Thread: Meeting Others in Dreams

I'm fairly certain this is only my imagination at work, but I get the feeling that sometimes when I see someone I know but don't know too well in my dreams, I am able to know them better in waking life afterwards. I feel more cordial to them as if we have shared an intense experience or have spent some time conversing with one another. Usually the nature of my personal dreams is very dramatic and almost plays out like a movie, so I feel as if they have gone through one of these crazy night voyages with me. Does this happen to anyone else or is it only me? It is almost as if somehow I've pulled them in to my dreaming mind, though I know that is impossible. Is it?

Empathy. I feel you already know this, but you aren't actually facing anything external to your own experience here.

Some believe in shared dreaming, others don’t. If you can’t confirm that it was a mutual experience than perhaps while your dreaming with them it feels like you know them better because you notice things that you haven’t been aware of while awake or it could just be a dream experience that is opening you up more to people.

Originally Posted by DawnEye11

Some believe in shared dreaming, others don’t.

There hasn't been any solid evidence supporting shared dreaming since we know what empathy can achieve; the reasonable answer is that it isn't a thing, since what the OP described can be explained by well known phenomena that we know to be true (mostly because we all experience it), and since it would pose a series of logistical problems if it were a thing - lets not forget evolution is the one true law of existence as we know it. "There is such a thing as being just plain wrong", don't forget.

This kind of "some people believe this, others don't" talk when discussing such subjects, just serves, in my very humble opinion, to muddle up things in a forum where we're trying to figure ourselves out. I feel it's my responsibility to give the person asking the question as solid of a foundation as possible, to put their feet on, since they are clearly divided on, or ignorant of, the subject (hence the question); this will allow them to actually weigh things and start developing their own views. Not saying that I'm always right or that I always deliver a good foundation, mind you.

Just state what you believe, and if others don't agree with you, they'll state what they believe as well; it's much better than posting something unarguable.

Sorry for the rant, but this upsets me greatly since I see it way too often, and I think it's not healthy for the community.

Originally Posted by DawnEye11

Some believe in shared dreaming, others don’t.

There hasn't been any solid evidence supporting shared dreaming since we know what empathy can achieve; the reasonable answer is that it isn't a thing, since what the OP described can be explained by well known phenomena that we know to be true (mostly because we all experience it), and since it would pose a series of logistical problems if it were a thing - lets not forget evolution is the one true law of existence as we know it. "There is such a thing as being just plain wrong", don't forget.

This kind of "some people believe this, others don't" talk when discussing such subjects, just serves, in my very humble opinion, to muddle up things in a forum where we're trying to figure ourselves out. I feel it's my responsibility to give the person asking the question as solid of a foundation as possible, to put their feet on, since they are clearly divided on, or ignorant of, the subject (hence the question); this will allow them to actually weigh things and start developing their own views. Not saying that I'm always right or that I always deliver a good foundation, mind you.

Just state what you believe, and if others don't agree with you, they'll state what they believe as well; it's much better than posting something unarguable.

Sorry for the rant, but this upsets me greatly since I see it way too often, and I think it's not healthy for the community.

I know someone named Amy, and I met her in a dream a few times

Is Amy someone you know in waking life?

I don’t mean to upset you but that is how it is when people come across the subject of shared dreaming. They say it exist and others say it doesn’t. Based on my experiences and others I see the possibility of it existing but I’am not entirely sure yet. The skeptic in me still wants more proof before concluding anything. However, I’m not going to conclude it doesn’t exist because a lack of scientific data in the system.

I used to scoff at the idea of shared dreaming, but then I had some experiences that changed my mind. It absolutely is one of those "some people believe, some don't" kind of things, because it happens entirely in people's minds, so there can be no real objective evidence. Science isn't capable of studying the qualia that can only be experienced subjectively in one person's mind. It deals only with empirical results where things can be measured precisely, and you can't do that with dreams.

What I now believe is happening is dream telepathy, which isn't how I used to think shared dreaming was supposed to happen. At the time I thought shared dreaming meant 2 or more people had pretty much exactly the same dream and that if they would all write it down you'd easily be able to tell. But what I experienced was different. Here's the first one that started to convince me - I had a dream involving me as a midget who couldn't speak properly and I saw a girl wearing a see-through top who then flew away (or did she just disappear in my dream? It's been a long time - the memories are hazy now). In fact, right now I don't remember if I was aware of being a midget in my dream - maybe I just experienced it from a low viewpoint, as if I was a child? I used to read the dream journals of many other people in here, and on the same morning a girl posted a dream that she saw some kind of weird deformed guy who was really short and didn't speak well, then she took off her top and flew away. However there were many other details in her dream that were very different from mine, and the dreams only coincided in these particulars. She saw the midget and I think she walked away for a while and had other things happen, then later she saw him again, and that was when she took off her top and flew away. For me these events happened immediately one after the other. It doesn't coincide exactly, but it's more like we both shared certain ideas that we interpreted somewhat differently from each other. In the same way that people will tell the same story differently even if they all saw the same thing happen, only more so because dreams are more subjective than seeing a real event take place.

This same kind of thing then happened to me several more times involving different people on the board. In each case I first wrote my dream in my dj then discovered somebody else who dreamed something remarkably similar. The first time I just thought it was a freaky coincidence. But after it happened 4 or 5 more times I became a believer.

My natural skepticism kicked in again when I realized that sometimes I wasn't asleep at the same time as the other person, but someone explained dream telepathy and it made sense. It works as if both people have been told something that they then interpret in their own way. And the message itself - the part that is actually shared, doesn't need to happen when both or either is asleep. It can happen while awake, but the message is very subtle and quiet and doesn't make it to awareness through the noisy hubub of waking consciousness. Instead is is just there in the background until you begin to dream, at which point you have dropped into that more subtle consciousness of dreams.

I think of unconscious thoughts as being always there - the way the stars are always there, but they're dim and can't be seen while the sun is blotting them out. But once it goes down (the sun of course representing waking consciousness) then the sky darkens and the stars become visible. That's one of the meanings embedded in my sig pic. So if we do receive telepathic thoughts or ideas or whatever they are, they remain in the background until our mind quiets down enough to process them in dreams. And we do all seem to experience telepathy at times - like when the phone rings and you know who it is before you answer.

Originally Posted by Darkmatters

I used to scoff at the idea of shared dreaming, but then I had some experiences that changed my mind. It absolutely is one of those "some people believe, some don't" kind of things, because it happens entirely in people's minds, so there can be no real objective evidence. Science isn't capable of studying the qualia that can only be experienced subjectively in one person's mind. It deals only with empirical results where things can be measured precisely, and you can't do that with dreams.

What I now believe is happening is dream telepathy, which isn't how I used to think shared dreaming was supposed to happen. At the time I thought shared dreaming meant 2 or more people had pretty much exactly the same dream and that if they would all write it down you'd easily be able to tell. But what I experienced was different. Here's the first one that started to convince me - I had a dream involving me as a midget who couldn't speak properly and I saw a girl wearing a see-through top who then flew away (or did she just disappear in my dream? It's been a long time - the memories are hazy now). In fact, right now I don't remember if I was aware of being a midget in my dream - maybe I just experienced it from a low viewpoint, as if I was a child? I used to read the dream journals of many other people in here, and on the same morning a girl posted a dream that she saw some kind of weird deformed guy who was really short and didn't speak well, then she took off her top and flew away. However there were many other details in her dream that were very different from mine, and the dreams only coincided in these particulars. She saw the midget and I think she walked away for a while and had other things happen, then later she saw him again, and that was when she took off her top and flew away. For me these events happened immediately one after the other. It doesn't coincide exactly, but it's more like we both shared certain ideas that we interpreted somewhat differently from each other. In the same way that people will tell the same story differently even if they all saw the same thing happen, only more so because dreams are more subjective than seeing a real event take place.

This same kind of thing then happened to me several more times involving different people on the board. In each case I first wrote my dream in my dj then discovered somebody else who dreamed something remarkably similar. The first time I just thought it was a freaky coincidence. But after it happened 4 or 5 more times I became a believer.

My natural skepticism kicked in again when I realized that sometimes I wasn't asleep at the same time as the other person, but someone explained dream telepathy and it made sense. It works as if both people have been told something that they then interpret in their own way. And the message itself - the part that is actually shared, doesn't need to happen when both or either is asleep. It can happen while awake, but the message is very subtle and quiet and doesn't make it to awareness through the noisy hubub of waking consciousness. Instead is is just there in the background until you begin to dream, at which point you have dropped into that more subtle consciousness of dreams.

I think of unconscious thoughts as being always there - the way the stars are always there, but they're dim and can't be seen while the sun is blotting them out. But once it goes down (the sun of course representing waking consciousness) then the sky darkens and the stars become visible. That's one of the meanings embedded in my sig pic. So if we do receive telepathic thoughts or ideas or whatever they are, they remain in the background until our mind quiets down enough to process them in dreams. And we do all seem to experience telepathy at times - like when the phone rings and you know who it is before you answer.

Thx for sharing your experience DarkMatters. That kind of thing has happened to me before too. Some instances I thought it might be because when were on the same site we can read or see images that can influence our dreams in a similar manner. However, there was other dreams where the things that came up matched up pretty well and weren't mentioned on the site.

I often thought about the idea of meeting others in dreams, but simply dismissed it as being a bit too farfetched. I then read stories of shared dreams by well-known authors and wondered if perhaps we do meet others in dreams. One thing I noticed is that often a dream character does not look 100% like the person her or she is representing (this I have often mentioned in my journal). But then there are the few times where the likeness is so real (and so are other things such as their behaviour, shared emotions and their personality) that I wonder if I did not connect with the essence of that person in a dream. A few years ago, a dream really hit me and left me wondering:

Some year ago, a strange dream coincidence occurred that made me really think about the possibility of meeting someone in a dream. There was this old flame of mine that I knew a long time ago and as life usually goes, bad timing kept us apart and we went lost touch. Last I heard she lived in Oakville Ontario, so I decide to see if I could visit her in a dream, or at least visit a dream character that was her. As soon as I became lucid I headed to her place but instead of Oakville I ended in a high rise apartment on the shore of Lake Ontario in Toronto. This dream was very vivid and realistic. My friend, whom I had not seen in 10 years, looked older and heavier, but it was her without a doubt. We talked for a short while and shared a wonderful moment. I wished her all the best in the world and told her that I think of her sometimes. We then hugged and the emotion was very strong, such that it woke me. I recall feeling amazing after this dream. Now, what is truly strange is the fact that the following week I could not get this dream out of my mind and so I decided to see if I could find her on facebook. To my shock, she looked exactly like in the dream but even more shocking was the fact that she had a photo album that was open to the public it was about her home; an apartment on the shore of lake Ontario in Toronto! And even freakier was the fact that the album was created the day after I had the dream.

I never mustered the courage to contact her to see if she had a similar dream, but this strange coincidence really made me wonder about dream connections.

Amicus