AgProv
Doctor of Disorientation Studies, UnseenUniversity
- Joined
- Apr 6, 2014
- Messages
- 1,529
- Location
- too North to be Midlands, too south to be North
I read the two threads last night on "reading in dreams" and "where do you live in dreams" and found them both fascinating. With the permission of the mods, i'd like to kick off a third related thread, on the significance or otherwise of speech and conversation in dreams.
My dreaming life is rich and fascinating and runs the gamut from fear, horror and revulsion to real ecstatic joy and delight. If it's said that some people only dream in black and white (does the licence cost less?) and others dream in colour, mine are quite often technicolour big-screen epic productions. But most of the time I'm mute and while sounds happen, it's very rare for there to be spoken discourse. Usually when there is it has a feel of importance and significance about it. (The same applies to seeing anything written down).
An example. During a really bad time in my life, (and no, I'm not proud of it either: all I can say is, it happened), I realised I was getting romantically obsessed with a particular girl and even though she'd made it clear there was no chance, I just could not get her out of my head. I had enough brains to realise it was unhealthy and damaging and I was one step away from actually stalking the poor girl, which could have caused a shedload of trouble and a world of pain all round. So I was glad to get out of town, go cold turkey, and let the whole thing die a natural death. I hope I didn't cause her too much alarm.
A year or two later I dreamt about her. She and a group of people I recognised from university were playing in a walled garden. they were standing in a circle and playing the game where you throw a ball around the circle to the person standing more or less opposite, who then chooses a random person to throw it to. A few of the other people in the circle I recognised as people i'd alienated with some bad or erratic behaviour.
I realised I'd entered the garden without asking permission, but wanted to get close to her; I barged uninvited into the circle, caught the ball, and looked at her. Let's call her Joan. The words surged up and I said, with some emotional effort, "Joan. Who or what ARE you?" I threw the ball at her; she caught it. She looked over to me - the expression on her face appeared to be part pity, part disgust - and said "You don't belong here. Goodbye." Then threw the ball back. It hit me with enough force to throw me right over the wall and out of the garden....
That's an example of speech having real power in a dream. I'm pretty sure I was able to work out the meaning - it didn't take genius level insight!
But that's an example of a dream that in some intangible way seemed to be more than just a dream; a general perception is that dreams where I speak, or have a conversation with somebody, appear to be far more solid, concrete, "real", than usual.
It also brings up what Robert Anton Wilson described as the morgensheutegesternewelt - the "today,tomorrow, yesterday world" - where normal perceptions of time vanish. The dream that dramatised all I needed to know about "Joan" did not happen to me until some years after I last saw her, for instance, when the irrational feelings had ebbed and I could remember her without great longing or desire.
And to quote another great Wilson - Colin - I remember his discussion of Dunne's An Experiment with Time. I think it was either in "The Occult" or "Mysteries". Dunne speculated that there are overlapping worlds where time proceeds at different speeds. Time One applies here. But Time Two and Time Three, even a Time Four, apply in other levels of existence, such as the Summerland of the spirit mediums.
If we speculate there is such a thing as the Astral Plane, a sort of shared collective consciousness where some (but not all) dreams happen and the dreaming minds of more than one person can meet and share an objective experience. Then there's no guarantee that if you share a dream with somebody, you are both experiencing it on the same night in Time One. I had that dream around 1993, some years after the unpleasantness. She might have had the same dream, from her point of view, in 1988...
I've also had the experience of talking in dreams, and waking up halfway through a sentence, to experience a "time-lag" .It's as if my voice here in Time One is lagging two or three seconds behind my speaking voice in the dream; in the dream I might be saying "but the flowers are yellow and the grass...." and as I wake up, I'm completing the sentence with "....yellow and the grass is green". This feels oddly supportive of Dunne's proposition re. different time flows.
I've rambled on a bit. Anyone care to take it up?
My dreaming life is rich and fascinating and runs the gamut from fear, horror and revulsion to real ecstatic joy and delight. If it's said that some people only dream in black and white (does the licence cost less?) and others dream in colour, mine are quite often technicolour big-screen epic productions. But most of the time I'm mute and while sounds happen, it's very rare for there to be spoken discourse. Usually when there is it has a feel of importance and significance about it. (The same applies to seeing anything written down).
An example. During a really bad time in my life, (and no, I'm not proud of it either: all I can say is, it happened), I realised I was getting romantically obsessed with a particular girl and even though she'd made it clear there was no chance, I just could not get her out of my head. I had enough brains to realise it was unhealthy and damaging and I was one step away from actually stalking the poor girl, which could have caused a shedload of trouble and a world of pain all round. So I was glad to get out of town, go cold turkey, and let the whole thing die a natural death. I hope I didn't cause her too much alarm.
A year or two later I dreamt about her. She and a group of people I recognised from university were playing in a walled garden. they were standing in a circle and playing the game where you throw a ball around the circle to the person standing more or less opposite, who then chooses a random person to throw it to. A few of the other people in the circle I recognised as people i'd alienated with some bad or erratic behaviour.
I realised I'd entered the garden without asking permission, but wanted to get close to her; I barged uninvited into the circle, caught the ball, and looked at her. Let's call her Joan. The words surged up and I said, with some emotional effort, "Joan. Who or what ARE you?" I threw the ball at her; she caught it. She looked over to me - the expression on her face appeared to be part pity, part disgust - and said "You don't belong here. Goodbye." Then threw the ball back. It hit me with enough force to throw me right over the wall and out of the garden....
That's an example of speech having real power in a dream. I'm pretty sure I was able to work out the meaning - it didn't take genius level insight!
But that's an example of a dream that in some intangible way seemed to be more than just a dream; a general perception is that dreams where I speak, or have a conversation with somebody, appear to be far more solid, concrete, "real", than usual.
It also brings up what Robert Anton Wilson described as the morgensheutegesternewelt - the "today,tomorrow, yesterday world" - where normal perceptions of time vanish. The dream that dramatised all I needed to know about "Joan" did not happen to me until some years after I last saw her, for instance, when the irrational feelings had ebbed and I could remember her without great longing or desire.
And to quote another great Wilson - Colin - I remember his discussion of Dunne's An Experiment with Time. I think it was either in "The Occult" or "Mysteries". Dunne speculated that there are overlapping worlds where time proceeds at different speeds. Time One applies here. But Time Two and Time Three, even a Time Four, apply in other levels of existence, such as the Summerland of the spirit mediums.
If we speculate there is such a thing as the Astral Plane, a sort of shared collective consciousness where some (but not all) dreams happen and the dreaming minds of more than one person can meet and share an objective experience. Then there's no guarantee that if you share a dream with somebody, you are both experiencing it on the same night in Time One. I had that dream around 1993, some years after the unpleasantness. She might have had the same dream, from her point of view, in 1988...
I've also had the experience of talking in dreams, and waking up halfway through a sentence, to experience a "time-lag" .It's as if my voice here in Time One is lagging two or three seconds behind my speaking voice in the dream; in the dream I might be saying "but the flowers are yellow and the grass...." and as I wake up, I'm completing the sentence with "....yellow and the grass is green". This feels oddly supportive of Dunne's proposition re. different time flows.
I've rambled on a bit. Anyone care to take it up?