Thread: We can prove dream sharing is real

Just wanted to say, Asmodean is an epic first name dude. It's the name of a forsaken character from the wheel of time books and I would love to have such a cool name haha. Good luck for your dream sharing tests, it seems paranormal to me but I wish you the best of luck still.

Yes i believe in dream sharing and also dream intrusion. If you want to read my dream journals go ahead, most are quite interesting.

I believe in this as well. I'm struggling with lucidity lately but if anyone would like to pop in for a visit, I have great dream recall.

Reality is a lot bigger than they say, folks!

Originally Posted by Borislav

Hello everyone, this is Asmodean Borislav here. I studied biochemistry and am very familiar with the processes of the brain. I am fascinated by dreams and have devoted my experience with lucid dreaming to studying its therapeutic possibilities, as well as studying what exactly is happening in the brain while lucid. I apologize for my sometimes poor English, as it is my second language.

That's enough about me, now I'll tell you what I hope we can accomplish. I believe in dream sharing. I have read accounts written by many of you, and I believe that science can back this up. I would hope that any person who has experienced an account of dream sharing would be willing to either post their account here, or PM me, for the sake of science. It would benefit me greatly to be able to be in touch with one who has experienced this phenomenon first hand, whilst I try to find the science to back this up.

My last request is that all skeptics please refrain from posting your remarks here. They will not sway any of us from our opinions, especially if we have experiences to back them.

Thank you all,
Borislav

Are you doing a scientific study?

My last request is that all skeptics please refrain from posting your remarks here. They will not sway any of us from our opinions, especially if we have experiences to back them.

There is a User Group dedicated to Shared Dreaming, with their own forum section HERE. That would be the best place for this thread to be.
I understand that you don't want skeptics to post in this thread because that's not the point of the thread, the point is for you to collect personal accounts.

But when you phrase it like that, you are insinuating that you DON'T want to hear the personal accounts of the Skeptics - which discredits any "Scientific" conclusion that you could possibly come up with.

If you want to only get the responses from those who believe it exists or are looking for the answers, then you should post this in the user group. I don't think the "Skeptics" would intrude on that forum simply to argue about its very existence, when the forum section is dedicated to studying it, not debating it...

Out here in the other forums, it's anyones game, and there are more Skeptics.

Originally Posted by WakingNomad

Are you doing a scientific study?

Yes I am

I will not be releasing the details of my study yet, however, as I fear that some may use the information for unjust purposes. What I will tell you is that I have assembled a team of scientists who believe that there is a new science to be pioneered, and we believe that the key to this science lies withing what you know as shared dreaming.

In regards to my comment about skeptics. I realize that in the science community there are many who will be skeptical, but let me worry about that - I will have research and data to back me up eventually. I only said that to prevent this turning into an argue-fest.

I implore any of you who may share or have shared a dream, to please contact me. It will greatly help my cause to be able to talk to people who have successfully shared a dream with another so that I may know where to start. I would be forever greatful, and history would remember your name forever as one who helped pioneer a new technology.

I thank you for your interest in this thread, I realize this may seem a little far-fetched to some of you but just wait and you will see that something great will come of your contributions. Enjoy your gift - you can do what all humankind should, and one day hopefully will be able to do. Keep an eye out for updates on my progress in this same forum.
My sincerest thanks, and apologies for any confusion or misconceptions,
Borislav

Hello Borislav. Obviously, if you wish to do a scientific study and do anything with it, at some point the people involved have to be willing to step up and put their names and reputations behind their work. If they're not willing to even reveal that they're considering the subject, I would find that worrisome. Its understandable though that you wouldn't want to post that information, and might want to restrict it to private e-mails.

Obviously trust is important to shared dreaming, if people don't feel comfortable they will not be able to participate effectively. For myself, I'd need to understand what 'new technology' is conceived of, and what is the interest of the 'business friend' you mentioned earlier, and what the publishing and intellectual property arrangements would be. I have no interest it helping prove shared dreaming so that someone else can get proprietary control over some application of it.

Regards.

I have yet to hear from a member who can share a dream with a person of their choosing. Many shared dreamers are experienced LDers who make contact with some what random entities or dreamers. The logistics involved in two known people sharing a dream and being able to confirm it, and then repeating it again, is messy at best. I feel as LD skills go, the ability to travel outside your personal inner realm on purpose, is an advanced skill. So both people would need to be very advanced in LDing, and that is rare enough. Most of us who may be genrally considered advanced still go days on occassion with no luck. Some weeks a single LD or two, and others much more. So maybe they need to be hyper-advanced like an actual Buddhist monk who has little else to study or do. That is getting crazy rare, and you would want two of them.
The next problem, with 25 years experience, I still have little direct control over travel in other worldly planes. I may be able to get to a certain place or five that were specifically shown to me by an entity native to there. I would be wandering blind if I had to try to find something as specific as the enterence to anothers mind. The other person would need to also know the way to reach one of the same places. I assume that makes the chances of our two Buddhist monks being able to reach a place in common an even rarer event.
A randomly successful shared dream will not work for science, as it should be repeatable.
I for instance remember a couple dreams with someone who claimed to be a teenage girl in a comma ward in Western Canada. While that may cause me to think I did have a shared dream, nothing can be proven by this type of shared dream. I think some of us, at least me and Waking Nomad can get to places where we meet other dreamers, as in who ever else happens to randomly be there. The moment we are required to find each other, it goes from us stumbling on to interesting people to us both needing to control many many factors in an exact way. Not impossable, but perhaps impossable to prove. I am like Shadowofwind, in that I would like more details, before I talk more.

Originally Posted by DreiHundert

There is a User Group dedicated to Shared Dreaming, with their own forum section HERE. That would be the best place for this thread to be.
I understand that you don't want skeptics to post in this thread because that's not the point of the thread, the point is for you to collect personal accounts.

But when you phrase it like that, you are insinuating that you DON'T want to hear the personal accounts of the Skeptics - which discredits any "Scientific" conclusion that you could possibly come up with.

If you want to only get the responses from those who believe it exists or are looking for the answers, then you should post this in the user group. I don't think the "Skeptics" would intrude on that forum simply to argue about its very existence, when the forum section is dedicated to studying it, not debating it...

Out here in the other forums, it's anyones game, and there are more Skeptics.

(from dictionary.com)

1. a person who questions the validity or authenticity of something purporting to be factual.
2.
a person who maintains a doubting attitude, as toward values, plans, statements, or the character of others.
3.
a person who doubts the truth of a religion, especially Christianity, or of important elements of it.
4.
( initial capital letter ) Philosophy .
a.
a member of a philosophical school of ancient Greece, the earliest group of which consisted of Pyrrho and his followers, who maintained that real knowledge of things is impossible.
b.
any later thinker who doubts or questions the possibility of real knowledge of any kind.
adjective
5.
pertaining to skeptics or skepticism; skeptical.
6.
( initial capital letter ) pertaining to the Skeptics.

Originally Posted by Borislav

Yes I am

I will not be releasing the details of my study yet, however, as I fear that some may use the information for unjust purposes. What I will tell you is that I have assembled a team of scientists who believe that there is a new science to be pioneered, and we believe that the key to this science lies withing what you know as shared dreaming.

In regards to my comment about skeptics. I realize that in the science community there are many who will be skeptical, but let me worry about that - I will have research and data to back me up eventually. I only said that to prevent this turning into an argue-fest.

I implore any of you who may share or have shared a dream, to please contact me. It will greatly help my cause to be able to talk to people who have successfully shared a dream with another so that I may know where to start. I would be forever greatful, and history would remember your name forever as one who helped pioneer a new technology.

I thank you for your interest in this thread, I realize this may seem a little far-fetched to some of you but just wait and you will see that something great will come of your contributions. Enjoy your gift - you can do what all humankind should, and one day hopefully will be able to do. Keep an eye out for updates on my progress in this same forum.
My sincerest thanks, and apologies for any confusion or misconceptions,
Borislav

Go to the shared Dreaming FAQ, and check out the dream journals I have listed there.

Originally Posted by shadowofwind

Hello Borislav. Obviously, if you wish to do a scientific study and do anything with it, at some point the people involved have to be willing to step up and put their names and reputations behind their work.

I am willing to put my entire reputation behind my work, when the time comes. The time is not yet right because my research is not yet complete.

In regards to my intentions of what I hope to accomplish with my study. I don't remember ever having referred to my partners as "business partners" and I assure you that this is not a thing i am doing for money. In fact, this is something I am doing completely independent to any companies or corporations and I am prepared to surrender a great amount of funds to my team's cause. This is my dream, and I finally know where to begin. I'm driven to unlock the mysteries of dream sharing, which will only give birth to so much more.

If you have any further questions, please PM me, I will be happy to answer them.

Borislav

Originally Posted by shadowofwind

For myself, I'd need to understand what 'new technology' is conceived of, and what is the interest of the 'business friend' you mentioned earlier, and what the publishing and intellectual property arrangements would be.

Originally Posted by Borislav

I don't remember ever having referred to my partners as "business partners"

Originally Posted by Borislav

although technically I am a scientist and my friend a buisnessman, we both personally study psychology

I pulled that out of context and from another thread, and any implication a person could draw from it might be totally wrong. But since you're intentionally leaving a lot vague and unsaid, there's really no way we can judge. Saying you're a scientist doesn't really tell us much. I'm a scientist too, with some relevant expertise. But I'm still not in a better position to do shared dreaming scientific study than anyone else on this site. I'm not saying I believe there's something slippery about what you're up to. I'm just saying that as long as a significant part of the picture remains hidden, some of us are going to stay clear.

Shadow of wind, you have some very valid points. I myself would be cautious as you are. I thought I'd explained my education thoroughly enough but in case I hadn't, I studied biochemistry at McGill and Specialize in the functions of the brain, and in plant genetics. Although I cannot disclose my works until I can prove certain points, I just ask you to try to understand why. There are certain people who would invade people's dreams, and torment them and possibly do serious psychological damage. My team and I are studying this, in part for its psychiatric benefits, and anything with psychiatric benefits can be reversed to do harm. I assure you I am up to nothing sinister, I am simply pursuing my dream and wholeheartedly trying to help others as I have my whole life. I understand there is no way for me to guarantee this and I am sincerely sorry, but I hope that you can understand why.

Thank you for trying to understand, and I apologize again for having to conceal this from those who mean no harm to anyone. I will give updates on what I can.

Again I implore you, if you have deeper inquiries, please feel free to PM me and I will go into more detail. You will find I am very reasonable and easy to talk to.

Borislav

WakingNomad - What was your point by illustrating the definition of skeptic?

Borislav - If it is true that your scientific research has obtained information that you are legitimately worried about falling into the hands of an evil mastermind... Then... Damn.
This must be very revolutionary work indeed - and if you are having such success, I STRONGLY urge you to collaborate with the Oneironaut Shared Dreaming Project....

Borislav- This pisses me off. Excuse me, but did you say science and no skeptics in the same paragraph? What kind of science are you doing that doesn't involve skepticism? What the hell did they teach you at your university? Science IS structured skepticism. I question the validity of your education-- you've assigned too much romance to the brain, you confuse your wishful thinking with the realm of science. Should you collect enough accounts to go through peer review(and it will not be taken seriously), you must find and explain a mechanism by which consciousness is shared without physical connection. And if you answer some sort of shit about metaphysical spirits, get the f#$% out of science.
EDIT 3: I have been corrected, you do not have to prove the existence of and explain the mechanism, only provide a strong enough argument to prove the phenomena of dream-sharing and simply leaving the mechanism as an "I don't know."

I don't believe in freaking shared dreams because they have no compelling argument nor reproducible publicly verifiable evidence, and belief in this foolish pseudoscience portrays human beings mystically and romantically-- it is not scientific and it is anti-intellectual. It's simple; if you second guess a DC or get a funny feeling about them, your brain automatically scrambles for causality of the feeling. If one is dreaming and has previously heard of dream sharing, then naturally this possibility will pop up. You get stuck on it and convince yourself and totally believe it-- EXPECT it. Of course the DC will behave strangely after that-- you EXPECT them to! That's how everything in LDs is supposed to work, right? You know something and it just is! You have no previous experience with "dream-sharing" people aside from what you have heard, so your brain has to fill in the character's behavior based off of this, there's nothing else for it to do! You know about the brain! You know about the power of placebos! Most everyone here has seen the power of the brain first hand, but some still seek fantasy outside the bounds of reality. There is so much that we do not know, I understand this. There is so much progress to be made, I believe passionately that we can attain it. Human beings are so intricate and beautiful and intelligent, on a planet with vastly diverse biology to which we know we are related, within a galaxy of incomprehensible complexity, within a cluster of mind boggling enormity, and when you get much larger than that it drives you mad to really think about it! I argue that there is far more to reality than we know-- but it is not a realm of spirits and mysticism and magical links between people's unaugmented brains. I dare you to dream larger than that.

I'm sorry for posting and losing my cool, but I feel very passionately about humans, and about furthering scientific study. I don't have anything against you guys. I just hope you can maintain a balance between wondering, speculating, dreaming(in the sleeping and non sleeping way)-- and rigorous scientific study. Stay skeptical. Keep dreaming.
/rant

EDIT: I re-read my post and apologize for my offensive language in the beginning. I don't want to be mean, and my strong emotions were not scientific either.. which makes me hypocritical. I will keep my original words there as a testament to my being an asshole.

EDIT 2: You seem like a nice guy and I feel bad. I know you're really trying and I turned into a raging internet jackass.

Originally Posted by OutlawPig

my strong emotions were not scientific...I will keep my original words there as a testament to my being an asshole

Greetings fellow asshole. Emotion is natural when you care about something. The humility to look at that emotion is rare though.

Originally Posted by OutlawPig

you must find and explain a mechanism

Although this is highly desirable when it can be done, science doesn't require this. Newton didn't have a mechanism for gravity. Mendelev didn't have mechanisms for most of his chemistry. Even now, if you dig down to a low enough level, there's a point in nearly every scientific theory where it rests on some kind of axiom or observation which doesn't have a known explanation. The only time a scientist can explain a mechanism is when making minor extensions within an area of mostly settled science. Granted it is common for scientists to demand a mechanism before accepting observational evidence. But this is a kind of ignorance, a proud, dogmatic regard for what already established, and is not the mentality that allows big steps in science.

You offered a possible explanation for people's belief in shared dreaming that seems plausible to you based on the information that you have. I guess you can see that it would be unscientific to close the door to any evidence that doesn't fit that explanation. There's no friggin' way that your hypothesis fits my own experience, its not even close. That isn't to say that I can define instrumentation and an experimental process that is guaranteed to produce my results. Just because its really hard to study something scientifically doesn't make it unreal though. And it doesn't mean that scientific study of it is impossible either, it just means that its a harder problem in some ways than what has been studied previously. Imagine trying to do 20th century physics with the mathematical ideas of 500 years ago. Our current scientific methods are to a large extent limited by the tools we use, not by the nature of scientific inquiry itself. For example, to the extent possible we try to define our models in terms of functions, and have a lot more trouble where those descriptions are inadequate. And closely related to that, we try to decompose everything into causal relationships and well defined probability distributions. But that's not science that makes us do that, its just a type of model that we know how to work with.

From what I know about physics, there's no way that anybody is going to propose a real mechanism for shared dreaming any time soon. A person might as well try to explain how to build a jet out of bricks. That doesn't make shared dreaming superstitious nonsense though. I'm also not optimistic about anyone's ability to prove it statistically in a scientifically accepted study. That's both due to the difficulty of doing that, and to the narrowness of scientists who deride anything that they don't already know. But that kind of proof is a lot closer, and I think it will happen eventually.

Carl Sagan tried to deal with this issue in his contact story. His protagonist had an experience which she could not prove, and yet it would have been unreasonable for her to just blow it off as if it didn't happen. Similarly, there is quite a bit of variety to human dream experience. Most people hardly remember dreams. I dream at least lucidly every night, with rare exceptions. I've never had a shared dream of the type where two people seem to inhabit the same imaginary movie-like environment. But most of my dreams don't have strong sound and picture components to them. A large portion of my dreams do have shared thought aspects to them. Its not easy to 'prove' this to someone else, because the experiences are all metaphorical. But I've nevertheless accumulated a large volume of a kind of objective evidence - metaphors are partially subjective, but not entirely. It would be both unscientific and idiotic for me to disbelieve my own experience because it doesn't fit the theories of another group of people that hardly dreams.

I'm not at all asking you to believe in shared dreaming, it would be unreasonable for you to do that. My suggestion is to disbelieve to the extent that your disbelief is based on something solid. But where its based on conjecture, leave it open, just don't decide. That leaves the door open to experiencing and realizing things that weren't in your experience before. Continue to question your experiences, hypothesizing 'rational explanations' (translate: fits entirely within existing mental models), and seeing if you can make them fit. Eventually, after many years of evolving experiences, you may find something that stands your skeptical tests, that repeatedly does not fit, is not in fact even close. If that doesn't happen, that's fine too. But this really isn't that uncommon. All of my immediate coworkers (myself excluded) have PhD's in hard subjects, but most of them believe in supernatural phenomena. The arrogantly dismissive, dogmatic, strawman-attacking attitude of professional skeptics is not in my experience as pervasive as the impression one gets from popular-science press.

Philosophy is skepticism. I don't know about science because they usually can make nothing into a something.

Give an example hathor, because that sounds to me like rubbish. Science is based on extreme scepticism and only takes as true those things with positive empirical evidence. I don't know what you think philosophy means but the entire concept of scepticism is simply one of many epistemological approaches within the umbrella of philosophy.

Regarding the current, lively discussion in this thread: it's true, science does not require a mechanism. All it requires is evidence. But it does require very strong evidence, which means very strict experimental and statistical methods. If there was such evidence for shared dreaming, even if we didn't understand how it worked, it would become a fact of science. The thing is that there isn't any; and in the case of shared dreaming it would actually be very easy to obtain evidence if it were true. Simply isolate two people and see if they can communicate some kind of message via dreaming, with a success rate significantly and consistently above that of chance.

I'm upset. I typed a whole reply and there was an error so it didn't go through. Ssssiiigggghhhh.

shadowofwind: I respect you. You have experienced something I have not, and which there is little documentation on, and so it is difficult for me to pass judgement. I'm interested. You say that you dream metaphorically, okay, that's cool. In an abstract dream environment, what visual or emotional cues lead you to believe you are sharing your consciousness, and how can they be considered valid in that sort of environment? You dream metaphors, which are(in my experience) subjective to the interpreter. And you believe that you can share these sort of dreams with another sort of conscious entity. Through metaphors. I don't know what you experience, but is one possibility that your brain(which believes in shared dreams) designs metaphors which point you to that, sort of reaffirming your belief and entertaining your idle sleep-brain at the same time?
I love Carl Sagain. Have Contact on audiobook.

I will do my best to keep my personal bias out of science. It has no place there. I love science. Please experiment, please collect data, please grow your pool of knowledge. I support that. It is my opinion that the outcome will be a negative, but science doesn't(or should not) have opinions. Good luck to you.

I would be more than happy, Borislav, to offer a skeptic's hand in your research.

hathor28: I do not wish to disrespect philosophy, of which I have great respect. I thoroughly enjoy philosophy. If you look back to your ancient Greek schools of though, they go hand and hand with early science. If you look to modern scientists, such as Einstein through Carl Sagan, you will notice that they are philosophers in their own right. Science deals almost exclusively in skepticism. A hypothesis is rigorously tested before it is theory. This is why experiment is at the heart of science; to test, to collect evidence, to double-guess and test again. To prove things wrong, and in doing so, prove others correct. Philosophy has long gone hand in hand with science. It asks "how come X, maybe because of Y." Science says "I conducted some experiments, and it turns out that it's definitely Y." It is the questioning, and science is the pursuit of answering the question, though many scientists do not consider themselves philosophers in any big way. But asking questions is a big part of science. You mentioned making nothing into something. Here's a philosopher's question: What is nothing? You don't seem to know anything about science, so I will leave you to your opinion.

Your opinion is wrong.

Again, the type of skepticism that I wished to avoid is being misunderstood. I seperate two types of skepticism - skepticism in the field of work, which is unavoidable and wholly necessary for progress, and uneducated skepticism. Uneducated in the sense that you clearly do not understand what dream sharing is about. There is nothing metaphysical, or paranormal about it. I admire that you defend your cause so, outlaw pig, however, in the future it is expedient that you assemble all of the information needed before you formulate your crude, bashing remarks. There is nothing that I enjoy less than wasting amounts of my time reading several paragraphs of well written, cuss-ridden slime. This, my dear friend, is why I mentioned not wanting skeptics to post in this thread. If you would be so kind as to not begin an argument with me, as I will not continue it, I'd be very appreciative if you would not post in this thread again unless you have a mighty change of heart. A bit of food for thought - when viewed by many, profanity is the mark of a weak mind trying to express itself forcefully.

Regards,
Borislav

Okay, I'm not being skeptical here, I'm being confused, so please bear with me:

It seems to me that shared dreaming is about the easiest of dreaming phenomena to test and prove. All you need do is have two dreamers go to sleep, each having been given a very simple, even archetypical, image or word to share with the other during the dream. If they wake up and each independently relay having clearly dreamed of the other's image, then shared-dreaming has been proven. No more need be done!

For instance, one dreamer could be given "apple," and the other "orange," and the shared dream need amount to no more than an exchange of fruit -- regardless of dream setting, quality, or whatever. If "apple" dreamer dreamed of an orange, or just an orange object,while consciously passing on his apple image, and "orange" dreamer dreamed of an apple or similar while knowingly passing on his orange image, then the dream was shared, the test a success. The test subjects can, and perhaps should at first, be advanced LD'ers with a long record of dream-sharing experience -- and they ought to know each other well. Also, there should be two independent people passing the test images to the dreamers, to avoid both corruption of data and the possibility that some other phenomenon is happening (like ESP).

So here's my confusion, especially with regard to this thread: If proving dream-sharing is that simple, then why isn't it happening all the time? Why hasn't dream-sharing been added to the textbooks? (and please, Shadowofwind, spare the "DARPA doesn't care to spend money on it" argument, because I can't believe that the knowledge and technology that can come from such proof would not be well worth the tiny investment -- not to mention that it would make a great masters or doctoral thesis, so you think kids would be trying it regularly, regardless of any scientific and business communities' lack of interest)

And finally: why, Borislav, do you require some super-secret process developed and supported only by true-believers when the test is so obvious and simple that children could base their fifth-grade science fair projects on it? Are you just looking for expert test subjects?

Please let me know what complication I'm missing.

Originally Posted by Borislav

There is nothing metaphysical, or paranormal about it. I admire that you defend your cause so, outlaw pig, however, in the future it is expedient that you assemble all of the information needed before you formulate your crude, bashing remarks. There is nothing that I enjoy less than wasting amounts of my time reading several paragraphs of well written, cuss-ridden slime.

I like that last bit.

You're right, absolutely I did not assemble all of the information available to myself before passing my crude judgement. As for my crude language, well, a dummy like me aught to utilize my entire vocabulary, you know.

I have browsed the dream-sharing bit of the forums, albeit rushed and anything but thorough. I suppose I saw what I wanted to see. Which was silly talk about mystic mind melds. I am intrigued now, by what means would the phenomenon work if not paranormally or metaphysically? For the sake of knowledge, I do hope you share some of your research as you go. I know I'm not on your good side but there are others here that seem put off by all the secrecy. And you've explained that away, I know, falling into the wrong hands, etc.

I do apologize whole-heartedly. I can admit my faults and improve myself, for such is science.

OutlawPig.

I think the ultimate test to prove this would be to have both dreamer perform a specific eye movement when the two dreamers meet, just like how lucid dreaming was partially proved by stephen laberge. Just like sageous said, it would been an incredibly easy test. If by chance both dreamers did share the dream at least then you would have more evidence to turn to then "I know its real because I thats my opinion".

Originally Posted by Sageous

If proving dream-sharing is that simple, then why isn't it happening all the time? Why hasn't dream-sharing been added to the textbooks?

But what if it is, and we're not even realizing it? What if some of our dream characters, are other people dreaming and showing up in our dreams? It's all about how you look at it. Dream sharing could very well be possible, people talk about their DC's doing things to them when it could very well be a lucid dreamer torturing his or her said "DC".

See saying that doesn't help "what if it is". Currently the probability that it exists is extremely against your odds. Read this

I believe there is a way humans can share dreams through an unknown part of the brain, it extremely hard to detect or prove and exists in another dimension

This may sound unusual but that is what a hell of a load of people believe. The only way to prove this is by taking it logically step by step. Even If we were having shared dreams without realizing it, it wouldn't make a difference. Currently its about establishing it validity.