Gotta admit… when you first mentioned a post about DCs having a consciousness… I was highly sceptical and thought “what the hay?!” But that is a fascinating study.
Maybe other LD’s can try some of the above exercises and post their results here?
Thanks all, but the credits all must go to Paul Tholey (RIP 
) and his team to investigate such controversial topic.
Yes would be great to test some of the ideas mentioned in this paper 
I think there are already some topics about (in the Lucid Lab).
yes, we have the ‘testing the realness of DC’" topic, among others. But it would be great to repeat this experiment in the lab, curious what our findings will be!
Wow this is great I’m just in a very difficult arguement with a bunch of hostile sciencetypes about this very subject on another forum. This ammo is much appreciated. ¦¬)
This is the converstion so far
By me - Do dream characters have seperate consciousness?
I’m a moderately frequent lucid dreamer and many times I’ll get a very high level lucid dream, in a high level lucid your awareness is super sharpened and your not dreamily headed like the low kind. In most low levels when I encounter people (dream characters) they are pretty monosyllabic and dopey, in my high levels I still get those DC’s but I also get the seemingly aware separate entity type of DC’s. These can hold detailed conversations and act in an extremely independent way and generally seem to have consciousness.
My question is, I can accept the recreation of reality happening in my brain, even if the detail is a little mind blowing but are these high level DC’s some sort of temporary split personality with my own brain? They are not just a play back or cutting together of memories, neither are they just an expected response program like the low level DC who just come out with one word answers. Could the high level DC’s be existing along side my own consciousness and use my own brain’s resources at the same time as I am?
Re: Do dream characters have seperate consciousness?
In a word, yes, probably. Multiple personality disorders have been documented, so it’s certainly possible.
Ever make up conversations? Well, I’d imagine it’s the same thing.
Re: Do dream characters have seperate consciousness?
I believe evrything and everyone in your dreams is a part of your subconscious and during lucid dreams you have easier access to your subconscious and all the info it normaly hides from you.
Re: Do dream characters have seperate consciousness?
in as much as meaning resides in the brain, one would expect the random dream to produce something to which the brain can assign some meaning … meaning at abstract, symbolic levels has a recursive and circular quality … some dreams are not completely random, imho: I’ve experienced a dream which assisted me in devising three chess strategies to beat my brother that subsequently worked … I worked through about 18 or 20 past games with him during my dream … a feat I cannot seem to accomplish while awake … I do not regard that as a random dream, but rather as putting my brain to good use while sleeping … a technique I use to solve problems on an as needed basis …
Me - Re: Do dream characters have seperate consciousness?
Ok if these high level DC’s are a type of multiple personality within my own brain existing along side the normal consciousness (me), then could they also lay down memory? Could I access that memory? Could a DC have greater control over my brains resources at a certain time if only for a short while than I have?
Re: Do dream characters have seperate consciousness?
you question should read do I have separate consciousness.
then you’d be getting a little closer to the answer you seek…
Me - Re: Do dream characters have seperate consciousness?
Ok then, they are me as we are both working on the same hardware so to speak, howver I don’t have any connection to them. If they do have almost complete access to the same brain and “might” be able to lay down memory then it seems to be completely seperate from my own memory.
Are people with a recognised Multiple personality disorders able to access the memory of another personality from the one that to the outside world is considered the dominant personality? If not naturally can this be accessed using other methods for example hypnosis?
Re: Do dream characters have seperate consciousness?
it’s all in YOUR head
Me - Re: Do dream characters have seperate consciousness?
As you say in MY head.
Are you then saying that they can lay memory down and that I could access this memory, as you say, in MY head? Or don’t you know?
Re: Do dream characters have seperate consciousness?
Let’s find out. Next time you’re lucid dreaming…lucidly log onto the computer and let one of them type to us. Then come back when you wake up and see what s/he had to say. Do you remember it?
Re: Do dream characters have seperate consciousness?
who elses head might it be?
who is they?
is/are they you?
the body carrying the brain has access to the brain’s memory, period.
god help those who cannot tell the difference between their dreams and reality … I think I’ve met a few and they are particularly dangerous on the inter states …
Re: Do dream characters have seperate consciousness?
i just read an interesting article saying (basically) that humans are hard-wired to assume agency in the objects around them, especially if they act in a non-random way. That means that if a rock followed you home from school, you would assume that it is a creature instead of an object. If someone in your dreams speaks to you, you assume that the person has a seperate consciousness and is therefore more than another aspect of yourself.
Me - Re: Do dream characters have seperate consciousness?
Quote >>Let’s find out. Next time you’re lucid dreaming…lucidly log onto the computer and let one of them type to us. Then come back when you wake up and see what s/he had to say. Do you remember it?<<
That sounds a little complex, letting them write down something on paper that I can’t see would do… although I can check my memory then and there, rather than waiting to wake.
Με||όώ you need to Mello, maybe its just your choice of font? I don’t think it is an outrageous question to ask “Do dream characters have separate consciousness?” If even for a short period.
Are you a frequent lucid dreamer? They might be an aspect in my mind but let be clear Με||όώ matey although I can read/predict what many dream characters will say do many are very different, switched on and I can predict their actions and can hold full conversation with facts that I don’t remember obtaining?
I assume my brain is creating the extremely real dream character and to do this it is accessing parts of my own memory that I can’t usually bring to mind. Basically alot of brain resources are being focused on some of these characters, is it that far fetched to think about them having a consciousness that runs parallel to my own in the same brain even for a short while?
is/are they you?
the body carrying the brain has access to the brain’s memory, period.<<< Hmmm I could think of at least a dozen examples where the brain of a body has had memory blocked and that memory that might have been laid down cannot be accessed
“god help those who cannot tell the difference between their dreams and reality.” Errrrr WTF?? How do you think Με||όώ that lucidity is achieved?
You seem to be attacking me for having an altered state of consciousness Mellow or do you just find my initial question not worthy of replying to? Why did you bother by the way?
Mistress Alt… I’m not trying to say that these high level dream characters are some spiritual beings or drifting ghostly mind. I assumed they are an aspect of me I’m just interested in the mechanics of what is occurring in my lucid mind. Remember my brain state is more awake that in REM sleep when a lucid occurs.
Although I take your point about the non-random not predicted way that people/beings/objects etc might act, thus triggering the feeling they have separate consciousness. What I’m asking is could these aspects of myself have for a short period consciousness that approaches my own? Maybe the word separate is confusing matters here, it certainly seems to have put a bug up Mellows ass?
Mystic do you have a link to the Tholey source for this article?
Heh interesting discussion
No I don’t have a link to this article. In fact, I don’t think you can find this paper somewhere on the net… On PubMed there’s only a short abstract of it. I’ve found it in the big article collection of the psychology library here at school. Perhaps they too have access to past copies of the “Perceptual and Motor Skills” magazine?
On the Paul Tholey memorial :
https://gestalttheory.net/people/thol_ref.html
there is a french translation of this article, but no english translation. You can find other articles in English and German.
Wow thanks for that link! I see there’s a link to a related article about DC consciousness Tholey once wrote: gestalttheory.net/archive/traumgestalten.pdf
It’s in German though 
Wow, I find that very interesting, especially since I am always curious on an outward perspective on me. I do believe I may give it a try when I start LD’ing.
Very interesting,I can see how DCs could have memorys from past dreams.
I would like to study this more myself,If anyone has any links or anymore info on this I would be in debt to you.
This is the most interesting thing I’ve read since I first learned about lucid dreaming about 7 months ago. Very nice, there should be more studies on this. My LDing has been a little off lately, I think this has just given me new inspiration.
I believe in multdimensional theory. We are all one huge consciousness separated/encarnated in many objects and characters, living at the same time, in different reallitys or vectors of time but all happening just right now. DC are not only in my mind, but I,m also in theirs. We humans are DC´s. I had a LD and I asked a man “How do you feel of being a part of my mind?” He said then “Exactly the way you feel being part of mine. We are both dreaming each other”.
Every ego on this earth, awake or asleep, every object, all diversity of things, they are only different versions of the same Self. Expresions of their content. Time isnt lineal but vertical, like a tree, the tree of life. Our huge mistake, I believe, is to take brain as the basis of dream, wich is our materialistic philosphical point of view. But maybe we are wrong, maybe dream is the basis of brain. ¿What if matter is only a peculiar vibration of consciousness? What if dreams dont occur in our brains, but our brain in our dream? ¿What if consciuosness is not inside our body but our body inside consciousness? The problem is thinking ourselfes as separated entitys, as separated souls. ¿What if the universe is more as a great mind, rather than a great mechanic-machine?
Well you may say I have to proof it, but our methods of proving things are limitated by the same paradigm from were they come from… I see with my heart, and thas my experimental proof.
Consciousness is not a subproduct of matter. Like fruits contain seeds and seeds fruits, the universe in the begining contained conciousness like a seed. Everything what comes in the future, its already here, but its only waiting to manifest. Evolution is not a progress from things wich convert in other things, there is no change, universe is only a huge brain/mind remembering what “it” already fullfiled. What we see is the past. Just like during dreams we create from our memorys a whole scenario, such is the universe nature, a mental function, very similar to dreaming.
The problem again is taking ourselfs as the basis of experience, we are not the experimentors, we are the experience of the universe. We are not experimenting with things, things are being experimented true us. We are not dreamers but dreamed by something elese. We do not think, we are the toughts.
We are the toughts, and maybe the thinker at the same time but in an other order of reallity. There we are the Source of ourselfs/ego. ¡What a paradox! 
I don’t think the experiment was desinged to suggest that dream characters have a seperate or independent consciousness… but I think it suggests that dream characters can operate independently as if they were individuals in their own right.
The following would suggest that the researches were looking at this from the point of view that DC are still generated from within our own subconscious
I don’t think it is weird that we don’t remember some aspects of our dreams… how do we know that we are remebering 100% of any given dream anyway?
Also… have you never dreamt that you were somebody or something else?
Sorry… I was looking at the memory part a little later on… you will need to re read my post.
This study is not promoting that they do act out in on their own… imagine the consequences… as soon as you stop dreaming does that mean the dream continues somewhere else without you?.. People who believe in other realities would probably say “yes”. But this experiment wasn’t desigined to test that.
Yes, independency could be only a reflection of the suconscious, but not only for DC, but for ourselfs. ¿Can we really operate with independence of our own inner psyquic proceess? ¿Are there really a difference between us and DC´s?
Free will, every decison we aparently make on our own, they are pretty conditioned by our past experiences. Subconscious play a big role in our actions. We are reflecting its content every second, just as DC`s do. We are puppets, walking and talking to each other with virtual independence, but innerly we are the same one pupeteer/universe, talking only with himself. Our identity is only a mask the whole universe uses to experience itself separate form itself, isolated/ego.
There is no escape, ever action we take, is an expression of some latent content in the universe. We give life to its ideas.
Does dream characters still exist living their lifes while we are awake? Yes, just as our bodys are still on bed while we are flying in the dream world, no matter we are consciouss of it or not; just like this they have their own life no matter if we are not aware of it. For us they disapear but not for themselfs.
By the way, and I,m going to contradict myself now. ¿Is there a way to proof that our body is really still on bed while we are seleping an not aware of it. You can say, ¡sure, thats a silly question, put a camara or an observer to watch you while seelping! But, lets say there is no witness, artificial, animal, or human to observe or sense the body, how can we be sure its still right there? ¿Does things stop their continum of existence when “we” or “something” break atention to it?. ¿Does objetcs in sapce have dependency to a subject?
There are to ways then of thinking it. Or we become aware of different reallitys and characters wich are there all the time, or these reallitys exist only while we are aware of them. ¡Maybe both! They exist all the time in a latent, dormant form, and awareness give life to them. ¡Yes!, Its like a play, all actors are setlle in their positions, with their scripts well memorized, but they dont move or start manifesting the idea of the paly untill the public/witness is there.
¿So how does thesee fit to our dormant preexistent body? Its not there in a manifest way of existence, its not visible for there is nobody to watch. When we sleep our body became energy with no mass or form, its absorves itself in a sort of energy configuration or code until we, someone or something becomes aware of the body.
Matter is a cuality of consciousness, and quantum mechanics and new phisics are discoverying the play of cosnciousness in the results of their experiments. ¡This is a paradigm revolution!
Except that when we are lucid dream… we ARE aware of our body in bed. Also, if DCs exist while we are awake as well as when we are asleep, why does their consciousness change when we become lucid? Why should they change if they are entirely separate? The article is about characters in lucid dreams, not normal ones. Characters in NLDs are often boring and flat, and I doubt they are there when we awake.
Tommers, about the memory thing and some of the other stuff you said…
What if the brain HAS recreated a consciousness for another dream character and not much else? By consciousness I mean free will and awareness of itself, but then it could simply feed off of your thoughts and memories?
So you wouldn’t wake up remembering what THEIR perspective was because once it happens they have no recollection of it except from YOUR perspective and your memories, but they are still separate with their own perspective.
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
Sometimes in a dream you switch between yourself and someone else in a dream. Perhaps you are remembering part of your DC’s dream.