The Nature of Shared Dreaming -- a Loose Theory That Might Work

There are a gazillion threads discussing shared dreaming on this forum, and yet another one might not make a difference, but I had a thought this morning regarding an explanation of its physical nature -- and a rationale for it being “real,” that I thought might be worth some discussion.

I was actually thinking about bubbles at first -- you know, the ones kids blow through a wand, basically spheres of soap held together by surface tension. I don’t even know why I was thinking about bubbles; probably a forgotten dream, as I had just woken from a late-morning nap. But then I started imagining the shape of bubbles, and their necessarily cohesive surface. And for some reason then I started thinking about thought energy.

I’ve written many times about thought energy here and elsewhere, so most of you likely know the tune, but here it is again [this is all conjecture based on no more than wishful thinking, BTW, so please hold off on the physics lectures! ]:

Thought energy is the energy created by conscious, sentient, thought. It is an actual form of energy which, because it is completely new and unrelated to the physical world, does not conform to the currently known laws of physics -- it is not electromagnetic, and does not contain known units of energy. Also, thought energy is not to be confused with the electromagnetic energy of brainwaves produced during the physical act of thinking -- that is something else. Thought energy is unique in form to each person generating it, sort of like fingerprints, but it likely would tend to be drawn to the same locale as other thought energy…which, finally, is where the bubbles come in.

Here’s the theory itself: Thought energy is created by individuals and tends to be attracted to other individuals' created thought energy, as well as itself. This dual attraction, when combined with the billions of actively sentient beings these days, has formed a “bubble” of coherent thought energy that encompasses our entire planet. So what we have is an energy sphere of connected thought pools (each pool representing an individual), and that energy is not under the jurisdiction of Newton’s laws.

When we dream, we enjoy a direct connection with our personal pool of thought energy, which in turn is connected to all the rest of the world’s pools through the surface tension of the thought energy bubble. From this position we have an opportunity to “transmit” to all the other individuals’ pools simultaneously, and also to listen to any recognizable transmissions that might be coming from other pools. If we can manage to recognize and understand these exchanged transmissions, then we are dream-sharing.

A couple of corollaries:

First, your transmission goes to the entire sphere of all the billions of pools at once; there is no directed communication. However, if you know the individual whose thoughts you are looking for, and they know you, you should be able to spoon out a conversation from the general ocean of thoughts you are experiencing simultaneously, simply by recognizing a moment of order (your known individual) from the overall chaos of the sphere.

Also, this theory still doesn’t answer the question of how we would convert incoming thoughts into symbols or images that make sense to us, and vise-versa. I imagine/hope there might be some sort of “universal translator” built into our minds that can convert thought energy to usable metaphor. This could be similar to Jung’s collective unconscious, and his theory of universal archetypes.

So that’s what I have so far. I know it’s pretty rough, and probably totally wrong, but it does at least offer a partial answer to the problem I have always had about the “physics” of shared-dreaming: How can two people communicate in a dream instantly, without regard for time or space, and how do they find each other at all?

So, if anyone would like to discuss, upgrade, query me for details, or trash this theory altogether, then go for it… This for a change is a dream-sharing thread that asks how it can work, rather than just assume that it does, and thoughtful discussion about the “how” might get us a little closer to creating techniques for more easily and/or accurately practicing the art of dream sharing. .


In case anyone wants to start a conversation: I hope you won’t mind if I include a few ground rules for discussion that I urge you to follow:

* What I want to avoid on this thread is an “Is not, because I said so! / Is so, because I said so!” argument, as these sorts of conversations are pretty much useless and tend to lead to angry, if heartfelt, exchanges… let’s not go there!

* I am not asking if you “believe” in dream-sharing, or asking you to assume that I believe in it. I really don’t care what people want to believe; perhaps nobody should.

* I don’t care at all about how good you are at shared dreaming, or that a friend of your cousin’s uncle is a master dream-sharer. This is not a thread about belief, anecdotal proof, or how cool dream-sharing might be. It’s about the “how.”

* And, of course, if you’re inclined to post with something like “dream-sharing just exists, and we can never understand why,” don’t bother. Though that is likely true, it will do nothing for the conversation.


Any thoughts?