group meetup place? Perhaps everyone could share an image of the same unique door to conjure and walk through as part of attempting to reach the neutral zone? Could maybe even provide various kinds of built in shielding for everyone. Has something like this been tried?

Your response is intriguing, shadowofwind.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by shadowofwind

Venyrx, I don't think that anyone can provide you with any "proof" that can't be faked. I have some e-mail evidence that I know I didn't fake, but there's no way to demonstrate that to someone else. So I think if you want proof, you have to have the experiences yourself.

---

It's true that someone's sharing of an email isn't "proof" in the societal sense, ie. if you try to share an email, some will claim you sent it yourself. However, on an individual level, sharing that sort of content can be pretty convincing for the person who first requested it.

To be more specific, due to the circumstances by which my contact with you has developed (my asking for a copy of someone else's email, but then finding someone else allude to their having something similar themself, after having already been active in the thread apart from my asking) I'm someone who would believe you if you sent a screenshot of an email with evidence of shared dreaming.

In other words, while I don't have "proof" that the emails in question are genuine, I have good reason to think they are, because:
1) You were not actively seeking out people to try to convince. (most people who hoax things will immediately seek others out to share it, not wait till someone else brings it up)
2) You were already active in this thread, writing substantial posts. (due to time constraints, it's not very reasonable for a hoaxer to get involved in lots of threads, if their sole purpose is to trick people who eventually might ask for evidence)
3) You write thoughtfully and coherently, and you seem genuinely interested in the subject. If you were a hoaxer of evidence for it, I'd expect a more controlled and elusive writing style. (deflecting counter-points, instead of demonstrating understanding of them and accepting that providing definitive proof is difficult)

And finally, the one you might find the most unexpected:
4) I have, in fact, already done pretty extensive, personal experimentation on the link between the mind and remote entities (that is, "extensive" relative to mainstream attention/acceptance; "just the beginning" relative to what is possible). In my case, my experimentation was directed toward "psi" rather than shared dreaming, but it's plausible that the mechanism behind one would be the same as the mechanism behind the other.

To be more specific, I purchased a "hardware-based random number generator" (the BitBabbler black: TRNG hardware, software, and testing - BitBabbler), coded my own software to translate the output from the device into actions on-screen, and starting running "sessions" where I would "will"/"intend" the results to trend toward the designated target. (with my computer recording the results of every session in a database) [Note: The software does make use of the mouse, but only to change the location of an on-screen "intention-focusing" marker. The code that runs the simulation is entirely separate from the code that changes the location of the marker.]

It will surprise some to hear (as it did me!) that the experiment -- yes -- succeeded. And it didn't just succeed "nominally"; the results deviated from chance so far that it reached a peak "rarity by chance" of 1 in more than 32,000 (32,258, to be precise -- with the control series remaining under the 1 in 20 threshold throughout the entire experiment). After that "peak", the results did begin to weaken. One might consider it to still have been "trending" in the right direction (depending on the length of the evaluation window), but because the trend intensity was much weaker, the rarity-by-chance value began to drop. Because of this, I put the experiment on hold (ending at a rarity by chance value of 1 in 2,808).

See here for screenshots/graphs of the results from the experiment: https://imgur.com/a/iKkSxKn

I did consider resuming shortly after, if pre-marked-as-such "test" sessions showed the effect restrengthening; but I only tried this once or twice before deciding it wasn't worth the time on a continuation that some people wouldn't consider legitimate anyway. (Since it increases the chance of the effect being based just on some environmental variation between days. Since I'm familiar with the code, I knew this to be very unlikely, since the random-number generation process applies a "simplify each from-device number to just a 1 or 0 (based on an alternating more-than/less-than mapping), sum it with 199 other such 1s/0s, and use the result as your actual number" filtering process, which dramatically mitigates the effects of any large-scale environment changes. But since this takes further explanation, and is another component for people to dis-earnestly criticize, I figured it was best to leave the result as is and just start fresh with a new, more comprehensive experiment in the future.)

(I'll eventually get back to psi experimentation, but there's other things I'm focusing on right now; I got what I wanted out of my initial experimentation foray, and when I return to it I intend to expand the experimentation and make it easy for anyone to set up and perform themselves -- and with the streamlined ability to combine everyone's results into a global result set. However, if someone is intent on replicating my experiment right now, I'm willing to help you do so, so long as you aren't lazy about your half of the setup. ^_^)

It's also worth noting that throughout my experimentation process, I updated my friends with the results as they developed (specifically, over Google Hangouts). Like you mention shadow, there's no definitive way to prove oneself as an honest person; but just as I trust your account based on heuristics (writing style, understanding of epistemology, the path by which the person came in contact, etc.), so also I'm hoping people will be able to recognize my own account as genuine.

Because I often get frustrated with the lack of transparency from other people claiming they have evidence of things (but that the evidence is just not currently accessible for some reason), let me break with that trend by being upfront:
1) About a year ago, I became interested in the subject of psi. I considered it quite unlikely (~10% probability), but I was interested in it enough that I thought I'd look into it more.
2) I spent weeks doing extensive reading on existing psi research. The results were not conclusive, but they were much better than I expected. By the end of my research, I was seriously considering the possibility that psi is real.
3) During my reading, I also came to find that tons of people who criticized psi (and the research), were doing so based not on reasonable complaints, but just because they found the idea "ridiculous". For example, a group would do a study and obtain positive results (rarity-by-chance values of over a thousand, over a million, over a billion), and critics would just ignore the data and complain about "problems" with the study that they didn't even take the time to see if they applied. In many cases, the "problems" were known by the researchers before they even started their work, and they carefully prevented it from coming up. The critics never knew this though because they didn't even take the time to look at the paper (and others hearing of it dismissed the research immediately because they assumed those complaints were valid).
4) Although the data from existing research was promising, there is always the concern that some of the researchers were making mistakes or outright lying. While selective reporting was already shown insufficient for many of the study sets (the amount of deviation from chance is just too high, given how many studies would have had to have been discarded to yield the given global average), the doubts about competency or honesty are ones which are harder to definitively rule out. This is true of every field, but it's especially prevalent for subjects that are not currently accepted by the mainstream. Because of this, I decided I would perform psi experiments myself: this way I have direct access to the source code (to verify for myself that the code and analysis-algorithms are accurate), and because I am the sole test subject, I know there's no deception going on during the test sessions.
5) I got to work and coded a simple experiment, where I try to will the number generator to yield more high numbers than low numbers. This first attempt had interesting (imo) results, but ultimately did not reach the traditional bar of "significance" (ie. a termination-point rarity by chance of 1 in 20 or better).
6) I designed and coded a second experiment, specifically designed to amplify the "psi effect" if one were to exist (the basic idea is that I had two targets, a positive and a negative, but the negative target was concealed to prevent subconscious "psi missing"; once the session completed, it would then tell me how many times the visible "positive" target was hit relative to the unknown-location "negative" target). This is the experiment I mention above; the results were (in my opinion) very successful -- performed over about twenty days, with a streak of 13 straight days of gains at one point.

The good part:
7) The device I used is a commercial product that anyone can buy. (and I still have my copy, which still functions)
8) I still have access to all of the data from my experiment. It was not lost to a fire, accidental deletion, etc., so I am able to deliver if someone asks me for it.
9) Because I updated my friends with what was happening during the process (both my reading as well as my experimentation), I have multiple third-parties who can verify that things developed as I describe. (If someone wants contact info, I can provide it on request through private-messaging.)
10) The experiment was done carefully (well, for an experiment that some random software-developer put together; it's not as air-tight as a years-in-the-planning lab study done by a room full of PhD professors, but oh well), and with precise rarity-by-chance values calculated (based on Monte-Carlo simulations). Because of this, I can give a distinct number to people who ask how significant the results really were, in a way that rational people cannot just ignore. (Instead of having to rely on a person's subjective opinion of how significant some result is. Not that subjective analysis is useless; however, it's much easier for people to brush-off/dismiss that if the theory clashes with their existing worldview.)
11) The software was self-developed, and is not part of some organizational distribution barrier, so I can share it with anyone who's willing to try replicating the experiment. (I can work with you on request if you're interested. I just haven't done so yet because it will take a fair amount of time to package up nicely, and no one has shown a serious interest yet.)

Anyway, if the above text-version is too boring, here's a link again to the screenshots/graphs of the results from that second experiment: https://imgur.com/a/iKkSxKn

In summary, I'm actually pretty open to the idea of remote interactions. I say that I'm skeptical of shared dreaming because, even though I do now believe in psi (not conclusively, but I do consider it more likely than not), I'm skeptical about how much that psi connection is involved in the seeming correlations between specific dream accounts. I think there probably is some connection (just from general psi interaction), but I have doubts about how substantial that connection is. (as opposed to it mostly just being coincidence, misremembering, exaggerating, and/or selective reporting)

That might sound bad, but I think a healthy skepticism is good to have, as long as you're genuinely open to considering new evidence that comes in. For me, this is how I currently approach shared dreaming: skeptical, but interested, and willing to hear more. (and eventually experiment myself, most likely)

So anyway, my point is that I do care quite a bit about potential evidence for things like psi or shared dreaming, so if you have evidence for such things, I'm very interested in seeing it! (I'm not just a critic looking for something to shoot down ^_^)

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by shadowofwind

A few years ago, I used to taunt skeptics a little bit on this point. It seemed to me that a lot of people's skepticism came down to fear, since they were willing to argue endlessly about shared dreaming, but not willing to try it. Now I think that it is important to respect that fear, and not try to push someone's buttons until they decide to try something that they don't really want to do.

---

I personally think it usually has more to do with arrogance than fear. A lot of the critics I encountered on existing psi research, seemed to be treating the papers as something just to laugh at and feel better about themselves for confidently rejecting (while providing only shallow, condescending, and sometimes just plain wrong justifications for). I suppose a subset of them might be from fear as well, but I don't think it's the most common reason.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by shadowofwind

Here's a possible experience to try: Ask yourself a question, something you care about fairly deeply, like the answer to a philosophical or psychological issue. Be open, in other words willing to not control your own dreams. Write down what you dream afterwards. I'll make note of my dream and send it to you. If my dream contains imagery or other details from your life that I could not have known otherwise, then there's some evidence. Since I share my dream first, you'll know I'm not faking it. Then if you share your dream, I might be able to provide some additional explanation. My dreams tend to be fairly metaphorical, so there will probably be enough subjectivity in interpretation that you wouldn't be sure that its not just a coincidence or reading stuff into it that's not there. But once you get a small sense of the experience, if you keep pulling on that string and wanting to know, you may get clearer experiences later. That's how it went for me anyway.

---

I think I probably went through a similar experience while beginning my research into psi, and eventual experiments on it. If the quirks of psi research apply also to the phenomenon of shared dreaming (assuming it is real), then I have some idea of what that process could look like.

Two interesting things about psi research is that, 1, it's not as straight-forward to study as some people assume, because the phenomenon appears to interact significantly with the state of mind of both the test subject and the researcher (this is unfortunate, but it does not make research pointless, as some critics like to pretend). And 2, it's quite the adventure to gain first-hand experience of discovering a whole field of studies I never knew existed, realizing how biased mainstream thought can be and how swiftly people will discard scientific approaches when it strays too far from their preconceptions, and thinking about what implications such phenomena may have on the nature of the world, if in fact they are genuine.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by shadowofwind

The reason I suggest asking a philosophical question, is that's the kind of thing the 'shared dreaming' part of me cares about. It has no interest in trading passwords or predicting lottery numbers or other such things. I don't control it, and I don't make any attempt to influence my own dreams, it just happens or it doesn't. I almost don't even dream now, so I don't know if anything will happen if we try this, but its easy to try. Previously, I seemed to be about 50% successful with this sort of thing. In one case I don't know if it was real or if the other person was making up his dream afterwards to make it match mine. In another case the sharing was objectively real. In another case or two I believed it was real, and so did the other person, but it was subjective, without objective evidence. In one or two cases the other person did not dream at all. Here I'm only talking about deliberate attempts to do this on this web site. Most of my experiences have been spontaneous, not deliberate like this.

---

Well thank you for the offer! Most people are not serious enough about these sorts of subjects to actually put in time to try to see if they are true. Most will not even spend a half hour to do some Google searches for existing research on the topic.

On your offer specifically: That sounds fun, and I'd like to do so. I have a similar problem that I'm currently not having that many vivid dreams. I'm experimenting with some software-driven LD induction ideas (eg. having it generate random 3-digit numbers, with me trying to train my memory by repeating it back the next time I awake), and I've had some successful inductions, but I'm still a far way off from reliability. I know lucidity isn't necessary for what you propose, but for me, I usually don't have vivid/detailed/memorable dreams unless the spark of lucidity first gets introduced into it.

In summary, I'd like to try your idea, but I'm not sure how long it will take. Maybe how we can do it is, I'll formulate a subject that's meaningful to me as a suitable "target". I'll then wait until I have a dream that deals with the subject substantially. I'll then send you a message (or post in this thread), letting you know I've completed my side, and have recorded the result. (And I'll post my dream and thoughts to a third-party site which shows the "last edit time", so that once you've posted your dream, I can link you to my own pre-written account, and we can compare them to each other -- knowing that neither has been tampered with after reading the other's.)

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by shadowofwind

As I've explained elsewhere, probably even in this thread, it doesn't matter if we're both asleep at the same time, it doesn't work that way. Just pick the next sleep after you read this, if you decide you want to do it, so we know which dreams we're trying to compare.

---

We could do it that way, but I'd rather wait until one of us (probably me) has a substantial dream on the target before starting the process. This way we have a higher chance of finding "noteworthy matches", as opposed to if it's based on a hazier dream with few details (where even if you manage to match something in my life, it's less demonstrable to other readers by means of the raw dream accounts).

By the way, I've always been kinda curious why some (eg. you, zenith, and many others) are not interested in "proving" things like this as much as I am. For me, one of the most important things to do, before you spend a lot of time on something, is to obtain clear evidence that it is real so you can convince the wider world. Why? Because if you can convince the wider world, you can increase the amount of research that gets done on it.

I mean, imagine if the world woke up tomorrow, and 80% of scientists were convinced shared dreaming is real. Can you imagine how quickly our knowledge of the subject would advance? So I can understand why it might not be interesting personally to someone to obtain clear evidence, but aren't you guys at least interested in it because of what it would mean for expanding how much research is done on the subject?

Anyway, looking forward to our eventual SD attempt! (As well as the email interaction you mentioned -- that should be fun to read, even if not conclusive :) )

I just need to think of what question to use as the target now...

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Venryx

Your response is intriguing, shadowofwind.By the way, I've always been kinda curious why some (eg. you, zenith, and many others) are not interested in "proving" things like this as much as I am. For me, one of the most important things to do, before you spend a lot of time on something, is to obtain clear evidence that it is real so you can convince the wider world. Why? Because if you can convince the wider world, you can increase the amount of research that gets done on it.

I mean, imagine if the world woke up tomorrow, and 80% of scientists were convinced shared dreaming is real. Can you imagine how quickly our knowledge of the subject would advance? So I can understand why it might not be interesting personally to someone to obtain clear evidence, but aren't you guys at least interested in it because of what it would mean for expanding how much research is done on the subject?

Anyway, looking forward to our eventual SD attempt! (As well as the email interaction you mentioned -- that should be fun to read, even if not conclusive :) )

I just need to think of what question to use as the target now...

---

I did strongly want personal evidence for a long time, but there are multiple reasons why I'm not so keen on rushing to prove SD to the world. For one, it would be quite difficult, as I was barely able to prove it to myself, and don't have a reliable way to experiment with SD.

More importantly, caution seems wise here. I've dedicated the vast majority of my life to my greatest obsession of exploring and pushing against the boundaries of what can possibly be done within a dream. Have made many breakthroughs throughout the years and if you could witness some of what I've experienced then perhaps you would also consider approaching SD with caution. I see it as a missing puzzle piece that could potentially unleash a sort of pandora's box upon the world.

For the sake of exploration and experimentation, I'd be willing to help produce subjective evidence intended for those involved, but I'm not currently looking to prove SD to the world.


On another note, I got pretty heavy into psi training for a few years, way back in my early to mid teens. Worked with things like psiwheel, shielding, advanced constructs, programming, etc, but not much to show for it this side of reality. Never did get the wheel to spin under glass, and psi always felt super light, no where near dense enough to interact with solid matter in any meaningful way, at least for me. Anyways, I excelled with constructs and programming, and got the most use from my training with psi by implementing it into my dream control toolbox. I took what I found useful and then dropped trying to attain irl usefulness. Don't really want to dedicate 30+ years of training just to maybe come out the other end finally able make a psiwheel spin.

I can also understand why some people would dismiss claims coming from psionics without looking deeply into it. I don't know how things are now, but back when i was researching psi there was a lot of fluff to sift through.

I only vaguely recall hearing of RNG manipulation, but that sounds like some first earth battalion type stuff. I'm curious as to how it works, and what could be done with it. Are you manipulating the generator itself, manipulating some sort of quantum potential, somehow piloting to a world line where the desired outcome was achieved, or something else? Could you manipulate RNG in a pokemon game to achieve a high rate of shiny encounters?

Venryx,

I had a couple of related dreams which I can post after you tell me that you're ready, that you selected a topic and dreamed already. I don't think it matters very much that I dreamed before you selected your topic, because your topic selection will tend to be tied in with the same intuitions anyway.

I think that if we drag this out very long it will get harder to demonstrate anything, because our dreams will get increasingly contaminated by our external interactions, and the novelty of having met a new person will wear off. I'll see what I dream tomorrow night also, then I think that's it for me.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by shadowofwind

Venryx,

I had a couple of related dreams which I can post after you tell me that you're ready, that you selected a topic and dreamed already. I don't think it matters very much that I dreamed before you selected your topic, because your topic selection will tend to be tied in with the same intuitions anyway.

I think that if we drag this out very long it will get harder to demonstrate anything, because our dreams will get increasingly contaminated by our external interactions, and the novelty of having met a new person will wear off. I'll see what I dream tomorrow night also, then I think that's it for me.

---

Oh my. I'd prefer to not have to be rushed, but since your subconscious has already started, I suppose I'll have to try. ^_^

Deciding on a topic now, and turning on my try-hard-to-remember-my-upcoming-dreams mode... (we'll see if it works)

EDIT: Okay, I've decided on my topic and written it down. Now just need to have a dream about it.

Venryx,

I don't have time to read everything carefully right now, but briefly on the subject of why I'm not more enthusiastic about 'proving' shared dreaming.

Let's suppose I find someone in a psychology department somewhere who is potentially interested in working on this. We can try to get funding, or do it unfunded. If we try to get public funding, the first priority of any potential grant source is ass-covering: they have to be able to justify their decision to their higher-ups, who are worried about negative fallout if some other party publicly demands to know why they spent money on this. A second problem is that SBIR or STTR grants from agencies like NIH or NSF need some justification of potential business benefit, advancing science isn't enough. There are other grant types, but they're much harder to get. The ass-covering issue probably sinks us all by itself though. If we go to a private source of funds, ass-covering is again an issue, unless we're talking directly to Mr. Billionaire, and lack of a way to monetize it is again a problem. The way that Mr. Billionaire got to be one is by making decisions based on money. Even the ostensibly altruistic activities of most rich people are investments that benefit companies they own, if you look at the details. I've met wealthy people who believe in paranormal phenomena who have not the slightest bit of interest in funding such research.

But lets suppose we find an exception. Or lets suppose we do the work unfunded, even though that's very difficult because most people in 'respectable' research positions have other research obligations and families to take care of. (I'm neglecting other things just to write this message.) Suppose we successfully produce evidence that some kind of dream telepathy is real. How do people know we didn't cheat? We need a referee. How do external critics know that the referee wasn't in on the cheat? That will be alleged, and it can't be disproved. Why would any potential referee want to put their reputation and risk like that? Would it even be right for us to ask them to? And how am I going to get subsequent grants on other respectable subjects after gaining notoriety as a pseudo-scientist? I need to continue to earn a living. Likewise for other people who I collaborate with on other research. It is a huge can of worms. With other research, other researchers can reproduce the results if they do it correctly. The whole scientific approach depends on that. Here, I'm not even sure I can reproduce it myself, there's an essential element that I'm not in control of. If the research is successful, other people will need to follow up, and many or all of them will get negative results. How to answer that? My experience from conversations is that other potential researchers also have a very poor intuitive grasp of what we're trying to accomplish, and will not set up their experiments or interpret their results in an appropriate manner. They imagine we're trying to send a hidden signal between two people. We're not, it doesn't work that way. And there will be some subjectivity or metaphor that needs to be grappled with when interpreting the results. Researchers are generally not equipped to deal with that either. The a-temporal and action-at-a-distance nature of the interaction also makes the experiment very hard to isolate. We need to involve multiple people, with many dreams, and everything leaks into everything else. It makes it extremely difficult to have any kind of control group, or to make anything like a 'measurement'.

Having said all of that, I'll ask around again and see if I can find any interest, but it looks to me like a doomed undertaking, and the risks are probably too high for it to be worth trying.

Venryx,

I've now read the rest of your post.

I'm going to go ahead and post my last night's dreams in the Dream Interpretation section. So don't go there if you're not ready to read them yet.

If you don't dream, that doesn't kill our experiment, because your thoughts would show up in my dreams as easily as mine would show up in yours. I don't dream anywhere near as vividly as I did a few years ago, but maybe its enough.

A potential flaw in your software experiment is if the start and stop of the random number generation isn't completely isolated from the software execution. Your mouse use will subtly affect the run time. If your software triggers the hardware, then that seems to me to be a problem. Or if the software polls the hardware, that's a problem. But if the software has a buffer that stores the hardware output, so that the buffer content has nothing to do with the software timing, then that works. I guess you already thought of all that, but I couldn't tell from your description.

In any case, I know I can affect 'random' events, so I'm not surprised for you to find this result. It would not surprise me if you fail to reproduce it though. The reason for a failure to reproduce, is the effect the experimental outcome has on your life is not the same for subsequent experiments as it was for the first experiment. The later outcomes don't "matter" as much because they don't affect your belief in psi as much, which affects choices you make which affect a lot of other things. I doubt your subconscious actually knows how to manipulate the random number generator, I don't think the manipulation is direct like that. What your subconscious does know how to do is select possible future life conditions out of a larger set of potential conditions and make them 'real' by making them more concrete at some level. The 'random' events that lead up to those conditions then fall into place as necessary, without any direct intervention. So for instance if you have a box that contains a superposition of a dead cat and a live cat, you have some way of selecting which one you want to become manifest when you open it, without needed to understand any of the complex interactions inside the box that led to those two states.

(Some people assume that quantum superposition exists only for coherent states, and collapses the moment that particles interact with a mass of other particles. In that view, the 'measurement' has already occurred inside the box before it is opened. I think that's wrong though, and that's the entire point of the cat thought experiment. The cat is not a metaphor for a system described by a single wavefunction, it is supposed to be an actual cat, both alive and dead.)

Given that it is somehow possible for you to affect 'random' outcomes, and assuming that this ability isn't limited by physical distance, then it seems to me that what I call 'shared dreaming' follows as a necessary consequence.

When I said that I think you didn't "directly" manipulate the random number generator, that's a little bit misleading, because how 'direct' the manipulation is depends on the scope or granularity of your concern. If the general, long term determination of outcomes is possible, then it is also possible to narrow the focus of that. But I think its a lot easier to work at the 'big picture' level.

As I mentioned earlier, I think a key is to tie something into the experiment that you're really interested in at an emotional level. I read about one psi experiment where people were anticipating the appearance of random pornographic images in a sequence of images. That seems to me to be a lot more sensible than having people trying to guess numbers, for instance.

If the kind of mechanism that I propose is right, where you somehow subconsciously grab one possibility out of a large set of possibilities and make it more concrete, then there's also another reason for your results to degrade as you lengthen the experiment. The overwhelming majority of random number 'histories' look pretty random, and the longer the sequence gets, the larger the grab bag of useless results gets. If you were really affecting the outcome moment by moment, as if you had a little demon putting particles back in a box, then if might be more easy to extend that, like hitting free throws over and over if you're good at free throws. But if your makes and misses are inherently 'random' except for some rough capability of finding and materializing a future global state among several, then your skill doesn't increase the number of 'makes' in the bundle of potential histories, and it might be a lot harder to skew the long-term statistics.

So I think I predict a disappointing future for your random number generator experiment. I think the results are going to dwindle, notwithstanding that I believe your initial results were 'real'.

On the upside, I think that this subtle power to affect outcomes works very easily over long distances and timescales. If a series of coincidences needs to happen years ago in order for something to happen, and I can't even know what those coincidences are because calculating the complex causal interactions leading up to the desired future state would be pretty much impossible, somehow that doesn't seem to be much of a problem. It just happens.

For clarification, I should say that I don't believe that the past is more real than the future is. I think its a fog of possibilities, and that all histories which lead to the present state are equally real. I think that its also possible for the "present state" to drift or jump around, so that different incompatible histories lead up to it. But there's no way to prove that objectively provided that everything drifts or jumps consistently, since the historical record is part of the present. A reason I believe this is because I think that the 'jumps' don't have to be entirely consistent, I think that contradictions are possible. To the limited extent that I understand quantum theory, contradictions aren't prohibited by any of the math, they're just assumed not to occur. In other words, as different independent observers open up the box and observe different mutually exclusive states, those multiple results get reconciled in a consistent way when the observers communicate with each other. Its boxes inside of boxes, and nature prefers consistency as communication 'collapses' everything into a global state. But consistency isn't absolutely required, and sometimes it gets trumped if a particular outcome is inconsistent but is strongly favored for other reasons. I believe this based on personal experiences. I think that manipulating this sort of thing isn't essentially different from what makes your software experiment work.

Going back to your fading software result, what I'm suggesting is that if you designed it so success depended in part on past events that seem to be completely out of your control, the experiment would still work, provided that nothing else depends on those past events that's more substantial than your experiment. And it would also still work if it depended in part on future events, though off-hand I don't know how you would design that in, since there's no precognitive element to your setup.

I've had a very large number of clear premonitions that aren't plausibly due to 'coincidence', externally self-fulfilling prophecy, confirmation bias, subjectivity in interpretation, or extrapolation from past experience. If my sense of how this works is at least vaguely correct, then these experiences must make some kind of long term difference, at least to myself. That might lend hope to the possibility of 'proving' some of it in the future. If proving it were impossible, maybe I wouldn't have bothered to waste a non-trivial portion of my life on this sort of thing. Or maybe I'm just having my humility strengthened through unfortunate events and farcical behavior. I'm quite confident in my belief in psychic phenomena, I think I've approached it with enough intelligence and skepticism and proved it to myself far beyond any reasonable doubt. The potentially farcical part is what to do with it, what it all amounts to in the end besides vanity.

I could give you a lot of examples that you might find compelling, but I'd rather not if we can skip it. I have a lot of other things going on that I need to deal with.

I was relatively lucid while asleep last night, but my dreams were notably bereft of content.

There was an image of meeting friends to go diving in a flooded cave, but not diving because the water was cold.

There was a scene in an apartment that I've been in before in dreams, but not in real life. This time there were children's toys on shelves along one wall, which I don't remember from previously. Often my dreams have a soundtrack. This time it was a song that was sort of a hybrid of a Def Leppard ballad and the song Empire by Queensryche. "East side meets west side downtown, no time, no line, the walls fall down. Can't you hear it calling...."

There was a scene of waiting outside of a shop or cafe that had a publicly accessible restroom. Some kid came out and offered to give me a key code, but I declined, and it wasn't locked anyway.

There was a scene where I was lamenting something distubing that happened in a dream a few years ago that came true in real life.

For the last two nights there wasn't any notable sense of any personal presence in my dreams besides myself. Sometimes in the past I can clearly feel someone else.

For much of the night I was lucid but not really dreaming. One of the new Tool songs was playing much of that time: "pneuma, reach out beyond, wake up remember". So I guess that image was the main content.

One of my first quasi-shared dreaming experiences, about 8 years ago, was bare like this. Every single night in that period I would have a very lucid, highly scripted parable-like dream. On one night, I was lucid as usual but there was no dream. That night my sister had a dream which began with an image of a mouse biting her finger. In her dream it was raining, and the explanation for the rain was "anisotropic acidity". The dream made no sense to her. The world anisotropic acidity was in her vocabulary because of her biology background.

The previous day I had read a story that began with a mouse biting the talon of a white owl. After that I had mentally critiqued a theosophical assertion about 'finer states of matter' which violated my understanding of physics. I interpreted my sister's dream as suggesting that the different levels of 'activity' attributed to the different Greek 'elements' are more akin to reactivity than kinetic energy. (Rain is a transition from one 'state of matter' to another. Part of my critique had been that matter doesn't have states. The states are statistical properties related to kinetic energy and entropy that have no meaning for individual atoms. For me the words anisotropic acidity also allude to an etch in semiconductor manufacturing. I think that the process by which fate become manifest is analogous to an etch, in the sense of things becoming concrete because other possibilities are being removed.)

There was also some simple sound or image in my 'blank' dream that alluded to her dream, but I've forgotten what it was.

In my mind a white owl is a metaphor for the dream muse.

Anyway, my last night's experience was mostly blank like that also.

Most of my past 5 years have been largely blank, but also not very lucid. I think that boredom has been a primary cause of the lack of lucidity. So I guess that nothing is implied by the blankness in this case, unlike with the owl dream.

Read my post in the dream-interpretation forum for my previous night's dreams.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by ZenithofThings

More importantly, caution seems wise here. I've dedicated the vast majority of my life to my greatest obsession of exploring and pushing against the boundaries of what can possibly be done within a dream. Have made many breakthroughs throughout the years and if you could witness some of what I've experienced then perhaps you would also consider approaching SD with caution. I see it as a missing puzzle piece that could potentially unleash a sort of pandora's box upon the world.

---

That's certainly an interesting thought. The way you talk about it makes it sound like you've managed to achieve consistency in your dreams that reveals a sort of structure behind dreaming. That's not been my experience, so that might explain part of our difference in caution. For me, dreams vary so much from time to time that I don't get perceptions of some sort of "ruleset" behind the dreams. Can you give some examples of what you're speaking of?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by ZenithofThings

Don't really want to dedicate 30+ years of training just to maybe come out the other end finally able make a psiwheel spin.

I can also understand why some people would dismiss claims coming from psionics without looking deeply into it. I don't know how things are now, but back when i was researching psi there was a lot of fluff to sift through.

---

Yeah, that makes sense to not spend too much time on psi, since even if one were to prove it to themselves and perhaps even add to the global experiment set, it probably won't "develop into everyday changes" within our lifetimes (well, unless one found a way to prove psi so conclusively that it become accepted worldwide, but I suspect it will take decades until we get to that point).

Regarding the quality of the research: it varies. Some studies are indeed lax on setting up careful isolation between, say, sender and receiver in telepathy or "knowing when stared at" experiments. However, there are also many studies which are done carefully and with strict isolation, have control groups, are performed multiple times, and obtain statistically significant results, but which critics still ignore because they've already made up their minds on the subject. (they pass off these remaining studies as selective reporting, fabrication, or various mistakes, usually, without actually doing the homework on how much selective reporting would have had to occur, or carefully evaluating whether the mistakes they assumed to have happened actually occurred, given the details of the researchers' methodology)

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by ZenithofThings

I only vaguely recall hearing of RNG manipulation, but that sounds like some first earth battalion type stuff. I'm curious as to how it works, and what could be done with it. Are you manipulating the generator itself, manipulating some sort of quantum potential, somehow piloting to a world line where the desired outcome was achieved, or something else? Could you manipulate RNG in a pokemon game to achieve a high rate of shiny encounters?

---

Yeah, RNG manipulation is certainly an interesting variant of psi! That's actually why I chose it, over other alternatives like telepathy, clairvoyance, etc. (some of the alternatives are also harder to test, for example telepathy where you need to have someone else invest time each attempt as well)

I'm also very curious about what sort of mechanism is working behind the scenes to make it work. This is just my personal guess, but I'm partial to the idea that our expectations/intents are somehow "shifting the probabilities" of the target event itself, rather than learning the details of how to manipulate each physical system. This is because, from the reading of other research I've seen, it seems that psi is able to interact with a large variety of "random" processes, with little or no "learning curve". In other words, it seems to be able to function regardless of what filters, reprocessings, etc. that occur within the system.

Regarding the possibility of, say, manipulating RNGs within online games to achieve better rewards: I think the effect will be weaker there because almost all online games use pseudo-random number generators rather than "true random" hardware-based number generators. The difference is that pseudo-random number generators are actually deterministic sequences based on the start-time of when the server or number-generation started. Thus, once you have a given "start seed" for the generator, all the numbers after that are predetermined based on the algorithm used.

That said, there might still be some interaction with psi, since psi could "shift the probabilities" of events occurring that would delay the choosing of the generator "start seed", until just the point where it would select a seed that yields the results desired/expected/intended. That said, I think the effect will be a lot weaker, because there's only so far that the "start seed"'s time/conditions could be shifted before it starts majorly impacting other precedents/expectations. (I think the more a "psi attempt" violates other expectations, the weaker the effect will be. For example, I think violating a "rock-solid" expectation like gravity would be harder than violating statistical trends in systems like a random number-generator; random number generators already have a lot of chaos and unpredictability, so there's more "room" for psi to function there without having to break wider expectations.)

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by shadowofwind

But lets suppose we find an exception. Or lets suppose we do the work unfunded, even though that's very difficult because most people in 'respectable' research positions have other research obligations and families to take care of. (I'm neglecting other things just to write this message.) Suppose we successfully produce evidence that some kind of dream telepathy is real. How do people know we didn't cheat? We need a referee. How do external critics know that the referee wasn't in on the cheat? That will be alleged, and it can't be disproved. Why would any potential referee want to put their reputation and risk like that? Would it even be right for us to ask them to? And how am I going to get subsequent grants on other respectable subjects after gaining notoriety as a pseudo-scientist? I need to continue to earn a living. Likewise for other people who I collaborate with on other research. It is a huge can of worms.

---

I agree that those are problems if one takes the traditional route of trying to prove it through self-initiated academic research. The problem is that even if you obtain significant results -- a single study or even set of studies -- most people will not treat it very highly due to it being just a single group. The idea is that if it's done by a single group, the researchers involved might be fabricating results, doing many attempts and only reporting the successes, making a mistake that they keep doing each time, etc.

That's why, if I decide to pursue this further over the years, I have a different plan: Create a self-contained "psi experimentation" system, which anyone can obtain for themselves using "off the shelf" components (commercially available hardware random-number generator, open-source experiment software that can run on personal computers, and a public database storing the data for anyone to view).

Because everything about the experiment is open, critics can examine the source-code for themselves to make sure there are no mistakes in it. This resolves the issue of people alleging mistakes that the researchers just didn't know about.

Regarding the concern of result fabrication: critics can try it for themselves in their own home. It's true that there's always been that option for people for some experiment types (eg. zener-card telepathy), however, this situation is more compelling because there is a global database using the exact provided software which backs up the claims of statistical significance. In other words, you can provide actual numbers to the critic, showing, say, "80% of people obtain statistically significant results for this experiment, on their first try. If you're earnest about evaluating psi's existence, you can't just ignore an experiment that has this much success, and that you can try for yourself in your own home, adding to the global database."

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by shadowofwind

With other research, other researchers can reproduce the results if they do it correctly. The whole scientific approach depends on that. Here, I'm not even sure I can reproduce it myself, there's an essential element that I'm not in control of. If the research is successful, other people will need to follow up, and many or all of them will get negative results. How to answer that?

---

What you're getting at here (I think) is the goal of 100% replicability. You say that "the whole scientific approach depends on that". I only halfway agree.

While 100% replicability is indeed the gold standard of experimental verification, I disagree with the idea that anything lower than 100% replicability is useless to scientists. If that were true, there are huge portions of our scientific knowledge which we would have to just be rejecting or ignoring at this point. In fact, from what I can tell the majority of scientific research is not about 100% replicability; instead, it's about collecting evidence in favor of a theory, based on what we can observe and see from careful research. Those conclusions may certainly be supported by 100% replicable experiments (for some of its underlying assumptions), but for the conclusions themselves, most are not directly evaluable in a 100% replicable way.

For example, almost everything we know about the world from prehistoric times isn't directly evaluable. We know about dinosaurs not because we have a 100% replicable experiment that proves a dinosaur can be created; rather, we rely on evidence in the fossil record. We think systems like the grand canyon were formed from a flowing river over millions of years, but this reasonable theory isn't directly evaluable; instead, it's based on inference from what we see in the terrain, carbon dating of contents lodged in the different layers, and calculations we make about whether the conditions of the system over the year were stable and substantial enough to yield the results we see over the given timeframe. These are all reasonable considerations, but they're based on evaluation processes other than direct, in-lab, 100% replicable experiments.

Another example branch of scientific inquiry that doesn't rely on 100% replicability is medical research. Many drugs do not have a 100% success-rate, and yet are still prescribed to patients, and well accepted as being of assistance for the condition. This is based on statistical analysis of the effects of the drug on lab subjects. For example, a drug may improve the survival rate of patients from 20% to 30%. That's a substantial improvement, but it's far from the gold standard of 100% replicability.

It's not just that it doesn't increase survival to 100%, it's that sometimes a study actually finds the survival rate was lower for the treated group than the untreated group. This doesn't prove the drug doesn't work, however, because the sample size in each study is too small to rule out random fluctuation. Instead, you have to base your evaluation based on meta-studies that take into account the average effect of the drug among all the performed studies. This is exactly the approach researchers of psi make use of -- metastudies that look at what the average effect size of psi is, among all the lab studies we have on it. (Now this does open up concerns of, say, selective reporting, but that's something you have to deal with regardless of the subject, if you're dealing with <100% reliable phenomenon. And there are established methods to attempt to estimate how much selective reporting has occurred, and calculating how much selective reporting would have had to occur to yield the given results. For some types of psi experiments, the number of "missing studies" that would have had to have been concealed is too much to be reasonable -- for example, 1000+ "hidden failed studies" per single published successful one.)

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by shadowofwind

My experience from conversations is that other potential researchers also have a very poor intuitive grasp of what we're trying to accomplish, and will not set up their experiments or interpret their results in an appropriate manner.

---

So far I've been responding to your points with psi as the subject in question. For the most part, evaluation of shared dreaming will have the same considerations as evaluation of psi (with one difference being that psi is a bit more streamlined to study since it doesn't rely on people needing to wait for dreaming + remembering their dreams). The following section is where they diverge some.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by shadowofwind

They imagine we're trying to send a hidden signal between two people. We're not, it doesn't work that way.

---

Well, that is one way they could evaluate it, right? It's not the only way, but certainly if you found you could send a signal between two people through dreams, then that would greatly support the idea of shared dreaming. (basically, that would be evaluating psi in the context of dreaming)

I guess you're skeptical that that would succeed often enough to be statistically demonstrated in a reasonable time-frame, though. (whereas more personal evaluation methods can be based on less rigid constraints, and therefore reveal effects without having to wait for those distinct/predefined hits)

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by shadowofwind

And there will be some subjectivity or metaphor that needs to be grappled with when interpreting the results. Researchers are generally not equipped to deal with that either.

---

Agreed. If trying to evaluate less rigid/defined matches, it's hard for researchers to do this since they don't know the details of the person's experiences, so if something greatly matches something going on in their minds the last few months, it's hard for them to know how intimately they match, without being concerned about the person just exaggerating.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by shadowofwind

The a-temporal and action-at-a-distance nature of the interaction also makes the experiment very hard to isolate. We need to involve multiple people, with many dreams, and everything leaks into everything else. It makes it extremely difficult to have any kind of control group, or to make anything like a 'measurement'.

---

I agree it makes things much harder. I don't think it utterly fails the effort, but it means you have to collect a lot more data to be able to reach statistical significance for any conclusions. (for example, control groups may have some level of unintentional shared dreaming; however, the hope is that as long as the control group has less shared dreaming, eventually this will be discernible in the statistical data)

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by shadowofwind

Having said all of that, I'll ask around again and see if I can find any interest, but it looks to me like a doomed undertaking, and the risks are probably too high for it to be worth trying.

---

Because the effort is admittedly difficult, I agree it's not something we need to be rushing to implement. I'm just saying it's something we should look to further as a society over the years (this applies to both psi research and shared dreaming research). Because psi research is "easier" (can be done in the daytime), it's probably what I'll be looking into mostly personally, but someone could attempt something similar for shared dreaming. (I'm building a lucid dreaming website, so I might implement some sort of "shared dreaming experiment" section there, but probably not for several years since there are lots of higher-priority features I have planned.)

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by shadowofwind

If you don't dream, that doesn't kill our experiment, because your thoughts would show up in my dreams as easily as mine would show up in yours. I don't dream anywhere near as vividly as I did a few years ago, but maybe its enough.

---

I did have my first substantial dream this morning since beginning my attempts. The issue is that it doesn't have that much to do with the question/topic I set for myself. That said, it's been enough days that I think I'll just post that dream anyway. I suspect it won't have much overlap with yours (since it seemed pretty run of the mill for my dreaming), but I guess it'll have to do for this attempt. (I'll post it in my dream journal later then link to it; then I'll go and read your first dream account)

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by shadowofwind

A potential flaw in your software experiment is if the start and stop of the random number generation isn't completely isolated from the software execution. Your mouse use will subtly affect the run time. If your software triggers the hardware, then that seems to me to be a problem. Or if the software polls the hardware, that's a problem. But if the software has a buffer that stores the hardware output, so that the buffer content has nothing to do with the software timing, then that works. I guess you already thought of all that, but I couldn't tell from your description.

---

Yes, that possibility did definitely come to mind; even if the code path that runs one section is separate from another, they're still running on the same CPU, so it could cause micro-delays in the running of other instructions.

That said, I think the chance of such micro-delays causing significant effects is very small. There are a couple of reasons:
1) The software does, as you mention, have a buffer that stores the hardware output. More specifically, my experiment program launches another process which starts the device's generation, and begins receiving its output. Every couple seconds, that program outputs the new contents of that buffer to its "standard output", which my program then reads and uses as the new contents for its own buffer (a "currentCycle_unusedSamples" array). Whenever the timer in my experiment needs the next number, it then accesses the latest unused-value in that "unusedSamples" array.
2) The values from the device are "processed" in such a way that it greatly mitigates the potential for exploitation, even if the mouse movements were substantially disrupting the number generation. As mentioned earlier, this is the process used: "simplify each from-device 0-255 number to just a 1 or 0 (based on an alternating >=128/<128 mapping), sum it with 199 other such 1s/0s, and use the result as your actual number". What this means is that, even if you found a way to make the device start outputting only high numbers (>128), this would not cause the experiment to start receiving high values for use by the live experiment. This is because the filter used alternates between considering a >128 number to be a "1" or "0", and the results of 200 of these "simplify to 1 or 0, with alternating mapping" operations are then summed into a single output number, so that each individual 1/0 only contributes 1/200th of the final value of a number. (And if someone counters, "maybe you subconsciously managed to alternate your mouse movements so it makes it generate high then low then high to get past the alternating mappings", then they're not understanding how frequently these operations are occurring. We're talking about thousands of raw 0-255 numbers from the device per second. There's no way my hand muscles, not to mention my brain, are anywhere near fine-tuned enough to be able to synchronize with operations occurring thousands of times per second.)

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by shadowofwind

In any case, I know I can affect 'random' events, so I'm not surprised for you to find this result. It would not surprise me if you fail to reproduce it though. The reason for a failure to reproduce, is the effect the experimental outcome has on your life is not the same for subsequent experiments as it was for the first experiment. The later outcomes don't "matter" as much because they don't affect your belief in psi as much, which affects choices you make which affect a lot of other things. I doubt your subconscious actually knows how to manipulate the random number generator, I don't think the manipulation is direct like that. What your subconscious does know how to do is select possible future life conditions out of a larger set of potential conditions and make them 'real' by making them more concrete at some level. The 'random' events that lead up to those conditions then fall into place as necessary, without any direct intervention. So for instance if you have a box that contains a superposition of a dead cat and a live cat, you have some way of selecting which one you want to become manifest when you open it, without needed to understand any of the complex interactions inside the box that led to those two states.

(Some people assume that quantum superposition exists only for coherent states, and collapses the moment that particles interact with a mass of other particles. In that view, the 'measurement' has already occurred inside the box before it is opened. I think that's wrong though, and that's the entire point of the cat thought experiment. The cat is not a metaphor for a system described by a single wavefunction, it is supposed to be an actual cat, both alive and dead.)

---

I also would not be surprised to find that my next attempt had weaker results, for a similar reason that you do. Based both on what I've read from the field, as well as my own experiences while doing the experiments, it seems that the "effectiveness of psi" varies depending on the state of mind of the experimenter. Because my second attempt will be less significant to me (since I already think psi is real now), the psychological/emotional investment I place in it will be a lot lower. (By the way, because of this consideration, I did my best during the experiments to keep a curious and upbeat psychological state -- having some of my favorite new music playing, and skipping the experiment on some days when I was feeling down or unmotivated.)

That said, I still will probably do additional experiments in the future. This is for a few reasons:
1) I'm curious to see how much this "weakening" effect occurs. It will be somewhat annoying, since then skeptics will jump upon it and assumes that means they're then justified in discarding previous data on the subject (if it doesn't work the second time, that proves the first time was a fluke, even if it reached a rarity-by-chance of 1 in 32,000, right?), but ultimately I care more about obtaining more data for those who are actually serious about investigating the subject than I do about "limiting the surface area" for dis-earnest criticisms.
2) I plan to expand the experiment to attempt to discern further findings. For example, I plan to try different numbers of targets, different number-generation speeds, with and without the mouse visualization, with and without performing the experiment from another room using a video feed, on days when I feel good vs days I feel bad, and perhaps most importantly, having the experiment be performed by other people on other computers and with other copies of the hardware number-generator device to see how much variation there is based on test subject.
3) I suspect that while later successes will on average be less intense, there will still be further successes -- particularly when I start variations of the experiment which I find fresh and interesting. This is helpful, because although overall it will reduce the average intensity of successes, it will still help ease concerns from some readers that my belief in psi is based on only one experiment. I'd argue that "only one experiment" is still a valid justification if that experiment is done correctly, and achieves highly significant results (and anyway, my belief is based on many others' experiments, not just my own) -- but nonetheless obtaining further successes would be helpful, if for no other reason that some people just don't seem to appreciate what a "rarity by chance of 1 in 32,000" means. (it means that, if there were no mechanism causing the intent and results to correlate (ie. if it were just due to random fluctuation), a correlation with the intensity obtained would only occur one out of 32,000 attempts)

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by shadowofwind

Given that it is somehow possible for you to affect 'random' outcomes, and assuming that this ability isn't limited by physical distance, then it seems to me that what I call 'shared dreaming' follows as a necessary consequence.

---

I agree that shared dreaming becomes highly likely, if psi is real. However, the question is, how often would shared dreaming occur? Would it occur only when specifically intended, or would it also happen accidentally? And perhaps more importantly, how substantial would the correlations within those shared dreams be? For example, is the content-sharing significant enough that friends could discover major struggles someone is going through without even being told of it? Or does it only have minor correlations, like one person having a pleasant dream, and the other thereby becoming more likely to have a pleasant dream -- but with majorly different and unrelated content?

I'm of the opinion that both are plausible possibilities; I don't have enough data as of yet for thinking shared dreaming happens in a common/unintentional/substantial way, but I also don't have much data against it either.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by shadowofwind

When I said that I think you didn't "directly" manipulate the random number generator, that's a little bit misleading, because how 'direct' the manipulation is depends on the scope or granularity of your concern. If the general, long term determination of outcomes is possible, then it is also possible to narrow the focus of that. But I think its a lot easier to work at the 'big picture' level.

As I mentioned earlier, I think a key is to tie something into the experiment that you're really interested in at an emotional level. I read about one psi experiment where people were anticipating the appearance of random pornographic images in a sequence of images. That seems to me to be a lot more sensible than having people trying to guess numbers, for instance.

---

I agree that tying the experiments in with people's emotions increases the potential for psi to occur. There's quite a bit I've read on the idea, but I won't go into it due to time constraints (someone could talk about these things for hours, if they had the time -- sometimes I make time, but I'm already spending quite a bit on the other points, so not today :P).

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by shadowofwind

If you were really affecting the outcome moment by moment, as if you had a little demon putting particles back in a box, then if might be more easy to extend that, like hitting free throws over and over if you're good at free throws. But if your makes and misses are inherently 'random' except for some rough capability of finding and materializing a future global state among several, then your skill doesn't increase the number of 'makes' in the bundle of potential histories, and it might be a lot harder to skew the long-term statistics.

---

I agree. And I think this is actually a counter-argument to one of the criticisms some might make about my experiment: "You don't have perfect isolation between your physical body and the number generation; you might have just learned subconsciously how to impact the experiment through normal, physical means." If in fact I had learned subconsciously how to do this, you would expect the results to just continue to climb indefinitely, as I get better and better at it. Instead, you see a massive jump during the first two days (already past the traditional bar of significance), followed by a "doldrums" period, which slowly ramps up -- eventually reaching a peak of 1 in 32,258, at which point I feel emotional release at having finally surpassed the 1 in 10,000 mark (I'd gotten close but not quite made it the previous four runs), and the effectiveness then begins to subside.

By the way, an interesting side-note about that moment where it surpassed 1 in 32,000 deviance: While that session was occurring (just prior to the one marked in the last screenshot on this page), I specifically remember watching the number of hits rise and rise, and having a surreal moment where I felt like "This is it, this is the big one; it's staying so long around the target. How high will it go!?" In the end it reached a whopping 98 positive hits (the average was about 20), and only three negative hits (the average was about 16). That was the session just before the highest peak (which raised the total 1 further), which was exactly the 555th session, and the 15th session of that 30-session run. That's the point where it reached the 1 in 32,258 rarity (having a deviation percentile of 99.9969%; meaning that out of the one million Monte-Carlo simulations, exactly 30 of them reached that deviance or higher [and I confirmed this in the raw data files]). Does that mean anything? Perhaps not; I know people can find all sorts of things if they go fishing for patterns. But nonetheless I found it kinda cool.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by shadowofwind

So I think I predict a disappointing future for your random number generator experiment. I think the results are going to dwindle, notwithstanding that I believe your initial results were 'real'.

---

I'm glad at least someone believes the effect was real! Showing my friends as I went along, some of them already believed in psi, but the three who definitely didn't -- well they were certainly surprised by the results, but I don't think it actually converted any of them.

I'd asked what probability two of them gave it before starting (specifically, the ability for someone to influence a hardware random number generator just mentally), and one said "about 1%", while the other said, "less than 1%". I didn't ask them afterward what their new estimate was, I guess because I expect them to have the typical skeptic response of refusing to budge in their opinions, and it's kinda depressing to see that lack of open-mindedness when the work you've spent dozens of hours on, and actually had success with, is the subject. (to be fair, they were more open-minded and willing to listen than many others)

I will say that at least it did give them pause (I remember asking one what his opinion was, as the rarity values started exceeding 1 in 1000, and all he said was "It's interesting...", followed by a long pause), which is more than most discussions on the topic yield. They know me well enough to know I'm not lying or intentionally mishandling things (avoiding the deception criticism), and they know I don't have a backlog of many failed experiments (just the one experiment prior to it, as mentioned earlier, and various much-smaller-scales ones, like one where I lucid-dreamed to try to guess the color of some multi-colored balls I hid -- which by the way had six colors, and I got it right the first two times, but then got misses for the next two, which maybe you don't find surprising :)), avoiding the selective reporting criticism. With those criticisms not being applicable, the main concern one had is just that I made a mistake somewhere, either in my code implementation or in the method used to determine the rarity-by-chance values (which, fair enough, are possibilities -- though I'm pretty sure I did get them right). Another was concerned that there wasn't 100% airtight separation between my physical presence and the number-generation device; but as explained above, I consider the possibility of that being subconsciously exploited very low.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by shadowofwind

On the upside, I think that this subtle power to affect outcomes works very easily over long distances and timescales. If a series of coincidences needs to happen years ago in order for something to happen, and I can't even know what those coincidences are because calculating the complex causal interactions leading up to the desired future state would be pretty much impossible, somehow that doesn't seem to be much of a problem. It just happens.

---

It's certainly expanded my ideas of what's possible, concerning how the world works behind the scenes. The idea is: If thoughts can influence real-world events at a distance, what actually is the basis of grounding for our world? Is it non-personal mechanistic objects operating apart from our thoughts and desires? (that seems kinda hard to fit with some of the experiment results) Or is it somehow intricately linked with our minds? Are our collective minds somehow the ground of all external objects rather than the other way around? Anyway, I'm not all that decided now on how I think the world is fundamentally structured, though I have some theories I'm more partial to than others.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by shadowofwind

For clarification, I should say that I don't believe that the past is more real than the future is. I think its a fog of possibilities, and that all histories which lead to the present state are equally real. I think that its also possible for the "present state" to drift or jump around, so that different incompatible histories lead up to it. But there's no way to prove that objectively provided that everything drifts or jumps consistently, since the historical record is part of the present. A reason I believe this is because I think that the 'jumps' don't have to be entirely consistent, I think that contradictions are possible. To the limited extent that I understand quantum theory, contradictions aren't prohibited by any of the math, they're just assumed not to occur. In other words, as different independent observers open up the box and observe different mutually exclusive states, those multiple results get reconciled in a consistent way when the observers communicate with each other. Its boxes inside of boxes, and nature prefers consistency as communication 'collapses' everything into a global state. But consistency isn't absolutely required, and sometimes it gets trumped if a particular outcome is inconsistent but is strongly favored for other reasons. I believe this based on personal experiences. I think that manipulating this sort of thing isn't essentially different from what makes your software experiment work.

---

That's a very intriguing view of the world, and it would, if true, explain a number of bizarre mismatches in first-hand accounts of some things (where both seem completely earnest, and have no ulterior motive or history of hallucinating or the like). It's also true that it's "slippery", in the sense that it's difficult to both verify and counter-verify (as you mention). That said, I don't take the view some take that if a theory is "slippery", then one ought to regard it as if it were completely false. Rather, I think one should take caution about how strongly they adhere to it, but I still view those theories as worth talking and thinking about, because even if they're hard to verify, and even if in the end some portions of it turn out overzealous, other parts may well still have truth to them. (and some have a lot of "subtle pointers" to them that are likely to go underappreciated, unless one is attuned to really taking note of how elegantly some things end up fitting)

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by shadowofwind

Going back to your fading software result, what I'm suggesting is that if you designed it so success depended in part on past events that seem to be completely out of your control, the experiment would still work, provided that nothing else depends on those past events that's more substantial than your experiment. And it would also still work if it depended in part on future events, though off-hand I don't know how you would design that in, since there's no precognitive element to your setup.

---

I believe I understand what you are saying, and that's an interesting idea. It also fits with plenty of experimental results which I found during my reading. You might not be that motivated to look for them since you already believe in that model, but there are several very interesting results that have been obtained toward that end. (I won't list names here since then I have to defend them from people who will undoubtedly start looking for criticisms for the individual groups. ^_^ I believe their research is sound, but it takes a lot of time to explain why I think the criticisms lack weight.)

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by shadowofwind

I've had a very large number of clear premonitions that aren't plausibly due to 'coincidence', externally self-fulfilling prophecy, confirmation bias, subjectivity in interpretation, or extrapolation from past experience. If my sense of how this works is at least vaguely correct, then these experiences must make some kind of long term difference, at least to myself. That might lend hope to the possibility of 'proving' some of it in the future. If proving it were impossible, maybe I wouldn't have bothered to waste a non-trivial portion of my life on this sort of thing. Or maybe I'm just having my humility strengthened through unfortunate events and farcical behavior.

---

Most people won't, but I believe you. It's probably not of the nature that is easily demonstrable to other readers, but from the thoughtfulness of what you've written so far (combined with my already believing psi is a thing now), I believe the examples you're thinking of (well, some of them) were indeed an application of the same system behind psi, and that you're not just engaging in statistical naivety, wishful thinking, etc.

Regarding proving it at some point in the future: I believe someday we will, and it will be widely accepted by society as just a matter of fact (however, I think it'll happen multiple decades if not centuries from now). I also think that it will be considered the next revolution in scientific knowledge and inquiry, and people will become more open-minded from that point, as we realize how much more connected the physical world is to our minds. I believe this will also cause an increase in life satisfaction, as it weakens the link between the certainty of bodily death and the end of one's mind/consciousness. (if the mind is the ground of being rather than the physical world, as is made more plausible by phenomenon of this sort, the mind may just end up reconstituting itself in some other form past the death of its linked physical avatar)

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by shadowofwind

I'm quite confident in my belief in psychic phenomena, I think I've approached it with enough intelligence and skepticism and proved it to myself far beyond any reasonable doubt. The potentially farcical part is what to do with it, what it all amounts to in the end besides vanity.

---

What to do with it? For me, the biggest benefit is what I mentioned above: it means our physical bodies are much less certain to be our ultimate grounding, greatly increasing the probability of life past death. That's a world-changing perspective shift for many people, and is one of the main reasons I'm interested in potentially collecting more evidence for it.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by shadowofwind

I could give you a lot of examples that you might find compelling, but I'd rather not if we can skip it. I have a lot of other things going on that I need to deal with.

---

I understand; it can be a lot of work to provide the background for a story, explain the event itself, and then go through the various criticisms that people are going to have (along with their evaluations).

So I won't ask you for a long list of events you've had that support it. What I do ask is just that one case you mentioned earlier, about the "I have some e-mail evidence that I know I didn't fake". Email evidence is particularly interesting to me, because of how "distinct" it is. In other words, the email I'll be able to see is the *exact* email that the person received himself, meaning that -- although I lack some of the background -- at least the event content itself is clearly discernible. It's up to you how much background you want to add of course, but that's the one thing I'd really like to see. :)

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Venryx

Regarding the possibility of, say, manipulating RNGs within online games to achieve better rewards: I think the effect will be weaker there because almost all online games use pseudo-random number generators rather than "true random" hardware-based number generators. The difference is that pseudo-random number generators are actually deterministic sequences based on the start-time of when the server or number-generation started. Thus, once you have a given "start seed" for the generator, all the numbers after that are predetermined based on the algorithm used.

---

Is "true random" number generation a thing?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by ZenithofThings

Is "true random" number generation a thing?

---

Perhaps not. But we at least don't know that they're deterministic -- unlike pseudo-random number generators. (specifically, the devices are designed to amplify the effects of microscopic, unpredictable events like quantum tunneling)

Before you guys fully give up your test (if you haven't already), I thought I might make a suggestion:

Instead of attempting to somehow wind up in a random shared dream with a stranger (I assume you are relative strangers), which seems to me a fairly impossible, even magical, thing to achieve, why not try something a little different?

I suggest that maybe all you need to do is pay attention. I think I mentioned in my OP (it's been a long time!) that we may all be sharing our dreams all the time, and actually sharing with a specific person results not from somehow finding each other across time & space (neither of which, perhaps ironically, exist in dreams) but from opening yourself up to the presence of the person with whom you wish to meet, and allowing that presence -- which was always there -- to fully manifest in your dream.

Hmm. I'm not sure that made any sense. Look at it this way: If we are all "sharing" our dreams at all times, then at any given moment in a dream there are billions of other dreamers -- and their dreams -- present in your dream; perhaps even more, given that dreams might not care much about time. Given that many dreams, their combined presence, I would imagine, might exist as unseen background noise in your dream -- unseen or heard background noise, perhaps around you all the time, or perhaps making up distant, plain, imagery that goes otherwise unnoticed in your dream (i.e., the sky, or perhaps shadowy horizons; I really don't know). But, even though you can't see or hear their presence, all other dreamers are there, all the time.

So, to connect with another dreamer you might only need to open yourself up to allowing the presence of your dreaming partner into your dream. If you know your partner well, or have at least established some sort of shared bond -- like the desire to visit, say, a specific dreamscape together --you might just find an image of him, or something you clearly know is him, after just a few moments... and vise-verse.

Here's the catch, though: you need to get together first and spend some time learning about each other. You can't be open to an abstract, I don't think; you really must know the person with whom you want to share your dream, or at least something very specific about them. I think Shadowofwind mentioned that this might invalidate the experiment, and you are right; it probably will. But who is this experimenter for? If you are trying to prove to yourselves that shared dreaming can work, and don't care if some empiricist debunks you, then you will still be succeeding at something... right?

Again if I can remember correctly, Sivason exhibited how to do this on Debra Jane's (S'cuse me; EbbTide000) Dream Remote viewing Experiment thread a while back... I think it was toward the end of the thread; you might want to check it out.

I'm not sure any of this was clear, but I hope it'll be something you consider before throwing in the towel.

Sageous,

I don't know anyone who knows me who would want to get that close to me. Sadly, there's nothing that I have or am that they would want.

The thing that makes my approach with strangers occasionally work is the potential to share some understanding that hasn't been shared yet. Once I know someone, its not merely that the knowledge confuses the experiment, it diffuses it entirely. The 'sharing' isn't something that I do, it happens by itself because of the potential. This is why 'finding' someone whom I don't know isn't a problem. I don't make any effort at all to find them. Its the impact that the exchange will have on us that causes the connection. This is like what I said about Venryx's software experiment. I doubt that his subconscious knows how to manipulate the random number generator. The manipulation occurs because its the only path that leads to an outcome that has been determined according to some other principle. Some interactions in physics can be understood in this kind of way also, such as light minimizing the time it takes to travel through layers of refractive media. The light doesn't understand how to do that, but it happens anyway. In one way of describing this, the light actually takes all possible paths, including slower paths, but the phases add destructively and cancel out everywhere except for the 'short' path, where they add constructively. Similarly, most of the innumerable experiences where we don't share information in dreams get lost, and a few of the ones where we do share something remain.

None of that invalidates what you said about being open to being aware of what's already there. I'm just trying to explain the dynamic with strangers better.

Another reason I prefer the 'answer a philosophical question' way of choosing a topic, aside from it being something that I care about and like to do, is it tends to restrict the interaction to something that I'm comfortable with. I don't really want to do a full mind meld with anyone, whether I know them or not, and increased experience with other people has made me less rather than more open in that way. Philosophical questions are also an area where I might occasionally have something that someone else wants.

Another reason to try telepathetic experiences with strangers, though this point is very similar to my first one, most people are not interested in shared dreaming. Anyone who wants to prove it to themselves may have to seek out strangers who are also interested, because there isn't anyone else. I think it isn't merely a matter of opening oneself to be aware of people who are already there, because the interaction is two-way. Consent of the other person is necessary, otherwise it violates their privacy. But for people who have such consent, then I agree with you and think you have made a valuable suggestion.

I think this 'shared dreaming' stuff is essentially a matter of true empathy. So that is a reasonable way to think about and approach it.

One last comment....Any time two people have thoughts that have some intersection or point in common, such as might lead to any kind of human interaction, a person can 'find' the other person through the connection between the thoughts. Everyone has a unique feel to them, distinct from everyone else. Its true that the interaction is limited by the nature of the thoughts, so that the experience a person gets is not anything like the full extent of the other person's being. But there's still a fairly clear impression. I don't think that's much different for me with new acquaintances in comparison to people I know well. Its like how I don't need to know someone well to be able to see their face. If I needed to get to know someone well externally before I could know what to recognize in a shared dream, that almost presupposes that I'm not able to do any of the direct contact of the kind that would make the shared dream possible. All real knowledge of other people is direct in that way in my opinion, even though it is assisted by other more 'outward' experience.

Further up in the thread on 9/26/19 I posted an anecdote about one of my first pseudo-shared dreams with my sister. Part of my interpretation of the experience is that the thought behind the dream wants to be communicated, or we want it to be communicated. So it plays out in whichever person's mind has the best vocabulary and images ready to express it, provided that its likely that the dream will then be communicated to whoever the main target is.

At the center of my suggested 'ask a philosophical question' ploy is my trust that fate will try to answer the question, so I don't need to do anything to try to create the dream.

Anyway, my sister had another dream last week but she didn't bother to send it to me until today. I don't want to post it because its not my dream but I'll send it to Venryx in a private message.

Numerous researchers/psych students are conducting tests pertaining to paranormal studies and psychic phenomena. On unexplained mysteries website. Under psychology/philosophy. Different colleges. I'm not entirely sure but most of it looks legit (I think the universities have history working w site) if anyone's interested.

Hi all,

I find the idea of sharing dreams fascinating, although now isn’t a good time for me to participate in an experiment. Honestly, I’m not sure there ever will be a good time. But it’s still something I’ve thought about, especially in connection with certain experiences of my own which suggested future directions to take if I were to try something of the sort.

One of these actually happened on Dreamviews, and so it might be of interest to you guys. It wasn’t a shared dreaming experiment but a remote viewing one – here on this thread. I wasn’t participating in the experiment, but I do like to keep an eye on these things (although somehow, I managed to miss this one until my recent post on chess dreams).

So the gist of what happened was: OP printed a photo, placed it in a particular physical location, and people tried to figure out what the picture showed. The experiment started Nov. 9 and ended Nov. 16, when the picture was revealed: the façade of a blue building in Dresden, equipped with a silver-colored, artistically-designed drain system that makes music when rain falls.

On the night of Nov. 8-9, I had a couple interesting dreams, which I posted in my DV journal on the 12th. One of them contained a strong visual impression that resembled the revealed picture in a few key ways. My post is #10 on the thread, and I posted the relevant excerpt from my dream:

It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to call this house a mansion, but the room I now find myself in wouldn’t be out of place in a palace. It’s richly decorated, 18th-century style, in blue and silver. There’s another doorway on the other end, and one of the longer walls, to my left, is covered with shelves, all of which are lined with ornate silver music boxes.

The color scheme is right on target, and the presence of mechanical devices that produce music is a very strong connection. The fact that the location of the building in the picture is apparently a passage, or series of courtyards, and so a kind of interior area even though outside, may also be relevant – and certainly, it resembles the area in the dream, which was a series of connected rooms.

This is all there on the thread – but when I got to thinking about what happened later, and about why I might have picked up on something I wasn’t looking for, I found there were other connections as well. I don’t have any strong connections to present-day Dresden—I’ve been through it by train, but never actually set foot in the city itself. But it was an important center for classical music back in the 18th century because it was the location of an important court full of people who were patrons for it. Even now, the city is full of baroque architecture from this era.

That’s probably my closest connection to the city – through its musical history. And while I didn’t actually use the word ‘baroque’ in the dream to describe the decor, I easily could have. And the fact that my current music teacher actually appears in the dream before the scene with the music boxes is also a connection to that history.

So my guess as to what happened is that I was primed to pick up on the image—in spite of not trying pick up on anything—in a way that I apparently wasn’t for the subsequent pictures in the experiment, since this didn’t happen again. But what I saw was filtered through my own associations, reconstructed through the meaningful images I had on hand (so to speak) that were closest to being the right shape. And for all I know, this happened for the actual participants as well, only it was filtered in a more extreme way.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by shadowofwind

Part of my interpretation of the experience is that the thought behind the dream wants to be communicated, or we want it to be communicated. So it plays out in whichever person's mind has the best vocabulary and images ready to express it, provided that its likely that the dream will then be communicated to whoever the main target is.

---

I haven’t had the time to read the whole thread, but this does sound a lot like what I experienced.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by ZenithofThings

On another note, I got pretty heavy into psi training for a few years, way back in my early to mid teens. Worked with things like psiwheel, shielding, advanced constructs, programming, etc, but not much to show for it this side of reality. Never did get the wheel to spin under glass, and psi always felt super light, no where near dense enough to interact with solid matter in any meaningful way, at least for me. Anyways, I excelled with constructs and programming, and got the most use from my training with psi by implementing it into my dream control toolbox. I took what I found useful and then dropped trying to attain irl usefulness. Don't really want to dedicate 30+ years of training just to maybe come out the other end finally able make a psiwheel spin.

I can also understand why some people would dismiss claims coming from psionics without looking deeply into it. I don't know how things are now, but back when i was researching psi there was a lot of fluff to sift through.

---

Totally unrelated to this thread but you weren’t by any chance the author of a website from several years ago called something like psyorg or something like that? I was just thinking about that website today and wondering where I had stored all my print-outs and wondering whether or not chi, ki or psi energy really was a real thing. There is so little useful information about it all on the internet.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by cece23

and wondering whether or not chi, ki or psi energy really was a real thing. There is so little useful information about it all on the internet.

---

Oh yes, totally real. However, it is an advanced yogic skill like being really good at lucid dreaming. Much of the world doubted lucid dreaming was real. Many practice for months with only a few seconds of lucidity if any. Same with the energy. It is so subtle a skill and takes so much discipline and focus most will not get even enough to prove to themselves it is real. The best system for learning it (all those words refer to the same thing) is from India and called Kundalini. My word probably means nothing to you, just like someone telling you they can do such and such in their dreams. I assure you that decades into the study it is a very real thing as profound as the sense of balance or kinesthesia. Not as obvious as sight or sound, but certainly equal in it realness as those two senses mentioned.

To clarify, I do not believe humans can move objects with there mind in the telekinetic sense, or even reliably hear the thoughts of other people, but who knows. What can you do with it? That is not so important as learning to experience the sense involved. Having an entire new sense is amazing. It is useful in things like effecting probability, or perhaps calming an angry crowd, or effecting the weather. Someone with huge levels of energy can have astounding almost miraculous levels of coincidence happen. In my case I just had a mysterious string of extremely improbable things save my life from 100% certain death. The string of events was so improbable that everyone I know except my atheist sister (she is on the edge seeing a miracle but not wanting to believe) say you could not even figure odds as nothing but a miracle fits.

I also believe that to take it to that level of power you will need a spiritual aspect to the training much like a cleric in D and D is different from a magic user. That is because you can learn to harness crazy amounts of this energy, but with out spiritual assistance you are ineffective at knowing where to direct the energy. I did not know I needed saving, but generated the energy which was directed by something beyond me spiritually.

Sivason,

So revisiting a question I've expressed many times before that I still haven't found a satisfactory answer for....

The experience of kinethesia is largely imagined, its a mental simulation. All the senses are like that, internal cartoons that represent something, not direct contact with the things they represent. As such, if you have a lot of control over your imagination you can realistically hallucinate almost anything.

The fact that objectively verifiable miracles are possible proves that these forces or energies are in some sense real. But it doesn't very much prove or validate the experiences of how they work. People I've known who believe in paranormal or 'astral' stuff rarely if ever seem to grasp this. Even when they seem to understand the idea intellectually, as a matter of reflex and faith they still interpret their higher experiences as being 'real' at face value. And these experiences tend to be highly influenced by their theories about what is going on. Most if not all of the time it seems to me that they're thinking in terms of metaphors that aren't internally consistent and which they don't really understand or recognize as metaphors, notwithstanding that they may have some degree of real psychic power.

Most of the traditional teachings that I'm aware of hold that personal vitality is squandered through sexual activity. Other teachings, particularly more modern ones, hold that its not. They say that the energy isn't actually lost because it gets absorbed by your partner's vital body, particularly in a healthy 'love' relationship. The first, ascetic argument seems to me to be accepted by people largely because it resonates with their instinct for not wasting their procreative power. But it seems to me that the 'energy' is largely a felt metaphor for all the work they'll have to do to raise the kids the produce, and to some extent a metaphor for the actual physical reproductive capability. How much actual vital energy is at stake, I don't know. The more sex-friendly dogma seems to me to be contrived to validate people's desires and lifestyle choices, I don't think it makes much sense at all. But that doesn't confirm the ascetic view either.

A related consideration is that any activity a person engages in tends to train or condition their mind, and that affects their ability to control and express psychic power. This I have no doubt about, I both experience it and understand it to a significant degree. But then I wonder, to what extent is the idea of vital energy a metaphor for that fact? I wonder the same thing about Conscious Light, such as is mentally directed in Secret of Golden Flower. I question whether these things are actually conserved like physical matter, and gained or lost like money. I wonder if people are trying to think about these as if they are physical quantities, like an invisible fluid, when in reality they are not.

By the way, when I say "I wonder", I don't mean that as a passive-aggressive way of saying "I think you're wrong if you think that". I mean I ask the question but I don't think I know.

People clearly have the ability to influence luck, and some people can do it in more overt ways than others. I think that the people with the more overtly miraculous power aren't necessarily the strongest ones though, there are different ways of expressing power. I think that as a group, martial artists are actually weaker in important ways than people that are capable of inventing and organizing technological societies, for example. And those Enlightened materialists are weak also, in their own away. In terms of my ability to manipulate events, I seem to be far weaker than I was five years ago, but I'm doubting that I'm actually weaker, I think I've learned to express it differently.

It seems plausible to me that my psychic power, which I wield almost entirely subconsciously, works the same way as your Kundalini energy. The way I experience it is very different however. And I have to suspect that the systems that teach about it are largely wrong, just because every system of thought that I've encountered has started to break down a bit under sustained scrutiny, and I've been through that enough times that it seems unlikely to me that there are exceptions. (Raja yoga is the closest teaching that I can converse about by the way, if you're looking for a common vocabulary, I've never been interested in the more physical disciplines.)

I think that a primary reason why people do not recognize the flaws in the systems they subscribe to, is that faith in the system gives them a degree of access to the power that's common to other adherents of the system. If they step outside of it to question it, they lose that power. They can feel that loss of power, and it makes them feel empty and exposed, so they recoil from that, and keep drinking the cool-aid until such a time that they may be ready to transition to some other large basin of power.

My nature has been to go against the grain on everything. Part of the reason for that is I dislike the loss of mental sobriety and freedom that attends being psychically a part of a group-think. Part of it is I don't really fit anyway. Part of it is I rebel against what I see to be false or corrupt authority, and I think that every religious tradition is corrupt. Partially I think I'm ignorant and reckless, and suspect that some annoyed god will squash me like a bug someday. I get away with it for now because I'm too irrelevant to bother squashing. Also, the gods are perfectly patient, and are just as happy to squash me later as now.

Anyway, most of that was context for two questions. One is I want to know whether or not sexual activity wastes psychic power, if you can to some degree separate the truth of the matter from what you've read or been told or want to be true. Personally I can't tell one way or another, either possibility seems plausible to me, though the explanations mostly seem implausible. I do think that people are far more sexually promiscuous and addicted than would be the norm in a healthier world. And I think that continence is far easier than most people realize if your mind is in the right place for it. Biology is nowhere near as hardwired in that regard as is commonly assumed. At the same time, I also think that there's a lot to be said for being true to one's present inner condition, and that trying to emulate an ideal norm of thought or behavior without fully understanding the spiritual implications isn't always very useful. And I distrust most of what I've read about energy.

My other question is more general, I'm fishing for insight about the nature of spiritual power that helps me find it more clearly for myself. I've read and heard so much quasi-Vedic and quasi-New Age half-bullshit that I think I stopped discovering anything new that way 20 years ago. I'm looking for something direct and personal that extends a bit outside of what is in those expressions.

I'm clearly being immature but I did get a laugh out of reading ten paragraphs about spiritual skepticism only to find out they were only just context for THE question: is sexual activity draining me?

Thank you for that.

Before you get your educated answer, I will give my two cents to excuse my interruption: I think sexual activity, because it is an activity, uses energy... but nothing dramatic... Just like preparing and cooking food costs energy. Plus, you are fulfilling a physical need. Is it draining you? You'll feel it if you are doing too much of it. Your body will ache (maybe use lube) and you will feel bad you are sacrificing other things. If you are busy and tend to the things waiting for your attention, I think sexual activity will most likely be a healthy release of energy. After all, we all need to pay our energy taxes ;)

Now, my answers reminded me of teachings I received from ISKCON about karma. I was told when cooking food, to do it for Krishna, and the highest relationship with Krishna is marital, perhaps sexual. This way, you do not gain more terrestrial karma and instead bring yourself closer to Krishna. In words that make sense to me, I think it's a suggestion to direct our energy toward our "bigger whole." You will be more connected to this whole. Even if you drain minimal energy through sexual activity, it can still be productive, connecting you to a greater Whole.... a god, other people, yourself...

Sivason, here's another illustration of my question about energy. When playing chess, it is possible to feel the 'power' of the pieces. I doubt that the experience of this is essentially different from how anyone feels the chi power of their own body. And yet, I also have a hard time believing that the pieces actually have invisible power, it seems to me it must be a projection. At the same time, I think that its possible to feel the potential moves and their implications in a direct and supernatural way, a kind of precognition, but of possibilities. And maybe that's what people are doing when they're describing things to themselves in terms of 'energy'. I think that any description of what this life energy is has to explain how it relates to the chess piece energy, and what's going on there.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by shadowofwind

Sivason,
One is I want to know whether or not sexual activity wastes psychic power, if you can to some degree separate the truth of the matter from what you've read or been told or want to be true.

My other question is more general, I'm fishing for insight about the nature of spiritual power that helps me find it more clearly for myself. I've read and heard so much quasi-Vedic and quasi-New Age half-bullshit that I think I stopped discovering anything new that way 20 years ago. I'm looking for something direct and personal that extends a bit outside of what is in those expressions.

---

1) I have long since stopped paying attention to what books or traditions teach, as I have been actively, first hand exploring far beyond what they talk about. Besides, I am sure you will agree trusting the words of others is nothing compared to doing the experiment yourself and seeing the results. Straight to the point: The idea that physical orgasm depletes this energy is total F-ing nonsense. It likely comes from religious hang ups about celibacy and how morally strict the Hindu culture is supposed to be. The energy sense has nothing to do with any bodily reality I can find. I suspect it may not even have a sensory organ involved. How could the physical release of dopamine and such change how developed one of your senses is? This matches my first hand experiences. I can do exactly the same amount with energy before or after orgasm. I notice no difference at all.
In fact it is possible to learn to transform energy into other frequencies (think of red light changing to blue light, same energy different parameters) through practices involving sex. Now I will say that other aspects of your sexual reality may effect your energy. If you spend most of your focus and intent on sex you are not spending it on other things. Eventually one may have so much energy flow that conservation is no issue, but for most people so little energy is flowing that spending it on chasing sex might be limiting. On the other hand this sense is something that can be strengthened and that is done by using it. My first teacher told me that the idea of storing up energy is ridiculous. You need the energy to be flowing so the amount which flows will increase. there is no limit to the energy, their is a limit to how much you can get to respond to your intent. The amount increases like muscles increase, by using it. So in that sense using it unconsciously to chase sex is still using it and better than not using it. Very importantly, bad effects happen if you attempt to use your own energy flow to harm others, so trying to magically seduce a women would be a horrible idea.

2) Fine. Lets cut out all the religious and Vedic thought. I will try to make it clear in basic terms. There are two things creating what you perceive as you. One is obvious and that is the physical construct of matter. Even most sensory experience is simply part of this. That is the human as animal. The other part is something sort of spherical that is composed of a different type of matter. Think in terms similar to dark matter, as in a real thing but not measurable by normal matter. This thing has three aspects that can be used to describe it. First it has volume, as in it can increase in how much of this other matter it contains, it could be a low mass or high mass object. Second it can be more or less orderly. Think of a ball of yarn vs the same ball after a cat has messed it up. Third it is in motion. It is not a thing that stays in the same state. Think how a glass of water will have some kind of convection current happening due to temperature variation.
What is this somewhat spherical thing? I am no one to tell you it is the soul or it is the astral body. I can only say it is part of what forms your conscious experience and that it can become something you are fully aware of like a true sense.
Based on the three observable aspects 1:volume 2: lack of chaos/order 3: motion/ convection we can work on improving this object that is part of us and influences our conscious experience. You can add volume like weight training, you can reduce chaos like we can learn physical skills (create better neural paths) and we can learn to create an intense convection current including directing the pattern of flow. But first we must develop the sense involved.
How can you do this effectively? Well here is the problem, we have not consciously noticed this thing so in no way have exercised enough to feel anything. Say you had been paralyzed your whole life and then were cured. People can tell you how to lift your arm but nothing happens when you try. If you stop there you will never lift the arm. Perhaps you do not feel anything and do not believe that you are no longer paralyzed. It is important to keep trying because the trying is building the neural path needed and the muscular development needed. Someday you see a twitch and feel some tension in a muscle. Now you start to grasp that this is something real. Eventually you can actually use the muscles and perhaps become an athlete.
Now we look at energy with that in mind. In the beginning the channels that this stuff moves through are minimized (atrophy) and the volume/pressure of flow is reduced by its pathway being atrophied.
Conclusion: the first step is stay on the task of getting energy to flow down any of the pathways in any volume, despite the fact that you may not feel anything or what you feel may be faint enough that it seems like imagination. Here is the exercise I give students first. Picture you are effecting some kind of force and making it move. You will use senses you do understand to visualize this. Picture the feeling you get when the sun is on your back and creating a pleasant warmth. Also picture warm liquid is being poured on your shoulder and as liquid does it naturally responds to gravity, thus flowing down your arm and finally dripping off your fingers. Even if you can not feel this it will develop the pathway to handle more energy. this is the stage where the freshly healed paralytic attempts to move, the attempt builds the pathway until something is actually happening with enough volume that you can sense it. It is a new sense, not touch or kinestesia. I can not describe it, you just keep trying until enough flow happens that you experience "something." The next exercise is flow it down both arms (no need to develop both sides, it is not in your arm, you have developed one pathway that is not physical so can be used for many things, it could be visualized as flowing out your nose for that matter. You did the work to develop the path not your arm.) Flow it down both arm but have the two flows run into each other when leaving your hand. This creates an eddy. Visualize something like the warm fluid gathering into a spinning ball. This also is developing a new pathway that is different than the first. It may take time of visualizing with no result before you feel something new. The best way to describe it is that it is similar to holding two positive magnets near each other. There is a subtle interaction between the two colliding flows. Eventually a very perceivable something/force is felt. You can work on manipulating how they interact through conscious intent. One pattern is a stable eddy that builds in volume. This puts enough of this other matter in one place that you can more easily perceive this new sense.
So here is the direct and personal side. Do not worry how it is explainable, as I believe it is not physics of ordinary matter. It is matter of a different natural and must have its own physics. There is no point in complex spiritual thought or complex meditation until you ACTUAL can sense the stuff and your own ability to have an effect on it through focused intent. Do this by sticking to intent based simple exercises with no complex thought. Just develop the sense. Once you do remember it has three obvious traits. It can be increased in concentration/volume. It can be made orderly with intent. It can be increased in flow by developing the paths.
When you can cause it to move in a high enough volume that you can feel it, you work on forming a simple flow pattern (order and flow together) and increasing the volume you can handle. After that you can explore endlessly on your own, plus feel free to check in with me if questions come up.

What do I think it is? I perceive an endless expanse of energy. For visualization picture a sheet of finely woven cotton bed sheet. Now picture taking something that can grab a single thread such as a pair of tweezers and start twisting that thread around that fixed point (the spinning tweezers). Doing this causes the sheet to form in to a ball. The blank expanse of sheet now has an item that is only composed of the same sheet but now has three traits. It can get bigger. It can be twisted nicely or randomly. And it is twisting in relation to the rest of sheet at a rate (flow). This energy is infinite like space is in the regular matter. Things in our physical world may be attached to one of these balls or may be part of one of them. These balls can contain patterns which give them identity and can include extremely complex patterns (think of binary code). Conscious beings often are attached to a ball that has formed a sense of self just like the physical construct of an animal has a sense of self. What we see as ourselves is the perception of the physical animal combined with the awareness of the ball (entity in my jargon). I think of it as the soul, but just because I like the word. On death of the physical matter this entity still exists and can do other things including attach itself to a new animal body (reincarnation). On the practical side (lets call it the energy body for generic sake, not referring to any Vedic concept) the energy body can be developed and taught skills like the physical can. The skills are involving interacting with all the other patterns that have formed of that short of matter. This is where we get magical seeming effects. The part of us that is this energy body can interact with the rest of the universe as expressed by other patterns in the energy field (sheet). The types of interaction are in no way tied to location in the physical matter. How much can be achieved through mastery of this?. Certainly miracle level coincidences such as it raining everywhere in the valley, but mysteriously the clouds part on only your city block so you are looking at stars in the middle of a storm. Certainly rarely having to wait to cross busy traffic. Precog, aura sense, low grade esp and such.

The way you describe the ball is somewhat reminiscent of Carlos Castaneda's writings. I wonder how his writings hold up for you so long after reading his work?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by sivason

I have long since stopped paying attention to what books or traditions teach, as I have been actively, first hand exploring far beyond what they talk about.

---

Are there a few books that you find still hold up or you found influential in your beginnings?

Thanks Sivason.

If I think about my capacity to feel, I can create a sort of cascading avalanche of feeling from the top of my skull to my toes. (I haven't done this more than a couple of times, more than 20 years ago, because it seems pointless, but presumably I still can if I want to.) Any relationship to your yarn ball? Totally irrelevant?

You say that "the types of interaction are in no way tied to location in the physical matter". That being the case, in what sense does the yarn ball have a size and location in relation to the physical matter? Does it have size and location, or is size and location how you think about its power and its relationship to your own mind, which is presumably connected to structures in your brain?

You describe this yarn ball as being a personal snarl in a universal yarn sheet. That being the case, it seems to me that its yours in the sense that your personality that is related to your body is interacting with it, but it also belongs to everyone else.

I think my means of controlling my own body through its nerves is the same means I use to contact things remotely. My human body is an instrument that's designed to be usefully manipulated that way, but I think that in other regards the interaction is the same as I'd have with an 'inanimate' object. This is why oracles like Tarot decks or the I Ching work, for instance. There's a spirit connected with the oracle which is related to what it can express, and what it has expressed and will express for everyone else who has used it, but I think that everything else is that way also. So, to illustrate the idea, if scientists ever figure out the right neural network for a truly intelligent machine, it will have a soul automatically. And the ancestors of such machines already have souls in somewhat the same sense that a fetus does, though less directly.

Suppose for a minute that the universe extends infinitely beyond the event horizon. Or suppose that parallel universes exist, not physically connected to ours. I think these are equivalent. The magical body ought to allow a person to contact other worlds that are very, very much like the one we're in, but not quite the same. Is that what is going on with precognition? Or are we interacting with other potential worlds that in some sense are not as physically real as our is? I don't think we're contacting "the future" when doing this kind of thinking. I think we're exploring possible futures somehow, and choosing among them. I don't think its based on extrapolation using a mental model of the world, I think its direct, and does not involve reasoning in that sense. Are the people in those other worlds real?

Your statement that there is no loss of energy with sex seems plausible to me. I think however that in regards to psychic power, the primary impact of sex is however not a matter of where one is spending one's time and attention. Your magical inner body puts you in contact with everything. Sexual thinking conditions you to feel or desire in certain ways to certain stimuli. Sexuality seems essential to me in the sense that its a part of you and you can't be aware and alive psychically if you're not at ease with yourself. At the same time, it seems to be to be incompatible with the self control that is necessary to achieve a much greater degree of psychic power or awareness. It is a paradox in this regard. Even love of justice is like that. Or hatred of injustice anyway. It seems to me that other influences can provoke and manipulate you by foisting images on you and using your emotional reaction as an opportunity to run off with a little bit of your cache of the cosmic yarn ball.

I'm not making an argument for detachment by the way. I think that detachment comes with its own considerable downsides, and I view excessive idealization of it as a mistake. I think its OK for people to be limited psychically, and its a kind of greed or gigantism to try to acquire too much.

Anyway, thanks for your time in writing that, I'll keep thinking about it. I can find it if I can relate it to something I'm already aware of. One possible area would be a person's ability to wander or explore with their sense of identity, which is the same ability that makes 'telepathy' possible. Another area would have to do with luck, and choosing between possible futures, even to the point of altering the present by altering the past. Both of these things seem real to me, but I can't relate them to your energy body yet.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Occipitalred

The way you describe the ball is somewhat reminiscent of Carlos Castaneda's writings. I wonder how his writings hold up for you so long after reading his work?



Are there a few books that you find still hold up or you found influential in your beginnings?

---

Carlos Castinada clearly either had developed this sense or talked with people who had. I think nothing he or I say about what we have found should be taken as gospel. That is why I tried to stick to the 3 basic aspects I think everyone agrees on. Those aspects are not very mysterious and do not explain too much. The problem is after describing the basics of interacting with the energy body, he still had to write books. Most of his work was proven to be fictitious as far as the story parts. I also feel most of the energy stuff that he talks about are subject to experience and perhaps spun bigger and more complex to sell books. I think The Serpent Power by Sir Arthor Avalon is the best source material for a scholarly study of many years, but is of very little use to most people. Probably any book on ReiKi or Kundalini is worth reading. Just be aware that details like what color energy is or where a chakra is found is simply a person trying to explain a news sense in the words of an old sense. People are to quick to take these things as what they also will experience. I think we will all find commonality in the quest, such as that the stuff moves best in spirals or that its flow seems similar to fluid dynamics.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by shadowofwind

Thanks Sivason.

If I think about my capacity to feel, I can create a sort of cascading avalanche of feeling from the top of my skull to my toes. (I haven't done this more than a couple of times, more than 20 years ago, because it seems pointless, but presumably I still can if I want to.) Any relationship to your yarn ball? Totally irrelevant?
.

---

This is totally relevant. There is always a chance it is nothing but imagery, but it sounds exactly like one of the common pathways and like you clearly can sense it. I would start any work with that model and get to where you can feel it at will. Then in higher intensity. Then try to influence its motion. For example it can be given a spiral current in either direction as it cascades by applying intent.

I think all of your above thoughts on this are sound and on what I would think of as on track. I can of course not tell anyone else what the truths are, beyond very simple aspects of how I experience it.

Size and location is a weird and hard to grasp aspect. The location of one of these bodies in that field seem unrelated to location in the world. In fact I do not think the energy body is attached physically to us. It is connected, but I feel location is somehow a thing of this world and not related to the physics of this stuff. In a real sense the energy body also extends infinitely into the whole but has a center. that center is the base of its identity and can actually have spacial relationship to patterns in the field. For instance there is a center point of some large source (God? Just some big thing, like the sun?) that I can sense. I can move my energy body to be in line with what i would think of as an accretion disk caused by that thing and also adjust my axis to fit most successfully with it like a planet in a stable orbit and spin.
Size in my jargon does not relate to size in this world, say that your energy body is as big as a house or the city. It is more that it is something that can be added onto. It can be developed in a way that it contains 'more.'
Maybe it is related to a sensory organ or nerves, but I suspect it is a sense of the energy body, so the sensory organ may be composed of this other matter, not flesh. I don't know.
The parallel universe thing is a big part of my thinking. In my experience this is all data sets and no physical world truly exists. Therefore if we look at it as a created virtual world, we now do not have to worry about limits. We do not need to create a new sun each time a new reality is created. Instead it is just a variant version of the program running separately. It makes sense that the energy body may be able to access information from variant programs.
In the end please let me close with: I do not know. I only can relate my experience and suspicions.

Well thinking back to when Sageous started this thread 6 years ago to pleasantly speculate on dream sharing mechanisms, Sivason's "Yarn Ball" theory has some parallels to the "thought energy bubbles" theory and later the "thought energy threads" (which all make me think of Castenada's energy balls with assemblage points to energy strings, if I remember).

1. Time and space are not part of these theories. (Because known physics has not been able to measure the subject of our speculations, perhaps scientist know some brain structures and brain waves associated with "awakeness" but nothing about consciousness is understood, least of all, the interaction of these consciousnesses outside of these measurable structures and energies. It makes sense that such theories must act through "natural" "physics" different from those of the matter and energy we are able to measure, a bit like the black matter Sivason mentionned... if possible)
2. Trying to imagine this different spaceless/timeless/immeasurable matter/energy, we often think of balls and strings. Makes me think of how we can think of light as photons (matter, balls) or radiation (energy/string).
3. These theories include a whole (a sheet, mesh or cohesive tensions) within which to find individual "bodies" (bubble, thread, ball) that connects in an ambiguous way with our individual physical bodies.
4. Somewhere along the bigger otherworldly energy structures, I guess, you can find the different parallel universes which often accompany these theories but I think the theories are least clear on this because it is the most speculative and furthest from our measurable life experience.

In terms of difference, when thinking about Sageous thought energy, I feel like he is speculating about a different energy than Sivason is discussing... Both these matter/energies are spaceless/timeless/immeasurable. Why do I think both these matter/energy are different? Because one is associated with thought and the other with Kundalini perhaps? As far as I understand it, Kundalini is an "evolutionary" energy of growth, not a vitality, energy of life. Again, I don't yet understand this distinction.

Sageous' theorised thought energy gives me the impression that it is efferent (outward in direction, after the self in orientation, in a timeless, spaceless way) whereas I imagine Sivason's model as being afferent (inward in direction, before the self in orientation, in a timeless, spaceless way) (mostly because I'm trying to imagine it as a Kundalini energy of evolution and growth).

Yet... even if their theories are not meant to have the direction I am assigning to them, even if two such energy/matter system with these directions exist, they could not intuitively be two parts of one cycle, like "A" energy "moving" into you, then "B" energy "moving" out of you... because at any point, anything that is afferent to you is efferent to someone else and vice versa. So they would be the same energy/matter.

Instead, what I mean to speculate about, is that there could be different matter/energy systems such as Sivason's, Sageous', Carlos' or whomever that follow the 4 precepts I mentioned above. I'm not sure with what roles.

For the fun of it, I'm gonna say Thought energy is efferent (outward) and Kundalini energy is afferent (inward) though they are not a cycle of eachother. I see Kundalini energy/matter as being composed of a range of energies from "naive innocence" (Imagine this as a color, I guess, like low frequency electromagnetic wave is "red") to "uplifting wisdom", being an evolutionary energy... and thought energy as being a "colorful" array of personalities and identities...

I'm sorry I used Thought energy and Kundalini energy, you may as well replace them with A energy and B energy. I'm just leisurely philosophizing on these different spacless/timeless energies and used those preexistant systems to inspire me...

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by sivason

For instance there is a center point of some large source (God? Just some big thing, like the sun?) that I can sense.

---

I associate the sun with a ‘nature’ spirit that is connected to this world. There’s another spirit, sort of a parent to humanity, that is in some sense from somewhere else. Humanity is sort of grafted on to the rest of the animal kingdom of this world, which this ‘outside’ spirit has modified for its own uses. There’s an embrace or a dance between the sun spirit and the outside spirit. I experience the earth and its associated sun as being like a room in a very large network of rooms. There’s a veil of sorts that keeps us from knowing very much about what’s in all the other rooms, the same kind of subconsciously voluntary veil that keeps us from being too much in each other’s heads as individuals. The ‘outside’ spirit transcends time. If a person were to suggest that the ‘outside’ spirit is the ‘nature’ spirit but from the distant future, I think that would be wrong, but not entirely wrong.

A reason I haven’t done any exercises of the type you suggest, or any other type, is it doesn’t seem relevant to what I care about. I’m not saying it’s not relevant, just that I don’t feel the relevance, hence I have no motivation. I guess it is that way for most people.

As an example to illustrate what I do care about, consider a mother duck. The duck cares for her ducklings. She has a half dozen every season, most of which she will fail to keep alive until adulthood. I can’t accept this. I understand that this may be the only way that nature can work, in which case I will have to learn to accept it, or I will die. But that doesn’t fix the problem for me. It’s really not about suffering, it is more about the wrongness of the violation of the mother’s love. Most people shield themselves from this by not feeling it very directly. Some people even deny that the duck can feel. But I can’t shield myself. I don’t even want to. So I have spent my life trying to find a solution to this problem which is probably insane to try to solve. Pretty much everything that I vaguely ‘know’ about spiritual stuff is a result of this.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Occipitalred

Well thinking back to when Sageous started this thread 6 years ago to pleasantly speculate on dream sharing mechanisms, Sivason's "Yarn Ball" theory has some parallels to the "thought energy bubbles" theory and later the "thought energy threads" (which all make me think of Castenada's energy balls with assemblage points to energy strings, if I remember)...

---

You know, I was going to do the dutiful thing the other day and suggest that we get back on topic, but then I noticed that you guys were pretty much talking about things similar to my OP (if I remember it correctly); especially Sivason's generous post #147 above. Now I'm glad I kept my trap shut.

Thanks for the interesting conversation, guys, and for that nice summary, Occipitalred; I'm glad this thread has found another moment of life, as I have a feeling this stuff might be important (to someone, someday...)!