I have been realizing lately when i 'wake up' again before falling asleep that I am often 'talking' for the 'other person' in the dream.

In other words, if it's my brother in the dream, i'm thinking what's he saying, right, but it actually feels when i snap out of it.. hmmm.. maybe its not me at all, but him talking though me.. like a spirit i guess...

In other words, I'm beginning to think maybe we all do 'meet up' in dreamspace, because in comparison - i don't 'speak for the other person' when daydreaming, they remaing quite 3rd person.

I have realized i was 'speaking' for someone else, and it often feels at the moment of snapping out of it that i'm not just waking up, but detaching from something that is completely gone upon coming-to.

it's bloody-well weird.. maybe this belongs in the salvia section

The closest I come to this is when I'm dreaming and I think someone is about to say something and then they do. Or more often, I'll think I hope something bad doesn't happen, only that so I know when I look over my shoulder, that exact terrible thing will just so happen to start taking place.

Most people will tell you that in your dreams, you play all the roles. That every character, scene, object or situation is simply a projection of your subconscious mind.

While this does seem to be the case in most normal dreams, there are exceptions, and even entire dreams, where this idea seems to fall apart.

As a regular lucid dreamer, I tend to leave whatever subconscious dream I find myself in upon becoming lucid, and journey to places where it seems that other actual dreamers are.

A series of "shared" dreams as a youth convinced me that this is possible. Once you have woken up from a singular dream experience involving someone you know, and had them call you up and tell you the exact same dream, before you even confirm having seen them in a dream... you might start doubting the whole "all in your mind" hypothesis.

It's probably the same reason why trying to define the DMT experience becomes so complicated. DMT has its own set of rules yes, but depending on how far you get, some of those rules can seemingly change or start operating under different mechanisms such that lower level experiences may or may not reflect what appear to be fundamental rules of operation. Likewise the same mechanism that runs "lower level" dreams may not be the same as "higher level" dreams such that we call them both dreams but perhaps they don't deserve the same name.

You want to know something interesting about this. I was and still am a trained lucid dreamer. If you've seen Inception you know there are ways to tell if you're in a dream. This is true in real life.
One of the best ways to find out is look in a mirror in the dream, if the reflection is not you(it might be scary, be warned) you know you're in a dream. I'm not sure what this means for the subconscious, but it definitely shows there is some disconnection or skewing of your self image when you are in a dream.

It's funny you bring up both inception as well as looking in mirrors because I have an experience that reflects both of these concepts. First of all, I woke up from a dream into another dream (i.e. I thought I had woken up, but turned out I was still dreaming). When I woke up I was in my old house that I haven't lived in for over four years. I walked into the bathroom and with the thought that I may be dreaming, I looked in the mirror, but to my surprise what I saw seemed to be a completely accurate and valid things that would be going on if I looked in the mirror. I saw myself the way I expected to see myself. I raised my hand and saw it raise in sync. I ended up concluding that I actually must be awake, so I failed my own litmus test of sorts in that dream

wow. incredible synchronization!

Just the other night, I had this same experience (for the first time). I was walking alongside with someone through an aisle in a store. He was explaining to me, a metaphor about the store.. about the things on the shelves in the aisles of the store. But it was weird, because when he was talking, within the inner dialogue of my mind <I> was talking, explaining it to myself.

Yes I too have noticed that some of these tests can fail, particularly in dream within a dream situation. I think your brain tries to keep you dreaming, it doesn't want you to be aware for some reason. Probably something important going on in those dreams.

It is the nature of dreams to convince you that they are real. They are so successful in this brainwashing that they can convince you any number of incongruous things are perfectly natural. Completely irrational things can happen and you will just buy it, unless you are already quite suspicious that you might be dreaming.

Even when something seems totally wrong, after a few seconds it becomes quite logical and the dream fills in the blanks in your memory to justify the new story. All dreams are like this. You can enter a house you never saw before in your life, and within a minute you will not only know for a fact that it is your house, but you will even begin to remember when you bought it and events that took place there... even when you can also clearly recall that it didn't exist 1 minute ago.

Memory is untrustworthy. It is directly altered and affected by the same dream information that feeds your so-called senses in a dream. Like Morpheus said in the Matrix "You think you are seeing this with your eyes?"

Hehehe.

Dreams within dreams, false awakenings and other such experiences can be very trippy indeed.

I once had a Groundhog's Day dream where I awoke and went through the same exact morning like 10 times or more. Each time I would become lucid, I woke up again and went through the same routine. After a few times, the deja vu became stronger and stronger until I awoke suspicious and began to remember the dreams that had passed. I started forcing myself to remember the headline on the newspaper I collected from the front yard, the picture on the orange juice carton, and other details... then check them again when I woke up. I determined that each dream was a slightly altered alternate reality. Most things were the same, but some subtle things were different.

I decided that I might be being given the choice as to which world I wanted to continue on in. The last 4 dreams all ended with me in the bathroom having to take a piss, but being sure that I was still dreaming, and not wanting to piss my bed. Finally, I had to go so badly that I just peed, thinking "I really hope this is reality." I could feel myself making the choice to have this version be my reality. As the piss hit the toilet water, I could feel the reality firming up and instead of dissolving and waking again, this became my fixed reality. I kicked myself for not holding my piss and choosing the best reality based on something more significant than my bladder. I could have waited till I found myself in a reality with legal recreational drugs for instance... but then I realized that I could be waking up in a different reality every morning anyway and not knowing it. There is no way to prove that the life you are living today is the same one you went to sleep in last night. Remember, memory is untrustworthy.

that seems to be true in general

Are there documented cases illustrating otherwise?

I'm assuming the shared dreams described above suggest otherwise.

it is a good assumption to entertain, but it seems to be undocumented hearsay
i would at least like more information about it and both parties to corroborate it

I know of no one doing any serious research into shared dreaming.

Even if I could convince someone I have shared dreams with to come on the Nexus and corroborate my statement it would still be anecdotal hearsay.

The only real proof that an individual without a pile of grant money can get, is to master lucid dreaming themselves and conduct their own dreamworld tests. I am not personally trying to convince anyone, and all the other advanced dreamers I know are of the same opinion as I am anyway.

I would say that I have 4 or 5 different kinds of dream throughout the night. Some of them are mental garbage housekeeping, some are deep delta wave body repair and near unconsciousness, some are self created dream worlds... but some of them have the feeling of stable reality, or have characters that turn out to be other people. Considering the extreme unlikelihood of both parties remembering the same dream and then having the occasion to discuss it, I would say that for every such experience I have had, there could be hundreds of other times that I got no such confirmation. And, I have had on the order of 50 confirmed shared dreams.

Hi...ive been trying to practice lucid dreaming for the past few yrs...i say trying because i seem to get frustrated with lack of results and forget for awhile....ive only become lucid a handful of times and in each for merely a few seconds...after which i seem to get too excited and fizzle out of it.....that groundhog Quote reminds me of my first one....the same scene over played many times and in each i became a little bit more aware...i was being chased by a bunch of policemen(surprise surprise) and in each new dream id remember which way they came and how to escape...over and over again until i finally realised that it was a dream and didnt need to run....i was at the top of a staircase and said to myslef i want to be at the bottom....i felt almost like a spirit as i glided down through the stairs and reach the bottom...at this point it was like the dream was ripped apart and i must have woken up..i say must have because i only recalled the dream about a wk later and not the next morning..... my other lucid expieriences seem to be when im in some sort of trouble..dunno why but it has worked.... must try seriously again me thinks....

Can i ask you something HyperspaceFool???...How long were you trying to become lucid before it became somewhat easy for you???

Shared dreams to me seem mostly conjecture and anecdotal evidence. There is no reason you could enter someone else's dream, just like you can't know another person's thoughts. I believe you do play all characters in a dream, they are just your projections of those real people. I have to bring up Inception again to illustrate this, but near the end when he encounters the dream Mal in the final layer of the dream, he tells her she's only a shade of the real thing. This is basically how it is in a dream, you have observed that person for a certain amount of a time and have a mental image of what that person is like.


Also I wanted to respond to SimplePsyman about lucid dreaming. I know you asked HyperspaceFool about this, but I assume we are both pretty experienced with lucid dreaming based on his posts.

One of the best and easiest ways to go lucid is sleep interruption/WILD method. WILD is wake induced lucid dreaming. Basically set your clock to wake you up about 5-6 hours in your sleep cycle. Then as you fall back asleep keep thinking that you will go lucid. I know this sounds complicated but its really not, I just think to myself "Go lucid, Go lucid." You'll feel your consciousness begin to fade into sleep, and may even experience sleep paralysis. If you've done it right you will enter the dream already lucid. To extend the dream try rubbing your hands together in the dream, and actually saying out loud "maintain lucidity." These tactics have been known to help many dreamers, including myself. To help you better recall the dream after, lay still for a little while, keep your eyes closed and REALLY think about the dream you just had. Using this method I have had enormous improvements in dream recall.

Just a side question to you, have you ever had a natural lucid dream? I find natural LDers have a much easier time going lucid, as I naturally had these dreams for many years before I even knew what they were.

I'll conclude with some more reality checks to help you tell if you're in a dream, try one right now if you wish.
-Look at a clock face then look away and look back. If its changed at all, you're dreaming. (this is because the part of your brain that comprehends time is asleep)
-Look at your hands, if they look strange or if you have more than 5 fingers, you're dreaming(this one works really well for me), also try putting your hands through each other, this one is easy to learn and habituate, but is the first test to fail usually.
-Look in a mirror(I already mentioned this one), if the image is not yourself or is distorted, you're dreaming.

Many more and other dreaming tips can be found at Dream Views forum. I have been a long time member(as dk2852) of that community and highly reccomend it. Much more can be found there than I could ever elaborate on.

Just as there is no proof that you can enter people's dreams, there's a similar lacking of evidence that you can't aside of the fact that even if it does happen, it's most likely infrequently. I feel these statements are projections of your inability to experience or recognize these phenomena when they take place much similarly to the way that most normal humans in contemporary society would do just the same. Many (anecdotally) have felt that they've had shared trip experiences (particularly with ayahuasca). There's no way to verify this, but if shared trip experiences can be valid, I see no reason why there can't be some special individuals who can group inhabit other mental spaces.

Sure there isn't proof that it can't happen or never happens. But in science the one making the extraordinary claim has to provide the evidence.
I don't believe in shared dreaming or shared trips because I have no reason to. I don't need evidence to disprove that claim because it is extraordinary and there is no evidence for it. Therefore I suspend belief. Do you see my point?

Hello dmtk2852 thank you very much for your response...ive never actually tried the WILD technique...not sure why...i am somewhat of a semi insomniac which can be somewhat of a handicap when trying to become lucid haha...but more than anything i suppose i just have to keep up with reality checks and working on my recall....its in my mind now so i think i will try again to keep this on my mind....

ive never had a natural lucid dream...but was always amazed as a child with a sort of floating feeling like i was lifting off the bed and reaching higher....id usually pop out of it fairly quickly and thought nothing of it until years later my father asked me if i ever felt something like that...as he did as a child also.... he went on to tell me about astral projection but in a very vague way...i suppose he never researched more on it.... but was always a draw on my mind... something he said to me always stuck with me tho...he said these things usually only happen as a child.... what i take from it is the innocence of childhood i suppose and such an untainted unassuming mind....fresh to the natural ability's within us all which if not guided will dwindle....

Thanks for the link aswell my friend i feel it will help enormously looks like an interesting site....will keep me busy for awhile me thinks....

Suspending belief is different from denying the possibility

Fair enough, I would never deny that its possible to have a shared dream. But by the same rationale I believe its possible to be telepathic or have force powers like a Jedi. But is it likely, hell no.