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Reading In Dreams

Cherrybomb

Justified & Ancient
Joined
Aug 26, 2009
Messages
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Location
Sitting on the roof, at dusk.
I've read somewhere recently that you can't read in your dreams, but I have read things in my dreams many times. Where has this idea come from?
 
I first saw that claim decades ago (1970's?). It's certainly true that it's difficult to read in dreams, mostly because (IMHO) it's difficult to 'hold' a bunch of text in legible form.

However, I've literally read multiple pages of books and reports in dreams, and looked up items in books or documents which I pointed out to other dream-characters.

The only thing more difficult than reading text is using a map. I've managed to do this in a few dreams back when I was actively working on lucid dreaming.
 
Thank goodness it's not just me! :lol:

Yes, it is a hard task to focus on things like that but it's not impossible. I often see people holding up signs in my dreams or read time tables (good lord my dreams sound dull!)
 
In doing some cursory 'Net-searching on this topic, I found an interesting thing ...

Nobody seems to be able to point to any original documentary source for the claim one can't read in a dream. However, almost every thread I've found on this topic points to a 1992 episode of _Batman - The Animated Series_ in which Bruce / Batman realizes he's in a dream state because he can't read text:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perchance_ ... ted_Series)

I know I'd heard or read about inability to read in dreams by the end of the 1970's, so this episode can't be the original source for the claim. However, it might arguably be the source for widespread popularization of the claim.
 
I have to say that now I think about it, I don't recall ever needing to read in a dream, although by the same standard, I can't remember having a conversation in one either.

Generally if there is information in a dream I just know it.

Lightswitches never ever work in my dreams and at a point in my life when I was having very disturbed sleep and nightmares, were always a good tell for me if I became aware I might be dreaming. But there's another thread for that!
 
I've never read in dreams, I don't even recall anything ever having words on them or anything apart from the time when I dreamed the Norse Gods showed me my real name carved on a birch branch in runes, but I couldn't read runes :?
 
I've never been able to read text or musical scores in dreams They're both wiggly and vague and have unusual symbols printed in.
 
I've spent a lot of my life reading, so naturally I read in dreams, too. It takes practice. The text keeps sliding around.

The theory is that dreaming is a right-brained activity and reading a left-brained one, so never the twain shall meet. But of course right and left brain aren't as rigidly divided as that.

When I was young, everybody dreamed in black-and-white and dreaming in color was supposed to indicate a genius-level intellect. But now everybody dreams in color...
 
Sometimes I wake up still puzzling over something that I've been trying to read.

Occasionally I do read something clearly, then realise as I wake that it's gibberish. :lol:
 
But now everybody dreams in color...

I have never ever dreamed in colour, though tbh it's not what you'd normally think of as black and white either, more like the information about what colour things should be is missing in a way it couldn't be with things in this world.

Last night I was dreaming about trying to read a comic book, almost certainly because this thread had influenced me. I don't remember anything else about it. :lol:
 
We used to have threads on dreams and peeps used to interpret them for each other. That was fun. :D
 
Printed words (as in books, signs, etc.) are difficult for me to read, but I usually understand them all the same. Like I get their intent.

Just last night I had a dream that my client PM'd me on Facebook to tell me he was feeling sick. It was an oddly specific message and I actually read it on my computer screen.

That is, looking back, I remember seeing the actual English words on-screen.

He isn't sick today, but still....
 
Oh, I read in dreams: it makes sense at the time. The problem is holding onto it for long enough to remember in the morning!

Last night I dreamt - again - of being back at my old university. I was thinking: again I'm back here. how many more times? And how soon before they realise I'm posing, I know nothing, and I'm here on false pretences?

For some reason I was doing a joint degree in philosophy and maths. My tutor gave me an essay question to read. I read it, understood the words, blinked, and asked how i was expected to reconcile two completely opposite concepts? All I can recall is that it asked me to explain a philosophical concept in mathematical terms, or vice-versa. I was sceptical as to how the two could be equated. My tutor, a youngish good-looking guy who I now realise had a strong resemblance to Malcolm Bradbury (who did indeed attempt to teach me once or twice) grinned and said "you'll work it out."

But can I recall what the essay question actually was? Even though I read it and it was in English and made sense... no I cannot. Ah well...

I've also been to Reading in a dream. Can't recall much about it or even if the dream-Reading was like the "real" town. I've only been there once and it seemed... well, anonymous, like so many places on the outer fringes of the monster that is London.
 
ziggurats aside i can definitely read in dreams, ive started receiving texts in dreams
 
Heh... to misquote Daphne du Maurier

In my dreams I return to Suffolk Terrace

Or to Waveney Terrace. Or to a strange transformed version of Horsham St Faith residences (sadly no more).

Last night the weirdness was an old boss of mine smiling up at me and telling me I needed to know more about Tycho Brahe. I heard the name and saw it spelt out. Woke up with a vague feeling it had to do with astronomy or astrology or something like that. Googled it at the earliest opportunity. It turns out to be a late-mediaeval astronomer who led a colourful life and had a false nose, having mislaid his original one at an early age.

As to what relevance this holds for me I have no idea whatsoever.
 
AgProv, perhaps I know you on FB, but a friend of mine showed a picture of (what I assume is a band called "Tycho") and my first reaction was, "Brahe?"

Haven't thought of the guy for ages and that was still the first thought that came to mind.
 
University of the Esoteric Arcana

Perhaps you do!

I get around a bit on the Internet: "AgProv" is one identity scattered around the place. (tvtropes, Terry Pratchett wiki, and others). I'm also "A.A. Pessimal" on one site and go under my, er, "Clark Kent" name on FB and other sites.

My direct knowledge of The Place With The Ziggurats is from many years ago when it was a lot smaller than it is now; for instance, the School of Medicine was in its very earliest fledgling infancy and there were only a quarter of the number of students; the ignorance was more concentrated and not as diluted.

It had an impact on me both for good and bad, which is why, I suppose, I return there a lot in dreams. I've only been back once in waking life, though, and that had a certain exorcising-of-personal-demons quality about it...
 
AgProv said:
Or to Waveney Terrace. Or to a strange transformed version of Horsham St Faith residences (sadly no more).
f-block all the way ... or was it z-block ! and mary tyler moore court
 
Sometimes I dream I'm working a crossword puzzle. I write in the answers and start filling it up, and I can remember all the words up/down and across to a certain point, then it all falls apart like a soup sandwich.
 
Does algebra count? I dreamt I was in a maths exam last night and was utterly unprepared for it.
 
I've dreamt in Reading. I don't know if that counts.

I've read things in dreams. That is to say, I've dreamt about reading, but I'm not sure that's what you mean. Put it this way. I've read many things that I've then thought back to in my mind. I've read many of the previous posts in this thread, and can remember reading them, and can remember some of the phrases within them with probably various accuracy. But in remembering them, and remembering reading them, I don't get an image of each piece of text in my mind, yet I know sort of what that text looks like and can conjure bits of it to mind. If you dream about reading, I imagine the memory of doing so would give much the same impression. But that doesn't mean the original experience of reading in a dream is the same as in real life, in the sense of looking at a whole piece of immutable text that your mind has created that contains information you don't consciously know until your eyes scan over it. The question of whether one can read in a dream surely comes down at least partly to whether it's even possible for one's brain to contain such information in such a way as to allow you to experience it as though it's external. I wonder whether it's a bit like when you know something in a dream without having been told it. Sometimes in dreams you know who someone your brain has created is, or where you are even though you've never really been there, as though you've always known. Sometimes I think we feel we've read things in dreams, and remember having done so, while in the dream state what actually happened was quite different.
 
Tycho Brahe...

Going back to the strange dream I had where my old boss told me I really needed to know about Tycho Brahe and the name spelt itself out visibly as she said it.

I was completing the Mail on Sunday prize crossword this morning for posting. (Hey, the wife buys it and even she doesn't buy into the politics or the mid-set. The prize crossword competition is, however, worth £1500)

Guess what clue 1 across was...

----- Brahe, Danish astronomer, (1546 - 1601)

Interesting coincidence! Crossword entry duly sent.[/i]
 
Are you able to read signs and written material in your dreams? Sometimes I can read perfectly, sometimes the letters and words are clear but make no sense, sometimes the markings are utterly incomprehensible. Are different parts of the brain in play from one dream to the next?

Interested to hear of others' experiences.
 
By weird coincidence, I had a strange disjointed dream this morning, in which I was able to read some writing.
However, I have forgotten it because it made no sense.
I barely remember dreams when I do remember them at all.
 
I've had some luck in reading longer stretches of text, such as 1 - 3 pages of a fiction book / story. In my experience there can be accurate recall and cross-reference within the course of the dream itself, but little or no recall once I awake.

Some examples ...

One key scene in a dream involved my reading a newspaper account of a crime, then relating the newspaper account to a dream-character and interrogating her as to whether she was the culprit (she was ...). I even presented the newspaper and pointed to particular passages and phrases while questioning her. When I awoke the lurid crime scene newspaper photo stayed with me, but I couldn't recall the text details on which the subsequent discussion had focused.

I've had multiple dreams involving a textual list of things that serve as my agenda, with my referring to the list again and again as the dream unfolds. This always falls victim to dream (non-) logic, in the sense that I almost always find items appearing on, and / or disappearing from, the list from scene to scene. Most of the list items stay intact as these changes occur, so it's not an entirely new list every time I glance at it.

In my younger days I often had dreams involving a lecture hall setting, where I would write (and refer back to ... ) notes both during the lecture session and afterwords (in dream time). Some of these scenes involved my reading (and occasionally transcribing) text or figures written on a chalkboard / whiteboard. The text didn't survive waking, but sometimes pictures or figures persisted long enough to recall.

IMHO my most impressive reading-in-a-dream experience involved navigating through an unnamed European city using street signs and a big fold-open city map, all the while cross-referring items between these two things. It was a very long dream experience, and once I'd found my intended destination I used the same textual references to navigate 'back' again. The part I found impressive was the persistence of previously-inspected street (etc.) names on the map, so that I could re-orient myself repeatedly. The graphics and 'actually visible' scenery lingered briefly upon waking up, but none of the text stayed within reach.
 
You want the Reading in Dreams thread (or one of them):
forum.forteantimes.com/index.php?threads/reading-in-dreams.56086/page-1
Cross-linkage obsoleted by thread merger.
 
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Are you able to read signs and written material in your dreams? Sometimes I can read perfectly, sometimes the letters and words are clear but make no sense, sometimes the markings are utterly incomprehensible. Are different parts of the brain in play from one dream to the next?

Interested to hear of others' experiences.

Yes, I definitely can. I collect Silver and Bronze age comics, and will sometimes dream that I've found a market stall which has stacks of amazing but cheap comics (the actual comics in the dreams vary, but I actually had this dream a few nights ago and it involved finding loads of Marvel westerns).

Similar dreams are apparently very common among people who collect stuff!
 
I often read in dreams although like others have said, sometimes the words / letters are nonsensical. For me it's never been great volumes of text, more a few words / sentence on a piece of paper or on a wall or somesuch.

I've often heard that "it's impossible to read in dreams" which strikes me as odd because clearly it's not impossible. Must be one of those misconception things.
 
Yes sometimes they seem like letters but you cant understand what they are.
In one where I was floating looking at symbols marked on the side of stone blocks on a pyramid it sparked my interest in ancient Egypt.
I couldn't find the one I was looking for later though when I looked at the meanings of hieroglyphics.
 
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