Lucid Reviews: Inception (2010)

I will be doing a series of reviews of movies (and literature, music and art) which focus on the topic of dreaming and lucid dreaming. This will be an ongoing project which I will post on periodically. Note that when writing my reviews, I will not be concentrating on the quality of the general narrative, direction,  set/costume design or acting, as would be the case in a normal review. I am not a movie buff (I rarely watch movies) and my personal taste tends to be non-mainstream and quite narrow, meaning I am not ideally positioned to comment on film-making or acting generally. I am only concerned with reviewing the elements of the movie which deal with dreaming/lucid dreaming and how this phenomenon is portrayed in the work - for example, whether it is scientifically possible or reflective of the reality of dreaming etc. 

Inception (2010)

Written/Directed: Christopher Nolan

Featuring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Ellen Page, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Marion Cotillard, Ken Watanabe, Tom Hardy,Dileep Rao, Cillian Murphy, Tom Berenger & Michael Caine
Genre: Science Fiction/Heist Thriller

Movie Trailer

Plot Synopsis

Cobb and Arthur are 'extractors' who perform corporate espionage using experimental military technology to infiltrate the subconscious of their targets and extract valuable information through a shared dream world. Their latest target, a Japanese businessman, Saito reveals that he has commissioned their most recent mission, setting an impossible task for Cobb: planting an idea in the subconscious of another person - inception. 

Saito wants to break up the energy conglomerate of his main rival, Fischer and wants Cobb to convince Fischer's son and heir, Robert, to dissolve the company. Saito promises that he will use his influence to clear Cobb of a murder charge which would allow him to return home to his children. Cobb accepts the job and with the help of his father-in-law, Professor Miles, assembles a team - Eames (a conman and identity forger); Yusuf (a chemist who develops a sedative serum for the 'dream within a dream' strategy); and Ariadne (an architecture student, able to design complex dream labyrinths). While dream sharing with Cobb, Ariadne realises his subconscious contains an invasive projection of his late wife, Mal. 

The elder Fischer dies in Sydney, and his body is flown back to Los Angeles, accompanied by the younger Fischer. The team - and Saito - sedate Fischer and take him into a shared dream. At each dream level, the person generating the dream must stay behind to set up a 'kick' (a hypnic jerk) which is used to awaken the other team members from the deeper dream level. To be successful, these kicks must occur simultaneously at each dream level, which is complicated by the fact that time proceeds much faster at each successive level. 

The first level is Yusuf's dream of rainy LA. The team abducts Fischer, but are apprehended and attacked by armed projections in Fischer's subconscious. which has been trained to resist extraction. Fischer and Saito (wounded) are taken by the team to a warehouse. While dying in a dream would normally awaken Saito, the powerful sedatives required to maintain and stabilise the multi-layered dream will instead send a dying character into 'Limbo' - a world of infinite subconscious, from which it is nearly impossible to escape, as the dreamer risks 'forgetting' they are in a dream. Eames impersonates Fischer's godfather, Browning, to suggest Fischer reconsider his father's will. Yusuf drives the van as the other members of the team are sedated into the second level of the dream.

The second level of the dream is Arthur's dream of a hotel. Cobb convinces Fischer that he has been abducted by Browning and that he (Cobb) is Fischer's subconscious protector. Cobb, as a ruse to infiltrate Fischer's own subconscious, convinces him to go down another level of the dream to explore Browning's subconscious. 

The third level of the dream is Eames' dream of a snowy mountain fortress, which is protected by guards. The team must infiltrate it in order for Cobb to take Fischer down into his subconscious. Yusuf, chased by Fischer's projections in the first level of the dream, deliberately drives off a bridge and initiates his 'kick' too early, which removes the gravity at Arthur's (second) level of the dream, which forces him to improvise a new kick which will happen simultaneous to the van hitting the water. This causes an avalanche in Eames' (third) level of the dream. Mal's projection emerges and kills Fischer; Cobb kills Mal and Saito dies. All 3 'dead; characters fall into Limbo. Eames sets up a 'kick' by rigging the fortress with explosives and Cobb and Ariadne enter Limbo to rescue Fischer and Saito. 

Cobb reveals to Ariadne that Mal ended up in Limbo after he and she experimented with the dream sharing technology. While sedated for a few hours of real-time, they spent 50 years in a dreamworld, constructed from their shared memories. Mal refused to return to reality, so Cobb used a rudimentary form of inception by reactivating her 'totem' (an object which is used as a 'reality check' which allows the dreamer to distinguish between dreams and reality) and reminding her subconscious that the dreamworld was not real. When she awoke, Mal was convinced that she was still dreaming and and in an attempt to 'wake up for real', commits suicide, framing Cobb with her 'murder' as a way to force him to do the same. Facing a murder charge, Cobb flees from America, leaving his children with Prof. Miles. 

During this confession, Cobb makes peace with his guilt over Mal's death. Ariadne kills Mal and wakes Fischer up with a 'kick'. Now revived at the mountain fortress, Fischer enters a safe room to discover and accept  the planted idea - a message from his father who tells him to 'be his own man'. While Cobb remains in Limbo to find Saito, the rest of the team ride synchronised 'kicks' which takes them back to reality. Cobb finds an aged Saito in Limbo and reminds him of their agreement. The team awaken on the airplane and Saito makes a phone call. 

When they arrive at LA airport, Cobb is able to pass through the US Immigration checkpoint and meet Prof. Miles, who accompanies him home. Cobb tests reality using a totem - a spinning top which spins indefinitely in the dreamworld. However, he ignores the result of the spinning top totem, instead joining his children in the garden, leaving it unclear if this is reality or a dream. The totem is actually Mal's totem - Cobb uses his wedding ring as his totem (he only wears it in the dreamworld) and it was not on Cobb's finger when he handed his passport to the Immigration Officer. 

Dream Themes

• Lucid dreaming
• Shared dreaming/sharing of a mutual dream space
• Use of dream totems
• Manipulation of the subconscious
• The analogy between (shared) dreaming and the cinematic experience

My Review
On of my main problem with Inception is the fact that it led countless amateur lucid dreamers to fully invest themselves in the potential reality of the movie - and treat it like it was the next technological step in neuroscience and dreaming. In the aftermath of the movie release, many oneironauts stopped focusing on the basics of lucid dream induction and began to try to create the conditions of the shared dream and the dream-within-a-dream, which are key themes. This is encouraged by the reactions of the media - including some scientific literature - which used the release of the movie as inspiration for articles questioning whether Inception could become a reality and taking actual dream research and manipulating the theories and findings to reflect the themes of the movie. This is typical of the mainstream media - using buzzwords and 'gimmicks' or current trends to create interest.

This isn't necessarily the fault of the movie, itself, but my enjoyment of it was affected by the fact that in countless discussions of the science of lucid dreaming, Inception was used as a blueprint for the scientific potential of lucid dreaming. Suddenly everyone was using a 'dream totem' - and lucid dreaming experienced a surge in mainstream popularity - albeit a very Hollywood-version which focused on the fantastical elements, rather than what we know to be scientifically or psychologically factual.

I am aware Nolan may not have set out to make a realistic movie which portrayed the actuality of lucid dreaming, but I still hold him responsible for misinterpretation of what lucid dreaming is and how it works.

Of course, we have various emerging technologies which enable us to induce lucid dream states and also recreate very basic images of what a subject may be dreaming of, by using MRI scans to monitor their brain responses. But shared dreaming has never been proven empirically, and essentially remains categorised as a 'pseudoscience'.

It is clear that some scientific investigation informed the making of the movie. Producer and writer, Jeff Warren describes how the consciousness appears to act in 'predictable ways' when there is no sensory input. Further, there are 'informal laws' which exist in the dreamworld - 'the law of self-fulfilling expectations' (where if you expect something will happen, it will) and 'the law of narrative momentum' (where the dream begins to fray if you remain in one place for too long). 

In Inception, time runs slower in the dreamworld than in real time - with a scaling effect, so that time slows down even more so when entering subsequent dream levels. This seems to accord with most people's experience of dreaming, with an important exception - in lucid dreams, research by Stephen LaBerge has shown that the dreamer tends to experience time almost in real time. Therefore, there is very little time dilation at all in a lucid dream. In respect of the laws of physics, Inception at some points in the plot suggest that the laws of physics do not apply in the dreamworld - for example, when Paris is folded like a piece of paper and with the 'impossible staircase' (based on that designed by M. C. Escher).

In Inception, the main characters use a drug ('somnacin') and a dream machine (Portable Automated Somnacin IntraVenous (PASIV) Device) to upload a dream scenario into the mind of their target and then enter the dream. While we are very much aware of powerful drugs which can modulate our sleep processes, there is of course, no way to use drugs - or machines - to enter into a shared dreamworld. 

Although Inception does not explicitly refer to 'lucid dreaming' (although note that Nolan is himself a lucid dreamer), it does make reference to concepts familiar to lucid dreamers, which may contribute to the acceptance of the the movie as factually accurate by many oneironauts. Notably, Cobb describes 'dreamsigns', stating that 'Dreams feel real when we're in them. It's only when we wake up that we realize something was actually strange'. The movie also leans heavily on the concept of 'reality checking' - specifically by the use of the dream totems. This is of course an aesthetic choice - the spinning totem belonging to Mal and used in the final scene by Cobb - was used in movie publicity and promotion, largely due to it's symbolic appearance. 

However, any regular lucid dreamer would know that there are far more reliable and easy reality checks which could be performed by a lucid dreamer - such as trying to push the fingers of one hand through the palm of another, or looking in a mirror. Remembering to carry a dream totem around - or using a wedding ring as a dream totem - seems to over-complicate the process of reality checking. In fact, given the way in which the (lucid) dream state is entered by the main characters, there seems little need for them to perform such a reality check anyway - and therefore this little more than a plot device. 

Further, the way the totems work in the movie is inconsistent. One of the rules we learn is that no-one must touch your totem, as figuring out how it works could lead that person to trick your subconscious into believing you were awake in reality. So, for Cobb, his dream totem (Mal's spinning top, and to a lesser extent, his wedding ring) will topple over in waking reality, but spin forever in his dream world; Arthur's die is weighted so that it will always land on one number in waking reality, but in someone else's dream, it could fall on any random number; Ariadne's metal bishop is weighted in a certain way; and Eames' poker chip has a misspelling of 'Mombasa' ('Mombassa'). Cobb explains to Ariadne how the spinning top totem works - which means he can never be sure that he is not in Ariadne or Mal's dream, even if it continues to spin for infinity. The problem arises in relation to the spinning top. According to the movie, if the top falls, Cobb must be awake - but why? Surely everyone would be aware that a spinning top would definitely fall in waking reality, not spin forever. Therefore, if someone wanted to enter into a shared dream world with Cobb and trick him into thinking he was in waking reality, they would simply make the top fall. There are only 2 options: one which would never happen in waking reality; and the alternative, which you would implicitly assume was the 'in a dream' option if you understood the function of a totem and how they are used to check consciousness and reality. To make sense, the totem would need to behave in a unique way in waking reality (such as the other totems used by other characters) and an ordinary way in someone else's dream world (assuming the other person is unaware of the special quality of the totem, such as how 'Mombasa' is misspelled on Eames' poker chip). If Cobb's totem is to be an effective reality check, then it can't be so easy to predict how it would operate in reality.

The 'rules' of dreaming as portrayed in Inception seem to be overly convoluted to the experienced lucid dreamer. For example, Cobb states that in order to wake yourself up from a dream, you must first kill yourself. This is a needless 'rule' which runs counter to the lucid dreaming experience. Any lucid dreamer will tell you that lucid dreams are very unstable and difficult to anchor. It is incredibly easy to wake up from a lucid dream prematurely, just by becoming too excited - given the REM state is a very light stage of sleep and a lucid dream occurs when the sleeping mind is very close to being fully awake. Most lucid dreamers could wake themselves from a particularly stable and strong lucid dream simply by telling themselves to wake up. 

This also means that the concept of the 'kick' (hypnic jerk) becomes pretty obsolete in terms of how lucid dreaming actually works. A hypnic jerk is an involuntary muscle twitch/spasm which happens when the brain is trying to test whether the body is asleep or awake. The hypnic jerk is often incorporated into a fragment of dream narrative (falling/slipping/being attacked). Therefore, it would be wholly impossible to set up a 'kick' of this nature anyway - hypnic jerks are always involuntary and unconscious, and in any event, not related to the lucid dreaming experience. It seemed that Nolan just wanted to incorporate a common dream experience into a movie which dealt with lucid dreaming without any necessity for inclusion. 

Another random 'rule' is that in a second/third level dream (a 'dream within a dream' scenario), the dreamer must not die or they will become stuck in Limbo, where time is so slowed down that decades pass there, when in waking reality, it is simply a matter of minutes. This is - at best - speculative fiction, but from the perspective of a seasoned oneironaut, a completely illogical addition to the plot. There is no reason why the rules of the dreamworld would be any different in a second/third layer dream, as anyone who experiences dreams within a dream will likely concur. 

One of the more interesting aspects of the movie is the fact that the audience is kept guessing as to whether scenes are 'reality' or 'dreams' - encouraging them to look for clues, such as upside down clocks or the presence of Cobb's wedding ring.  We also see how subconscious elements creep in to influence what we see in dreams - for example Mal and Cobb's anniversary suite number is number 3502; the train that barrels down on the team in Yusuf's dream is also number 3502, and the taxi they hail is numbered 2053. Additionally, the random string of numbers Fischer arbitrarily gives as the combination to his father's safe is 528491. This is also the combination to both safes in Eames' snow fortress dream, the fake telephone number Eames gives Fischer (as the sexy blonde) in Arthur's hotel dream, and the room numbers in the hotel are 528 and 491.

My main issue with the way dreaming is portrayed in Inception is that I get the impression that Nolan wanted to make an all-purpose movie about lucid dreaming/shared dreaming etc and did his research, cramming in various elements of dream science which do not necessarily work together to produce a cohesive understanding of the complex ideas which inform the movie. It appears that the most interesting elements of dreaming have been cherry-picked, but Nolan doesn't stake his position on the subject. The movie is complex, relying on clunky narrative, which is both exposition and jargon-heavy, which adds to the difficulty in understanding the plot. When non-lucid dreamers try to untangle and interpret the movie, it's frustrating that the science/art of lucid dreaming is misunderstood - largely because the movie provides half-baked or mixed-up conceptualisations which are necessary to drive the plot and create interest, but don't further or support actual understanding of the themes so intrinsic to the storyline. 

The way the dream scenes are portrayed in the movie is one of the best things about it, in my opinion. Still, these scenes are not free from my criticism. Nolan reminds us we are watching a heist movie by including the gunfight scenes - seemingly forgetting that in a dreamworld, there is no necessity in using 'real' weapons in a realistic way. Any dreamer with superior dream control should be able to manifest and use any means of tackling an enemy without the constraints or rules of the waking world. The zero-gravity fistfight, the city of Paris being folded like a piece of paper and the crumbling beach scene were all visually stunning - and in particular, the latter had a very 'dreamlike' quality about it, which gave a sense of authenticity to me, as an oneironaut. 

Commentary from Dream Experts
Deirdre Barrett, a Dream Researcher at Harvard University states that Nolan did not accurately portray all aspects of dreaming, but conceded that the illogical, bizarre and disjointed narrative of dreams would not lend themselves to a complex thriller. However, she cites a scene in which a sleeping Cobb is shoved into a full bath, and in the dream world water gushes into the windows of the building, waking him up as an example of how 'real stimuli get incorporated, and you very often wake up right after that intrusion'.

Robert Stickgold - Associate Professor of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School 

'I thought it was a lot of fun. It’s a funny story, I got a call from Sony when they were just about to release it, sort of probing if I wanted to be a go-to person to talk to about dreaming that they could pass out. And I said no [laughs]. I said no because I felt I was going to watch the movie and say: 'Well, the movie was really dumb,' but it actually wasn’t bad at all. A, I enjoyed it a lot, and B, I love the sort of playfulness of getting you to forget where you are in the dream. You say: ‘Oh wait a minute, is this actually happening? Are they really on the train? I’m confused. What’s actually real and what’s a dream, and what’s the dream within a dream?’ And I think they did that beautifully, and I just enjoyed it. 

I don’t think at any point in watching the movie – I have two kids that went to M.I.T. and they sit around and watch all the science fiction movies and give them one to ten thumbs down depending on how bad the science is – and I don’t remember any point in that movie where I had that feeling. Obviously, the basic supposition that you can control things in the real world by controlling dreams is wonderful science fiction, but that’s out front I think, and I just enjoyed it'. 

Jane Gackenback - Dream Researcher & Former President of the International Association for the Study of Dreams

'It was great fun. I was on the documentary about dreams on the Blu-ray. They flew me down there and the whole thing. Anyway – a lot of the points [Christopher Nolan] got right. With Hollywood, it always goes too far. Yes, we do have lucid dreams. Yes, you wake up into another dream, and wake up into another, and I think they did that four deep in Inception. I had a colleague who did it seven deep once. Yes, you can have a certain amount of control over the dream. I don’t think to the degree in which they have it. Some indication – I hesitate and say ‘some,’ big time – we can share dreams – particularly people who have lived together for 50 year, or identical twins, that sort of thing. Lots of places he got it right. He’s an amazingly thoughtful film maker'.

Dream Myths in Inception

• If you die in a dream, you wake up - this may be true for some dreamers, but it is not a hard and fast rule of dreaming - many people experience their own death in dreams and continue to remain dreaming for some time
• Shared dreaming - this is not scientifically possible, anymore than ESP or telepathy is empirically proven. While there is subjective anecdotal evidence from some dreamers who claim to share dreams with other people, there is no objective evidence. Further, Inception does not explain in any depth how shared dreaming via a shared dream network actually works in the movie. While it is possible to summons dream characters into a lucid dream, these dream characters may seem to act completely independently from your conscious dream self, but they are simply projections/personifications of your subconscious mind
• Dream Limbo - in dream Limbo, the dreamer (who entered as a result of dying in a second or third level dream) is no longer lucid - they accept the dream as reality and do not realise they can simply wake up from it - this is a fictionalised aspect of the plot, which seems to stem from Nolan's desire to depict time dilation in the dream state
• Dream within a dream - while dreams within a dream are possible in theory, the reality is not quite like that portrayed in Inception. Dreams within a dream are conceptual, rather than literal - in reality there aren't defined levels of dreaming which you pass through, but rather, a series of dreams in sequence
• Dream architecture - while in theory it is possible to create a dream scenario (i.e. dream incubation) or control a dream from within - and even influence someone else's dream, for example, by introducing stimuli such as certain sounds or smells into their environment while they are in REM sleep, the levels of dream architecture shown in the dream goes beyond what we know to be the reality. Our dreams may reflect our waking influences or preoccupations - and lucid dreamers can often exert surprisingly high levels of control over their dreamworld with practice, but in fact, dreams are not as susceptible to our conscious interference as we might like to think. There is also no reason why a gifted architecture student would be used as a 'dream architect' - Ariadne's ability to design architectural structures in waking life gives her no special advantage over dream control

Have You Seen This Man? (Debunking the 'Dream Hoax')

'This Man'

You might have seen online posts asking 'have you seen this man in your dreams?' with accompanying images of a photofit drawing of an unattractive, but relatively commonplace male face. These posts tend to be accompanied by editorial text, explaining that this man has been appearing in the dreams of people across the world, and often give explanations such as 'astral projection' of a dream character - or other equally implausible, and un-empirically testable phenomena. This article aims to expose the urban myth and provide an explanation for why it has proven to be so popular. 

The website www.thisman.org, dedicated to the myth claims in its headline that hundreds of people dream of this man every night. The website claims that in January 2006, a mentally ill client of a New York psychiatrist sketched an image of 'This Man' after he appeared repeatedly in her dreams, often giving her advice on her personal life. She was certain she had never met the man in her waking life. The psychiatrist circulated the image amongst other clients and subsequently, a number of clients, who saw the image, also claim to have been visited by This Man in their dreams. 

In 2009, the thisman.org website was launched, stating that it was exploring the mystery of This Man and asking people to submit accounts of their own dreams in which This Man appears.

Since then, over 2000 people - none of whom appear to share any relationship or common trait - have reported also being visited by This Man in their dreams. A number of the dreams - some romantic, some nightmarish - have been recorded on the thisman.org website, which also includes sketches of This Man produced by dreamers (see below). All anecdotal 'evidence' of This Man dreams on thisman.org is recorded anonymously.

On the thisman.org website there are also a number of photographs of posters/flyers appearing in public places around the world, with the original photofit image, asking if anyone has 'seen this man?' I have posted some of the images, below. 

Often, when This Man 'appears' in a dream, he gives strange, almost prophetic advice to the dreamer. In some instances dreamers have had relationships with This Man - falling in love with him, even if they identify as a heterosexual male in their waking life; or alternatively, have been subjected to a violent act or murder by him. All dreamers reporting the appearance of This Man in their dreams claim that they do not know or recognise him from waking life.

Here are some of the submitted accounts of This Man dreams from the thisman.org website:

'I have had this recurrent dream for some years now. A tall, dark man shows me a picture and asks me if I can recognise my father in it. The man in the picture is this man I have never seen before, he looks nothing like my dad, nevertheless I inexplicably answer that I do recognize my father. At this point I usually wake up feeling very peaceful. Other times the dream continues, I am standing before my father’s grave, I place some flowers on the ground and I realise the photograph on the tombstone is missing.'

'I fell in love with him from the very first time I saw him in my dream. Even though if I think about it I must admit he’s really ugly. And yet each and every time, he sweeps me off my feet with his romantic gestures and sweet words. He buys me flowers, jewellery, he takes me out to dinner or to the beach to watch the sunset.'

'I have always had this dream of flying in the sky over my city and observing my friends from up there. Since I moved to another house I started meeting this man while flying. Not every single time that I have this dream about flying, but often enough. He flies too, but he never speaks.'

'The first time I had a dream about this man I was having a hard time at work. I had a dream about getting lost in a huge and deserted shopping mall. Suddenly this man appeared and I started running away from him. He chased after me for what seemed like an hour until I found myself against a wall in the kids’ area in a supermarket. At this point he smiled at me and he showed me the way out towards the cash desks and I woke up. Ever since that night this man has appeared in all of my dreams and he always gives me directions to get out of the dream and wake up.'

'I dreamt this man…was Brazilian and very handsome. He was a schoolteacher type with 6 fingers on his right hand. He said if the US had a nuclear disaster: go North!'

'I have seen this man in 3 completely different dreams. He was slightly different from the picture, but I recognized him immediately. He appeared suddenly and disappeared in the same manner. His message in all 3 of my dreams was: 'It’s all over'. That was repeated 3 times in each dreams. The differences in the picture and the man in my dreams are: his hair was a little longer in the top; his eyebrows were not as bushy. Other than that, he is identical. I had no fear of him, but many questions.'

The thisman.org site also includes a section addressing potential theories for the appearance of This Man in dreams. These are reproduced below:

ARCHETYPE THEORY

According to Carl Jung's Psychoanalytic Theory, This Man is an archetypal image belonging to the collective unconscious, which can surface in times of hardship (emotional development, dramatic changes in our lives, stressful circumstances etc) in particularly sensitive subjects. 

RELIGIOUS THEORY

According to this theory, This Man is the image of the Creator i.e. one of the forms in which God manifests himself today. This is the reason why his indications and the words he utters during the dreams should be decidedly followed by the dreamers. 

DREAM SURFER THEORY

This is the most interesting theory and the one that has the greatest implications, but it has also the lowest scientific credibility. According to this theory, This Man is a real person, who can enter people's dreams by means of specific psychological skills. Some believe that in real life This Man looks like the man in the dreams. Others think that the man in the dreams looks completely different from his real life counterpart. Some people seem to believe that behind this man there is a mental conditioning plan developed by a major corporation. 

DREAM IMITATION THEORY

This is a scientific psycho-sociological theory which claims that this phenomenon has arisen casually and has progressively developed by imitation. Basically when people are exposed to this phenomenon they become so deeply impressed that they start seeing this man in their dreams. This works on the basis of day residue (i.e. experiencing the image of This Man in waking life - and the image/theme emerging in a subsequent dream, because it has been imprinted on the subconscious mind of the dreamer. 

DAYTIME RECOGNITION THEORY

This theory states that the apparitions of This Man are purely casual. Normally we do not remember precisely the faces we see in our dreams. The image of This Man would therefore be an instrument which, in the subject's waking life, facilitates recognition of an undefined oneirical image.

THE HOAX, DEBUNKED

However, the real explanation is a lot less scary than the thisman.org website suggests - although equally as interesting. You see, the This Man myth is just that - fake. It was a hoax, created by sociologist, journalist and online marketer, Andrea Natella. Natella runs an online viral marketing company, Guerriglia ('Guerilla') Marketing, which specialises in 'subversive hoaxes' and 'weird art projects exploring pornography, politics and advertising' in the avant-garde tradition of the Situationists. The hoax has been reported on Vice (who initially believed the hoax, but then published a retraction article, highlighting the fact they had been scammed the very next day) and also the knowyourmeme.com website. The latter site debunked the myth, claiming that its popularity is due to internet 'copypasta' and inclusion on a number of websites who bought into the hoax. In fact, Natalla's site was briefly acquired by horror movie production company Ghost House Pictures, in promotion for an upcoming film titled This Man, written and directed by American filmmaker Bryan Bertino - which, according to imdb.com - is still 'in production/development'.

So - it seems that Natalla's viral marketing campaign was very successful indeed! However, the fact that this was a worldwide hoax does not mean that everyone who thinks they have met This Man in their dreams are lying. I tend to believe that the beauty of this hoax is the fact that once you are aware of it, it is possible that you experience This Man in your dreams, as a result of imprinting on the subconscious or the effect of day residue (our waking experiences which shape and influence the content of our dreams). There is also another theory - which would explain why some people claim to have met This Man before having seen his image (or learned of the story) online. This is the EVERYMAN THEORY. The theory works on the principle that the face of This Man is an amalgamation of many common male facial features, - it was cleverly designed as a kind of 'catch-all' which rouses an impression of familiarity in those who believe they have seen him in their dreams. Consider the following, for example:

• His hair is full and yet also balding
• His eyes could be any color at all
• His lips are partly full (bottom lip) and partly thin (top lip)
• He has no distinctive race/ethnicity
• His face shape is simultaneously angular and round
• Cover the lower half of his face and he looks old; cover the upper half and he looks young - so his age is non-distinct
• Cover the right half and his eye is hooded, his nose large and his lips full; cover the left half and his eye is smaller, his nose petite and his lips thin - it's a very different face altogether 

These myriad common features mean that many people, from all over the world, might find familiarity in his face and therefore seek to perpetuate the viral nature of This Man, thereby furthering the goal of Natalla, in making this a highly popular and ubiquitous campaign based on free publicity.

'This Man' - Around the World

Cantalupo, Sabina, Italy

Senta, Serbia

Uiwang-si, Gyeonggi-do, South Korea

Vilnus, Lithuania 

Finland

San Ramon de Alajuela, Costa Rica

Buenos Aires, Argentina

Los Angeles, California, USA

Berlin, Germany

Sao Paulo, Brazil

Stockholm, Sweden

Zacatecas, Mexico

Hluhluwe Reserve, South Africa

Mc Allen, Texas, USA

London, UK

San Francisco, California, USA

Hamilton, New Zealand

Barcelona, Spain

Memphis, Tennessee, USA

Bilbao, Spain

Austin, Texas, USA

Auckland, New Zealand

Milan, Italy

Puerto Piritu, Venezuela

La Habana, Cuba

Rome, Italy

New York Psychiatric Institute, New York, USA

Rostov, Russia

 Washington, Virginia, USA

Dream 364

'The Murray Family Saga'

I attempted to do WILD to induce a lucid dream. I started to feel the sleep paralysis and see the hypnagogia (visual hallucinations of bright flashing lights), but then I became panicked from the vibrating/sinking feeling of my body and tried to shake off the paralysis by moving my arms. I then fell into a normal sleep/dream, without becoming lucid.

In the first dream scene I was at my nan's house in Sheringham. It was evening and the lights were on brightly. I was watching TV and also reading a magazine. I read in the magazine - at the same time that my mum also informed me - that Kim Kardashian was now starring in UK soap, Emmerdale, which is a show I find particularly boring as it is set in the countryside and involves a lot of typical soap opera scandals happening in a rural farming community. 

The next scene involved PS and JGH, although I cannot recall much about this part of the dream. I know that I was in very bright, yellow light throughout this particular scene. PS was laying on a sofa at one point, at one end of a long room. At another stage in this section of the dream I was in a fish and chip shop and three unknown male dream characters entered. They started talking about the ideal way to serve chips. I saw a close up of chips in a hot cabinet. There was some reference to books/poetry.

The next part of my dream was very vivid and detailed. There was a family - the Murrays. I am not sure if they lived in Australia or Britain. Their house was a huge bungalow with a stream running right outside the front door. There was a grassy lawn and some pretty trees/plants also outside the front of the house, which was located in a suburban neighbourhood, unfamiliar in real life. 

I was then confused, as I was watching The Anna Nicole Show on TV (the reality TV show following the life of the late glamour/Playboy model Anna Nicole Smith (1967 - 2007) but I was confused, because instead of starring Anna Nicole Smith (given it was her show), it had Courtney Love playing Anna Nicole. In the dream, I actually questioned why Love was playing Smith and wondered if I had confused the two famous blondes.

Here is a family tree to show the family relationships:

The father, Bill 'The Executioner' owned a car manufacturing or sales company. He was not seen in the dream. His brother, Richard, also not seen in the dream, was the Vice President of the company. Also not seen in the dream were Pam (the mother) and Uncle Richard's best friend, 'Seraphim' who was a hotel tycoon. 

The dream started with me experiencing the dream from the perspective of 'Lauren'. Lauren was an underage girl who was dating Oliver (known as 'Ollie' in the dream). Lauren's underage (slightly younger) friend, Heidi (my cousin's name in real life) was dating Ollie's younger brother, Daniel. Oliver and Daniel had two sisters, Tracey (who resembled a contestant named 'Tracy Collins' from Masterchef Australia, season 6 - aired in 2014, which I am currently watching). I was convinced that the 'Tracey' dream character, was in fact just a younger version of the real life Tracy. Rather than describe the looks of all of my dream characters, I will just post some pictures of celebrities whom they closely resembled or looked identical to.

All the siblings were in their early 20s, but none of them had jobs. Ollie wanted to be a hotel tycoon. Daniel wanted to be an artist. Tracey wanted to be a landscape gardener and Alice wanted to be a movie director/film-maker. Lauren (the 'me' in this part of the dream) and Heidi were with Daniel. It was strange, because the Lauren character was not dating Daniel (she was in a relationship with Ollie), yet I seemed to think of Heidi as being the girl dating the brother who was not featured in this dream scene dream scene (Ollie). The characters of Lauren and Heidi seemed to converge in a confusing way in my recollection of the dream, although whilst in the dream, I was clearly Lauren, who was not Daniel's girlfriend, just his friend and the other girl, Heidi was dating the brother who was not Ollie (thus, Daniel) although Daniel did not react towards Heidi as if she were his girlfriend. Heidi and I (Lauren) were outside. We left the family home and jumped over the small stream which cut across the lawn, horizontally. It was night-time and the sky was a dark, with a pastel pink, lilac and blue just over the rooftops. The moon was very bright and full and there were stars in the sky. Daniel was trying to create a work of art - a night-time skyscape - using pastels to create the beautiful glowing colours. We saw the completed art work and it was lovely. It then appeared to be daylight, and we were walking back towards the house - although the road we were on seemed to be Sunway Park in Sheringham. Daniel was in front, I was behind him - talking to him - and Heidi was trailing behind, carrying his picture. Suddenly Heidi started crying. I asked her what was wrong and she showed me that she had ripped Daniel's art work. Daniel needed this picture, either for an art competition or for art school, and he reacted angrily. I suggested that he tear the picture into small parts and then mount them like a collage on a bigger piece of black paper. He attempted to do this, but was not happy with the results.

The scene changed. Daniel and Ollie were in a hotel gift shop. Ollie was telling Daniel that he had convinced the hotel owner, Seraphim (a friend of the family) to stock some art works Daniel had made, so that they could be sold to hotel guests. The works of art were 3-dimension pop-up greetings cards (made of pink, lilac and blue flowers) and T-shirts which had 3-dimensional cars made out of flowers, which protruded from the stomach and back areas of the T-shirt when worn (as if the car and flowers were driving through the mid-section of the T-shirt's wearers). Daniel was really pleased about this. I knew Ollie wanted to take over the expensive hotel complex as it's owner. I thought the family were very ambitious.

The scene changed again, and I started to see it from the perspective of the youngest sister, Alice. Alice and Daniel were in a field in daylight. In the centre of the field was a stack of wooden boxed, which also resembled hay bales. Alice told Daniel that she climbed into the centre of the boxes (like a fort) to get inspiration for her film-making and suggested he also try it to see if it inspired his art. Both Daniel and I (Alice) climbed into the middle of the stack of boxes. I then saw Tracey mowing some grass.

The next scene was in a concrete courtyard (day). Daniel was showing a sculpture he had made. This involved a white sportscar which was mounted on a plinth. On top of the sportscar was a massive IPad, which had a streak of orange paint across it. The orange paint dripped down onto the white paint of the car, creating a pretty effect. All the siblings were standing around looking at the car sculpture and we were praising Daniel, as it was clear he had won a prize for his art. We were opening the bonnet. doors and boot and then shutting them, commenting that the car (which was apparently a copy of a car the family had owned when we were children) made accurate sound effects, identical to those of the actual car from our childhood. We decided to take the car for a drive. We all got in - Daniel was driving. We drove very fast down a long motorway, with the wind blowing in our hair (even though the car was not a convertible - it had a roof and  the IPad on top of it). I then saw the car speeding along the motorway from above, third person perspective. All the siblings were laughing with joy.

We ended up at a primary/elementary school which was huge and also resembled an airport. Tracey and I (Alice) were entered a gym where a physical education class was taking place. Tracey started talking to me about Ollie's ex-girlfriend, Mary, with whom he had two very young children, Ben and Sarah. Tracey remarked that it was sad that Ollie and Mary had separated, because this meant we had little contact with our nephew and niece, whom Tracey seemed to suggest we had never met. She said our parents (Bill 'The Executioner' and Pam) wanted to see their grandchildren. There was the suggestion that Ben attended this primary school, but Sarah was too young to attend school. As we walked across the gym, through the children, we realised that a child (a chubby boy with thick glasses) had covered the entire floor in either melted apricot ice cream, or apricot yoghurt. We had to be careful, because the floor was flooded with the apricot substance and was very slippery. I said that the boy was 'naughty' for doing this, but one of the teachers overheard me and said that the boy had done it to be nice to other people.

We exited the gym through another set of doors on the other side. There, we saw what looked to be an airport waiting room, but it was the school reception. The lights were very blue and there was a huge screen mounted on the wall, showing a baseball game which I was interested in. Tracey said she needed to make a phone call - I am not sure who she was phoning, but it was either our father or our uncle. Ollie and Daniel were now present, as was Ollie's ex-partner, Mary. Ollie and Mary were getting on really well, and I was hoping they might reconcile for the sake of the children. I was trying to listen to the conversation between Ollie, Mary and Daniel and also to Tracey's side of the phone conversation. Ollie was telling Mary and Daniel that he did not like the name 'Oliver'and wished he was called 'David' instead.

Tracey received bad news in the phone call. Apparently, it was illegal to buy car 'tyres and wires' if you were not a licensed car manufacturer (which Daniel was not, despite the family business being in the car industry). Our uncle Richard knew this, and had sold Daniel's car art to Seraphim, who was actually a villain. All the siblings were shocked by the actions of Richard and Seraphim, even though it seemed like Ollie was actually trying to take over Seraphim's business. 

* Strangely, DL (whose first name is 'David') told me that on this particular night he had a dream which involved a dream character who resembled another (male) contestant from the same series of Australian Masterchef. He had also experienced the ground being covered with rotten apricots and had chased after a speeding car on a road. This is a very strange coincidence, although I would not conclude that it is an example of dream sharing/dream telepathy.

Dream 308

'Academia & Wild Animals'

Dream date: 15 November 2014

I was with my mum and some other (unrecalled) people. My mum and I were looking through a magazine which seemed to be about education and academia. There was a small advert in the central pages of the magazine, which said (words to the effect of): 'AG, AP and SP perform better than 70% of the population. They are the cream of the crop!' I questioned this to my mum, as AP has got a university degree, but AG and SP left school with average qualifications and were not particularly academic or intelligent in my memory. I felt like my own qualifications and intellectual acumen was being undermined, as I went to school (and outperformed) all of these individuals, yet was not named in the advertisement (which was written by a teacher). I flicked to the inside of the front page of the magazine, where there was a small article at the bottom of the page, informing the reader than PS and his sister, TS, were to train as 'pharmaceauticals'. I tried to find the advert about AP, AG and SP again, but I could not see it in the magazine any more, even though I looked at every page. 

I was then standing outside the pub  and corner shop which were at the bottom of one of my childhood homes in Sheringham (where I lived from the age of 12 years until I left to go to university). It was snowy and there was frost on the ground. Tethered to a lampost outside the pub and shop was a giraffe and a tiger. I was on the other side of the road with DL and we began walking, towards part of the town known as Beeston Regis. We passed people walking tigers on leads, like dogs. We stood still for a moment and I said to DL: 'You are in my dream, which means you are dreaming too!' although strangely, I was not lucid at the time. I was saying the words without a conscious awareness that I was actually dreaming. He asked me what he should do. I said: 'You should try to become lucid!' to which he asked 'how?' I replied that he should 'try to stay calm'.

I was then in a sunlit garden, staring at a bungalow-type building which had French windows. My academic supervisor at university, IE, called me in through the French windows (which were the sliding door kind used in conservatories) and told me that he was about to let his dog run out into the garden, but I needed to watch this and make sure the dog was safe. He asked me to hold the lead of the dog, to which I agreed. He opened the French windows/sliding door again and I exited back into the garden. A black shaggy dog then ran out, and joined a line of other dogs, of various breeds, which were sitting in a row across the grass. I thought that IE didn't need me to watch his dog, as it seemed well-behaved and knew what to do without me guiding it. I then saw IE in a dog costume, which was black and shaggy - similar to his dog. He was on one side of a chain link fence (still in the garden) and a female, also wearing a dog costume, was on the other side. They were dancing around and trying to get to one another, but the chain link fence was in the way. I then saw IE - still in the dog costume - running towards a tree in the centre of the garden, on which a target (for shooting/archery) was mounted. There was a circular bench around the base of the tree.

I was then outside PS's home (my former home for several years) in London, lounging on the drive with PS. It looked like PS's house, but also the exterior of my old primary school. We were both reading the same newspaper. PS said that he needed to eat some cornflakes 'to keep up his strength' and disappeared into his house/the primary school to get some.

Dream Telepathy - Can we share the same dream with someone else?

I have never experienced the phenomenon of dream telepathy - telepathic communication with another person through a shared dream. Telepathy (mind-to-mind communication is a form of extra-sensory perception - a form of experience which is beyond the normal sensory capacity to perceive. ESP also includes the heavily-disputed and non-proven phenomena of clairvoyance (visual perception of remote events or objects) and precognition (knowledge of a future event). These phenomena are categorised as a form of parapsychology and have been dismissed by many as pseudo-science.

I am very sceptical as to the veracity of reported dream telepathy experiences, as well as the 'evidence' on which other forms of parapsychology or ESP are based. Many people on social networking or in my personal life have questioned my belief in dream telepathy, and my answer is always the same - I cannot vouch for anything that I have not witnessed or found solid empirical evidence in support of. The same people also tend to ask my views on out-of-body experiences (OBEs). This is a topic I am even more clear on - I cannot believe in OBES or near-death experiences because I am of the opinion that our brain is responsible for our consciousness and mind, and as an atheist, hold the belief that we do not have a soul. Therefore it is impossible for me to support the notion that our consciousness can be separated from our physical body. I think that the difference between a lucid dream/false awakening and an OBE is the fact that lucid dreamers are aware they are dreaming and those thinking they are having an OBE are in fact experiencing a form of false awakening, but believe that they are awake. From what I have read, near-death experiences occur as a result of the brain reacting to anaesthetic during surgery. I do not approach my dream research with any concept of spirituality, faith or religious belief and assert that supernatural or paranormal phenomena can be explained by alterations on consciousness created in the brain. I hope to post further articles on these topics at a later stage

However, since a recent conversation turned my mind to the subject of dream telepathy, I thought it might be useful to conduct some research into the idea that we can share a mutual dream with other people and see what I could find out about this controversial subject.

However, despite the (lack of) empirical data on dream telepathy, there have been numerous reports of shared or group dreaming. The concept was popularised in the film Inception (2010) in which a group of 'extractors' seeking to commit corporate espionage, are able to use experimental military technology (PASIV) to infiltrate the subconscious of a target and extract information while experiencing a shared dream.  Other films have explored the phenomenon of telepathic/shared dreams - for example, Dreamscape (1984) and the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise series.

Some advocates suggest that the best mechanism for testing the existence of shared dreaming is the lucid dream. Although it is possible to incubate certain dream themes, it is very difficult for inexperienced or non-lucid dreamers to plan their dreams in advance, and impossible to alter the course of a dream in progress without becoming lucid. 

Lucid dreamers are able to manipulate and influence their dreams, suggesting that the lucid dreaming experience is the most fertile ground for experimentation and research into shared dreaming. There are various forms of shared dreaming reported. 

The most commonly reported type of telepathic dream are meshing dreams which is where Dreamer A shares certain parts or elements of his dream with Dreamer B. This phenomenon can be explained by the fact that often the hypothetical Dreamers A and B will have a close or intimate relationship - certainly their relationship is intimate enough for them to have a waking conversation about their dream experiences. Therefore, the shared dream may be a coincidence as a result of shared waking experiences and events. 

Another frequently reported form of mutual dream are meeting dreams - these are the 'true form' of telepathic/shared dreams, in which Dreamer A and Dreamer B meet in the dream world and are able to communicate with one another. Stephen LaBerge of the Lucidity Institute believes that mutual/shared dream experiments in the sleep laboratory can test the objective reality of shared dream worlds - i.e, test whether the dream world is a genuine alternative reality. In Lucid Dreams (1968), Celia Green describes the experience of Oliver Fox who was able to 'meet' his friends in planned locations within a dream, by setting an intention to do so. Fox was able to counter allegations that he experienced a successful 'meeting dream' because he had simply incubated the dream and the intention to meet his friends, Elkington and Slade, by claiming that Slade (who had later disclosed that he had not had a dream that night), failed to turn up in the set location. Both Fox and Elkington, had met in the dream as planned, and expected to also see the absent Slade, with both reporting afterwards that he was not present. Fox argued that if this was simply a case of dream incubation - because both he and Elkington expected to see Slade - it made no sense that both (separately) experienced him as missing during their respective dreams.

The first person to document the phenomenon of dream telepathy in the modern age was Sigmund Freud, who produced a model which expressed his ideas. In Dreams and Telepathy (1922) which is reproduced in Psychoanalysis and the Occult (1953), Freud considered that a connection between dreams and telepathy could neither be proven nor disproven. Like myself, he was deeply suspicious about the notion and stated that he had never experienced a telepathic dream himself, nor in the accounts of any of his patients. Two dreams which would fit within the definition of a telepathic dream (the death of a son and a sister-in-law) were labelled as 'purely subjective anticipations'. His ideas on telepathic dreaming were not widely accepted at the time, yet he continued to communicate them. 

In the 1940s, the subject was tackled by Jule Eisenbud, Geraldine Pederson-King and Nandor Fodor, who described alleged cases of dream telepathy. Albert Ellis regarded their evidence to have been based on flimsy, insubstantial evidence which could be better explained by bias, coincidence and unconscious cues and accused them of emotional involvement in their research, resulting in observations and judgements being clouded by a desire to prove that dream telepathy existed (see A Ellis, 'Telepathy and Psychoanalysis: A Critique of Recent Findings' (1947) Psychiatric Quarterly 21 and 'Re-analysis of an Alleged Telepathic Dream' (1949) Psychiatric Quarterly 23).

There have been many experiments conducted to test the theory of dream telepathy and its effectiveness, but with significant issues of blinding. Many of the test subjects found ways to communicate with their peers to make it appear that they were telepathic and attempts to cut off communication between the agent, sender and receiver of information failed because subjects were able to get around blindfolds, despite best attempts to make the empirical studies rigorous and reliable (see P McBroom, 'Dreams, Art and Mental Telepathy' (1967) Science News 92). In studies commenced in 1962, which took place at Maimonides Medical Centre in Brooklyn, New York, and led by researchers Montague Ullman and Stanley Krippner, subjects were monitored and awakened after a period of REM sleep and separated to study the claimed ability to communicate telepathically. The results, published in 'Dream Telepathy: Experimental and Clinical Findings' in N Totten, Psychoanalysis and the Paranormal: Lands of Darkness (2003), suggested that there was some evidence of dream telepathy. Krippner and Cheryl Stanley also analysed the phenomenon in studies published in 'Dreams, Telepathy and Various States of Consciousness' (2011) NeuroQuantology 9(1). 

During the Maimonides experiments, Ullman stated that one of his subjects recalled a dream in which he had given a chromium soap dish to someone who was building a house. Unbeknown to the subject, Ullman had recently been mistakenly given a chromium soap dish while he was building his own house, and had retained the dish as an act of belligerent dishonesty due to his annoyance at the rising building costs. Ullman thought that the 'dream telepathy' of the subject was a symbol of his distrust for therapists. 

A further 'example' of a successful dream telepathy experiment between a telepathic sender and telepathic receiver, involved a target painting, Dance Class (sometimes referred to as School of Dance) (1871) by Edgar Degas. The receiver recalled a dream in which 'I was in a class made up of maybe half a dozen people, it felt like a school...there was one little girl who was trying to dance with me.' The problem with the interpretation of this dream telepathy dream as successful lies in the fact that the definition of a target match between the sender and receiver is very broad and subjective in nature - indeed, the dream recalled by the receiver does not match particularly accurately with the actual image in the Degas painting, and is very vague on specific details, such as the presence of young female ballerinas wearing tutus (and one facing the wall, crying); the mirror and green watering-can; or the old man seated at a piano playing the violin. Even on the face of it, the description given by the receiver and the actual Degas painting does not appear to be a positive match. 

In another of Ullman and Krippner's Maimonides experiments, reported in the 1970s, a local artist gave a projector show at a rock concert, turning the whole audience into a group of telepathic senders. Firstly, they watched a short colour film about eagles and their nesting habits, then about birds from all around the world an mythical birds, such as the phoenix. Throughout the screening of the film footage, the Holy Modal Rounder's played their song, If You Want to be a Bird (1968) Located in a 100 mile radius of the rock concert, 5 telepathic receivers were told about the event and asked to record their dreams at midnight, around the time of the 'exposure'. The following dreams were reported:

Receiver 1: '...something mythological, like a griffin or a phoenix'

Receiver 2: 'a snake'

Receiver 3: 'grapes'

Receiver 4: 'an embryo in flames'

Receiver 5: did not sleep, but visualised 'a number of seagulls flying over water'

While 2 out of 5 receivers dreaming (or visualising) birds seems like an excellent result, one must beware cherry-picking results which leads to flaws in the test. The target material of birds is very broad  and unspecific - it wasn't a solitary species of bird, which would have made a correct answer more impressive, but all types of birds, which could render the correct answers of 'phoenix' and 'seagulls' as nothing more than mere coincidence. A more specific and measurable target transmission is required in order to produce more reliable results. Further, it may be that the receivers were aware of the likelihood that the Holy Modal Rounders would play one of their most successful recently released songs. If You Want to be a Bird (or 'Birdsong' as it is otherwise known) because it featured prominently in the incredibly popular film, Easy Rider (1969). This knowledge may have influenced the receivers dreaming/visualising birds after being made aware that the band would be performing at a rock concert during which the target transmission would be made.

The experiments by Krippner and Ullman (which were known as 'picture target tests') were criticised by CEM Hansel in 'The Search for a Demonstration of ESP' in P Kuntz, A Skeptics Handbook of Parapsychology (1985) who argued that there was a weakness in the design, in the way in which the agent become aware of the target pictures. The agent should have been the only person who should have known the target until all judging of the targets had been completed, however an experimenter was with the agent when the target envelope was opened. As the experimenter was able to communicate with the subjects of the test, Hansel concluded that there were poor controls in place. An attempt to replicate the experiments was conducted by David Foulkes and Edward Belvedere, who found that neither the subject nor the judges matched the targets with the dreams above chance level (see E Belvedere & D Foulkes, 'Telepathy and Dreams: A Failure to Replicate' (1971) Perceptual & Motor Skills 33). Other results from Foulkes and Belvedere were negative (see CEM Hansel, The Search for Psychic Power, ESP and Parapsychology Revisited (1989) for criticism and analysis of these studies). In S Sherwood & C Roe, 'A Review of Dream ESP Studies Conducted Since the Maimonides Dream ESP Programme' (2003) Journal of Consciousness Studies 10, the authors reviewed the literature on dream telepathy and claimed that there was some evidence for its existence. However in J Alcock, 'Give the Null Hypothesis a Chance: Reasons to Remain Doubtful About the Existence of Psi' (2003) Journal of Consciousness Studies 10, it was argued that Sherwood and Roes' review was based on an 'extreme messiness' of data, the experiments at Maimonides had failed to prove the existence of dream telepathy and 'lack of replication is rampant'. 

Robert Waggoner (see Lucid Dreaming: Gateway to the Inner Self (2008)), the author - an expert in lucid dreaming points to the recurrence of the phenomenon within psychiatric therapy sessions where patients refer to 'psychic glimpses' of their psychiatrist which were communicated to them from within a dream. However, Waggoner's secondary source material cites the Maimonides experiments and Ullman's anecdotal evidence (referred to above) as support for the phenomenon and therefore is an unreliable source in itself. Waggoner also recounts a personal experience of dream teleaphy. He states that a simple, yet unpredictable action which took place in his own lucid dream was implanted into the subconscious of a friend. His dream was recalled as follows:

'I'm inside [a restaurant/bar], enjoying a feeling of lucid euphoria, when I see my friend Moe come inside...Trying to make some impact on her, I get the idea to make a peace sign with my fingers. I say: 'Look Moe, do you see this peace sign? Every time you see it, it can make you become lucid - you'll know you're dreaming'. Again, I put the peace sign in front of her face.'

Four months later, Waggoner was travelling for business and met Moe for lunch. As he stood outside the restaurant, he saw her approach with a curious look in her eyes and suddenly, she reached up and made a peace sign in front of his face. Waggoner asked why she had done this, to which Moe replied: 'I don't know, just felt like it'. This may be a simple coincidence - one would need to ask whether the peace sign was a common gesture or greeting amongst the local population which had been adopted by Moe/anyone with whom she had recent contact in her waking reality. If using the peace sign was prevalent in the time and place during which this experience took place (for example, a two-finger peace sign was popular during the 1960s and is also a common gesture in Oriental youth cultures today), this may have inadvertently influenced Waggoner's decision to make the peace sign in his lucid dream, quite coincidental to Moe's use of the gesture in his waking reality. The peace sign is a very common gesture after all, particularly following Winston Churchill's iconic usage and also, celebrities such as Paul McCartney, often being pictured making it. Therefore, this anecdotal evidence cannot be taken as evidence that Waggoner used his lucid dream to telepathically implant the impulse in Moe, particularly as in waking reality, she made no mention of lucidity nor confirmed anything else said/done by Waggoner in his lucid dream. 

We should be cautious before reaching conclusions which sound attractive, but are only supported by anecdotal 'evidence' which comes from those with a vested interest in, or desire, to prove the phenomenon exists, and has failed to be proven by empirical studies, subject to peer-review and equally unsuccessful attempts to replicate. Indeed, no para-psychological experimentations into dream telepathy have produced replicable results. 

If you are interested in the phenomenon of telepathic/shared dreaming, you may wish to take part in the ongoing global experiment led by Dr Rory Mac Sweeney (@TheMutualDream on Twitter) of 'Wake Up in Your Dreams' website. In the study, which is known as the 'Mutual Dream Experiment', dreamers are asked to conduct a monthly global dream share attempt, using an integrated online password system. Dreamers are asked to record a secret password online, and on the last Saturday of each month, attempt to exchange the password with another dreamer, using an anonymous email to verify the results. If you would like to take participate, click on the link above to be directed to Dr Sweeney's website and the homepage for the experiment.