Asking people in your lucid dream if they know they are dreaming

[Ariel]

Has anyone here tried asking the characters in the dream if they know its a dream, they always seem to be unconscious of it being a dream.

[heliac]

Same thing here.Sometimes If i try talking to people, random passer-bys, they dont seem conscious.Or if in the RTZ they act as if i am not there at all.

I haven't really had too much of an urge to verify with other dream state characters whether they are conscious of the dream state they are operating in yet too much, it's probably something i've taken for granted. Has this been a hot topic on your radar lately?

Sometimes dream characters do pop up to discuss things and sometimes the discussions are very interesting. Sometimes there is no discussion at all and communication is experiential. In these cases the character seems alien like, not alien from another planet, but foreign/abstract and not based on any major schema of known reality.

[newfreedom]

ThankU Heliac, for the word 'experiencial'

that's just want i 'need' for today processing 'right now'

i am struggling with my process at the moment, crown chakra headache, stress and distress and confusion, and memory loss at times too..

only managed 2, 4, 2, 2, 2hrs sleep last few nights and it 'gets tough' sometimes...

hopefully i can add to this topic when i'm more better...thanks for the question Ariel, i can really relate to it

Cheers all xX :rolleyes:

[CFTraveler]

Have you ever considered asking your dream characters what the difference between a dream and reality are?
Just a fun thing to try.

[ButterflyWoman]

In one of the first lucid dreams I had, I became lucid as I was standing in an airport, waiting for the ticket counter. I got super excited when I realised I was dreaming, and when I got to the ticket clerk, I said, "Can you tell me what an airport symbolises in my dreams?" (it's a common symbol for me). She processed my ticket, looked at me, smiled, and said, "Sorry, haven't got a clue," handed me the ticket, and called out, "NEXT!"

:mrgreen:

[Korpo]

Asking the dream characters can be a good way to develop awareness of who is a dream character (reflecting back desires, issues, etc.) and who is a fully conscious entity. This also helps discern dreams from dream-like experiences that in hindsight turn out to be more than they initially seemed when first recalled.

[Ariel]

Asking the dream characters can be a good way to develop awareness of who is a dream character (reflecting back desires, issues, etc.) and who is a fully conscious entity. This also helps discern dreams from dream-like experiences that in hindsight turn out to be more than they initially seemed when first recalled.

It never occurred to me to ask them, "What is the difference between a dream and reality?", that's a good question. As for the idea of asking our dream characters about the symbolic meaning of places in our dream , that is great idea too! I will have to try both of those sometime. This hasn't been a hot topic on my radar as of lately, it's just something that I do on occasion when the opportunity arises.

[simonlight]

Another curiosity I come across from time to time are people that I know. They are almost invariably asleep or really groggy and not quite aware. Shared dreaming?

[Neil Templar]

Another curiosity I come across from time to time are people that I know. They are almost invariably asleep or really groggy and not quite aware. Shared dreaming?

does it count as "shared" if they don't experience(remember) it? do you ever ask people if they saw you in a dream, after you've seen them?
i've had a number of shared dream/obe experiences, all of which were with close friends who were fully awake and actively involved in the dream, and who could describe the experience to me the next day, with enough accuracy for me to say we really did share the experience. scared the crap outta one of my friends actually, hehe..

i'm tempted to say that the groggy/asleep people you saw might be projections of your friends, kinda out and about in the astral on autopilot, but their consciousness was focused elsewhere, in another energy body perhaps...

[Beekeeper]

I asked one with a chainsaw if he was a dream character and he admitted he was. I also asked a couple of guides in a supply room if they were and they also agreed that it was their role.

I also had a dream character, whom I'm sure was conscious, ask me across the noise and activity at a crowded transport hub if I could talk.

I've seen other people too who haven't seemed consciously present, wandering with eyes open but no recognition. I haven't had Neil's experience though - that's pretty cool. I do remember Neil making a dream visit here and picking up some info and I've done the same to Mishell and Oliver's little son.;)

[Neil Templar]

Ok, so this was very cool indeed.
I was barely even asleep, i could hear my housemate moving around downstairs, making food, which i guess is the thing that allowed me full lucidity ;) when i began phasing/dreaming, i could still hear him, so i knew what i was seeing was a dream...

i walked into my Mum's house, there were lots of strangers there, along with my Mum, Sister and step-father. i went in and said hello, but nobody responded. i got the feeling they were all ignoring me on purpose, like i'd done something to annoy them or something. i wondered if i'd been particularly noisy when coming home last night (i was out late last night, visiting old friends, and drank quite a bit of red wine.) obviously not fully lucid at this point, thinking this was actually the place i live.

only my sister looked me in the eye, and she was holding something across her face, some sort of fabric, like a veil...
as i was getting no response from these people, i ignored them and went up to my room... on the way up the stairs, i heard my housemate moving around, and realised i was dreaming. :)
when i went into my room, three strangers were in there, one large man, and two females.
i went in and asked "who are you? what are you doing here?"
the man started to reply, and i remembered this thread.
"you know this is a dream, right?" i said.
he didn't respond. i went over and looked him in the eyes, "this is a dream. i am dreaming. you're in MY dream"
he looked at me, and then his face started to melt, like the nazis at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark..hehe..
i turned to the women.. "HEY! you know this is a dream? this is my dream!"
same thing, melting faces, until they became formless blobs, and then evaporated from view.
i turned around, and the guy was still there, but he had a different face, "i'm not stupid, this is MY dream pal!"
he melted, and dissolved...

i went downstairs, eager to see who else would melt, wondering if any of my family members might not melt...
my Sister was at the foot of the stairs..."hey, this is a dream. you're in my dream."
melty girl. it was strange to see...like, at first, the facade of my sister's face would melt, then i'd see the true face of the imposter underneath, then that face would melt, and then dissolve...
into the living room, where my Mum, step-dad and some other unknowns were..."HEY GUYS! this is a dream. you're all in a dream that I'M having!" my Mum, turned and said, "no we're not!" (which would be typical of my Mum, to argue against my ridiculous ideas that make no sense to her view of reality)
"yes you are, i'm dreaming right now"
at that they all melted, became formless, and vanished..
i went around the house, no-one was left. i went outside into the street, wondering, what would happen next.
i've evaporated all the dream characters..

i decided the only thing to do in this situation was take advantage of my lucidity and have fun, so i looked straight up at the night sky, and flew as fast as i could towards the stars...

the dream dissolved, i was in a black/grey void.
in front of me appeared a book. it opened.
on the page was a picture, an illustration of a fantasy landscape. rocky mountains, with caves, surrounded a lush green valley, at the bottom of which was a river of clear flowing water.
a voice in my mind told me, "these are the spirit lands"
nature spirits, i realised, and had a quick memory of the experience i had a while back, where i went into the faery realms, while on my bike...

i was looking at this picture, floating in the void, i decided to go in...
i focused on the green valley, and started slowly moving in to it.
i seemed to push thru an invisible membrane, and the illustration became real.
i felt like i was standing on my head, looking down on this land...
i floated down, down towards the river...
then when i got to the river, i went under the water, enjoying the fact that i could breathe fine...
i didn't really have much control of my movements. it was more like i was on some kind of automated tour. i went down to the bottom of the river, the water was absolutely clear, i could see plants growing on the bottom, little rocks, the reflections of sunlight glinting here and there...


that's where recall fades unfortunately...

[Beekeeper]

AWESOME!

[eyeoneblack]

Fantastic, Neil!

I needed a little inspiration hehe. :)

[heliac]

hi neal,That was an awsome experience, and inspiring. Please keep them coming!

[Ariel]

Wow, what an amazing experience. I've never "insisted" to my dream characters that they were in a dream, it makes sense though that they would dissolve, because you're exposing their temporality.

[Neil Templar]

to be honest, i found the experience AFTER i'd dissolved all the characters, to be the most exciting part...

[Ariel]

Just because they're not conscious of it being your dream, it doesn't mean that there isn't a pyschic connection taking place, especially if the dream characters are your close friends or family with whom you have a solid rapport.

[Beekeeper]

Robert Waggoner reports something similar. He was trying and failing to get a friend lucid. Eventually, he gave up and for a reason unknown to him made the peace sign with his fingers in front of her forehead. When next he saw her IRL, she put a peace sign up in his face. When he asked her why she had done that, she said she didn't know.

[Neil Templar]

these are interesting examples. i'd kinda assumed that the characters dissolving in my dream, meant that they weren't actually the people i know(mum, sister etc) but simply creations of my subconscious, like the rest of them.
i'd assumed that if there were any actual dreamers/projectors/non-physical beings present, that they wouldn't dissolve.
know what i mean?

now, thinking about it, i guess even if it was my mum's, or sister's dreaming mind there, they'd have to have a certain level of lucidity to stay focused there, after i'd dissolved everybody else...
i guess i wasted an opportunity there then, by insisting so strongly and quickly. perhaps if i'd given them more time to get to grips with the concept, or simply had a conversation that was less confrontational and more familiar, they might have woken into lucidity, and truly shared the experience?...

[Ariel]

I can't explain it either,....Either way,what you experienced afterwards was probably what you were intended to see at that time. I would love to visit a realm like that !!

[Neil Templar]

I can't explain it either,....Maybe our mental projections that we create of our loved ones in our dreams, somehow resonate with a part of who they really are, and its that small part mixed in with our own projection that can relate their own personal information.
or maybe we ARE indeed sharing experiences with those in our lives, more frequently than we believe?... it would make perfect sense, whether they're conscious enough to recall the events or not, it's possible the lessons involved in the dream scenarios are tailored for everyone involved, not just your/my/the dreamer's-self.
it would explain why lucidity can be such an elusive thing at times - if a scenario is set up, like a play in a theatre, each player with a set role, a set lesson to take away from it, the director wouldn't want any of the players suddenly improvising and messing up the perfectly good play, would he?

i'm now wishing i'd asked my Mum and Sister if they'd had any strange dreams that night...

[Korpo]

i'm now wishing i'd asked my Mum and Sister if they'd had any strange dreams that night...

I guess most dreams are not remembered because they don't seem strange to us as all. Just like the memory of any banal act carried out without much conscious attention they escape our recall soon enough. I guess so many outlandish dreams are recalled because they are considered interesting enough to do so.

Try remember to recall when you last peeled potatoes, try to remember any details about that experience... ;)

[Beekeeper]

The channelled material in Jane Robert's Dreams and Projections of Consciousness talks about this stuff. It states that you can ask all illusion to disappear and it will. It also states you can experience full and partial projections of actual people - I suppose that means that they're not lucid- as well as probable selves. The latter have split off from the original personality and gone on to live in probable worlds as a result of different decisions made at different turning points. One of Robert's friends, for example, experiences dreams where she meets Jane Roberts and her husband in a probable existence where Jane was too afraid to mess with the occult and, therefore, didn't channel Seth, and her husband was too afraid to become the artist he became. Both subsequently end up bitter people until redirected.

Kurt Leland suggests we are constantly sharing dreams with others but that our unique interpretation filters mean that the dreams take on their individual aspects, what Seth calls camouflage.

[Guitarmaster72]

There was one lucid dream i had where a character in my dream ASKED ME if I knew I was dreaming. It was actually a really close friend of mine, and i didn't believe him at first until i looked around at where i was and noticed that the building i was in was different than it was in real life, and i saw people like, jumping around as if this place were on the moon with really low gravity. I then became lucid but could only enjoy the lucidity for what seemed like 30 seconds because i woke up after i found out i was dreaming.

I've got a question about this though... aren't OBE's and dreams connected with each other? If so, do you suppose this could have been my friend's astral being in a dream of mine in attempt to communicate with me in the astral plane? or do dreams and astral projections not work this way? is it even possible for two people who are dreaming to meet up with each other in their dreams? Maybe I'm reading too much into this and it was all my sub-conscious's doing, but who knows :/

[Neil Templar]

I've got a question about this though... aren't OBE's and dreams connected with each other? If so, do you suppose this could have been my friend's astral being in a dream of mine in attempt to communicate with me in the astral plane? or do dreams and astral projections not work this way? is it even possible for two people who are dreaming to meet up with each other in their dreams? Maybe I'm reading too much into this and it was all my sub-conscious's doing, but who knows :/

These might help -
http://forums.astraldynamics.com/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=16025&p=118099
http://forums.astraldynamics.com/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=13785&p=104825

Because i rarely have classic OBE exit symptoms, most of my "adventures in consciousness" take place during sleep, so i simply call them all dreams. However, i often recognise them for being OBEs, based on the nature of the environment, and the fact that there have been a few shared experiences, totally verified by the friends who shared the experience. (none of whom were interested in the OBE phenomenon, and simply remembered them as vivid dreams)

[Ariel]

............. is it even possible for two people who are dreaming to meet up with each other in their dreams? Maybe I'm reading too much into this and it was all my sub-conscious's doing, but who knows :/

I think its possible.

[Beekeeper]

I've also had dream sharing experiences. In one I protected my younger sister from bullies and my sister rang me to tell me about her similar dream. In another, I heard Simon and Garfunkle in the background ("Homeward Bound" IRRC) and the other person confirmed the song was playing in her dream. Another one was with a colleague decades ago involving lion but I can't remember much beyond this.

I've also had two dreams recently that weren't shared but picked up information about two people that I didn't know in waking life. One was a friend's intention to join an environmental group and the other was about a friend's unexpected relationship with kittens.

There was a dream once where I slid down a tunnel and ended up plummetin towards a friend asleep in her bed. She looked terrified when she saw me, as if I were a ghost. I wanted to ask her if she remembered anything but she just wasn't the sort.

This is a bit embarrassing too but I tend to have sex dreams when my husband does, which can be a good thing because we both wake up in a similar mood.:-)

[istia]

Wow what an interesting thread with so many interesting points and theme-branches!

Neil, what an amazing experience (the melting-LD) which fo my impression changed into an OBE when you crossed the membrane and such part. I would love to be able to become so lucid, but too often forget to make reality-checks *roll eyes* nevertheless I have, like mentioned in this thread too, dream-experiences of amazing kind (which I in missing another description call DOM, Dream-OBE-Mix, as those are so very different to my other dreams from feel and awareness and mostly joy) and also I have had and still have too many dream-meetings with others, partly "verified" in one or another way as to call this co-incidental or un-related. So:
Gitarmaster, I personally do think that yes, Dreams and Obes are definitely connected, like sharing the same "substance", which we might call consciousness. And depending on how much of this substance we are able to generate, we can perceive and travell along and through those each other permeating fields.
And I feel its truly a bit like what you
Oliver put here in comparison, even though it sounds funny, like: even trying to remember "normal" life things like potatoe peeling often is difficult, or like today I wanted to go to work but just didnt find my car, lol, for even around 20 minutes I was searching, but just because I parked on a very new place, which seemingly was not yet connected to any "cell-seat in my brain" ;)
Ariel and Beekeeper, these are inspiriing connected/meetup-experiences.
and Beekeeper I think that it is a perfectly wonderful thing and gift to wake up in the same mood with ones partner inspired by your dreamings :)