I’ve actually had lucid discussions with dream characters about this. Discussions wherein during the lucid state the “actor” breaks character and talks to me candidly about the nature of dreams, and such…

I experienced something similar on my first and, unfortunately, only DMT experience. No joke, I came across one of those cybernetic elves you read about or whatever they are, and all I could think is, “Hmm, this is such a neat aspect of my imagination, she [the elf entity] must be a figment of my thoughts manifest in this state/realm.”

We exchanged more of an emotional contact in which she smiled at my thoughts on this and implied it didn’t matter, she loved me regardless. It was really neat, this sort of personal-but-universal love, motherly, Isis-like.

I must admit that in the dream I was talking about first of, everyone really seemed to be different aspects of me, I’d been thinking about my relationship with my dad loads and it illustrated all the different complex feelings I had at the time perfectly.

Since then, it’s been very useful with some dreams to ask ‘what if everyone was just a part of me’ but other times, it’s like no way, that person behaves just like that in real life and the whole ‘everyone is me’ model breaks down completely. Same if I’ve just been watching some stupid horror movie and am dreaming about evil monkeys from outer space, I don’t tend to read deep meaningful insights into them!

I’ve not had any dreams where I’ve really felt that someone else had a message for me, I’ve been worried that I have had after some dreams (or excited, depending), but the reality of the dream hasn’t manifest in real life.

Like Error 404, I think he’s hit the nail on the head, there is a real universe, it’s just that our perception is incredibly subjective. Even our senses of sight, smell and taste and so on is subjective, not real. Imagine if we were all bats, we’d perceive the world in a completely different way!

To put it another way, all the world is a stage and that stage is in my own mind, and everybody is acting out a role that I wrote - but they don’t know the role, other than through clues they derive from watching me fail to correctly act out my role in their drama.

I do beleive that there is a real universe out there, and that it corresponds somewhat to experienced phenomena. But we look throug thick and warped lenses that were developed not for perceiving reality as such, but for inducing behaviors likely to result in survival long enough to reproduce. It just happens that a reasonably efficient way for those behaviors to be induced is to have phenomena that correspond to some degree to an external reality.

’ve actually had lucid discussions with dream characters about this. Discussions wherein during the lucid state the “actor” breaks character and talks to me candidly about the nature of dreams, and such… So, I’m really glad you used that term…

fucking trippy!

As far as inventing people, I’m beginning to lean towards one of two tangents, either all reality is made up by the brain (which gets really complicated, and assumes that everything you learn, you already knew), or we’re all connected on various levels, perhaps through the energy that seems to be everywhere, even in a vacuum (scalar EM). Thus we can communicate or share minds on an unconscious level through this pervasive EM field.

From my POV waking reality is a “dream” as well, it just operates by rules that are a little bit more hard’n'fast than sleeping reality

WHich is to say that the reality which surrounds us when we are awake is a receptive matrix which to some extent accepts our projections and reflects them back at us, thus you run into people when you were just thinking about them, coincidences, etc

In sleep the rules get even looser thus people change from one into another etc, time telescopes, events repeat

Yes i think we communicate with other people in dreams, with spirits, and with aspects of our selves

Just like we do when we’re awake

I’m remionded of this book I read about Buddhism once, this student was asking a teacher about visions he had of heaven and hell and gods and demons, the teacher reminded him that these things are unreal creations of the mind - just like this world!

The word “real” loses meaning when everything becomes slippery, fluid and evanescent, no?

I mean, real compared to what?

Maybe its all just smoke through a keyhole

THe creations of my mind may be just as real as spirits or other people i communicate with in dreams as well

Maybe there’s some kind of sorting mechanism that puts people together in dreams who then sort of play certain roles for one another, almost like actors in a billion one act plays written by each one of us. That of course opens up the rather bizarre possibility that at times you’re merely an actor in somebody else’s dream. Certainly feels that way at times during ordinary life, that’s for sure.

I’ve actually had lucid discussions with dream characters about this. Discussions wherein during the lucid state the “actor” breaks character and talks to me candidly about the nature of dreams, and such… So, I’m really glad you used that term…

In one situation, I was having a pretty weird, disturbing dream until a few things happened to trigger it into a lucid one. The “scene” finally ended abruptly and I realized I was lucid, and I walked… well, I guess in some ways you could say off-set, with one of the characters that explained to me that he wasn’t my friend Tim, he was actually an actor, and that normal dreams are stories acted out by dream actors playing roles that are familiar. I realized then that it was actually my lucid dream guide in the form of my friend, and that he could take the shape of whoever he needed to be for each particular non-lucid dream.

As for the reality of dream characters, I have no clue. I know for sure though that when I’m lucid dreaming, background characters disappear or fade-out, and the whole view is pretty much limited to a small group of specific characters with individual personalities that seem much less “projections” (of myself perhaps) and instead individual entities with their own personalities. That’s usually what engages my interest in each of them, and i’ve had lengthy discussions with plenty.

-tc

And it turned out, although I didn’t heed the warning at the time, that she is intensely evil.

Haha. Hilarious.

I floated through classrooms, just watching the people and enjoying my weightlessness.

I agree with Don Juan, of the Castaneda books, that there are different types of dreams. Some dreams are random stuff from your brain. Like you watch a tv show about chipmunks and you dream about chipmunks. Or you dream about people you know, and your dream is an expression of your attitudes towards them or some unresolved issue you have with them.

But sometimes, your dreaming body takes you into different worlds (planes, whatever).

One more dream story:

My girlfriend at the time was sleeping over. She was on the floor, I was on the couch, laying opposite so I could see her face. I fell asleep and dreamt I was wandering outside the apartment. Then I floated up the stairs, through the door, and into the room where we were sleeping. Suddenly I felt an intensely evil energy, and saw a blackish shape in the room. I snapped back into my body and awoke instantly.

I looked immediately over at my gf, who was sleeping soundly. But all of a sudden, her eyes open and she’s looking right at me. Freaky. Then she told me she had also dreamed that she was outside her body, and had seen me come in the room in her dream.

And it turned out, although I didn’t heed the warning at the time, that she is intensely evil.

Personally, though, I haven’t met any “real” people in my dreams. My dreams have included people I know,, but I’ve never met anyone, like a guide or yogi or mentor, in my dreams. I wish I could, though.

As far as inventing people, I’m beginning to lean towards one of two tangents, either all reality is made up by the brain (which gets really complicated, and assumes that everything you learn, you already knew), or we’re all connected on various levels, perhaps through the energy that seems to be everywhere, even in a vacuum (scalar EM). Thus we can communicate or share minds on an unconscious level through this pervasive EM field.

Thats my two cents