Shared Dreams, How many are involved

[Philemon]

I'm wondering if anyone can share similar experiences or provide some insight concerning these events.


I have been sharing some vivid dreams with friends lately. In one semi-lucid dream, I was showing a "friend" and some other groups of people how to lucid dream. I showed them how to fly, how to walk through walls, how to ward off negativity, etc. There were some very specific details to this dream. At one point, I was showing my then unknown friend how to use energy to ward off an erratic Witch. The Witch became uncontrollable and I aborted the training session and moved on to something else.

Two days later, a friend calls and tells me I was in her dream the previous night. I had my dream two nights prior, so we weren't dreaming at the same time. She began telling me about a dream where I was teaching her and some other unknown people how to lucid dream. There was some walking through walls and she vividly remembered me showing her how to fly. I held in my excitement and didn't say anything as she continued. Then she said, "and there was this witch flying around all crazy"!! There was no crediting this to coincidence now.

Her dream memories continued further than mine. She recalled feeling overwhelmed by the dream and telling me she wanted to wake up. I apparently said, "well, just wake up then." She was confused and somewhat frustrated by this simple response. It didn't work that easy. Then I guess I explained it "better" and she was able to awake.

There have been more confirmed dreams with other people. I am always careful not to persuade them into confirming, but rather, let them tell me the details I already know. That way I know for sure.

I had one the other night with an ex-girlfriend I haven't spoken to in over a year. I don't know what to do about it.


I guess another looming question is, Who were all the other people in the main dream I described? Were they REALLY there, or just kind of a part of the setting?

[Anna Conlan]

Hi Philemon,

I wrote an article which addresses the question of whether dreams are 'real' or not and what you're doing when you're dreaming. You may find it interesting: healingandinsight.com » Testimonials » What we’re doing when we’re asleep

It sounds to me as if you're a dream master.

I regularly have 'synchronized' dreams - it seems to happen with my housemates quite a lot. Like, a few weeks ago, my housemate and I both dreamed on the same night that we were holding a baby and the baby's head kept flopping back because he couldn't hold it up, as if he had no bone in his neck.

And another time, another housemate and I both dreamt we were on a plane that crashed - and the details of the dream were quite similar too.

[RRR]

My current speculation is to the connected nature of dreaming.. How much is thought and proximity relative? How has dreaming changed now that as a culture we tend to sleep alone? In the wild that would be incredibly dangerous...How did humans sleep before civilization? If we slept in packs, could dream sharing have been a normal event, useful for psychic exploration? How has modern singular/coupled sleep modified the normal patterns of sleep?

Very interesting on the dream sharing. I often have dreams where I am communicating with other people, Its hard to say whether they are experiencing the dream as well without validation.

Its really cool that you share dreams with your housemates Anna. It fits really well into what I have heard before about proximity and I will keep it in mind when I'm working on my pack sleep experiments in the future

Keep us updated.

[BillPerry]

I seem to recall that LaBerge did research into this, or perhaps proposed a project.

I remember that it was something like:

Once you've gotten into the other person's "dream", have them follow your finger, and move your finger in a predetermind pattern.

If you're truly in the same dream, their physical eyes would follow that pattern at some point.

Would be interesting. But, for all that, we'd still need a workable model of how to get into a shared dream setting in the first place.

[Philemon]

[QUOTE=RRR;271307]My current speculation is to the connected nature of dreaming.. How much is thought and proximity relative? How has dreaming changed now that as a culture we tend to sleep alone? In the wild that would be incredibly dangerous...How did humans sleep before civilization? If we slept in packs, could dream sharing have been a normal event, useful for psychic exploration? How has modern singular/coupled sleep modified the normal patterns of sleep?
[QUOTE]

Interesting questions RRR. From Anna's experience, it would seem that proximity plays a role. From my experience, proximity and time continuums seem completely irrelevant. We had the dream on different nights. We live over 20 miles apart. (I don't think that counts as mental proximity).

I don't think it really matters if we sleep in packs or by ourselves, although it would be interesting to do a scientific study to get some real evidence. What matters is that we wake up and share our dream experiences with each other. If we all kept detailed logs of our dreams, we might realize that we were sharing hundreds of dreams. Anna and her housemates are probably a good example of this. If they share an interest in dreams, get to see and speak to each other about their dreams, it seems natural that they would notice consistencies.

Good questions.

Anna,

I did enjoy those articles. It's interesting that a lot of your "soul-searching" clients have dreams like this. It makes me wonder what is next on my soul-searching journey. This surely can't be it.
I look forward to reading more of your articles.

BillPerry,

I've read much of LaBerge's studies. The problem for most of us is that we are not in a laboratory setting. Even if we were, we wouldn't be able to be all the time. Proof doesn't really seem as important as practice, or developing the model as you suggest. We'll see.