How to Communicate with People in their Dreams?

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A very interesting article has been just released: Konkoly et al., Real-time dialogue between experimenters and dreamers during REM sleep, Current Biology (2021), https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2021.01.026

The experiments were conducted by four teams of researchers in the USA, Germany, France and the Netherlands.

From summary: “Here we show that individuals who are asleep and in the midst of a lucid dream (aware of the fact that they are currently dreaming) can perceive questions from an experimenter and provide answers using electrophysiological signals. We implemented our procedures for two-way communication during polysomnographically verified rapid-eye-movement (REM) sleep in 36 individuals. Some had minimal prior experience with lucid dreaming, others were frequent lucid dreamers, and one was a patient with narcolepsy who had frequent lucid dreams. During REM sleep, these individuals exhibited various capabilities, including performing veridical perceptual analysis of novel information, maintaining information in working memory, computing simple answers, and expressing volitional replies. Their responses included distinctive eye movements and selective facial muscle contractions, constituting correctly answered questions on 29 occasions across 6 of the individuals tested”.

So it turned out that there are real experiences in dreams, indeed, assuming that interactions with people in their waking state (researchers) are real experiences, therefore the gap between “reality” of waking life and “illusoriness” of dreams is not so huge as it was usually thought to be.

How real is reality?

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If the reality of dreams and of the waking life is the same, does it mean that the waking life is as unreal as dreams are usually thought to be or dreams are as real as the walking life is thought to be or the reality all these realms is something in between?

Reality, Hyperreality and Hyporeality

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When something (*) can exert an influence on me, and I can exert an influence on it, I call it real.

When something can exert an influence on me, and I cannot exert an influence on it, I call it hyperreal.

When something cannot exert an influence on me, and I can exert an influence on it, I call it hyporeal.

(*) Something could also mean someone.

Subjectivity of Dreams?

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The sentence life is (also) a dream does not close the gap between the subjectivity of dreams and the objectivity of waking life; it merely states that this realm is erroneously called waking life, because the real waking life is to find in “another place” (nevertheless, it essentially differs from all realms that could be called dreams).

From the psychological point of view, there is nothing terrifying in the sentence life is (also) a dream.

The idea that the gap between subjectivity of dreams and objectivity of waking life is only illusory, is truly terrifying; and I like this idea.

 

Ego and Paradoxes of Evaluating

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Every evaluating is an effect of ego, even the evaluating of ego itself.

The statement: the waking life is as real as dreamworlds is informative, as well as: ego is as real as dreamworlds.

Statements: the walking life is merely as real as dreamworlds, ego is merely as real as dreamworlds, are evaluative.

We should try to get rid of ego or shrink it, is a commandment stemming from ego.