From: miket@hermes.tcs.com (Michael Turner nmscore Assoc.)
Subject: Re: A Question to lucid dreamers
Organization: Teknekron Communications Inc.
Date: Fri, 6 Nov 1992 21:04:18 GMT

In article <92310.184920SRK106@psuvm.psu.edu> SRK106@psuvm.psu.edu (Senthil Ramas Kumar) writes:
>I would really like to thank all of u who responded to my question.  One
>common feature I find in all of u're responses are that they all seem very
>reluctant to admit that they are indeed in a dream.  It is not just
>reluctance, but also a sence of resignation on thier part.  I find thier
>reaction very interesting and amusing, and can anyone extrapolate on this
>and say (just a guess will do) why this is so.  I noted that micheal
>concluded that the entire dream sequence is the creation of only one
>dream-ego (the dreamer's), if this is so, why are the other dream characters
>acting in this strange fashion.  I feel that if indeed that if the other
>dream person was my own creation, the other person would have responded
>positively, something like " wow, I am only in u're dream, amazing isint it
>? " maybe I got this point wrong.  micheal, can u further elaborate on u're
>hypothesis ?

Hey, look at it from THEIR point of view!  What if someone told YOU that
you were born only minutes ago, and had only a few more minutes to live?

The dream researcher Paul Tholey has probably done the most published work 
in the area of interaction with dream characters.

As for the whole dream being the creation of one dream-ego, I'd like
to believe that there were more possibilities than this.  The case against
it might be purely anatomical -- that the perceptual apparatus of the
brain (e.g, visual, aural, affective) used in dreaming can't be shared among
different personalities in the same mind.  There is some evidence for this,
I think, in the study of multiple-personality disorders: that only one
personality can be active at a time, though some can share memories with
others.  On the other hand, this might only be a limitation that has to
do with having a sensorium that is anchored in perceptions of the real,
outside world.  The *dream* world *might* be breakable into multiple
sensoria, experience separately by separate characters with separate
threads of consciousness.  That might be what is actually happening
every time we have a multi-character dream, and we wake with the sense
having only been *one* of these characters because we inherit only one
of the threads.  Dream-memory is certainly volatile enough that this
hypothesis is hard to discredit.

Even if multiple-consciousness dreaming is not the typical case, that doesn't
mean that it doesn't happen, or that it couldn't be developed.  But I doubt
that it's possible.  One brain *can* have multiple minds, but it seems
that only one of them can be active and driving at a given moment. 

Getting back to the subject of dream-characters knowing they are in your
dreams, I became interested once in developing a relatively stable cast of
dream characters, other than those who are obviously people out of your own
life such as family, friends, and co-workers, acquaintances, and the
occasionally TV and movie character.  It seemed to me that, apart from
such frequently-appearing and/or well-remembered people, I had never met a
dream character twice, much as I might have wanted to in some cases.

I have only a few vague ideas about how to have on-going friendships and
repeat encounters with dream characters.  I have not tried any of them yet.

1.  BEFRIENDING

    One approach might be to NOT tell dream characters you meet while lucid
    that they are in your dreams, but instead to try to arrange a second
    encounter.  I think the most likely dream for a second meeting would be
    any subsequent lucid dream you have that night, since it's pretty
    common for lucid dreams to have "sequels."  Telling them they are in
    your dreams is a little bit beside the point, and couldn't help but
    hurt their feelings (if in fact they have any.)

2.  ROLE-PLAYING

    Another tack: do things in waking life that amount to role-playing of
    the dream character, working from the popular hypothesis that everyone
    in your dream is really YOU anyway.  If this hypothesis is true, then
    maybe some waking attempts at self-individuation might enhance the apparent
    self-individuation going on in your dreams.  Actors might be better at
    this than most people.

3.  RECONSTRUCTION

    Yet another approach might be to recognize that, since dream people (like
    dream places and dream things) are so often composites drawn from waking
    life, you might carefully review your everyday life and your past for
    just who the compositional people are, and think every day about this
    composite person.  Maybe if you flesh them out a little in your waking mind,
    they will show up again in your dreams.  This strategy might work well in
    combination with the role-playing strategy mentioned above.
---
Michael Turner
miket@tcs.com
Newsgroups: alt.dreams