Have you made other DCs Lucid?

I was reading some articles on the web by Paul Tholey, who was German LD researcher. In one article he was talking about interacting with dream characters.

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it is helpful if the dream-ego tries to convince the other dream characters that they are in a dream. The quality of the dream can then change completely and communication between the dream characters can take place which may lead to much greater insight than is found in the typical lucid dream. For this reason we consider the "lucidity" of all dream characters ... to be a higher form of lucidity. The verbal, or possibly even "telepathic," communication no longer takes place on a symbolic, but rather on a direct level.[/b]

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Sometimes in LDs I try to convince DCs they are dreaming. But until now I assumed that this was a symptom of low lucidity. In dreams where I felt I had a higher lucidity I would order DCs to do things or I would question them about their existence.

Have you ever made another DC lucid in your dreams?

Also, has anyone found any books in English by Tholey? Most of his writing seems to be in German. I couldn't find anything on Amazon or Addall.com

Plenty of times, but the quality never improved.

The only meaningful way I can see DCs becoming "lucid" is for them to act in accordance with their powers, which are in the end given to them by the dreamer.

Definitely, yes. I've given flying lessons to DCs often, especially when I'm flying and I notice that they are not. It's fun to be the teacher. It does, however, get old, because you eventually realize that you haven't taught anybody anything.

Except, perhaps, teaching yourself a bit more about your power and its relationship to your dreams.

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Except, perhaps, teaching yourself a bit more about your power and its relationship to your dreams. [/b]

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never saw it in this way
sounds less useless put in this way :D

HOLY SH*T! @ Ex Nine

Wheredafuq have you been?! :wtf2:

And yeah, I've had a lucid dream where my recognizing I was dreaming led some of the people in my group to have the same abilities that I have, but "lucidity" is a state of mind, so to ask if you've ever made a DC "lucid" is to ask if you've made a DC realize they were dreaming, so that's a little harder to answer. :wink:

Generally I'm pretty skeptical about the benefits of getting other DCs lucid. But the articles I read had many interesting concepts, so I have some curiousity about other people's experience.

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Originally posted by Ex Nine
The only meaningful way I can see DCs becoming "lucid" is for them to act in accordance with their powers, which are in the end given to them by the dreamer.
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This gets kind of complicated. On one level there is a dreamer that is creating everything, the dream setting, the dream characters, including the dream ego (the character you think is you). But we identify primarily with only one DC - the dream ego. Everything is the creation of our mind, but we generally have limited control. So what is controlling the other parts? Is there consciousness guiding the DCs?

Tholey was incorporating ideas from Gestalt psychology. Which has a view that we have split ourselves into parts and we need to reintegrate into a greater wholeness. I imagine that if this is true, then DCs that reoccur would be more psychologically important.

I want to experiment more with this. But so far my experience has been that when I tell DCs they are dreaming, they say go away :lol: :lol:

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Originally posted by Asclepius
Everything is the creation of our mind, but we generally have limited control. So what is controlling the other parts? Is there consciousness guiding the DCs?

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I don't think that we have limited control in dreams, but I know what it's like to feel that I have limited control in them at times, so I think I know what you mean.

We naturally fill in gaps of both sensation and logic with imagination so that a conditionally understandable "whole" emerges. That's Gestalt psychology of the active mind.

So, as I understand it, our dreams (and DCs) are emergent from the same process that leads to our holistic awareness of the real world, except that in dreams we have extremely little upon which to found that process, so what emerges is naturally chaotic and self-referential. In reality, however, we have biological detectors of light and matter to form a foundation. Whether in dreams or real life, this process occurs almost entirely without our needing to consciously attend to it.

It is, nonetheless, apparently exclusive to each individual, so I don't see a need question if there are other forces at work creating the content of my awareness than combination of my own gestalt emergence founded on otherwise "mindless" natural forces

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Tholey was incorporating ideas from Gestalt psychology. Which has a view that we have split ourselves into parts and we need to reintegrate into a greater wholeness.[/b]

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I do not think GP presupposes a historical split of the self. I've never read that in psychological literature before, but I have read it in what appear to be spiritual/religious interpretations of GP. It also might be from its roots in Continential Philosophy, but not part of its modern theoretical system.

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I want to experiment more with this. But so far my experience has been that when I tell DCs they are dreaming, they say go away :lol: :lol:[/b]

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I think you should be careful moving forward with the assumption that your self is currently split. You'll likely have experienes that reinforce the notion that you are disintegrated.

People expereince joy integrating with others, their environment, others with others, others with their environment, and environments with environments, concepts with people, and pretty much everything that can be imagined and this can be intensified in dreams.

I think all this is a natural consequence of the fact that we are already independently integrated selves and desire more integrations because that's just what we do.

That's how we became what we are and that's how we'll become what we'll be.

Some very interesting thoughts on dream characters.
If a DC happens to be a manifestation of yourself, could this possibly bring you to a deeper awareness of yourself?

I have had many encounters that I have asked a DC and as was pointed out, they said what I would have guessed.
But in other situations I have asked the same character a deeper question. One that would not apply to that particular person or dream character and have had interesting results.

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Tholey was incorporating ideas from Gestalt psychology. Which has a view that we have split ourselves into parts and we need to reintegrate into a greater wholeness. I imagine that if this is true, then DCs that reoccur would be more psychologically important. [/b]

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Originally posted by Ex Nine
We naturally fill in gaps of both sensation and logic with imagination so that a conditionally understandable "whole" emerges. That's Gestalt psychology of the active mind.

So, as I understand it, our dreams (and DCs) are emergent from the same process that leads to our holistic awareness of the real world, except that in dreams we have extremely little upon which to found that process, so what emerges is naturally chaotic and self-referential. In reality, however, we have biological detectors of light and matter to form a foundation. Whether in dreams or real life, this process occurs almost entirely without our needing to consciously attend to it.

It is, nonetheless, apparently exclusive to each individual, so I don't see a need question if there are other forces at work creating the content of my awareness than combination of my own gestalt emergence founded on otherwise "mindless" natural forces

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ok right, so our sensory processes are not functioning when we sleep. But I don’t think this means that we don’t have a foundation for the processes behind dreams or DCs. What we experience in dreams, especially lucid ones, is a fully representational experience of the world, indistinguishable in qualitative content from our waking experience of it. Maybe our senses which are continuously used in waking consciousness are taking resources from cognition that get directed towards other purposes in dreams. This would explain why cognitive science has shown that one reason we sleep has to do with our brain getting filled to capacity with sensory input. This would also explain why many people report that their lucid dream experiences are more vibrant and representational than waking experience.

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Originally posted by Ex Nine+--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Ex Nine)</div>

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I do not think GP presupposes a historical split of the self. I've never read that in psychological literature before, but I have read it in what appear to be spiritual/religious interpretations of GP. It also might be from its roots in Continential Philosophy, but not part of its modern theoretical system. [/b]

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Hmm? the continental tradition, which is most of philosophy, and the newer feilds of postmodernism and poststructuralism posit the modern subject as fragmentary. The main idea behind this is the under-representation of our situation in the world.


<!--QuoteBegin-Ex Nine
I think you should be careful moving forward with the assumption that your self is currently split. You'll likely have experienes that reinforce the notion that you are disintegrated.

People expereince joy integrating with others, their environment, others with others, others with their environment, and environments with environments, concepts with people, and pretty much everything that can be imagined and this can be intensified in dreams.
I think all this is a natural consequence of the fact that we are already independently integrated selves and desire more integrations because that's just what we do.
That's how we became what we are and that's how we'll become what we'll be.

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Nicely put. so maybe there is a split between the world and our representations of ourselves in it. maybe the self cannot be split, only stretched and made unrecognizable to parts of itself

In approaching this subject I do have considerable theoretical baggage. So I want to try and ground the discussion in experience.

In my dreams there are multiple characters. Often when I become lucid these characters will disappear.

Other recurrent characters seem to lower my lucidity. For example, if my brother appears in a lucid dream, I forget he is a DC.

Other characters in an LD may be frightening. (Here my view of them as split off parts is influenced by writings of LaBerge, Tholey, Jung, Fritz Perls, and Guntrip)

There is also the possibility of meeting characters that have different insight than the dream ego. (if you have not experienced this you are unlikely to believe the possibility, but Howetzer shows that others have experienced it).

I'm interested in using lucidity to faciltate the interaction of these aspects of consciousness.

I remain curious if anyone has experiences that support Tholey's belief that by guiding DCs to lucidity, greater communication is possible?

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In my dreams there are multiple characters. Often when I become lucid these characters will disappear. [/b]

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This happens to me very often.
I am curious to why. It is as if my attention goes elsewhere and they become irrelevant.

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Originally posted by Oneironaut
HOLY SH*T! @ Ex Nine

Wheredafuq have you been?! :wtf2:

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Exactly. We've missed you!

Anyway, once I told a DC that I was dreaming about them, and though they laughed, they shook their head in disbelief. I don't think I've come close on any other occassion, though.

I had an interesting experience in a dream this morning. I told one of my DCs that we were dreaming, I even had him plug his nose and breathe. He breathed without a problem and I was like, "That means you are dreaming", and he told me that that was normal in his world. I believed at the time that my dreaming and lucidity had taken me to another "world".

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Originally posted by Feynaro
I told one of my DCs that we were dreaming, I even had him plug his nose and breathe. He breathed without a problem and I was like, "That means you are dreaming", and he told me that that was normal in his world. *I believed at the time that my dreaming and lucidity had taken me to another "world".

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those tricky DCs :lol: did he look like he was from another world? :D

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Originally posted by Asclepius


those tricky DCs :lol: *did he look like he was from another world? :D

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Hehe, No, he looked like a normal boy. But he was not at all surprised that he could still breathe with his nose plugged. Tricky DCs indeed.

My first LD (that i can recall) was about a year ago. In the dream I was back in high school and my boyfriend (my actual ex-bf from school back then) and I were at the mall eating in the food court....anyways I wont bore you with the whole dream but I had realized that I was dreaming and I looked over at my ex-bf and I started to tell him that in the future we wouldnt be together and it had really been 8 years since we had seen each other that this was all just a dream....then he preceeded to tell me how crazy and dramatic I was being.
Thats the only time I can recall telling a DC about it being a dream.

Last night I had a dream where a DC made me lucid. There was a third DC in the dream who was also 'lucid'.

It was a long an interesting dream. The two DCs seemed more lucid than my dream ego and helped me practice an RC based on intertwining my fingers. They also laughed at me as I tried and failed different forms of dream control. :lol:

Full dream is in my dream journal.

Maybe a subconscious response to this thread, but it was definitely more fun have a DC make me lucid than the other way around.