From: miket@hermes.tcs.com (Michael Turner nmscore Assoc.)
Subject: Re: Dream characters with their own minds
Organization: Teknekron Communications Inc.
Date: Thu, 19 Nov 1992 20:44:44 GMT

In article <gj156879.722116773@cunews> gj156879@alfred.carleton.ca ( gj student 156879) writes:
  >          While stumbling through the library looking for interesting
  >articles on dreams, I came across the following which blew me away:
  > 
  >          "Consciousness and Abilities of Dream Characters Observed
  >During Lucid Dreaming", Perceptual and Motor skills, 1989, vol 68(2)
  >pages 567-578

I found a copy in the U.C. Berkeley Ed-Psych library.

  >[...]
  >          -there are cases of dream characters TELLING people they are
  >dreaming, and causing the dreamer to go lucid!

Since lucidity can be elusive when you try to ram into it straight on,
maybe autosuggestion techniques could focus not on trying recognize
lucidity, but on relying on dream characters to help you.  Of course,
you'd have to give them some motive for cooperating....

  >[...]     -a neat description of a woman who learned how to enter a
  >dream character's body by "astrally projecting" from her dream body.

The weird pronoun semantics involved in describing her point-of-view
shift made this particular anecdote a little hard to disambiguate.

  >[...]     -Tholey discusses the threat of becoming MPD by focussing on
  >inidividual dream characters and trying to make them reapear in future
  >dreams, but he goes on to say there has been some dream work with
  >MPDers where the subsystems communicate in dream.

The citation for this is:

	Salley, R.D. (1985) Dream work in a case of multiple personality
		_ASD (Association for the Study of Dreams) - Newsletter_,
		2(24), 1-4.

If anyone has a copy, or knows where one can be found, I'd be very
interested.  (Me too.)  ((Me three.))  (((Shut up, Curly.)))

   >[...]    -There was also a tantalizing hint at the very end of the
   >article about a device that would allow for talking back and forth,
   >one person IN dream, the other awake!  Tholey says this is using an
   >alterred form of a lucid dream inducing device.  Anybody have a clue
   >what he's talking about?

The truly tantalizing thing about this supposed device is Tholey's
conjecture that not only could the dream ego use it to communicate
both ways with the waking world, but so could dream characters!

I think this might be possible.  When I was young, I had a walking
fever dream, such as have been mentioned here recently, where I
was conscious of saying something to my father, and thought I was
saying one thing, only to have him tell me later that I said
something completely different.  Perhaps this was some personality
fragment (such as dream characters might be) taking the opportunity
represented by my open mouth and confused state.

(Of course, this isn't the end of the possibilities.  Maybe dream
characters could even communicate with dream characters in someone
else's dream, if this supposed apparatus could be made to work well
enough.  That might make for some interesting exchanges.)

I should point out that Tholey doesn't use the word "talking" in his
tantalizing hint.  His precise wording is as follows:

	At present, we are using an apparatus which was originally
	designed for the induction of lucid dreams.  With the aid
	of this piece of apparatus, two-way `communication' between
	the dream ego and the apparatus is possible.  In other
	words, the dream ego can send signals to the apparatus via
	the EOG and the apparatus can -- after a time delay --
	relay certain signals back: the signals being below the
	level required to wake the subject up.  Work is now being
	done on improving the apparatus so the question of whether
	other dream characters are able to send signals to the
	`outside world' can be given a definitive answer.

Such delicate wording!  "Other" dream characters.  `Outside world'.
Don't condescend to these characters, or they might become
uncooperative, and *then* how will we get more research funding?
He also seems deliberately obscure on technical details.

What is an EOG?

Given typical publication delays, and the date on this paper,
Tholey's "hint" could be as much as five years old.  Surprising
that nothing more has been heard.  Maybe it didn't work, or the
funding was held up because the proposal sounded so implausible
or ridiculous, or maybe they have gone into secret product
development....
---
Michael Turner
miket@tcs.com