What if... (What ARE dream characters?)

I was just skimming articles about dream characters when a strange idea popped into my head...

What if "dream characters" were really other people in NON-LUCID dreams?


They are all people we have seen at some point, they never have any idea what is going on, and they often seem in a daze like when you have a standard Non-Lucid dream. :shock:

I personally haven't read enough about shared dreaming to formulate an opinion, but I just think this is a cool thought to ponder, even if it has no scientific or logical merits.

I guess what I'm trying to ask is what are your thoughts on shared dreaming and the true nature of dream characters?

Well, first of all dream characters are not always people we have seen before in waking life. One can dream of people one has never seen. Also dream characters are not always confused and have no idea - mine seldom are like that.

Also if dream characters were other people and they actually represented the other people whose face we see in dream, then how would summoning a dream character work in a lucid dream?

However, that said I am open minded about the possibility of shared dreaming, it's just that I don't think that all dream characters could be explained that way, just at most some maybe.

Also, ever since I got into dream interpretation, I have come to realize that a lot of my dreams make best sense if I consider that several of the dream characters represent me or part of my psyche, so those dream characters are kind of like avatars for some part of myself. And sometimes my subconscious uses known faces for those characters and sometimes strangers.

I think dreams are complicated though, and no single theory can explain all dreams or all dream characters.

It's certainly interesting.
But what happens when a dream character resembles your best friend, but said friend is actually awake?

@ JoannaB
Can anyone confirm Joanna's belief that not all dream characters have to be seen in real life? I thought that was a pretty standard fact of dreaming?

But disregard the dazed dream characters, upon thinking about it more that doesn't make sense, as most DCs aren't dazed for me either. However during a Non-Lucid dream the dreamer doesn't often feel dazed, they think its real life, so other people being DC's can still be considered ;)

As for summoning, Non-Lucid dreamers would just go with it. Often in dreams the scenes change randomly; from beaches to a hotel, walk through a door in a theater and end up on the moon, etc. Being summoned and disappearing from your current location would be no different a feeling than these random changes.

I agree with your belief that dream characters are most likely split parts of our subconscious, all representing ideas or thoughts. It is just fun to ponder new outlooks every once and a while.

I recently watched a life-changing film on dream and reality called "Waking Life", and its made me think about all of this. Its a must watch for any lucid dreamer who can handle the complexity and dynamic philosophy involved.

@Splodeymissile

Now THERE is an argument I was pondering, and that seems to be the biggest hurdle. Perhaps that only SOME dream characters are real people Non-Lucid dreaming, or perhaps we all exist on autopilot in a dream realm while we are awake in reality?

I would like to get Gab in here, who from what I've glanced has some pretty neat ideas on dreams and a shared dreaming realm.

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Originally Posted by splodeymissile

It's certainly interesting.
But what happens when a dream character resembles your best friend, but said friend is actually awake?

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I think that the friend you'll see as DC could be someone other than your friend, If that makes any sense.

Also, like he said, It's interesting.

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Originally Posted by lsddream

I think that the friend you'll see as DC could be someone other than your friend, If that makes any sense.

Also, like he said, It's interesting.

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So, you mean like an elaborate mask? I suppose that could work.....

Ravenofshadow, both of your possibilities could work as well, though I think the former is more likely.

I have read other people confirm that they dream of strangers, too. Now it could of course be that those strangers are just people you saw in passing in waking life like on a street. However, one could also cobble together a person who had like the hair of one person and the body of another etc. think about it, why would your dream imagination be limited in creating people's images? If you can create stuff using your imagination, why not characters? That does not necessarily mean all characters are created, but they could be. Human imagination is a powerful force not to be underestimated. Now characters are complex, and thus it is much easier to just use one one has encountered than to create one, so many dream characters are ones one has seen before. That said a lot of my dreams include strangers I either never met in real life or don't recall meeting. Do they all have to exist in waking life for me to be able to dream about them? If that were so, then all fictional characters in books and movies would also need to exist, and they do not. However, this belief that one cannot dream of fictional characters is a common urban legend. I think it came about because it is indeed easier to just dream of someone one has met before.

My thinking is that DCs are just random constructions used as a filler for our dreams, or reflections of our subconscious minds at best. The whole shared dreaming idea is a pretty neat thought to entertain, but I don't suscribe to that theory personally. But hey, then again, why we even dream at all is still largely a mystery, so all we can do is speculate.

That's a cool thought! That probably would explain why they refuse that your dreaming...
Me: "This is all a dream! I'm dreaming."
DC: "No. No your not!"
And sometimes they get really mad and touchy about that subject.

OP, I understand that you want to have tendencies to feel that dream characters are much more than figments of your imagination. I completely empathize with you where you want to feel that those same thought-forms in your mind could actually be real people in some other abstract reality where all psychological predispositions are suddenly contradicted and that we may be interacting with real people dreaming. However, trying to close that gap and making a split with knowing what's just thought-forms/dream characters/dream guides/whatever vs. an actual person in their dreaming body is a difficult task.

Even if you want Gab to add her input, it's only going to fuel your expectations of what she's stated before. She has her own beliefs and schema of things, you and I and everyone has our own unique ways of trying to understand the lucid dreaming experience. The same goes for Beyond Dreaming elements where people start building these habits of feeling they're going beyond the confines of their mind. Maybe there is some truth to that, but based on the lack of finding a process that can prove that, they are just limited to experiential truths and anecdotal evidence.

So whether you get consoled with someone else who has a similar mindset to you, it's not going to do much other than creating an echo chamber. It's safe to presume that with the totality of our minds in general in dreams, even if there are experiences that feel too gargantuan and grand for the mind to conceptualize, we should aim for how and why the mind can do that before going beyond that.

I'm inclined to think dreams are far too personal for there to be dream sharing with DCs like this. For example, I might dream of being at a location familiar to me but with DCs representing people I know/knew who would have never visited this place, e.g. people I knew from school at my workplace. I don't know if this is common for people or if I'm a rare case, but it makes me think if people are dreaming of DCs being in unfamiliar places, then that would put people in these places in these other peoples dreams.

While I do find myself in unfamiliar places in dreams, I don't really find myself in places that could realistically be another persons school/workplace/home etc. These places tend to have an unusual structure. Again this could be me.

Another point would be fictional characters. These appear in my dreams now and then but they don't exist in the first place to be a real person in the dream, although this could be explained by the idea mentioned earlier that maybe some DCs are people dreaming and others not. Fictional characters in my dreams tend to have a more dominant role though rather than be a random passer by.

Just my take on it anyway. Maybe my logic is flawed, it's a subject where answers and ideas just create more questions I think.

Good point Shantak, I really like that response. Dreams do seem very personalized, and you very rarely find yourself in a place that is completely foreign to you.

LinkZelda - Not really sure what you just said. I'm not yearning for consolation, and I don't want to feel correct. I personally don't believe in anything I just said really. I'm just making a little hypothesis, putting some ideas out there, and seeing what people have to say. I have seen Gab's comments and I enjoy them because they are unique and well articulated - sorry if this offends you.

JoannaB - I'm sure you see strangers in dreams, but I have read and believe that they are people that we have seen in real life, or faces we know that have been twisted slightly; like our own reflections in mirrors during a lucid dream. Perhaps its possible to create a complete stranger, but for now I will stick to my sources.

Thanks for all the comments, its cool to see what everyone thinks about this.

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Originally Posted by RavenOfShadow

Can anyone confirm Joanna's belief that not all dream characters have to be seen in real life? I thought that was a pretty standard fact of dreaming?

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No, no one can confirm it. I would say that it is likely that it is just a myth that one cannot create a new face, this belief seemed to randomly pop up and I've never been able to find any proper evidence backing up the claim.
It seems ridiculous to even claim that the brain is so limited. What is stopping the brain from compiling a face out of multiple different body parts from different people and then slightly adjusting them, or completely designing a new face, perhaps one that you draw in the dream.

Here's my take on it (but let me point out, that I don't as yet completely believe in it - I merely lean towards that belief).

[Theory on]

The universe is much larger than the three dimensions we know. Possibly there are many additional dimensions. For evolutionary reasons most of us don't perceive these well, and those who do are called clairvoyant. The rest of us perceive more of the "hidden" parts of the universe while dreaming, than while awake.

When we encounter a dream character, it may be a figment of our own imagination, or a figment of someone else's imagination, or a fellow dreamer (lucid or non-lucid) or - a person in deep sleep.

This latter category is what I suspect is the case with the "dazed" dream characters, who do not seem to be aware of anything, and also do not seem to be engaged in any activity at all. They are probably not dreaming, because then they would be acting (at least observing the activity around them). Instead their consciousness is turned off, and they are in deep, restful sleep.

Possibly, forming yet another category, those people who are fully awake, are also present in the "dream world". Since their consciousness seems to be completely in the "physical" world, they would probably also come across as mindless mannequins in the dream world.

[Theory off]

Disclaimer: I'm a physicist, and really, really want to believe, that the universe is huge, exciting, and ultimately well-ordered and understandable. :)

Awesome input Voldmer!

That is a really cool theory... It seems that the universe is as limitless as our own brains and imaginations, so why wouldn't something like that be possible? :)

Similarly I don't really subscribe to these beliefs, I just think its good to have a healthy discussion and see where everyone stands. I believe that there must be some kind of spiritual connection with lucid dreaming, and even non-lucid dreaming; i'm just not sure what that connection is, or what I believe yet.