Just over a year ago I had the pleasure of interviewing Lucid Dreaming expert, Charlie Morley, for Hacked Perception’s YouTube channel. When I spoke with Charlie last year we touched on many subjects that naturally relate to lucid dreaming practice such as the nature of consciousness, death and reincarnation and astral projection.
For those who have not seen this you can watch the full interview here:
Something I didn’t get the chance to discuss with Charlie at any great length was the concept of Mutual Dreaming; that is the idea that two or more people can share (and also potentially interact) in the same dream environment (a concept that was immortalised by Hollywood in the movie “Inception”).
The reason for this particular blog came from a number of experiences where I have noticed that after a period of time sleeping beside someone there appears some level synchronisation of dream intensity and theme’s; one could argue that this is just a byproduct of shared life experiences (which for the record, I’m not denying is a contributing factor) but I feel there is something more complex at work.
Dreams (and consciousness for that matter) are still such a mysterious subject, one which I personally don’t think can be distilled primarily to “day residue” or sexual repression that Freud’s early dream analysis models suggest. The reason for this belief is rooted in a wider exploration of consciousness, where the most plausible of models (defined in disciplines as wide ranging as Hinduism, Southern American Shamanism to Quantum physics) indicate that consciousness may be the very fabric of our universe.
There are numerous organisations exploring the mutual dreaming experience and conducting experiments such as the work of Dr Rory Mac Sweeney and his ongoing Mutual Dream Experiment, whereby dreamers are asked to choose a “dream password” and attempt to exchange it with another dreamer on a specific night. These passwords are recorded and matched online and dream content is exchanged to further validate a match.
If you would like to read more or get involved in this please check out the Mutual Dream Experiment here:
Do I think such experiences are plausible?
Some of my personal thoughts on this would suggest one or more “paranormal explanations”, such as the dream world itself being an “external construct” or human beings having the capacity for communication (telepathy?) in dream states, both of which I don’t see as being impossible if I am to hold true to the idea that consciousness isn’t just “something in our heads” but something that we both exist in, and give existence to, simultaneously.
I wonder how much we can learn about ourselves and the perceived external universe by examining dream states…and if we can wake up in those dreams who knows what we will be capable of…
Sweet Dreams.
hackedperception 