Why can't dream characters answer certain questions?
I'm a little confused about this subject. While lucid, I have asked my dream characters questions such as:
What's your age/name? (I ask this to friends/family, not strangers)
What day is it?
What is a dream?
What is my purpose?
I repeatedly ask them these, but am never returned with a straight answer. (I've even been laughed at when I asked that last question.)
That got me to thinking. Dream characters are essentially your creation, created by your mind. And when vividly lucid, they respond to you however you wish. For most questions that I ask, I know the answer within the dream, but for some reason they don't. Why is that? They are my creation and part of my mind, thus, they should know.
Unfortunetely Stephen Laberge left this area out of his "bible". I was wondering if any of you have any thoughts about this as well or maybe some links to some studies done or essays.
Cheers.
Re: Why can't dream characters answer certain questions?
Quote:
Originally posted by evolo
Dream characters are essentially your creation, created by your mind. And when vividly lucid, they respond to you however you wish. For most questions that I ask, I know the answer within the dream, but for some reason they don't. Why is that? *
Cheers.
First, you are making an assumption that Dreams are solipsistic -- internal to the individual. Why such a limiting assumption? Particularly since any shared dream, or any precognitive dream would invalidate such an assumption. Since we do have documented shared dreams and documented precognitive and objectively perceptorial dreams, then we know that Dreaming IS effected by external influences.
Particularly interesting is that Dream Character will laugh at you when you ask them "what is the meaning of life?" Think about it. Why would they think that so funny. Perhaps it is the Irony. Dreams are there in order for us to explore just such teleological considerations. But apparently the question cannot be answered in twentyfive words or less, and so the Dream Characters just laugh. It is something the Dreamer must find out for his or her own self.
Re: Why can't dream characters answer certain questions?
Quote:
Originally posted by evolo
That got me to thinking. Dream characters are essentially your creation, created by your mind. And when vividly lucid, they respond to you however you wish. For most questions that I ask, I know the answer within the dream, but for some reason they don't. Why is that? They are my creation and part of my mind, thus, they should know.
Unfortunetely Stephen Laberge left this area out of his \"bible\". I was wondering if any of you have any thoughts about this as well or maybe some links to some studies done or essays.
Cheers.
Laberge did write an article though, which you can find at lucidity.com, where he suggests that the LD has both lucid and non-lucid contexts fighting for control of the dream (this is why we can often fall back into normal dreams when we get too caught up in the things going on around us in the dream that are part of the non-lucid context). If you accept this, then your answer could be that the DC's are part of the non-lucid dream context and can therefore give you any answer, like in a normal dream.
I once asked a DC why they were here and she suddenly transformed into a frightening witch, rose into the air, and started yelling at me, asking why I dared to question her reason for being there. I haven't asked a DC a question since.