Can Dream Characters Develop Awareness?

I'm just wondering...

That's a rather vague question, do you mean that the dream characters are aware they are not real? If so, then it could be argued that the dream characters are mere hallucinations and have no actual 'soul' at all. However what if they are actually real people, perhaps not from this planet, whom look upon us in a dream and see us as a character? It's a very interesting subject :P

Interesting... the universe (and parallel ones) are infinite right? So any imagination could be a situation/place right? Sweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeetttttttttttttttt... Dreeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaammmmmmmmssss...

Its just an assumption that there are paralell universes and hell our own universe might not even be infinite.

I think dream characters are just more like zombies, they act like they are conscious but they aren't. I had a strange dream with my mum, I became lucid and I started making fun of her. We were arguing about something and then I said "you do realise this is my dream right? This isn't real, its just a dream"

She then started getting angry at me for acting so stupid, she pretty much reacted like she would have if I said that in real life. Im guessing its because I expected her to. I just thought now though, what if I made her to a reality check, like in Inception?

If she really is conscious and I ask her how she got there, she should be confused ( or any other dream character btw). However if she is just a part of my subconscious she will mostly likely make up a story that I cant disprove. I have a feeling if I were to ask her to block her nose and breathe she would refuse to do it as it would be ridiculous.

However this gives me an idea. Say I talk to my mum about this in real life, and tell her if I ask you to do a reality check, will you do it for me, just out of curiousity? She believes in lucid dreams and if she agrees, then maybe my projection of her in my dream will agree as I expect it to!

Unfortunately yes they can. I recently had a LD when one did just that. I was a woman, don't ask me why, and leader of about a dozen other women, in conflict with a bunch of men. I set up the dream to have a Xenia warrior princess bloodbath with them, when suddenly the character takes over herself and while I helplessly watch in her body resolves the whole thing peacefully! As soon as this happens she kicked me out of the character, as I'm floating over the dreamscape as a disembodied consciousness, she winks at me. I was going this can't be happening! I want my amazon bloodbath.

Wow that sounds awesome, maybe its your subconscious telling you not to do bad stuff in a dream. I think a problem with doing unethical things in a dream is that it might increase your desire to do so in reality... which is why our dreams never really go exactly the way we want them.

Jack Reacher wrote: Wow that sounds awesome, maybe its your subconscious telling you not to do bad stuff in a dream. I think a problem with doing unethical things in a dream is that it might increase your desire to do so in reality... which is why our dreams never really go exactly the way we want them.

Characters in lucid dreams are essentially toy soldiers, fighting them off against each other is not any more "immoral" than doing it with play soldiers and hardly makes it more likely one would do it with real people. Real people are ones fellows with equal rights. One can only kill them only if two conditions are met: they're murderers; they are trying to kill someone or have killed someone. That said I never spare a vampire in a dream and would not spare one in real life either. This is what I would have done to all the Nazi or Daleks ;)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eq-LsoOTEGI

So far, my DCs seem like real people until I get lucid, then they are more or less zombies. If I talk to them, they smile and nod like they agree with me. But then I could say the opposite thing and they would smile and nod for that too. They seem to be saying, "whatever you want, that's O.K."

I remember one I my first lucid dreams, I kept running around telling everyone I could find that I was dreaming. All they did was smile, like "oh isn't that nice". My dream characters in lucid dreams are like the Stepford Wives. Maybe I need to run one through with kitchen knife and see what happens. :)

Dreams and their characters are created by the subconscious mind, even lucid ones. So I work on the basis that dream characters are projections of my own subconscious - different parts of my personality and core beliefs personified. Does this make them self-aware? I have no idea! (If people can develop multiple personalities in real life, each with their own separate awareness, then maybe a handful of dream characters can do the same? Some, however, do seem quite unmotivated and empty, it has to be said.)

I aim to treat DCs with respect, as I feel making them fight or kill each other is like trying to kill parts of my Self! Literally or metaphorically, this doesn't seem productive to me... Even "unwanted" elements of my psyche can still be evolved or modified, there's no need to terminate them.

I guess if you're just role playing and you're happy with it then you get to make allowances - it is, after all, your own subconscious playground and you make the rules when lucid. But perhaps this explains why Snaggle's dream averted its own bloodbath?

I also notice that in general men seem to enjoy more killing and action in their lucid dreams, while women enjoy other stuff.... so maybe it's my natural instinct to avoid killing DCs! I do tend to look at any death dreams as nightmares or highly cathartic dreams - not really something I'd do just for fun like it's so often portrayed in video games or the movies. If a character dies, it's highly meaningful to me.

I think main characters might be important, but I think less involved characters are just there for display, it reminds me of Inception. That girl got concerned when Leo starts sniping the projections, when she asks if he is killing off parts of his mind/self he says no they are just projections.

I think they are pretty much like philosophical zombies, things that can act conscious but aren't. Unfortunately there is no scientific experiment that can actually prove if something is conscious or not.

Having thought about it some more, here are some factors that might support them NOT having self-awareness...

• Recurring dream characters don't act consistently (at least not in my dreams!) If they were self-aware they should have reasonably consistent personalities, goals and agendas...?

• When I wake up, they cease to exist, so their awareness would be snuffed out against their will. It makes more sense to me that they don't have awareness in the first place. (Unless you invoke the belief that the dream world is REAL... which is a whole other philosophical can of worms and not something I support.)

Here are my PRO self-awareness arguments....

• They can seem to act autonomously / independently of me.

• They can surprise me with the things they say.

And lastly, if we found that dream characters did have awareness, I'd also have to say that the dream itself is self-aware; some greater awareness behind the dream that isn't me.

My early dreams were very violent and they have changed in nature a lot now and I tend to treat DC with respect. That does not mean I will get pushed around after all it is my dream but means getting what I want done or going with the flow of a dream. I am not sure if it matters how you treat them but how you feel about it, if you feel good after the dream it might be ok for you and if not then it isnt good to kill everything. I do know that a lot of the skills i gained came from wrecking and fighting DC, it does give the detached focus that is needed to stay in the dreams and thats not bad.

I have always treated dream characters in LDs with respect (despite being male). A major part of my motivation is that it seems so much more interesting to engage with them than to treat them as puppets or toys. (I am not always nice to DCs in non-lucid dreams: they are sometimes horrible to me and I retaliate.)

My dream characters seem similar to Rebecca's. They do not seem to have any long term memory. They seem to have some short term memory, enough to have a more-or-less sensible conversation, and to hold to the same position in an argument, but little more than that. Recurring dream characters seem to have no knowledge of their previous existence, as she said.

My dream characters often surprise me: they do things and say things which I do not expect. They quite often seem to know things that I don't, and more rarely, they seem to know that I don't know, and be teasing me. That suggests that they precieve me as a separate being. On a few occasions, a dream character has set me a puzzle, I have tried and failed to answer it and they have then told me the solution. Or a dream character has told me a joke, with a setup and then a punchline which comes as a surprise. And these are puzzles and jokes which make sense upon awakening - they are not just random things which only seem to make sense within the dream. (They are not great jokes or puzzles either.) Setting a puzzle or telling a joke seems to require some planning ability, albeit very short term planning, and some ability to predict my reaction.

There are differant levels of awareness in the DC and always a few clever ones lurking in the background. I had a lot of dreams last night and in one I was disussing dream signs with some very aware DC. I would call the dream semi lucid as I was having an indepth conversation but had not made the link to the dream world. I will post the dream in share your dreams as it was an interesting one for me.

Rebecca wrote: Having thought about it some more, here are some factors that might support them NOT having self-awareness...

• Recurring dream characters don't act consistently (at least not in my dreams!) If they were self-aware they should have reasonably consistent personalities, goals and agendas...?

• When I wake up, they cease to exist, so their awareness would be snuffed out against their will. It makes more sense to me that they don't have awareness in the first place. (Unless you invoke the belief that the dream world is REAL... which is a whole other philosophical can of worms and not something I support.)

Here are my PRO self-awareness arguments....

• They can seem to act autonomously / independently of me.

• They can surprise me with the things they say.

And lastly, if we found that dream characters did have awareness, I'd also have to say that the dream itself is self-aware; some greater awareness behind the dream that isn't me.

Rebecca are ones dreams non-existent when one is unaware of them? Dream characters don't cease to exist just because you wake up- you just become unaware of them. for a number of reasons I think that what we call our subconscious is really multiple versions of our self that are always conscious and always thinking and feeling separately from us (even though they'e all just parts of us). Put more simply, that our real consciousness is mutli-cored like a very complex CPU, even though we're normally only aware of our conscious self.

snaggle - i tend to agree with you and in dreaming we are bringing some of these states together with what could be called awareness or the devlopment of another form of "us'. Its a nice concept

Thats an interesting theory. Sometimes when I am trying to get to sleep I study my inner dialogue, this is going to be hard to explain but here it goes. Say I manage to turn off the song playing in my head ( which can be a fucking mission, sorry for swearing but it is) and I am able to slow down my inner dialogue and analyse each word.

Its kind of like layers of consciousness, there are LOTs of layers though. Something interesting to try out is slow down the pace of the dialogue and analyse the gaps in between the words. You will notice that there is another sentence in between the gaps, another dialogue that is talking about how you are slowing the dialogue down.

And if you manage to slow that down, you will "see" another dialogue that is making a note that you discovered the first layer.

Keep this up and you go insane! But anyway, I agree that there is loads of layers of consciousness going on, but its hard to see if they are actually aware of themselves... might give this some more thought before posting again lol

I must admit, I didn't read all the responses. But DO DREAM CHARACTERS DEVELOP AWARENESS?

It happened to me once. I was lucid, but HE took control.....

I was showing some people, (high school friends), that I was in a dream and they were not real. They were amazed by how I could levitate rocks and such. Then a person showed up. He was in his teens and wore make up like the lead singer of 'The Cure'. I asked him his name and he said, 'Gregory'. All of a sudden the ground beneath me and my friends started to rise. Gregory was with us. He said he was taking us to his god. He said his god was the scariest of all gods. I looked up and saw a fire in the sky and we were getting closer. One of my friends said what I was thinking, "Why would you want a scary god?" He didn't answer and the ground continued to rise. I had lost all control and before I got to the "Heavens which was now hell", I woke up. BUT in a different dream and I still remembered it and told everyone in the new dream about my previous one. (Like a false awakening, but in a completely different place.)

What about bi personalities? Considering the fact I've got two others, could they enter the dream?

Tiggrr wrote: What about bi personalities? Considering the fact I've got two others, could they enter the dream?

I don't see why not...their actions will be dictated by just how remote they are from your main conciousness

I would say they are aware - they must be if they can react and respond. But am certain that they are constructs of our minds and that is about it. Next time you are confronted by one try asking to see them as they really are - keen to know what they turn into as I have had a few surprises when doing this.

They kind of always have in my case, even to the point where I had to contend with two of them representing my friends on whether we were in a dream or not...I ended up winning the argument (while being non lucid)...but still, it's funny XD

they can take you to task alright and they know parts of you better than you do as well. I have had some wicked debates with them

Some dream figures appear to be more aware than others. I've experienced a few lucid dream figures that seem to be so autonomous, and a part from me; I wonder how they can merely be projections of my subconscious mind? I work on the basis that dream figures are a projection of my subconscious mind but I have also adopted the belief that on rare occasion my subconscious mind links me to dream figures/projections that are part of the universal mind or, as Napoleon Hill refers to it ‘infinite intelligence’.

Are you asking here if a dream character can possibly know that he is a part of the dream? That might actually sound a little odd and off but I would likely consider him having a mind on his own.

But when you consider it lightly, that would still be a matter of what the person is actually pushing on the dream character and not the character having a mind on its own.

its also a bit like asking if you SC has awareness, do you create your SC and use it like a friend and if so does that make it aware or do you imagine your SC and give it a charactor and if so is it any less aware or is your SC another part of you or is your SC seperate from you but exists within you, and so it goes on

this post reminds me of the movie 'waking life' where a dream character became self aware.. its a cool thought to think that its possible but i have a hard time with it. i dont dismiss it though. hey, maybe dreams are a way of entering a parallel universe :geek:

I have like one proof that Dream Characters isn't aware or concious. A lot of people tend when they in dreams, tell other dream characters that they are in a dream, the dream characters become angry. As humans with conciousness, we would first question ourselfs, and try to look for signs of this being a dream. We would then laugh, and might ask for a reason to why believing so, and later start to speculate before really getting mad, and start to say that it isn't a dream. So I don't believe they can develope conciousness. Conciousness comes from electric streams in the brain between cells. That isn't in dreams ;)

consiousness and awareness are different levels, a plant could be aware depending how you would judge it reactions to say sunlight but might not be conscious or then they just might be.