Sometimes people discover - usually accidentally - that they have experienced
a virtually identical dream, perhaps at the same time. In this variety
(let us call them Type 1), two or more people seem to experience the same
events and have similar images. As an example, two people might both report
having dreamt of mending the same component on a car.
A variation of this type is where two or more
people have the same dream, but separated by a period of time. Yvonne was
married to an airline pilot and experienced a recurring dream which stopped
troubling her around the time of her husband's death.
She dreamed of getting into an elevator, and
pressing the button to go down to the basement. However, the elevator accelerated
upwards gathering tremendous speed until it burst through the roof, at
which point Yvonne would wake up. She never told anybody about these dreams.
Five years later, she was staying with her
daughter in Dubai. While out for a drive together, Yvonne's daughter described
a peculiar dream she had recently experienced. It was identical to Yvonne's
dream.
In another kind of shared dream (Type 2),
one person seems to be present in another's, or others', dream and observes
what is happening. Thus, Sheila reports : 'I had a dream of something,
a creature of some kind, on my back. I awoke with an unpleasant feeling.
A few seconds later my young daughter ran into my bedroom saying "Mummy
are you all right ? I dreamed that something was on your back !"
Shared dreams may be much more common than
we imagine, because the discussion of dreams is usually fairly limited.
The theoretical implications are fascinating. Are they caused by the dreams
using a common symbol representing a similar thought concerning something
that happened in the day? Or is there a telepathy happening between
the dreamers? Or can a part of your consciousness actually enter someone
else's mind ? These questions need to be explored. Such anomalies often
act as clues that lead to great new truths.
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