Dream Telepathy Experiments

[Thunal]

Just recently, I, Robert Waggoner and Orione, had a Dream Telepathy experiment, which Robert has suggested is the mechanism that explains 'how' mutual dreaming happens. I was the one who would see if everything went according to plan, and no one cheated.

I must say, I am quite sceptical, because I was raised a Christian, but I found out it was fake (for me), so I now see most spiritual things as fairy tales. When we started this Dream Telepathy experiment, I didn't really believe anything special would happen.
But it did.

The experiment was as follows: I needed to pick five pictures. Shuffle them randomly and present them to the Telepathic Sender (Orione). She was then supposed to think about that picture for some time, and have an intention of sending it to the Telepathic Receiver (Robert Waggoner). He would go to sleep, and recall the dreams dreamt that night with the intention to receive the Telepathic Sender's image.

The Telepathic Sender would send me a note on how she sent the image, and the Telepathic Receiver would send me his dreams in which he tried to receive the imagery. I would compare them as sceptically as I could. But the evidence was quite overwhelming, in favour of Dream Telepathy.
On Friday night, Oct 2, 09, we conducted the experiment. The Telepathic Sender was instructed to spend five minutes in each of five hours 'sending' the image. On Saturday morning, the Telepathic Receiver sent me his dreams.

The recipient had gotten so many details from the picture and even things the sender had thought of a little while before, during and after the procedure.
Explain it how you want, but it's most likely Dream Telepathy.
You can of course say that they cheated, and try it for yourself. But, please, don't prejudge a situation you haven't explored yet.

We have posted the Telepathic Receiver's dreams below, and then the image sent by the Telepathic Sender.

Edit: I seem to have placed it in the wrong topic. It should be in Exploration of the Dreamworld

[Thunal]

The picture and the dreams:



Dream 1) I sit with others around picnic tables, talking about cooperation and water.

Dream 2) My wife calls a friend on the phone, while we sit in bed. She tells him to change the game time from 5 to 6:30. We then go to a restaurant with a family-like living room. There are pictures of scrambled eggs and bacon, etc., hanging on the walls. I have a beer.

We walk to a series of white tables, and sit across from a woman in a yellow gold dress who is very pregnant!! As we sit down, she gives a ‘gasp’ like she may be ready to have the baby – she looks and her husband and seems worried. Something about teaching or teaching a girl.



Dream 3) Thomas B (a professor here from Germany) sits with three others in front of a TV cabinet, watching a show – but it also seems they are being interviewed by the television. There is food on a nearby table with a white table cloth. At some later point, Thomas seems to come with a tractor to get things.



Dream 4) I go along a street and see a couch near the road, which has books on it. I pick up an old book, which seems to have a foreign name – like a fantasy book or book of tales or myths. I open it up and it has a colorful image of a man in a robe, pointing with his hand (looks like Moses).

I then seem to be waiting outside a café for my brother, but the café is not open and my brother is not there. I decide to leave, but now the roads are icy, and the street is blocked by cars and trucks. I go back to the café.

My brother shows up with his wife and others, and I realize that another place, Giselle’s, is open. I go there, and discover another café upstairs, which is more charming with old windows, plants, etc. Here, there are offering a brunch of eggs, fruit, pastry and more. Suddenly, it fills up with people. Just as I prepare to sit on a sofa, a disabled man appears, and I give him the seat. I tell people that I am doing an experiment with some Europeans. (too bad that I did not become lucid!!)

[Robert Waggoner]

Hi Everyone,

If you would like to see the experimental protocol for dream telepathy, please go to the end of page 2 in Mutual Dreaming: Any Evidence? post. Any of you can use that scientific protocol to conduct your own dream telepathy experiments with a friend or acquaintance.

Just a few points to make:

1) I hardly know Orione, the Telepathic Sender -- but she lives in northern Europe, and sent me and Thunal an email about her current life, and seemed like a good Telepathic Sender. Also, she did her part of the experiment exactly, which is important in any experiment. So thanks to Orione!

2) As I mention in the protocol, the Telepathic Sender is sending their version or their interpretation of the Target Image. This means that the Telepathic Receiver does not get a 100% replication of the Target Image. Instead, he or she gets a translation, which then the Receiver translates and attempts to describe upon waking.

3) Before telling me what the image was, Thunal asked me about the book and its title. I wrote him that the title was like two words connected with a hyphen - and the first word was longer than the second. I wrote it was like Chang-Zhun. Now if you look closely at the image, in the upper left hand it says "KatsuZen" -- wikipedia says Katsu is a word used in Chan school of meditation.

So where did our group find evidence?

As you look at my dreams, I repeatedly mention cafe, restaurants, food, pictures of food in 3 of the 4 dreams. The first dream mentions picnic tables (a table to eat food on). That is a lot of dreaming about food and cafes to have in one night, and mention over and over.

I also mention a seated woman in a gold yellow outfit. In the Target Image, the most prominent seated woman is wearing a gold yellow outfit. If Thunal had asked me to describe her, I would have mentioned her hair -- which looks exactly like I saw in my dream.

I mention a friend who sits with three others staring at a TV cabinet -- please notice in the target image how four people are seated at the counter staring at the wall.

As anyone can see, my dreams are not all over the place; instead, they have a theme of getting food and a cafe type environment.

So what do you think? Does this provide evidence for Dream Telepathy? If not, why not? If so, why?

[ThreeLetterSyndrom]

Well, it certainly points in the right direction, I must say. This is by no means scientifically convincing evidence, but it points in the right way, to say the very least.
Perhaps you could alter the experiment a little. Pick out simple shapes with colours and send those.

[Thunal]

This is done before, but then a hundred times. With very high success rates. It really should be quite convincing if they get it right 80 out of 100 times, with 'difficult pictures', shouldn't it?
And, just like the nova dreamer's light, usually the send information is translated into the dream, so a circle won't make a circle, but maybe a wheel, or an eye...

[ThreeLetterSyndrom]

Yes, but from the raised appearance of circle-like structures, the 'circle'-idea could be confirmed.
And what about sending a certain topic? The sender thinks of things related to that topic, the receiver dreams those and should be able to learn what the topic is

[Orione]

It was a fun experiment! And (in my opinion) a succesful one! Thank you Thunal and Robert!

[Robert Waggoner]

Hi everyone,

As Orione suggests, the evidence in support of Dream Telepathy from our first experiment would be strengthened with repeated experiments.

I am happy to conduct more experiments with Thunal and Orione, and continue to be the Telepathic Receiver. When objective people see my dream reports, and then the Target Image in repeated situations, I believe that objective people will realize that Dream Telepathy is the most likely explanation.

Since I have been both a sender and reciever, I think the established protocol should continue to be followed -- that is, sending interesting and unusual images that a person normally would not dream of.

This week, I am traveling in California, but in a couple of weeks, I will be happy to do another experiment.

Robert

[jake_uwo]

First off I just want to say I think its a really cool experiment that you guys are doing, but me being me I have to play devils advocate. It is very intersting that the recievers dreams relate to food and resturants. however there are many other details in the dreams that do not relate to the picture. My only question is how come the telepathic reciever sends his dreams to the person that sent the picture, wouldn't it make more sense for the reciever to send the person with the picture his description of the picture based on the dream? Because honestly there is so much going on in these dreams that without seeing the picture we would have a hard time knowing whats going on. But on the other hand what are the odds of you dreaming about resturants and food on the night you are supposed to telepathically recieve a picture depicting a cafe. Not very good ha ha.

so you guys should definately do another experiment. maybe just for fun, post the dreams first and let us see if we can figure out what the image may look like based on the recievers dreams. then post the picture like a couple of days later.

[Orione]

Oooh! Good suggestion, Jake_Uwo!

[Thunal]

I had seen five picture, of which one randomly was given to Orione. When I read the dream I immediately knew what picture it was.
But, yeah, it might be good if there was a fourth person, making a picture of the description of the dreams, and then checking if it was a match.

[Robert Waggoner]

jake uwo and all,

In the scientific studies conducted at Maimonides Sleep Lab in New York, this is how they did the judging. The Telepathic Receiver would write out his dreams, and then provide them to the judges. The judges would then be given four or five distinctly different images (the judges did not know which one was sent as the Target Image). Then the judges would indicate which image the dreams seemed to point towards, and include a degree of confidence (like 80% or some number). At that point, they would reveal the Target Image. Normally almost all the judges selected the Target Image.

As Thunal points out, as soon as his got my dreams (and saw that all four contained cafe and food imagery), he knew which of his five had been sent. And he was right.

However, you have to understand this important point -- the dreams are a translation of the Telepathic Sender's translation of the Target Image. For this reason, the Receiver does not "see" the Target Image. The Receiver picks up the Sender's thoughts about the image, and then the Receiver places those in a dream, and does his best to remember and write it down.

So let us say that Orione is an Anime fan. She loves Anime. If that was the case, then I might have dreamt about wierd looking men and women with big heads and giant eyes. For this reason, the protocol asks the Telepathic Sender to send in "how they sent it" and what they focused on.

Because of the important role the Telepathic Sender plays, it is extremely difficult to "re-construct" the Target Image exactly -- since the Telepathic Reciever receives the Sender's thoughts about the Target Image (a translation of a translation)

Cheers,

Robert

[jake_uwo]

ahh ok, I think I understand a little better how the experiment works. So based on the experiments you mentioned it seems like the telepathic reciever will have dreams about the interpretation of the image sent to him/her but not the exact image.

So just out of curiosity what is your theory on how this telepathy would take place? What is it about being in a dream state that allows the telepathic reciever to be able to get the image?

[Robert Waggoner]

jake,

Your have a good question. Freud's work with Sandor Ferenczi on 'thought transference' experiments impressed him so much that Freud wrote thought transference (telepathy) might have been the original communication means before the appearance of language. If so, then it is an ability that all of us have biologically. We rarely think about it now, since verbal and electronic communication are so easy. But it shows up occasionally, when we 'know' something -- but do not know how we know (like we know grandmother died, but only 'hear' about it hours later).

Others might say that telepathy suggests that everything and everyone is connected on another level. Here, you might develop an idea of a Universal Mind or Collective Unconscious or Matrix. I believe that some new physic ideas also suggest a profound level of interconnectivity.

Why does this happen in dreams? In the dream state, a person is naturally dissociated from waking day concerns, and thus more able to listen to inner events. If the dreamer is expecting to get a message, and a sender is intending to send a message to the dreamer, then you have a clear basis for communication. In this dissociated state of dreaming, the dream receiver can pick up the information more easily. (Of course, you can do this during the day, if you learn to quiet your mind. In my book, I have a profound example of this in the final chapter.)

For lucid dreamers, evidence for dream telepathy suggests a mechanism for mutual lucid dreams and much more. Orione, Thunal and I will be doing more of these experiments in the coming weeks, so people can see them replicated. However, any of you can do this simple experiment, and begin to see for yourself.

Robert

[jake_uwo]

Robert:

Thanks for the explainations. I wish I had more time to read about interesting stuff like theories on telepathy and such. School keeps my reading occupied by a limited few books... and the lucidpedia forum lol. Oh well, such is life.