People in our Dreams

How is it that we see total strangers in our dreams that seem to be familiar? We do even sometimes fall in love with them in an instant. Who are these people and how do we manufacture their faces?

It would take quite some imagination to create a face in front of you, that you have never seen before, but yet again seems so familiar that you can't let go of this person


There are a few Theories

Either that we've seen these people throughout our day, but wouldn't we remember that? I mean if I am able to fall in love with that person, I sure would notice her passing me on the street.

Or that we connect to other dimensions in our dreams etc..


I'm looking forward to your opinions

I've read that we don't make up faces at all. Anyone who is in your dream is someone that your subconscious mind has recorded/seen. The killer in your dream may be the local bagger you saw at your grocery store years ago, for example.

Which is I guess what your saying in the OP, however your subconscious mind can remember at a capacity you wouldn't believe. The conscious mind is a way for us to deal with the massive information input on our brains, while the Subconscious is like a catalog of everything (some people believe). Idiot Savants, for example, are said to draw from the subconscious mind more than the conscious and these people can remember things in depth at a very high rate.

reply to post by Lapislazuli


Ok, so you think that for example, in a village in let's say Tibet, where people have only seen the people that live there, that there is no possibility for them to have dreams about caucasians since they have never seen one?

I wouldn't think so..

reply to post by Hellas


Hellas!
Nice thread, this is something I've pondered on quite a bit! So here is my opinion, is it odd that I don't think either is wrong nor right? I literally believe it is true that our brains are so complex we are subconsciously taking mental pictures and notes all day everyday that we don't notice the first time around to say (examples of people who remember street names or signs, even peoples faces without ever really looking at them persay) but I believe the brain is so beautiful it collaborates and incorporates things we see from a day to day basis in our dreams, like artwork. But also I believe we do meet other souls in other dimensions/states of being to say. I think a lot of us who experience dreams with people in the ream you know is a deeper meaning than just your brain throwing up an image to rest. I believe it goes both ways. So I think their is truth in both oth the theories you listed so I am not going either or, I'm going both I love dreams and our minds and all the mysteries that come with! Cool thread, Cool theories, Cool Discussion. Have a good one 8)

Originally posted by Hellas
reply to post by Lapislazuli

 

Ok, so you think that for example, in a village in let's say Tibet, where people have only seen the people that live there, that there is no possibility for them to have dreams about caucasians since they have never seen one?

I wouldn't think so..

edit on 16-2-2012 by Hellas because: (no reason given)

Maybe we have all seen countless faces in past lives The people in Tibet would certainly entertain that idea. Who knows brother, I was simply putting forth my knowledge, but I agree with the poster above me. Dreams are something that have fascinated me and I actually record ones I remember. Got 31 so far lol

reply to post by Lapislazuli

Maybe we have all seen countless faces in past lives The people in Tibet would certainly entertain that idea. Who knows brother, I was simply putting forth my knowledge.

And thank you for that I didn't mean to offend you!

Well ok, past lives would be another theorie then. I was lucid dreaming when I was younger. When I knew i was dreaming and had met a girl, I always gave my number saying something like, 'Call me, because I'm going to wake up now'

I've thought about this before also.....One thought I had was - what if when dreaming, we are meeting on another another realm or plane, and even though the people in my dreams are stangers...I am the stranger in THEIR dream? HHmm?

But it most likely just random people you've seen in your daily life and didnt pay much attention to, but your subconscience remembers the face and uses it in the nightly dump of dreams....who knows...

reply to post by Lynzer

I am the stranger in THEIR dream?

I've thought of that, too. It's mind boggling, because we'll never know!

If you consistently see the same faces, this person could be your spirit guide. Funny enough, at least in my experiences, I don't normally look at the faces in the my dreams. I may be interacting with people but very rare I would study their faces in my dreams. I either interact with people I know in real life already or strangers that I don't normally pay too much attention too.

Well, in some cases, you could be talking or interacting with your past life self. I believed I have encountered my past life self in my vision. This was some 15 years ago. This figure, a young soldier, just appeared by my bedside while I was half awaken and asleep. One may say he was an illusion but his message was good and with good intention. He wanted me to preserve peace with his people in exchange he promised me that he would help me to resolve my personal issues with another person. I don't see anything wrong with that. There were couple of times in my dreams that I would be looking at a mirror and didn't see myself in it. However, I felt it was me but that person in the mirror didn't look like me.

I do have to say that most of the times, you do dream about people you regularly see and encounter in real life. I never dream about fat people because I don't see them at all in my daily encounter. I dream about cyclists and people I deal with in the cycling community.

Originally posted by ChiForce
If you consistently see the same faces, this person could be your spirit guide. Funny enough, at least in my experiences, I don't normally look at the faces in the my dreams.

I may be interacting with people but very rare I would study their faces in my dreams. I either interact with people I know in real life already or strangers that I don't normally pay too much attention too.

Well, in some cases, you could be talking or interacting with your past life self.

I believed I have encountered my past life self in my vision. This was some 15 years ago. This figure, a young soldier, just appeared by my bedside while I was half awaken and asleep. One may say he was an illusion but his message was good and with good intention. He wanted me to preserve peace with his people in exchange he promised me that he would help me to solve my personal issues with another person. I don't see anything with that. There were couple of times in my dreams that I would be looking at a mirror and didn't see myself in it. However, I felt it was me but that person in the mirror didn't look like me.

I do have to say that most of the times, you do dream about people you regularly see and encounter in real life. I never dream about fat people because I don't see them at all in my daily encounter. I dream about cyclists and people I deal with in the cycling community.

I don't think I ever looked in a mirror in my dreams. Interesting...

ETA: Nor have I ever looked at a watch or a calendar.....

I like the idea that who you see in your dreams is just a person you have already seen at some point in your life. I do however think it is possible for your brain to compile different features of many people to make a new person all together.

Good Thread.

There have been a lot of books about dreams that hold certain theories that are taught in schools, etc.
The truth is, no one really knows.

However, regarding not being able to dream about what you do not know, I disagree with that theory. My mother used to have dreams about places that she ends up discovering in the awake-world later. Once she had a very distinct dream about a house that a few years later she ended up living at. She still has these dreams and awake-world encounters. One time when I was a kid I had a very vivid dream about a large snake in our barn. I remarked about that dream at breakfast the next morning and then later that afternoon, my dad and I discovered a huge corn snake in the barn. We have never seen snakes in our barn before and I personally had never seen a corn snake at all before this incident. I only after seeing the snake in the barn learned that it was a corn snake.

I think that in our dreams is where the real work gets done. We can travel anywhere, even through time if want and it's instantaneous. Have you ever had a dream that seemed like it lasted a month or two and then you wake up and realize that you dozed off on the couch for a few seconds? Dreams have no time constraints or any boundaries whatsoever.
Once we learn to "wrangle" our dream and master our dream world, we can begin to accomplish greater things.
I think that is what our bodies are all about. Dream world life. Our bodies are designed to me mobile so we can catch food or, work for money to buy food, build a cave house or, work for money to have a house, and many other necessary functions. Our bodies are all about being able to be healthy and capable of having a safe place to go to sleep and let the real work begin.

I read somewhere that Ben Franklin and other intellectual contemporaries at that time practiced that ultimate living situation where they would sleep for 3 hours then stay awake for 3 hours, sleep for three hours then stay awake for three hours. Over and over in this pattern. They also would eat very small meals or snacks every time they would wake up.
They claimed that this was not only healthier by not laying down for long periods of time and eating large meals, but they claimed that this also kept them in close contact with the dream world. This kind of connected the two hemispheres or their conscience. This method also boosts lucid dreaming and astro-traveling.

reply to post by TimesUp


Thanks for your Story! Very interesting!

I don't think we'll ever understand the purpose and functions of dreaming. (and I don't mean medically or chemically)

It ist just the most mysterious place we can go. And when we're lucky we even experience a lucid dream now and then

This is going to sound very bizarre and probably holds no merit but I would like to throw it in the mix any way just as food for thought.

Perhaps you have heard or read about the teachings of Don Juan? Well, he "was" (if he was real) a spiritual toltec master/teacher. He taught many things to his students but one theme was pretty re-occurrent, the use of dreams. He claimed many things could be learned from dreaming, that the dream world was just another dimension, spiritual-stuff, blah, etc. I won't get into all the details.

However, he claims that there are entities in dreaming that can take any shape or form, they can access your thoughts, memories, what have you, and they can even manifest into beings that you hold very dear to you. Like the image of your mother, perhaps. These entities have a non-personal goal to consume energy and their favorite supply of it is you! With your abundance of energy. One way of them feeding off your energy is to make you express extreme emotions.

Like, for instance, one of these entities takes form of a very beautiful lady who is very sweet on you. The whole time in your dream you stay "connected" with this person. They are loving on you, staying close, being nice and kind, but really they are just sucking up your energy! They even supposedly have control over their emotions and can express feelings of love just to make you feel more attracted to them, even if they do not mean it. Again, it would be considered non-personal. Even then, they could make you fall in love and then turn demonic to really scare you. As we know, fear is one of the most powerful emotions and would surely leak a lot of your energy.

Told you that was bizarre. Any way, it's, of course, fiction. So, take from it what you will haha. But I thought it could be relevant.

I find it interesting sometimes in dreams people I am dreaming of do say things that I dont think i could ever come up with on my own consciously... like things i literally have never thought of.... over hearing jokes ive never heard.. or just other personalities and stories... even in my dreams I have seen books, with pages and pages of coherent information that i have never thought of before, that i dont think i could willingly construct yet the moment of my dream i was drawn to that situation where there would be that scene and that book,,.,,. I mean I guess its kind of consciously how do brilliant thoughts come up, the mechanisms of computing in our mind is so strange, how information is stored, sorted, processed, seen, computed, understood..... in a dream it is like worlds can be explored within seconds, cause and effect information is instantanious,,,, like how i got to the conclusion in my dream of the joke is borrowing from different experience and scene of everyday life,,, and maybe even though its not exact from something ive seen,, your imagination can take notes and make deviations,,, weve never seen dragons but we can imagine them, we can use basic outlines, shape, color, words, scenarios, to make a scene, an event, a setting, a story.. its like how movie makers or fiction writers create worlds that have never existed before..

Funny you should make this thread because I was thinking of making a similar one. Why is it that there is always a feeling of familiarity with those we encounter in our dreams? Perhaps it is the culmination of our unconscious memories, desires and random thoughts that create dream constructs, which our brain then presents to us in a different dimension. In this dimension, our memories and cognitive functions are heightened, and we are able to perceive things more vividly. I often wonder if our dreams are a journey into the world beyond this physical existence and may represent things to come after we are done here.

reply to post by Hellas


Its so weird that you should create a thread about this because i had a dream about this exact thing just the other night. I met someone who i have never seen before in real life, but it felt like we were "soul mates", not love like you have for a 1-2 year relationship, but a love that is totally indescribable. She then went on to say with tears in her eyes, that she's been waiting so long to see me again.

I then woke up and felt a huge urge to try and figure out who she was. And i am at a total loss as to who she is, she was so recognisable as if i have known her...well, forever!

Strangers in my dreams are just that ... strangers. I firmly believe I've never seen them before.

BUT!

The people I KNOW in my dreams ... don't look anything like they do in real life!

I tell my spouse, "You were in my dream except THIS time (dream) you looked like ..."

I've never seen a face in my dream that I've seen awake.

P.S. - Some of these strangers are 100% impossible as a real life person or face. Not deformed, just not human-looking.

reply to post by Hellas


I read somewhere that the faces you see in dreams are always from people you have seen somewhere in real life. I dont know if it is true or how they worked it out if it is....

Dreams are built from familiar pieces, things you know. Say you've never seen someone with dark skin, then the odds are you're never going to dream of someone with dark skin. Every thing you experience forms the something akin to a lego block, and dreams are built from your personal collection of lego blocks. Of course they are going to seem familiar, because everything in a dream you've seen before.