• Registered: 2005-03-07

Topic: Of Dreams and the Observer Effect

About a year ago I heard a radio interview with Dr. Stephen LaBerge on Coast to Coast AM, a man who got his Ph.D studying lucid dreams. 

For part of the interview he talked about how he believes that dreams don't actually have plots, but that our waking mind imposes the idea of a linear storyline onto what are random images.  To illustrate his opinion he said something like this...

Imagine that you're having a dream that you're walking down a dark street.  Down the street you see the silhouette of a man.  You think to yourself, "Who the heck is that?  Is he dangerous?"  Then, the subconscious, responding to your fearful question, sends the man towards you and he pulls a gun.  You wake up and you think that you had a dream about a robbery, but it could've easily have been a dream about meeting an old friend if you had thought that you recognized the silhouette.

For myself, I agree that this explains some dreams, but not all dreams. 

Anyway, this morning I remembered that radio interview while I was having a lucid dream.  And I now think that this analogy (while it may explain the feeling of a storyline in dreams), also demonstrates the Law of Attraction.  And the experience I had in my dream may explain the interaction between the Law of Attraction and the Law of Awareness.

Montalk's article on the two laws came into my mind, too, this morning as I pondered my dream:

http://montalk.net/notes/law-of-attract … -awareness 

I highly recommend you read it. 

So, to the dream:

I was having a lucid dream and I found myself standing on a VW bug in four feet of water in a blue, tropical bay.  Off to the side of the car I caught sight of a long, gray shape in the water.  Momentarily I thought that it was a big shark so I trained my attention on it. 

The gray shape didn't move as I looked at it.  It was just a vague gray shape under the water.  As I looked at it, I remembered the radio interview on Coast to Coast AM with LaBerge.  I thought to myself, "If I'm not careful, my subconscious will turn this gray blob into a shark and it'll try to eat me."  But as I watched it nothing happened.  Then I had the thought that it would only happen if I was afraid of it happening. 

After a few long seconds of nothing happening, I decided what would be would be, and I turned away from the gray blob.  Right then, the gray blob morphed into a giant rat and lurched out of the water at me.

I wasn't scared because (1) I was half-expecting it; (2) the fact that it was a Dungeons and Dragons dire rat coming out of the water, and not a shark, struck me as incongruous and slightly funny; (3) the rat was rather unconvincing: it was a cartoony, puppet-like rat. 

As I reacted to it, stepping back and looking at it, it sunk back into the water and the "nightmare" ended.

**

When I woke up I was stunned by the fact that the rat only manifested when I took my conscious awareness off of the gray blob.  I was reminded of Montalk's article and the idea that we can freeze future probabilties by thinking about them and how emotions will attract probabilities.

I'm also puzzling over the fact that it was a rat and not a shark that leapt up at me.  I had been thinking "shark" when I was afraid that the gray blob might turn into something, but it turned into a rat. 

Was it because I blocked the probability of "shark" by focusing on it?  Funny.

You can't change a tiger's stripes,
but you can avoid its teeth.
  • montalk
  • montalk
  • forum-keeper-upper
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  • Registered: 2004-03-24

Re: Of Dreams and the Observer Effect

Thanks for sharing that interesting dream experiment. Next question is, did the shape in the water only do that because you had read my article? Ha, honestly I doubt that, but would have been ironic if so. I noticed similarly in lucid dreams when I try to create or change something -- it is far easier to set my intent and then look away and look back, than to stare directly and watch it happen. And yes, when I do that and look back, it's not always identical to what I had in mind... in conscious mind, at least. The subconscious has its own ways.

But apparently reality likes surprises. If you do end up getting exactly what you ask for, maybe the surprise is in the timing. Or if the timing is exact, then in the characteristics. It really seems like some kind of quantum indeterminacy to me. In quantum physics there is a tradeoff between what you can know about momentum versus position, or time versus energy. The more you nail down one, the more the other becomes uncertain. Only time you know both with perfect precision is when it's no longer a quantum thing, but your regular manifested solid object. Or rather, when it's no longer fluidly shifting among timelines but frozen into one. It makes sense then, that if the mind-reality interaction works synchronistically, it must employ this fluidity in order to maneuver those synchronicities into place, and that automatically comes with an element of indeterminacy or surprise.

Another question is, what exactly is it that holds the form of a dream? That produces the illusion of gravity or solidity? I've had lucid dreams where I tried sticking my hand through a wall. Instead of going through right away, it was was like a warm knife melting into cold butter. Why the resistance? Because of my beliefs? If I said in the dream, "I don't believe this wall is solid" then it would probably still resist because changing my conscious beliefs might not have an effect on my subconscious beliefs, and it's the subconscious that's producing my dream environment (unless we're talking about astral environments). So likewise, in waking reality there is resistance to us bending a spoon. That I cannot do it despite my desire to bend it, does that indicate that at some deep level I still believe it cannot be bent? How deeply is that illusion rooted? Maybe it follows from the more fundamental assumption that my hand and the spoon are real to begin with, one trying to bend the other. Anyway, stuff to ponder....

Acquiring fringe knowledge is like digging for diamonds in a mine field.

montalk's Website

  • Registered: 2005-03-07

Re: Of Dreams and the Observer Effect

montalk wrote:

...question is, did the shape in the water only do that because you had read my article? Ha, honestly I doubt that, but would have been ironic if so.

Your article re-affirmed for me knowledge that I had already been given but don't fully understand yet.  When I was taught reality creation techniques a few years ago I was instructed to create a thoughtform of the desired reality, and before sending it out, to drain the energy of my attention out of it.  I was told that a probable reality has trouble manifesting if your attention is on it.   

I was told that the emotional energy in which you create the thoughtform is the energy that attracts that probable reality back to you.  So that if you created the thoughtform in an attitude of peace, it's helpful to hold a vibration of peace to bring it back to you.  If you create in peace and then fall into weeks of depression, the mock-up has difficulty "finding" you. 

montalk wrote:

I noticed similarly in lucid dreams when I try to create or change something -- it is far easier to set my intent and then look away and look back, than to stare directly and watch it happen. And yes, when I do that and look back, it's not always identical to what I had in mind... in conscious mind, at least. The subconscious has its own ways.

That's awesome information.  Thanks.

montalk wrote:

But apparently reality likes surprises. If you do end up getting exactly what you ask for, maybe the surprise is in the timing. Or if the timing is exact, then in the characteristics.

That too.

montalk wrote:

Another question is, what exactly is it that holds the form of a dream? That produces the illusion of gravity or solidity? I've had lucid dreams where I tried sticking my hand through a wall. Instead of going through right away, it was was like a warm knife melting into cold butter. Why the resistance?

I've had lucid dreams that I think could be "simulations."  I think that these are dream environments that are stablized (like the physical plane) by your higher self for learning purposes.  I think that there might be negative simulations, too.  It's much harder to mentally change a simulation. 

Some walls I have no trouble crashing through, or flying through like a hologram, but then I find some that are as real as a physical brick wall.  Once when I put my hand up against one, I felt a magnetic-like resistance.

My intuition is, is that there are doors out of these bubbles. 

But, well, I could be off-base, and it could be just that I'm blocked in the case of some dream walls.  I believe that they're solid, so they are.  But that doesn't change the fact that sometimes I go through walls with no problems.  And there's no apparent mental/emotional difference in me in these two types of dreams. 

Once in a "sim"-type dream, I found that I was in a very well-defined bubble that had as its borders a ring of mountains.  As I approached the mountains they looked pixelated and less real, but I couldn't fly above them or beyond them.  Then, there was a tornardo.  I had the idea to fly into the tornado and try to fly up it and out of the dream. 

Once I got into the tornado it was like being inside a silk tube, and I climbed and clawed my way up.  At the top I found a zipper.  I zipped it open and as I climbed out, I woke up.

You can't change a tiger's stripes,
but you can avoid its teeth.
  • From: A place forgotten
  • Registered: 2006-05-15

Re: Of Dreams and the Observer Effect

Was it because I blocked the probability of "shark" by focusing on it?  Funny.

Yup. I had a similar dream, where I was dropped off in a parking lot to get in another car. The parking lot was at the edge of a swamp, and as I gazed into it, I saw these glowing eyes looking at me through the dense grasses. Instead of freaking out, I just kept on looking at them. Then I realized they were the eyes of a frog.

"Don't eat any wooden nickels."

Magical_Mongoose's Website

  • Registered: 2005-03-07

Re: Of Dreams and the Observer Effect

Magical_Mongoose wrote:

Yup. I had a similar dream, where I was dropped off in a parking lot to get in another car. The parking lot was at the edge of a swamp, and as I gazed into it, I saw these glowing eyes looking at me through the dense grasses. Instead of freaking out, I just kept on looking at them. Then I realized they were the eyes of a frog.

Wow, so maybe you blocked the creepy potential of the eyes by staring at them. 

As I read this, I was reminded of the opposite effect again--the effect in which you're afraid of something, run from it, and it catches up with you.  An example would be when you're running from a scary figure, hide in a good place, but amazingly the nightmare figure finds you.

I had a recurring lucid dream when I was kid about a vampire being in my house.  I would hide behind a chair in the living room and there was no way it could see me, but it always did.  I always knew it was a dream, but always hid behind the chair--in my child's mind it seemed like the best option every time and I couldn't figure out why it didn't work.

I'm realizing that these ideas extend beyond dreamwork, though, and could be useful in meditation.  If you notice a fearful vibe in you, say hello to it, acknowledge it, keep looking at it until it changes into a "frog."  smile

You can't change a tiger's stripes,
but you can avoid its teeth.