Lucidity Letter, June, 1989, Vol. 8, No. 1

Mutual Lucid Dreaming

Linda L. Magallón

San Jose, Calif.

Let’s begin with the following assumption: reciprocal dreams exist. For expansion of this thesis, I invite the reader to peruse the literature on the subject Explanation and verification have been handled elsewhere, notably in the Maimonides dream telepathy studies (Ullman & Krippner, 1973; Van de Castle, 1977) and case studies in the works of Hart (1933), Ullman (1979) and Taub-Bynum (1984). Continued data gathering occurs in the ongoing projects of Van de Castle and Reed (personal communication, 1988) and Magallón and Shor (in press).

Mrs. J.B. Rhine informed Donahoe (1982) “that of the thousands of paranormal dreams on file at the Foundation for Research on the Nature of Man in Durham, North Carolina, mutual dream are reported so rarely that there is no separate file for them...” Even rarer are mutual lucid dreams, although reports of at least one lucid dream out of a corresponding group do exist in the writings of Donahoe, Fox (1980) and Magallón (1985).

Lucidity can inspire a willful intent to connect with other people, although being lucid doesn’t insure it. As with nonlucid dreamers, the default mode for most lucid dreamers is to remain within private psychological space rather than to socialize. Because there are variations in degree of lucidity ranging from passive dream witnessing to active manipulation of the dreamscape, types of correspondences can vary considerably.

Take, for example, the following dreamer’s response to a dream telepathy experiment which took place during The Lucidity Project, a mutual dream experiment which I facilitated between 1984 and 1987:

I have on a parachute harness which is connected to a balloon by heavy piano wire. Away I go into the sky. Incredibly weird! The balloon is so far above me it is almost out of sight. I am hanging in the sky seemingly without any support. Very lonely. Surface details are lost to be replaced with others like rivers, takes, and snowy mountains. Strange feelings of dissociation from the surface. Confidence, but still lost in the sky. (John Echo)

The targeted picture was a skydiver.

In order to pick up the picture, John, though lucid, did no more than experience and observe the dream. However, he had actively formed the aim to dream towards the “sender” of the picture prior to sleep.

This intent to reach out towards other people, places and objects can be developed before the dream begins and taken into the dream whether the route be via astral projection, freezing a hypnagogic image and entering into it, or through a sequence which involves a break in consciousness before the lucid dream springs up.

Even if the lucid dream emerges after nonlucid or no dreams, the predream intent can be remembered and starting from that point on an attempt can be made to connect with the targeted object or person. Techniques include flying, movement into another room, spinning to wipe out the current scene and go to another scene, willing a new dream scene to appear, calling for a person, asking others to bring or show the target, or conjuring up a dream character.

However, as Szot (1989) has pointed out, the creative imagining facility of a lucid dreamer does not guarantee that there is any relevance to the actual person or object involved. Verification is sought via the waking state. Correspondences can consist of dream to dream dream to target or dream to waking state persons and events.

Dreamworker Linda Ravenwolf was another member of The Lucidity Project. One goal night during the Project, I had this dream:

I go over to the center of the room and begin spinning, calling out “Linda Ravenwolf!” When I stop, it’s not surprising to me that I’m still in the same room.

The room has meat market counters along two walls, but they’re filled with vegetables. Placed at the end of one counter is a child’s table and chairs where two dark-haired women are seated. I walk towards them, looking fixedly at the woman on the left. She gazes levelly back at me with a slight smile on her face.

I ask. “Linda Ravenwolf’!”

Ravenwolf,” she corrects me. I peer closely at her face and say. “I want to remember: dark brown hair: caramel colored eyes at the corners.” Her straight hair is parted in the middle; the top, on both sides is a bit crinkly. She is wearing a brown shirt with multicolored trim.

I ask, “Are you lucid? Will you remember this dream?” Linda wrinkles her nose to consider and replies. “I just fed him. Probably not deep enough.”

“Deep enough?” I repeat

“Yes, you know,” she responds, gesturing down and up with her right hand to indicate a trough. I think she’s referring to REM sleep curves.

I sent the dream to Linda and she replied by mail, “The meat market counters filled with vegetables--I have almost completely stopped eating meat lately...That night I got up to gorge on some leftover guacamole. I had some trouble getting to sleep. Got too excited over some ideas...

“A dark-haired woman has appeared in several dreams this year. She’s helping me get my beliefs and feelings clear. She looks Latin American, but we don’t speak Spanish in the dreams...

“I often wrinkle my nose when ‘considering,’ and I have a slight smile: even when I’m very happy and amused, I seldom smile big.”

Further, Linda told me that “‘Linda’ really doesn’t go with ‘Ravenwolf’”; Ravenwolf was a pseudonym she used for writing: her birth name is Linda Reneau.

It’s important to note that at the time of the dream, neither of us had met, except through brief written correspondence which did not include any of this information. I had seen a black and white photo of Linda, in which she wore long straight hair and bangs. Though not recorded, I recall wondering in the dream why her dreamself didn’t have bangs.

“My hair is long, and I often use a curling iron to put some wave right on top.” Linda continued. “Just a slight wave, which falls to either side. I wear bangs- did I have bangs in the dream? I don’t like them, but I wear them here because without them my face is too long. I’d like to do away with them, however. (Wonder what beliefs lie under them?)”

This brings up the intriguing notion that a dreamer might be in touch with the targeted person’s idealized version of themselves rather than their waking state appearance. The malleable ability of dreamers to become different people even in lucid dreams complicates the situation even further. Which “who” is the target?

Realization that the dream is a visionary facade requires using other tools to determine in-dream correspondence. Lucidity has the advantage of heightening all the dreamer’s senses. The feeling tones of the dream character may prove a more valid indicator of connection.

More recently, in Shared Dreaming, an ongoing project involving dreamworkers from across the continent, including artist Eric Snyder. I dreamt the following on a target night:

In the midst of flickering hypnagogic, I seem to recognize Eric Snyder. This brings me to lucidity and at the same time I “freeze” his facial image in order to start a dream. Even though his appearance is that of my brother Ken in his twenties, I address him as if he were Enc. He replies a mumble of which I catch only the name, “Jeremy Taylor”. The effort to hold onto the dream is too much and I wake,

Was I really in touch with Eric, I wondered. If so, why superimpose the image of my brother Ken atop his? I held off drawing conclusions until I received the next batch of dreams. Eric had included a dream about four dreamworkers. One was me. Two others are not members of the Project, although Eric knows them. They were Jeremy Taylor and Ken Kelzer.

References

Donahoe, James J., “Shared Dreams”, Dream Network Bulletin, Vol. 1, No. 1 (1982): 1,6.

Fox, Oliver, Astral Projection (New Jersey: Citadel Press, 1980), p. 47.

Hart, Hornell, “Reciprocal Dreams”, Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, Vol. 41 (1933): 234-240.

Magallón, Linda, “The Lucidity Project: An Experiment in Group Dreaming”, Dream Network Bulletin, Vol. 4, No. 5 (1985): 10-11.

Magallón, Linda, and Shor, Barbara, “Shared Dreaming”, Landscapes of the Night ed. by Stanley Krippner (Los Angeles: J.P. Tarcher, in press).

Reed, Henry, “Dreaming For Your Neighbor”. The Omni WholeMind Newsletter, Vol. 1, No. 11 (1988): 7.

Szot, Francis Louis, “Communal Lucid Dreaming: An Introductory Technique,” Lucidity Letter, Vol. 7, No, 2: 93-96.

Taub-Bynum, E. Bruce, The Family Unconscious, (Wheaton, IL: The Theosophical Publishing House, 1984).

Ullman, Montague and Stanley Krippner. Dream Telepathy, (New York: MacMillan Publishing Col, 1973).

Ullman, Montague. “Psi Communication Through Dream Sharing”. Proceedings of Communication and Parapsychology Conference, (1979): 202-227.

Van de Castle, Robert, “Our Dreaming Mind,” Handbook of Parapsychology, (1977).