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Dreams are a dynamic complex of mental content, that is they occur inside our personal psyches and, as such, they cannot be said to exist in any type of objective field that could be verifiably common to more than just a single dreamer. If, for example, we go to a football game that others have also been to we can later make reference to an incident that took place during the game, for example a field goal, that both parties may understand via their common experience of that incident. Obviously this is a reference to "external reality." Now if a person has dream in which a particular person that he knows appears and with whom he has a conversation in the dream it is not very likely that he can continue that conversation which occurred in the dream by calling that dreamt of person on the phone and then telling her that he would like to continue that conversation that he had had with her in the dream. This writer is not aware of any serious research that has taken place regarding shared dreams, as such, but were such a thing possible there would be a minimum of two requirements: firstly, that the dreams in question would be simultaneous to each other in time and secondly, that the dreams contain an identical environment - in other words that both time and space are "one" or identical. Those are what we call necessary conditions but they are not necessarily sufficient conditions. Only sufficient conditions can form proof that there is such a thing as "mutual dreaming." One major problem with the notion of mutual dreaming is the question as to the location of both dreaming parties. Specifically, can it be determined that the two individuals were in the same place during the time of dreaming?  Would this mean that if the above conditions were satisfied that is that the dream took place at the same time and in the same environment but in reality that the two dreamers were, during the dream, in separate physical locations? Note the term "physical" location. Is there then a "metaphysical" location that can have an particular identifiable environment and exist in another dimension? If there is such an environment then it would seem that in order to get further substantial proof of that "place" it should be consistently available for others to go to as well. Inevitably the basis for so called "mutual dreaming" breaks down. There may be claims though of approximately "mutual" or "shared" dreaming which events occur when an individual has a dream that is remarkably similar to a dream claimed by another. This phenomena can be found where the two dreams both have a general frame of reference that is remarkably similar or a dream that has the same (type of) content as another dream, yet which dreams occur at different times. These then may be relatively shared dreams because the purpose, intent, experience and principals operative in the dreams are substantially the same. Dreams occur in people’s consciousness, in their minds but there are some special case circumstances when we have a dream that warrants a fuller and more complex understanding of the possible environments involved. Now there is that type of dream in which a person dreams that he or she is talking to a deceased relative or friend whom they had known when the deceased was alive. As well there is a belief, held by some, that the mind transcends the body and that thus the mind dwells, at least for part of it's experience, in the astral realm, which some believe, where it is a positive experience to be what they call Heaven (or "hell" or "purgatory," depending on the individual experience and what some would also call "karmic" pattern.   There are those very rare dreams in which we may find ourselves not in a fantasy based environment where exceptional things, that contradict the laws of nature, occur but rather in a known physical place that has been an actual part of our real waking experience. In the case of dreaming about a deceased person, especially where a meaningful communication takes place in the dream, we have an even more complicated problem of identifying the dream environment because we would first have to establish the deceased person’s "regular" environment, which absurdly is not a real environment but a type of metaphysical one and from there we would have to determine how she projected herself into our dream environment.  Would it be through her consciousness? Is that environment a psychological one, that is based on and in the living dreamer’s mind? If the living person's mind or at least the contents of her mind is the dream environment then that might suggest that there is no common exterior environment in which both the dreamer and the deceased person would be acting and communicating in, that is unless the living dreamer can some how access the deceased person's metaphysical reality or "space" but not necessarily her mind.  But if the deceased person is actually conscious of the communication involved in the dream that implies that there is a soul that is still conscious of itself and thus who’s consciousness has survived the death of his or her body. Now when two people in a normal earthly conversation communicate by phone, for example, they are talking in two separate environments and thus, unlike a dream scenario, where two those communicating share the same common environment and which environment may even play a significant role as far as the theme of the dream is concerned, those speaking via a telephone system are, generally speaking, in a "mental" mode of experience, i.e., they are just exchanging thoughts and ideas. The problem with a dream situation in which two entities are relating where one is alive and the other deceased, assuming that that is a logical possibility, is that one of the dream participants is "stationed" on earth in real life but the other participant is not. If we were to say that the deceased person is simply there as a symbol in our minds representing a perspective or principal that is necessary, as a contribution, to the theme and understanding of the dream, then we have no further problem. But how do we reconcile the environment issue in the face of the possibility that the deceased person is actually communicating with us autonomously? In other words that the deceased person has her own agenda apart from our will and immediate consciousness and is thus acting independently. No doubt the issue as to the possibility of a deceased person communicating with a living person would be raised by very skeptical or disbelieving argument but there is also a belief that such an experience is possible and in the final analysis one cannot disprove another’s experience as long as there are no inconsistencies in the reported events involved in that experience. In fact one can reasonably try to calculate the number of atoms in the universe but it is extremely arrogant to attempt to completely access and judge another's experience.  What might be the reasonable grounds for the claim that one had actual contact and communication with a deceased person?  There would be both substantial and reasonable grounds  where a dreamer, for example, would dream of her deceased father who appears in the dream wherein he informs her that there is a particular practical concern that must be attended to in her life of which she was completely unaware (for example, birds intruding and nesting into her roof through a break in the shakes.  If, upon later inspection, that "revelation" were to prove true, then the framed assertion that she had had her own psychic experience and had simply projected that experience onto a symbol, which symbol was her dead father, so as to conclude that the entire environment had remained entirely in her own head (mind) would not be any more provable than the frame of reference that her deceased father (in the form of his soul) had actually come to her in a dream and of his own independent consciousness and volition had communicated to her. But if the environment is entirely psychological as opposed to "real," that is to say an environment that has a common ground of mutually shared experience then would that mean that separate "environmental" experiences are taking place in each participant’s consciousness? For example, in my dream, if I see my aunt on a hill, under a tree with me, telling me that I should not be seeing the girl that I am currently in a relationship with, as she will, according to my aunt’s prediction, eventually betray me then when I refer back to that in my memory I can say that we were sitting under the shade of a tree on a hill when she gave me that advise in a dream. Would the hill and the tree then be products of my imagination that would only be in my head and not in my aunt’s mind? Or would three other possibilities suffice? The first of which would be alternatively that my aunt had had a variation of my experience in her own mind which was not identical, not shared but very similar in all elements and sufficed for her purposes as teacher and the second of which would be that my aunt had an entirely different environmental experience but which experience gave rise to the very same principal or had at least supported that principal, and the third of which would be that my deceased aunt has no sensory system in that she has no nervous system as we commonly know it and thus could only express that principal in the most abstract way, such as might be expressed through a telephone system to a receiving person on the other end of the line. All of these seem to be more expressive of the message in contrast to the environment which is not to depreciate the importance of the environment in a dream, especially in that the environmental variables are of exquisite importance in dreams. It seems more and more to be the case, as we analyze the environmental component of dreams that the environment is a composite of psychological symbolism that facilitates the message in a singular sense of importance.

There is yet another phenomena which seems to rely on a real external "place" as a mutually observable setting for a dream. This is what was alluded to earlier above in reference to our finding ourselves "...not in a fantasy based environment where exceptional things that contradict the laws of nature occur but rather in a known physical place that has been an actual part of our experience" in our real day-to-day lives. This "dream" experience is very rare and involves three necessary conditions: 1) sleep, 2) the activation of one’s etheric or "astral" body, and 3) a real secular environment that can be verified by common experience. Quite simply this is an experience that is not simply psychological but rather externally experiential. In other words the environment is existent and real and is thus external but the person’s physical body is stationary and asleep while the astral body moves to that place, in space and time where the individual who's astral body is "activated" may experience activities that may later be verified in the waking state by another participant who had been in the same dream and who had experienced the "common ground" with the other. Sometimes this is referred to as "astral travel" in the sleep state. If that is the case then is the notion of "remote viewing" also a constituent of dreaming. The answer is "no" for the very simple reason that the "remote viewer" - if that experience is truly possible - is not in the sleep state. So remote viewing then is not part of dreaming. In summary then the environment for dreaming is very predominantly the mind. As imagination is metaphysical then it does not fall under the physical jurisdiction of the laws of physical science and therefore it can be extraordinarily creative to the extent that we can find ourselves defying the laws of gravity, observing the immediate metamorphosis of one animal state into another, miraculous time-space transformation from one place to another, etc. with virtually anything being possible. But that serves the most important purpose of dreams, that is to convey an important message to our psyches.

(This article will continue with the importance of an understanding of the personality in relation to understanding dreams.)