In my limited lucid dreams (I’ve only had like 5) I still haven’t read anything, but in my normal dreams text isn’t as distorted as some posts make it seem like it would be. Text may slightly change between readings, but the letters are always correct and spelling real words (it’s never been nonsense letters or words). In a dream the other day I picked up a record in a record store and was reading the track listing and noticed that the tracks were in a different order than the copy I owned as I read through the track listing. But in dreams, my memory of text is a little bad… while I do remember the names of all the records I picked up in that dream (and some of them don’t even really exist in waking life), I still cant remember the name of the store it took place in, although I remember reading the sign on the outside before I went in…
In non-lucid dreams I never actually seem to read text more than once, so I can’t be sure about the consistancy of it.
While lucid however, reading paragraphs of text can be suprisingly facinating. Each time I read something, it says something slightly different. Usually the initial topic is what I would expect given what the text is written on.
For example, I opened a gaming magazine a few nights ago and read a small part of a review for a popular game. The second time I looked at it, the text was describing the comparisons between this game and lucid dreaming. The third time, it had changed the topic outright to LDs
The most interesting part though, is that the text is always coherent.
The only time I’ve been able to test this was sort of accidentaly.
About three months into Lucid Dreaming (or trying to, at least), I had a dream where I was reading a book, but I kept opening it and closing it, amazed at how it changed.
I didn’t read the text, but the format constantly changed. For example, first it was like a fiction book, then it changed to a listing similar to bulleted text. It happened to change about four or five times before I closed the book and said, “I’m dreaming!”
…at which point, yup, you guessed it, I instantly woke up!
I once was reading a piece of paper and singing it. I only remembered about 1 line though. It was a song that i’ve never heard before but sounded ok. I don’t remember it now though. Other times when i read it is a bit blury. I think this is one of those things that different for everyone.
Well I also have RD which vary in clarity; sometimes I can see things and remember them very clearly, and other times they are just ideas that barely take shape in my dream. The only thing I can say is you have really good dream recall if you can remember the exact words you looked at.
But regarding LDs, I would say it depends on their level. One lucid dream (2nd one) I looked at signs along the street and the more I concentrated on them, the clearer they became. My next LD I tried to look for writing, but as I picked up the so-famous THU book, it ended up being a picturebook. The writing everywhere was foggy and constantly changing, and I was tired within my dream (I donno if this is possible, maybe I was just borred) so I couldn’t find anything to read.
Text in my dreams varies. Sometimes its coherent language that stays the same and sometimes it changes… other times its complete jibberish. Often I have dreams where I am trying to write and I can’t seem to make the letters correctly. I keep messing them up and crossing them out.
I had one dream where I was in a supermarket and letters along the back wall clearly spelled out “Don’t Eat Pork.” I can still see them in my head. Thats fairly odd that message should get through.
Im not really thinking that my dreams were telling me something but I do think it odd that my brain seemed to want that message to come through clearly.
I do think dreams have messages in them though… information… sometimes. I don’t believe that everything is symbolic of something but some things obviously indicate situations that I am thinking about or having trouble with.
In my dreams where there is writing, lucid or not, about 3/4 of it is coherent and consistant; the rest just shuffles about. I’m wondering if it’s more because you know what the writing says rather than it staying the same.
I’ve had dreams where I was able to look at text once, and look again and ssee that it has changed. I’ve also had dreams where text doesn’t change at all. Luckily, when that happened, I knew better, I was already lucid.
Last night i had a dream with really clear writing, the clearest i’ve ever had it. I only saw about one chracter change. But there’s a catch, it was in Japanese. And kanji (the hard type of japanese writing) at that. I could understand a little of it and i was asking someone else about the characters i didn’t know. I still remember some of the characters that i don’t know. I’m going to ask my Japanese teacher at school on monday if it means anything. So you don’t have to know what the writing says to remember it. There were also other characters, but they are too complex and i wouldn’t remember them even in RL.
Thats fairly odd that message should get through.
There were also other characters, but they are too complex and i wouldn’t remember them even in RL.
well, it was an idea.
I don’t suppose we will ever know the real reason.