Thread: Shared-Dreaming Debate of 2015

Two things made me decide to attempt a new shared-dreaming (SD) debate: First, it's been a while since a thorough debate was held about this subject: It seems that DV's discussions about SD have all but gone away, and the few remaining new discussions generally assume that SD not only exists, but is practiced successfully by many, and I'm not sure that position is ready to be a given just yet.

Next, because the implications of SD's proven and practical existence are far-reaching, to the point of possibly rewriting the physics textbooks and upgrading the power of consciousness on a global scale, SD seems a very important subject to debate, allowing both sides a chance to see what the other side thinks (or perhaps learn that there is another side).

These are the only rules, and I hope you will follow them:

* No personal attacks!

The basic question we are debating is "Does SD exist?" and not "Do you believe in SD?" There is a difference.

* Keep your posts thoughtful, and as detailed as possible. Shouting "It is true because I said so!" and "It is not true because I said so!" is not a debate, and is a waste of all our time.

* All theories, no matter how insane, are welcome. But be prepared for them to be shredded; this is a debate. after all!


So have it, and have fun!


[I was going to call this the "WakingNomad Memorial Shared Dreaming Debate," but I'm not sure there are enough dreamers left who remember that great crusader for shared dreaming... and it seems so final...]

One of the tracks (maybe the main one?) in this thread needs to be "what would constitute an acceptable proof or a valid argument that SD exists?" Without any agreement on this, there can't be any agreement on "Does SD exist?"

I’ll side with the skeptic position. My "issue" with Shared Dreaming stems from 3 particular points:

a) Definition: I have yet to see a definition of SD in which proponents of SD agree on. Without a proper definition, it’s impossible to catalog experiences which could otherwise become anecdotal evidence which could evolve into actual data.

b) Falsifiability: this is an issue that I (re) found recently when arguing with Vincefield: people like him present ideas that make a lot of sense, provide rational arguments, but don’t give me ground in which to respond to them. In the case of SD, if someone tells me “It exists because X might actually be a cause of Y and not Z”, and that theory has no predictive power, then it doesn’t allow me to infer anything, thus, I can’t argue for and against it. If some argues in favor of consciousness not being rooted in the physical brain and that allows for dreams to being shared, should I dismiss centuries of research and observations with predictive power (meaning, the current model can make guesses that prove it right or wrong) in favor of a logic that can also be applied to “we know that you can’t move your leg if we cut it, that doesn’t mean your brain moves your leg, it just means the connection between your soul and your leg was severed”?
My opinion is that a valid SD concept should be subject to criticism: evoking the unknown or the impossible (without trying to conciliate with the current knowledge we have) makes the discussion impossible because even if the readers temporarily suspend their skepticism, there’s no way to point flaws to that theory, because it’s not falsifiable.

c) Validity: there’s studies that seem to indicate that a certain portion of our recalled dreams are actually false memories; there’s also studies that show alterations to memories based on their recollection. This and other aspects of memory/sleep/dreaming, but also cognitive biases give us a pretty good certainty that first-person reports are extremely fallible. In lights of that, why should we accept that 5-10 dreams are valid evidence of SD if we can’t independently assess the event/data?
What’s more frustrating (when exercising criticism against opinions other members post) is that many proponents of SD use an extremely complex/mysterious/abstract language. This complicates a lot the topic and it ends up wasting a lot of time in the discussion. For example, a paragraph arguing for the existence of SD in which the author mentions dualism, logical impossibilities, and one or two contradictions: how are we skeptics meant to argue against an argument whose foundation (regardless of being true or false) is based on already controversial, impossible to test/know, logically impossible steps?

In the end, while I know we’re not in a research facility equipped with tools and knowledge to perform large scale studies in SD, I still think there’s a line between going from what we know, assuming X or Y, and explore the unknown, AND using arguments/theories that have zero predictive value to build up evidence for the unknown and because of that CANNOT be proven wrong.

PS: Open-mindedness is not just considering that SD exists, it's also considering it doesn't exist. So in a debate, it's very unfair if anyone skips/avoids arguments that show the flaws in their own arguments, and settles in ONLY arguing points/aspects which point to the unknowable/untestable.

Originally Posted by Sageous

[I was going to call this the "WakingNomad Memorial Shared Dreaming Debate," but I'm not sure there are enough dreamers left who remember that great crusader for shared dreaming... and it seems so final...]

Now I am confused. Is he no longer alive?!

Originally Posted by sivason

Now I am confused. Is he no longer alive?!

I have no idea. I was only making a joke, Sivason, one that I hoped folks who know Nomad might appreciate and maybe one that Nomad himself might appreciate, if he is still lurking. I was hoping that putting the note in brackets as an aside might keep it as an aside, too.

So, back to SD?

Wasn't he captured by PsyOps or something?

Hmm. I wonder where this thread will lead. I was going to just watch but I thought I might as well respond in hopes that better suited people improve my answers. So, I will start by the discussion of Zoth's three issues:

a) Definition: I propose a shared dream to be a two (different, yes) dreams experienced by two different dreamers in the same night which includes an avatar of the other dreamer and a similar theme. That is, if I were to share a dream with Zoth, we would both have two different dreams, but at least, I would dream about someone/something representing Zoth and Zoth would dream about something/someone representing me. And there must be at least one similarity, for example, we both experience a nightmare, or we both explore the moon.

b) Falsifiability:
c) Validity:

For those two last points, I don't know. Without an actual lab, we are not going to do proper scientific experiments. All we can talk about are introspective experiences.

I don't think that it is a problem that some dream memories are fake. If two people experience a shared dream, whether the memory is fake or not, there is still the fact that the experience was shared.

Also, I don't think fake dream memories are that fake. There might be changes but the overall theme is probably still the same. I don't know.

Also, I searched through my University library for information and there was nothing about shared dreaming. It seems to actually be called telepathic dreaming and this is all I found (it's a review of a book, not even primary literature):

Untitled.jpg

I realize that it doesn't show, but it wasn't that interesting. They seem to say that there is some evidence but it's all very unreliable. I thought there would have been more research done on this. Probably none was good enough to be published.

Originally Posted by Occipitalred

a) Definition: I propose a shared dream to be a two (different, yes) dreams experienced by two different dreamers in the same night which includes an avatar of the other dreamer and a similar theme. That is, if I were to share a dream with Zoth, we would both have two different dreams, but at least, I would dream about someone/something representing Zoth and Zoth would dream about something/someone representing me. And there must be at least one similarity, for example, we both experience a nightmare, or we both explore the moon.

Do the dreams need to occur simultaneously? Must they share identical dialogue/situations?

If it's as loose as "has an avatar of the other guy + common theme and doesn't have to be simultaneous" then it's pretty clear that SD can exist and is easy as two dreamers good at incubation working together. There's absolutely nothing mystical about that. But I bet that definition won't satisfy most people.

^^ That's a good point.

Though I think Occipitalred's definition seems accurate, for the sake of determing whether SD is real or not we'd probably need to add one more piece, like perhaps an exchange of information...

Well, I would say that yes, the dreams need to be simultaneous, but if you're not a scientist and you're only talking with a friend, then, there's no way to know if the dreams happened simultaneously. But at least it would have occurred in the same night.

But I guess it's a good point you bring Fryingman, I hadn't thought of it that way. But let say I dream tonight that you and I were eating elephant meat and that you were telling me that God was real, and then I said so, and you said "Hey, I had a dream about eating hamburgers with you and I was telling you that the singularity was going to happen soon", then maybe that could be considered a shared dream, because there was no dream incubation of eating meat and talking about higher consciousness.

[EDIT] I wrote this before seeing Sageous' comment. I would agree with the exchange of information in the context of verifying if it is real but in "real life", it could merely be spending time together, like people can go watch a movie together or walk at the beach.

[EDIT 2]

I actually found these:
http://www.ingentaconnect.com/conten...20006/art00006
http://www.amsciepub.com/doi/pdf/10.....1971.33.3.783
http://apa.sagepub.com/content/49/2/629.short

Only the second option can be read without a subscription to the journal. Sageous, did you mostly intend that we would have a philosophical debate, that we would review the scientific literature or that we would make attempts to share dreams?

Definition

Pretty good point FryingMan ^^ I have mixed thoughts about Sageou's suggestion: in one way, shared dreaming immediately makes me think of a shared experience, in the same way Christiane F. experienced a shared hallucination with her friend (via drugs, but anyway), without any need of exchange of information. But that assumption already leads to some hard questions:

- Is SD intentional? If so, does it require intent from both participants?
- Does SD require the presence of other dreamers at all? I can simply dream about X and Occipital dream about X but we never see eachother avatar in the dream. Even more complicated, what if we are there, but not visible? Shared dreams might not necessarily stick to a panoramic view that allows recognition of other dreamer's presence.
- If this is shared dreaming, wouldn't incubation be considered a lower-form of it?

So, how about:

Shared Dreaming: a dream experienced by two or more people simultaneously, containing either the same unambiguous dream content. (if we agree on 80-90% of dream content on our description of the dream, wouldn't that fulfill the same requirement as we exchange information which might not necessarily happen?)

Technically, this experience would still be impossible to measure via objective reports, because even if we use that japanese technology that primes people to dream about something, and then reads the neural activity to determine and reconstruct the same dream content, every brain is different in terms of how its perception is processed. So we'd still be stuck with subjective dream recall reports, but I guess this would be fine if we made use of proper blinding techniques.

I don't think that it is a problem that some dream memories are fake. If two people experience a shared dream, whether the memory is fake or not, there is still the fact that the experience was shared.

Good point: whether you dreamed about it and I just created that memory after being awake, the similarity of the experience by itself wouldn't be less valid, even if it wasn't exactly a shared dream.

Tomorrow I'll try to gather us some literature on shared dreaming when I come back of work

These topics are endless...

Posting some links, read if you want

http://www.dreamviews.com/beyond-dre...-dreaming.html

https://flowofmysoul.wordpress.com/2...shared-dreams/

https://flowofmysoul.wordpress.com/2...ared-dreams-2/

Interesting links flowofmysoul ^^

Since you are here, would you mind answering a couple questions for us (it seems you're the right person to ask to):

1. If you are wrong and you aren't experiencing shared dreams, what would you say you have been experiencing?
2. What would make you change your mind regarding the existence of shared dreams? What would convince you that they aren't possible/real?
2. Why do you think there's barely any studies pointing to the existence of shared dreams?

Originally Posted by Zoth

Definition

- Is SD intentional? If so, does it require intent from both participants?
- Does SD require the presence of other dreamers at all? I can simply dream about X and Occipital dream about X but we never see eachother avatar in the dream. Even more complicated, what if we are there, but not visible? Shared dreams might not necessarily stick to a panoramic view that allows recognition of other dreamer's presence.
- If this is shared dreaming, wouldn't incubation be considered a lower-form of it?

So, how about:

Shared Dreaming: a dream experienced by two or more people simultaneously, containing either the same unambiguous dream content. (if we agree on 80-90% of dream content on our description of the dream, wouldn't that fulfill the same requirement as we exchange information which might not necessarily happen?)

Good points, Zoth. It's true that there would not necessarily be a need for "avatars/visual representation of other dreamers"... And it is true that if shared dreaming is to ever be practical or reliable, incubation must be allowed in the definition.

Given my small research, it makes more sense to refer to shared dreaming by telepathic dreaming. In this sense, dreams are not a physical plane, they are simply "brain activity" and shared dreaming is the ability a person's brain to affect another person's brain activity during REM-sleep or dreams.

Originally Posted by Zoth

Technically, this experience would still be impossible to measure via objective reports, because even if we use that japanese technology that primes people to dream about something, and then reads the neural activity to determine and reconstruct the same dream content, every brain is different in terms of how its perception is processed. So we'd still be stuck with subjective dream recall reports, but I guess this would be fine if we made use of proper blinding techniques.

I think that you could get significant reports if you compared with a control group that were told to incubate similar dreams as someone but to be closed minded to sharing a dream. Or something like that.

Originally Posted by Zoth

1. If you are wrong and you aren't experiencing shared dreams, what would you say you have been experiencing?
2. What would make you change your mind regarding the existence of shared dreams? What would convince you that they aren't possible/real?
3. Why do you think there's barely any studies pointing to the existence of shared dreams?

I especially like the two first questions, I hope he answers.

I've just started reading flowofmysoul's stuff and it's interesting.

Originally Posted by Zoth

Interesting links flowofmysoul ^^

Since you are here, would you mind answering a couple questions for us (it seems you're the right person to ask to):

1. If you are wrong and you aren't experiencing shared dreams, what would you say you have been experiencing?
2. What would make you change your mind regarding the existence of shared dreams? What would convince you that they aren't possible/real?
2. Why do you think there's barely any studies pointing to the existence of shared dreams?

To start there is no such thing as shared dreaming. Sharing minds, global consciousness, telepathy, any of these terms are more valid then shared dreaming.

1. If I am wrong. It depends on a situation, similar communications between two or more people might lead to similar dreams. Big world events, might lead to similar dreams. Living the same daily life as your partner does, might lead to similar dreams between two of you. And so on, depends on situation.

2. Lack of success. More and more lack of success.

3. If you are talking about public studies. Its a very complicated subject to study. Most people think shared dream is similar to waking life meetup, you look at each other, you talk, you wake up and recall it. No, its not like that, at least for now. There are many different scenarios, lucid vs non lucid dreamer, non lucid vs lucid, lucid dreamer vs awake person, non lucid vs awake person, lucid vs lucid, non lucid vs non lucid..
Lets take an example where one person is sleeping and is lucid dreaming and another person is also sleeping and is lucid dreaming too. You will not see each other as you look in real life, you would see each other of what you are in a particular dream(of what you are on a subconscious level). For example I like using quotes of famous people and in dreams it feels like powers are endless. Another dreamer saw me endlessly morphing from object to people, at the same time using different quotes of different people.
Another topic is language, words that we know are often useless in shared dreams. It is a completely different experience, you won't find words to describe some feelings from shared dreams. A lot of things are interpreted symbolically and that's another problem for studies.
It is hard to give one person a complicated passcode like "uk4zS0" and ask his partner to find this password in his dreams. Even if you know the passcode, chances of you giving it right to another person are miserable, however if those numbers matter to you, if you are temporarily attached to them, your partner can find that exact password in your memories instead of looking for you and asking you the passcode. Somebody gave you that password and you have that memory, if you saw it somewhere, then it should be in your head.

Dreaming person vs dreaming person experience is weird a fuck If somebody wants to study this, they should start with dreaming vs non dreaming.









Even when I had many successful shared dreams, I still tried to look at it from a sceptic view. A major symbolical sync isn't something you can rely on. You need to look for a sync that is weird, out of place and chances of such lucky sync between several people should be almost impossible.

I will give you one example. (It was was like 1 year ago)There were three of us trying to share a dream. Last few weeks most of our dreams were on topic of one big tree, where we tried to meet and etc.. Nothing weird, just green grass around and a big tree, whole week. Then one night I decided to change topic, without telling it to anyone. I appeared in a village, it was dark and there was a girl standing there, I called for two other people whom I tried to share a dream with and then I decided to do something out of place, so they can notice me and notice what I did. In that dream I ripped her head off and her head floating straight upwards as well as her blood. Next day I was waiting for two replies from my partners, I received two emails and in both they saw a girls head ripped off and floating straight upward and it all happened in a village. That is only one sync mentioned from this dream, we had two more in the same dream.

So what are the chances of this happening randomly? Nobody mentioned village or girl or her head before, it was supposed to be the same green grass big tree thing. And this isn't the best sync we got.

Originally Posted by sivason

I get that it is a crappy thing to debate 'beliefs' that can not be demonstrated

I agree here. Saying figuratively. That's why I am improving every day, so one day I can come and do this with ~100% success rate on any given person.

No experiment can ever prove shared dreaming. It could only point towards some unexplainable exchange of information. A profound psychic could pick up on information from clear across the world as easily as across the room, if you believe the same schools of mystic thought as I do. Distance is not an issue (and does not actually exist). An exchange of information may point towards one of the two subjects having some form of ESP and not shared dreaming. Would that still be cool? Of course, but it would not prove dreaming was shared.

Zoth's original point has little merit when talking about subjects with unclear mechanisms and potential as well as questionable existence. We can not have such discussions but say it must be limited to standard science and limit the metaphysical aspects. It may seem unfair to some, because you can not disprove or even refute a statement that is based on concepts of spirituality, by the inherent 'unknowability' of those subjects.

But hey, look at me, I just said that distance does not exist with a straight face (you can not see it, but it is very straight, lol) Who could even begin to take me seriously if I say such over whelming non-sense? Yet, I am an educated man, with decades of experience in "mystical" things, and honestly believe that as much as I believe the sky is Blue. Wait, I may as well say the sky appears blue, because "there is no sky" in the same way, "there is no distance." On top of that I just used the statement, " with decades of experience in "mystical" things," so now my validity is laughable at best.

I get that it is a crappy thing to debate 'beliefs' that can not be demonstrated, and brings on the exact thing Sageous asks to avoid, but perhaps certain topic are just going to be that way.

No offense intend towards Zoth who is one of my favorite members and has a valid point, if one that may be asking too much here.

Originally Posted by sivason

I get that it is a crappy thing to debate 'beliefs' that can not be demonstrated, and brings on the exact thing Sageous asks to avoid, but perhaps certain topic are just going to be that way.

Yes, that is probably true...but if people say they believe in SD, and then argue and defend that belief as you do yours, Sivason, well, the debate ought to move along just fine.

Originally Posted by sivason

No experiment can ever prove shared dreaming. It could only point towards some unexplainable exchange of information....An exchange of information may point towards one of the two subjects having some form of ESP and not shared dreaming. Would that still be cool? Of course, but it would not prove dreaming was shared.

If you prove ESP, that's good enough. The ESP that you would be able to prove would involve the same kind of deep psychological experience that is reflected in a 'shared dream'.

First off, I ran into Nomad on facebook last week, and he was doing well. Married to a hot blonde, and he was doing some sort of liver flush that was helping with his arthritis.


I'm so done with proving anything. If I ever start sleeping better, all you people demanding proof will be afraid to go to sleep, and nobody will believe you! If I was interested in trying to prove it, I might start with twins. Most sets of twins have had shared dreams, which I theorize is because their internal landscapes are so similar.

Shared dreaming, also known as Mutual Dreaming, happens to varying degrees. You have what Linda Lane Magallon calls Dream Meshing, where the dreams of 2 or more people seem to synch up to varying degrees in content and themes without actually meeting the other dreamer. You used to see this a lot in the DJ section here on DV. You can have full shared dreams where just about everything is pretty much the same, and you can have a mix somewhere in between Dream Meshing and Shared Dreaming. You almost never get a perfect shared dream where everything matches up, yet that's what everyone seems to expect.

Sharing Vs Meshing: Dreamers United - English

It's important to understand shared dreams do not occur in a shared dream space. Each dreamer creates their own unique and independent dream where they are in complete control. Yet it's still a shared dream. If you ever come to terms with that, the truth of it, it's going to change the way you see the waking world, which for all intents and purposes works the same way. It's like asking two different artists to illustrate the same story. Overall it will be the same in general, but there will be differences in style and interpretation.

One of these days I'm going to go Freddy Krueger on the skeptics. One of these days...








https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aRPCrWPAtEQ

Originally Posted by FryingMan

Do the dreams need to occur simultaneously? Must they share identical dialogue/situations?

If it's as loose as "has an avatar of the other guy + common theme and doesn't have to be simultaneous" then it's pretty clear that SD can exist and is easy as two dreamers good at incubation working together. There's absolutely nothing mystical about that. But I bet that definition won't satisfy most people.

No and No. As for timing issues, I saw one account here on DV I found to be credible between a father and son that happened 20 years apart. Father had it when his son was a small child, about his son when he was grown up, and the son had it when he was grown up. Sounds far fetched, yet it had the key markers I look for in any shared dream account, which is archetypal differences. In the father's dream, they went into a Denny's, in the son's dream they went to a Wendy's. That was the only big difference. Different yet kind of the same. You see that kind of thing in almost all shred dream accounts where you can track down both versions, and there's just no way everyone would "make up" that kind of odd detail. Hell, most people don't even understand those types of differences even after I try to explain it, so how could they possibly make it up?

Plus there was too many people involved in those Nomad dreams, too many different timezones. It never could have happened if everyone had to be asleep at the same time.

As for being Identical..
In the Moon Meetup, I found myself lucid on the moon. Look around at a whole lot of nothing until I spot a random kitchen, just sitting there on the moon. Since it's the only thing around I go to it. As I'm looking around wondering what to do next, in pour all these mafia type thugs and next thing I know everyone's kung fu fighting. I didn't exactly see Waking Nomad in that chaos, but...

In Nomad's dream for that night, he was on the moon, in the middle of an epic sword fight, as was typical of his dreams. Then for no apparent reason, he holds up his sword, and yells "TO THE KITCHEN!!!!", and leads his battle to the kitchen. I assume that's the point where all the mafia guys showed up in my dream. I interpreted his battle a bit differently, but his influence is unmistakable.







Oh! Almost forgot about this! A variation on my Mousey MILD technique, where the M stands for mouse. You imagine holding a mouse in your hand as you fall asleep to quickly bring out a dream version of your hand.

I was thinking if you tried this with a partner and held hands as you both fell asleep, but both stayed focused on that one hand holding your partner, you should get a phantom hand just like with the mouse method. But instead of holding a dream mouse, you'll be holding .... what exactly? What would happen? Beats me, I snore too loud and nobody wants to sleep with me.

I disagree with Sivason. In that only experiments will prove SD can exist

I say can exist because it doesn't yet. It will require vast technology, and not just wishful thinking, and B.S. No doubt in the distant future there will in fact be devices that allow one to experience things scanned from one brain and placed into another. But I would want to define shared dreaming as simultaneously experience the dream, either from one point of view/experience or as a pack.

If we take a definition of we just have to have a similar dream then shared dreaming wouldn't mean much. Suppose I fall asleep and enter a lucid dream in which I have good real world recall and mongo-control levels, and so I remember reading some stuff on here and I decided to start deleting things, sure my dream probably starts out nothing like one of Sageous dreams but I just delete everything, then sit in the nothingness for an hour or so then try and fail to build a trinity engine. When I wake up I log in and Inform Sageous of my great proof of shared dreams because it is exactly like the ones he has.

No I don't think so, recently I have had two dreams about teeth falling out does that mean I have had a shared dream with thousands of others including many of you, not unless we have a meaningless definition that shared dreams are just common dreams.

Shared dreams should be like shared sex, both people there in the bed together. Just because you and 2.5 billion other guys have grabbed themselves at least once in their lives does that mean you are part of a mass shared masturbation? Because your lame definitions of different dreams at different times in different places by different people sound like a similar formula for one big sticky mess. Real shared dreaming in the future will be two people laying near each other connected by a super computer.

Yep, it's a complicated issue, and if you prefer to let computers do your thinking for you, I guess you'll just have to wait until somebody invents a shared dreaming machine.

Or you could try, it's not like you have anything to lose. Coolemd, what if I could leave a mark on your body that would probably show as a red shape on your skin when you wake? Get lucid and find me. I won't lead you to water, but I can make you drink.

Originally Posted by The Cusp

if you prefer to let computers do your thinking for you, I guess you'll just have to wait until somebody invents a shared dreaming machine.

No if the computer was doing the 'thinking' (creation/ rendering) then it would be a simulation that is available now, you go online let your brain scan the simulated environment with your eyes as your companions / opponents do the same, a shared virtual world that is rendered entirely by the computer.

To be a shared dreaming machine, it would require that one or more brains create the material that is being scanned (and or integrated) by the computer and then rebroadcast to the sharing dreamers. The computer would merely be the conduit for the shared dream, much as your purely imaginary conduits, except real, where every dreamer would experience pretty much the exact same brain/brains created content in real time or near time. No doubt with the ability to replay the dream content latter, rather then demonstrate its ability via morning pillow marks.

I'm not gonna spend a ton of time in this thread. Most of my contributions to this topic can be found throughout my post history.

Not sure if this is well known nowadays, but most all the accounts of shared dreaming on this sight were knowingly induced. As for the rest, a handful were blatantly fabricated, and only a select few seemed to arise spontaneously. The ones that arose spontaneously (some of which I've personally experienced and verified) were always the most interesting and perplexing to me. For the longest time, I could never quite pin down the mechanisms behind these shared dreaming experiences in a satisfying, potentially verifiable manner.

It's been awhile since I've last delved into the theory behind shared dreaming, but I've been doing some light research into physical processes which could account for sync-ups which were not explicitly induced. I stumbled upon a few lesser known properties, effects, and triggers of mirror neurons. For the sake of time I'll assume you all know the basics of what mirror neurons are and/or can use Google. And to help you shortcut some research: apparently visual stimulus isn't necessary for all types of mirror neurons to trigger. Thus, it's not unreasonable to think folks who regularly chat over the phone or via skype are susceptible to the mental effects of these neurons--which could potentially result in shared dreaming experiences arising without explicit induction.

Obviously, this hypothesis is pretty loose, and would require equipment and dedication beyond most of our means to properly test--but I feel it offers an interesting physicality-based explanation for this particular phenomena.

Originally Posted by Mzzkc

I'm not gonna spend a ton of time in this thread. Most of my contributions to this topic can be found throughout my post history.

That's fine, but the main reason I started this thread is because expert and rational information like yours is drifting further and further from view; I'm not sure that people will be terribly interested in browsing your 2,000 posts to get your take on shared dreaming (even with DV's search-ish function). Any input you -- and anyone else who feels like they talked themselves into a coma about SD a couple of years ago -- can provide would be most welcome.

Originally Posted by Mzzkc

Not sure if this is well known nowadays, but most all the accounts of shared dreaming on this sight were knowingly induced. As for the rest, a handful were blatantly fabricated, and only a select few seemed to arise spontaneously.

Sounds about right.

Originally Posted by Mzzkc

I stumbled upon a few lesser known properties, effects, and triggers of mirror neurons....Thus, it's not unreasonable to think folks who regularly chat over the phone or via skype are susceptible to the mental effects of these neurons--which could potentially result in shared dreaming experiences arising without explicit induction.

This doesn't work for my experiences, most of which included premonitions and involved strangers the morning before I met them. Since I don't watch TV or movies that also tends to remove a lot of possible external triggers. For most of these dreams the other person did not have the same dream, so it is not a 'shared dream' in that sense. But I lump them together because when both people do remember the same dream, it seems to be the same kind of phenomena as the other experiences. It feels the same and the type of information obtained is the same, whether both people are aware of it at the same time or not.