I JUST FINISHED READING AND WRITING A REVIEW of Jean Campbell's Group Dreaming - Dreams to the Tenth Power.

It occurs to me that if people were able to pursue and develop some capacity for group dreaming this could have effects that are global in their reach. For instance all of every single person's communications within his or her country are regulated by the limitations of their infrastructure. This infrastructure is under constant pressure by commercial interests to not only monetize and control every single aspect of the world wide web but it also leads to major commercial and politically motivated infringements on the rights and privacy of every single user.¹ On a larger scale communications between individuals in different countries are not only monitored but also controlled and in some cases outright prevented from occurring. This is not without push-back of course.² But in many cases governments -- in addition to their in some instances already considerable intelligence capabilites -- are also going after major browser providers such as Google³, or major social media such as Facebook⁴ and requesting data on private citizens. Motivations include not only prevention of interference in democratic processes by foreign interests (US and Russia for instance) and go so far as to prevent some technologies such as cell phones from being allowed into markets where backdoor keys in software present security risks that could make possible remote information collection -- essentially spying.⁵ 

Development of group dreaming if successfully developed presents a possible means of interaction between any two individuals -- no matter where they are located -- which can neither be prevented by any government nor infringed on by any commercial interest. This provides the basis for citizen-to-citizen exchanges that rely only upon the characters abilities and inner natures of those who are conversing and interacting.

This of course is an opinion based on an extreme long view as it would require the awareness self-cultivation and commitment of individuals to forge in themselves the clarity and strength of consciousness that makes such things as lucid dreaming possible. This turns out to be a lifetime pursuit and dependence on individual development of skills turns out to be a self-regulating and naturally limiting factor; this is understood by anyone familiar with the literature. But such human abilities hold the potential to minimize the physical and ideological constraints imposed by often irresponsible commercial enterprises and governments of all kinds. The greatest impact I see is a potentially enormous growth of consciousness, and of global awareness and engagement as the human family breaks down unnatural barriers and attains to a planet-wide solidarity.

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References:

1 https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/06/actually-most-countries-are-increasingly-spying-on-their-citizens-the-un-says/276614/

2 https://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/20/opinion/protecting-citizens-and-their-privacy.html

3 https://transparencyreport.google.com/government-removals/overview

4 https://transparency.facebook.com/government-data-requests

5 https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0004cgm

OVER THE YEARS I HAVE HAD A NUMBER OF DREAMS of being with friends and acquaintances to whom I related the events afterwards in the waking state only to find they had experienced the same thing. This means they found themselves in the same dream environment I had, in which the circumstances were the same and in which events were commonly observed or experienced. I discovered we also often reported to each other the same buildings climate or objects. And they took place during the same night.

This of course raises many questions and potentially has many implications. How is such a shared experience possible? Is this just a variation of some anomalous shared awareness that occurs like a sort of empathy at a distance (telepathy -- or should we term it “telempathy”)? Is there an undiscovered aspect of our environment to which consciousnesses in the dream state have easy access and by which transmission and reception of impressions and mental constructs and meaning readily occur? In that case a mutually shared construct would constitute a sort of mutually generated and reinforced idea which we in dream state take for real even though it doesn’t reflect some physical reality. But this still relies on some means of exchange whose mechanism is thus far undetected in laboratory investigations. This is no simple question.

However a further step could suggest that environments may exist and events take place in them that are thus far inaccessible to the waking consciousness nor detectable through none but the crudest of measurements by detectors and instrumentation. In this case the human consciousness and nervous system may be the only instrumentation currently available to us. When I say the crudest of measurements by instrumentation I am suggesting that from the plethora of particles discovered throughout the development of modern physics there may be various combinations capable of binding together in coherent and stable ways which would in no way be detectable to either the waking senses of the person on the street nor to any of the arrays of detectors used in particle physics experimental beamlines.  Such condensed or concatenated matter is not what these systems have been designed to detect. Objects consisting of “clumps” of such matter may simply be undetectable at least at this time. We certainly have a strong argument for this emerging in modern physics in the concepts and theories about dark matter.

This suggests the possibility that mutually observed objects in shared dreams may have an existence independent of the dreamers. They may have existed before a shared dream occurred, and could therefore continue to exist after the experiences of the dreams. The condensation of non-concatenated particles such as in the formation of ice crystals from gaseous water to create snow or in the condensation and crystallization of chemicals of minerals in a hot gaseous state into solids such as rock crystals are two familiar examples. Currently there is no theory to suggest this may not also occur in dark matter.

Other questions arise. How stable are those objects? How durable or resistant to change under the influence of external forces and effects would such objects be? And in a realm where altered consciousness (e.g. the dream state) functions how susceptible might such substance be to the influence of human thought and consciousness itself? Would human consciousness be capable of affecting such matter in a free or gaseous state so as to gather and fix it into stable objects observable in dreams?

It may be possible to extend experiments in lucid dreaming to include an investigation into the properties of matter. What might we discover?

WHILE OUR MAIN FOCUS HERE IS THE REMEMBRANCE AND EVENTUAL conscious participation in our dream life I am also quite interested in anything related to type and quality of sleep, what makes it better or worse, and how to set up the best circumstances for the most conscious activity while dreaming. One major factor in many peoples’ lives – up to 18 million people in the USA alone – is the condition known as OSA or obstructive sleep apnea. This is a condition in which the air passages in the throat droop and close during sleep and thereby prevent clear passage of air or it may even prevent any air passage. This leads to the sleeper awakening sometimes gasping for air potentially many times a night and effectively keeps the individual from getting a healthy night’s sleep. Snoring to the extent that one’s sleep partner may not be able to sleep and has to temporarily or permanently move to another room. OSA can also be very stressful for the partner when hearing the sufferer stop breathing and then struggling to inhale through blocked passages. Even if a person is in bed and essentially unconscious for 7-8 hours if OSA is experienced she or he can awaken sometimes feeling less rested than when she went to bed. This can cause headaches in the morning and bouts of overwhelming drowsiness during the workday which causes the experiencer to struggle to stay awake for even the simplest of tasks. This drowsiness becomes a dangerous condition when it descends on someone while she's driving an automobile.

Because of the constant interruption of sleep the approximately 20% of REM (rapid eye movement) sleep, considered to be the period of most active dreaming, is interrupted. This can cause a significant reduction of dream recall such that OSA sufferers are only about 43% likely to remember dreams compared to the 71% of non-sufferers.* OSA leads to other complications such as reduced memory, increased risk of depression, obesity and stroke and heart disease.

In some increased stress and anxiety can worsen the condition. It can also increase a propensity for nightmares of the dreams that are remembered. OSA is also sometimes correlated with obesity but often times it is not. As such improvement of one’s diet and caloric intake could reduce OSA to a non-threatening level but that is not yet completely proven to be true.

Positive diagnosis of OSA is accomplished by an overnight test performed at a hospital sleep clinic. In this situation the “patient” has numerous sensor wire leads (electrodes) attached at strategic points of the body so heartbeat, respiration, blood oxygen level all can be monitored by a team during an overnight stay and sleep session at the clinic. Sounds of breathing are recorded and analyzed in conjunction with the resulting data collected from the body and a diagnosis is derived from this.

A simple way to do an initial diagnosis of OSA – in addition to observing the various symptoms noted above – is to use some sort of an app in ones cell phone that monitors the sounds of breathing overnight and produces an graph and assessment of sleep quality and activity the next morning. If your mate tells you that you snore and you don’t believe it such apps will tell you the truth when you hear the recording of yourself snoring like a freight train the next morning.

A remedy for OSA commonly in use these days is a CPAP (constant positive air pressure) machine. Various nose pads or breathing masks are used to maintain a small positive pressure above atmospheric pressure of your room such that the lungs and airway remain more inflated and therefore open than they otherwise would with OSA. This prevents breathing stoppage and sleep interruption. These systems must be adjusted to each user by qualified physicians and technicians to optimize each person’s sleep experience.

If you think you suffer for obstructive sleep apnea it is recommended you speak with your physician to arrange an overnight diagnosis at a sleep clinic so you can get a proper assessment. This could significantly improve your quality of sleep and life (as well as in extreme cases possibly lengthen or save a life!) And it could significantly increase your ability to remember your dreams and thereby help you make major progress in extending your consciousness into the subtle world by removing this difficult obstacle!

* See this URL for the full paper reporting the study: http://jcsm.aasm.org/viewabstract.aspx?pid=27713

REGARDING CORRELATING SYMBOLISM WITH PHYSICAL WORLD EVENTS  ...  I have often throughout the years noticed things in my dreams which seemed to have a significance other than the normal face value. For example a common object might be much larger than in everyday life, or it might be colored differently from normal, or placed in some very unusual location, or juxtaposed with something it would otherwise never be found with. Or I might find myself in some circumstances but the clothing I was wearing was completely the wrong kind for the occasion, or might be from some other period of history. Another very common experience is that there might be someone present in a dream who is playing the role of some family member or friend, and has all the familiarity feelings mannerisms and actions of that person but when looking at him or her he or she is clearly not that person. Reflecting on these circumstances or related events after awakening there would often become apparent some meaning other than that given by the appearances. Having kept dream journals for years these would often be noted and then I would simply watch what develops in my life to see if something comes to pass that shows a correlation between the dream and the rest of my life. Often something would later happen that would become quite clear. For instance, once I saw in a dream a large building with multiple rows of windows of about three stories' height on a building but the odd thing was the building was in the middle of a local bay. And the building was smoking and on fire. A house floating in the middle of the water; very out of place and strange for sure. But a few days after that there was a fire at the ferry terminal. In the dream it was no building but was the large broad side of a ferry with the rows of windows of the multiple decks. This turned out to be a case of seeing something that reflected impending events in the physical world. There have been numerous other observations and recollections that afterwards correlated with events that took place from anywhere within a day or so to a few years after. Fortunately I made notes of these and was able to develop over time a sense of the way these things were observed in the subtle world. In most cases there was nothing personal or any direct connection to me or my life but it was fortunate they were noted and could be correlated afterwards. I recommend for those who are sincerely working at developing a greater awareness of our lives in the subtle world that a journal or notebook be kept. Over time the quality of types of events and the quality of the way things are observed and occur becomes apparent and the relation between them and other parts of life can become more discernable.

IT'S INTERESTING HOW IN NEARLY ALL CASES OF DREAM RECALL we describe the circumstances we found ourselves in by talking about what we saw. Although there may be remembered other sensations we had experienced – such as hearing music, tasting food, smelling some fragrance, etc. – one would be hard pressed to find records of people describing their dreams from only tactile or taste or smell or auditory memories. Likewise the distinctness of these memories is a result of some recalled experience having been either vivid or having been experienced in a state of some clarity of mind.

     We are certainly challenged on a daily basis in so many circumstances where sensory overload can easily lead to a mind being tugged at in several directions at once. If we add to that some particular problem we’re concentrating on and trying to solve or some new thing we’re trying to create either of which can be interrupted by our surroundings then it becomes easy for the mind to become fragmented and distracted. It would certainly make sense that entering the subtle world with an agitated or easily distracted mind could easily result in an agitated or distracted (disjointed, fragmented) experience.

      Conversely if we are able to cultivate a clear mind that can either be called into activity at will or silenced and held at bay at will then it makes sense any self-generated fragmentation of the dream experience might be significantly reduced.

     That kind of mental agility could certainly be practiced on a regular basis through efforts to think systematically and methodically on some thing – then to stop the mind and hold it clear for a short amount of time – then to again purposefully exercise the mind … and repeat this cycle many times. Over time this could become habit. Since so much of what we do in the subtle realm is habitual then it’s possible such mental habits would also carry over there. And that would have a direct impact on the clarity of our experiences and therefore our recall afterwards.