Special effects
are the cinematographic and theatrical properties native to the altered
state of sleep. Measurable changes in the body and brain during slumber
permit the dream to appear and behave in ways not limited to the laws or
conventions of the physical world.
Moreover, a dream is virtual theater. In sleep, you could stay out-of-frame,
as if you were watching a flat screen TV from afar. But a virtual reality
allows you to enter the scene and become immersed in the environment that
surrounds you. Rather than remain a member of the audience, you become an
actor in the play. Some virtual realities are mundane - a close simulation
of physical life. Add special effects and you can transform into an avatar
living in a fantasy world.
Common effects - scene
shifts, time slips, sudden appearances or disappearances |
Exceptional effects - talking animals, magical slippers, flying monkeys, melting witches |
Dorothy, you aren't in Kansas any more. Special
effects lift you out of your usual dreaming mode and plunk you down in the
middle of the land of Oz. The extraordinary dream is a mutable reality where
people fly, scenery fluxes and things aren't what they seem to be. It takes
a detective's mind to figure out what's really going on.
Special effects occur in ordinary dreams, too, but you may not recognize
them for what they are because they are utilized so seamlessly. Besides,
you're probably used to seeing them on the computer monitor or television
screen. In the movies, optical effects are the sort of graphics that
can be produced by film editing, a camera lens or computer-aided design.
A movie's practical effects are live-action tricks like lifting huge
boulders made of Styrofoam, flying while attached to metal wires or being
disguised by costume and makeup. Dream effects are practical when they match
something real in the physical world. No matter how strange it appears,
a dream with practical effects is actually pointing to something that you
can perceive in waking life.
Optical Effects
Even in everyday dreams, scene shifts are very frequent: you find yourself
in one place and then, in the blink of an eye, you are in another. Or you
stay in one place, but props and characters enter and exit mysteriously,
here one moment and gone the next. In compositing, the dream combines visual
elements from several sources to produce a collage of individual images
or a splicing of sequences so that the timing of events doesn't occur in
the order you expect. As in waking life, a dream can be a head-directed
display, where you view first hand from a position behind your eyes. Autoscopic
views are also common, whenever you recognize your face second-hand or observe
your body from afar. Extraordinary dreams can mimic many more optical effects,
like these.
Morphing is a film process in which one object shape-changes into
another. It's especially noticeable in dreams when other characters elongate,
flatten, alter age or facial appearance. You can change, too. The flexible
nature of dream enables you to become someone else, develop super strength,
go through obstructions, levitate objects, teleport and time travel. Or
get electrocuted, exploded or plummet to the ground, yet emerge without
a scratch. In the virtual world of dream, even your own body can be a special
effect.
Native Artifacts and Cobbled Memories
Historically speaking, special effects didn't precede the dream - it
was the other way around. Flying dreams were reported by the ancient Egyptians
and Babylonians, much before the advent of mechanical aviation. Thus, the
dream has an innate ability to produce special effects all on its own. The
aerial views of the flying dream join other well-known effects like false
awakenings, sleep paralysis and hypnogogic slide shows as common native
artifacts of the altered state of sleep. There is no need to put a waking
spin on your interpretation of such artifacts. For example, you wouldn't
be having a natural paralytic sleep experience because you are somehow blocked
and frozen in waking life, but because you have simply reached that state
of consciousness where sleep paralysis is likely to occur.
Nowadays, though, many dream effects are created from imagery imported
directly through physical sight. If you are a frequent viewer of electronic
media, your sleeping mind can fashion a dream from a wealth of pre-produced
graphic effects. The difference between cobbled memories of waking life
and native sleep events is a subtle one, but can be learned over time, especially
when you become lucid or intentionally induce your dreaming experience.
Because of the dream's native capacity to create of its own accord, it
can be argued that at least some extraordinary dreams have nothing to do
with the physical world. They are star-gates to the mysterious, mystical,
magical, spiritual, esoteric, mind-boggling land of Oz. So it may seem retro
to return home to Kansas in order to understand them. But when the extraordinary
is added to the mix, even common ideas need an upgrade.
All dreams are produced using human hardware. As long as you are alive,
you rely on your physical body and brain to perceive them. No matter what
strange sights you see, no matter who or what you encounter, no matter how
you appear and act in the dreamscape, all dream content relies on you being
a card-carrying member of the human race.
So, on the one hand, your dreams will have native structural aspects
similar to those of fellow humans. On the other hand, the overlay of specific
content will be individualized to custom fit you. You are the only one with
your particular data base of unique life memories from which to form the
dream. The pictures in your mind may be utilized to describe the average
dream, that is, self-absorbed mind wanderings confined to sleep. But to
graduate to an understanding of practical effects, you need to put on your
detective hat to locate the clues that connect your perceptive dreams with
waking life.
Practical Effects
The nexus of dreams and daily existence has been demonstrated, time and
time again, in stimulus-response research within the laboratory and out
in the field. It's become obvious that you don't always dream oblivious
to the outside world, like a self-absorbed hermit projecting personal pictures
on the walls of a private cave.
Perception is the recognition of what's beyond private cave walls.
An exterior influence (like a ringing alarm clock) can be incorporated into
your dreams. You perceive what's outside your self-projection booth by using
sensory, subliminal or extrasensory means. Perception is also the revelation
of the wizard behind the curtain of certain special effects. It's the only
type of dream content that can create a factual foundation for dreams.
When you compare events in their waking and sleeping versions, assumptions
about dreams can be tested and verified.
The links between the two worlds are easy to recognize when the dream
is a clone of an everyday circumstance. In such a case, the same words can
be used to describe both events.
Label A
word that is a literal description of the physical stimulus. Found in the
oral or written report. |
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| Let's say your dream report contained the words "picnic," "grassy
field" "cigar" and "Uncle Paul." And you quickly
realize that the dream refers to yesterday's trip to the park with your
favorite relatives. These words are a direct reference to or presentation
of the obvious. If you had taken pictures of the park picnic, you'd be able
to select video or snapshots to illustrate the dream. |
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There are many other waking elements that the dream can duplicate completely
or in part. Tactile sensation (the cool grass). Smell and taste (the pungent
pickles). Sound (the twang of your cousin's guitar). Emotion (anger). Attitude
(playfulness). Thoughts (I wonder if Aunt Susan is pregnant?). Conversations
(Are you on a diet? Nope.) The labels you pin on a clone dream are realistic
and literal. A cigar is just a cigar. However, some elements that seem
to be obvious, really have hidden levels.
Clones are clear and conspicuous signs of the dream's capability to remember
the past, report on the present and prefigure the future. A hard-headed
literalist will accept only perfectly labeled dream specimens as proof that
ESP exists. But this misdirected attitude ignores the dream's aptitude for
creating metamorphic effects. The real issue is whether there is any rhyme
or reason to the mutable quality of Oz. It turns out that, for a perceptive
dream, there is. It's based on the dream's innate ability to picture information.
Sensory Sub-features
Parts of a perceptive dream will be the rudiments of what the eye sees
and the body senses. These structural sub-features are the literal
clues that point to the original waking event that inspired the dream.
Suppose one of the video clips of your trip to the park is out of focus.
On the screen is a very fuzzy image of something long and green that's jumping
around. Would you be able to recognize the grasshopper that visited your
picnic table? To identify it correctly, you'd rely, not on clear detail,
but on the 3 main components of visual sight (color, form and motion). Each
of our 5 senses have sub-features that the dream can retain as we first
perceived them, even while the rest of the image transforms or remains vague.
Here's some examples.
Vision (size, number, light intensity, detail, perspective). Especially...
color (luster, transparency, hue)
form (line, silhouette, curvature)
motion (direction, distance, duration, velocity, relative position)
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Sound (pitch, volume, rhythm, timing, tone, beat)
Touch (texture, density, weight, temperature, pressure, balance)
Taste (salty, sweet, sour, bitter, meaty)
Smell (fruity, woodsy, floral, spicy, metallic, fishy, moldy,
rotten, fresh and clean) |
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Sub-features
Structural components of the labeled whole. Not often found in a dream report. |
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Accurate Analogy
In the movie version of The Wizard of Oz, Dorothy awoke from her
trip through Oz to discover that some of its characters had equivalents
in the people of Kansas. For instance, one of the family farm hands looked
like the Cowardly Lion. Your dreams can produce the same sort of transformations.
Analogy A
comparison between 2 elements with similar sub-features. Initially determined
by evaluating dreaming and waking events. |
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| Suppose that instead of your literal cigar-smoking uncle, you dream of Paul
as a bear. Both Paul and the dream bear are tall, dark-haired, heavy and
smell bad. Paul is not a bear, but if you could place them side by side,
their similarities would become evident (form, color, weight, acrid scent).
A structural analogy involves alterations and conversions that are arrayed
according to the underlying blueprints of the original daytime event. |
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Bear is an accurate analogy for Paul, but not a link you'd likely find
in a dream dictionary. Analogy is not the same as symbol, sign or metaphor.
Many dictionary "meanings" are conceptual connections that vary
from culture to culture. They are representations that depend on speaking,
reading and writing a particular language, like English. In contrast, you
don't have to know English to see how Uncle Paul resembles a bear. Sensory
analogy is true for all humans, whereas literary symbolism is not. Symbolism
is learned language. Analogy is shared experience.
Sensory analogies are dramatizations of the elements in physical life.
Some dream analogies are modifications of visual elements (Paul >
bear). But most take unseen elements and convert them into pictures.
Let's say you got peeved at your uncle because he was flicking cigar
ash on the ground. You could easily recognize a dream rendition of the incident
if it was literal. But what if instead you dream of a bear beside a burning
bush? (Bear = Uncle Paul. Burning bush = anger). In addition to being the
likely consequence of wayward cigar ash, the bush afire analogizes your
reaction to the incident. The heat of anger is both a tactile sensation
and a vivid emotion. These 2 non-visual elements were combined and converted
into picture form. The prime special effect of a dream is its ability
to paint descriptive pictures of both the seen and unseen.
Enter The Avatars
In the dream, people IRL are converted into animated avatars. The entities
of virtual reality could look like their waking counterparts. But they don't
have to. While they may take on the appearance of lifelike humanoids, commonplace
animals and well-recognized inanimate objects, they may well become mythical
creatures, cartoon figures or abstract shapes. The more intangible a character
becomes, the more difficult it can be to identify, once you wake up. That's
why you'll be able to detect the more mundane examples at first.
 2
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| Uncle Paul-plus-cigar could show up as a fire-breathing dragon, an erupting
volcano or a cyclone of smoke and ash whatever your dreaming mind
personalizes just for you. To recognize Paul-behind-the-picture, you must
become alert to the sub-features that hold the imagery together. Mentally,
you undress the obvious analogue costume to find the structure or skeleton
underneath. This forensic examination will reveal the same types of sub-features,
no matter what sort of information you perceive. They have been found in
nightmares and regular, flying, lucid, psychic, prodromic and subliminal
dreams. |
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A Dream Is What You See
Although it's possible to dream in the dark, the vast majority of dreams
feature the productions of inner sight. A dream is rarely printed words
- that's just your dream journal entry. A dream is rarely a narrative -
that's just your verbal translation of what you saw. With the exception
of "thought-like" dreams, dreams do not speak a written language.
They paint pictures and act out scenarios. A dream is basically a visual-spatial
performance with a strong supporting cast of sensations, emotions and subtle
sensing.
In order to investigate the dream as a visual virtual reality, you'll
need to rethink old habits of recall and recording.
First, develop good recall for the animated graphics of your dream. Re-picture
them when you awaken as precisely as possible without adding anything new.
Rerun the movie in your mind repeatedly to fix the pictorial attributes
in long-term memory.
Next, record the dream graphically. Use line drawings and stick figures.
Quickly sketch characters, doodle props or draw routes of travel the dreamscape.
Such skeletal representations help flesh out the sub-features of sight.
Now, begin your written report. But include visual descriptions. Not
"a woman" but "a tall, thin lady wearing blue jeans and brown
boots. She walks like my cousin Olivia." Write enough so that you can
clearly re-vision the woman in your mind when you re-read your report a
week or more later. |
As you continue your investigation of perceptual clues, you'll be better
able to detect the unseen elements that the dream converts into pictures.
Visual descriptors only start your journey along the yellow brick road.
Because they are easiest to recognize and understand, they were among the
first to be discovered and analyzed by laboratory and field researchers.
Unfortunately, there isn't enough space in this presentation to talk
about the scientific backup for these ideas. For that information, you are
invited to read further, from the articles located on the dreamflyer.net
web site. You can also find other related accounts. Like how dream detection
supports dream interpretation. About sub-features, as they appear in extrasensory
perception. The challenge of identifying dream characters. And much more. |
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- Images
- 1) avatar_24626.gif @ avatars.qkype.com
- 2) ani-milan.gif @ www.heathersanimations.com
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