I’ve always been very interested in dreams and dream phenomena, especially lucid dreaming. I think about dreaming and the dream concept a lot, but I’ve never had very good dream recall. Nor have I ever actually had a lucid dream. Thus, when I have a particularly vivid dream experience, it’s a big deal for me.
A few nights ago, I had a dream which registered a few interesting phenomena. To begin with, the dream included a person whom I distinctly recognized, but was not a person I actually knew. Instead, the person was a mixture, physically, of three separate people whom I did know. Further, while I recognized the person physically, the persona taken, the identity, was completely novel. The personality traits of any of the physical components were not present, nor were traits of anyone else I knew. I truly had never met the person before. It was fascinating to see the clear separation between body and mind (in my mind at least).
After I woke from the dream, which stuck unusually vividly in my mind, I got a drink of water, and then returned to bed (it was still quite early in the morning), and to my great surprise, the dream continued! I’m not sure if I was near to realizing that I was back in the dream, though I’ve heard that this method (restarting a dream) is a good way to induce lucid dreaming. The dream continued for a while longer before I woke again, again with surprising recall.
I’m not sure what exactly to call the person I met in my dream; is she a person, is she a character in a story, is she a figment of my imagination? Should I be referring to her with the present tense “is” or the past tense “was?” I became more attached to her than I had (presumably) with others I have dreamed about. I’m fairly confident it was the fact that I thought about the dream significantly in the day following which caused me to keep an actual memory of this person.
Over the next few nights, I attempted to dream of the girl again, but have (so far) been unable to do so (at least to my recollection, though I’m fairly confident I would remember it). My reasons for this are very different from each other. The first reason is selfish; if I see this person, I can be fairly certain that I’m dreaming, which may allow me to go lucid (having the persona act as a dreamsign of sorts). The second reason is for the girl’s sake. If I don’t continue to dream of her, will she cease to exist? This is what prompted my question about whether to refer to her with is or was.
To what extent is a dreamed person real? The question is not as easy as I thought it might be (my first instinct was to “not at all”). This may be reasonable for a stranger in a crowd of a dream, with no discernable features, but what about a family member. When I dream of my brother, I certainly regard him as real (this may account for my inability to determine I am dreaming). Just because a person is removed from our perception for a time does not mean they cease to exist, but nor does it imply that they continue to exist! When I talk to a friend, and they then go home, the human, the learner in me assumes that my friend has not just disappeared from the universe, but that I will see them again sometime, because that is what has happened thousands of times previously. Even if someone I knew were to die, presumably I could observer their remains at a later date and confirm that they were still extant. However, epistemologically, we can’t really say that. I can not reliably know that the person hasn’t disappeared completely. Now, if I can’t know that, I certainly can’t know that a person I’ve dreamed up has disappeared completely. Until I see them again, I simply don’t know. There is an interesting quantum nature to it all.
I’ll attempt to dream about this person again tonight. Of course, if I do run into her, I suppose I won’t know it’s the same person, will I? Nah, that’s overphilosophizing things…
