Who is she, anyway?

In my peregrinations through lucid and out-of-body realms, I usually meet people who seem quite autonomous and self-possessed, as if they are "real" persons. The question of the lucid dream character's nature is one that intrigues me considerably. Indeed, it is at the forefront of my thinking about lucid dreaming, as exemplified by the chapter I wrote last year for the new lucid dream anthology, published by Praeger and edited by my colleagues Ryan Hurd and Kelley Bulkeley.

Because this question is always on my mind, I often ask dream characters who they are, or engage them in very personal exchanges in order to understand their purpose in the dream.

Last week, I had the following lucid dream, in which I encountered two unknown women, whose responses to my statements about returning to my own world prompted surprising replies. Here is the dream:

This lucid dream occurred after I had awakened around 4 AM and had taken galantamine before meditating. I meditated for about half an hour, and then returned to bed. I didn't immediately go into lucid dream without a break in consciousness, but became lucid shortly after returning to sleep... I decide to fly up into the air and seek a more refined level of consciousness. I fly up into a dark sky, praying as I go, and feeling very positive about what I will encounter. Finally, I emerge out of the top of the dark field and I see a brightly lit area nearby, as if it is an island floating above the darkness. I fly over to it and climb up the edge of the island and approach a woman who is seated on a ledge or slope, and sit down beside her. Our connection is immediately felt by me and by her, it seems, as our eyes meet. I speak to her awhile, and then aske her her name. She says her name twice without me hearing it. As has been the case before during these experiences, when a person speaks to me, it’s as if the sound is being blown away by a wind. After asking her twice to repeat her name, I finally hear her say, “Amit,” or something like that. Finally I say to her, “We will probably never meet again.” She replies, “If you do not come back here, I will come to your world.” We part at that point and I move into another level of the dream, in which I again encounter people on a hillside and a lighted area which was very beautiful. Again, I encounter a woman with whom I feel an immediate deep knowing and rapport. We talk with several other people, the details of which I have since forgotten. Soon, however, I say to her, “I must go back to my world.” I am surprised that she stands up and says, “I will go with you.” We walk to what appears to be an elevator of sorts, and begin to descend toward my own world. 

Then I seem to be "back," at least partly, witnessing and participating in the process of my return. Julie has a key that I know is essential to making the return possible. I took the key from her, and put the key into a socket. When I inserted it, I felt a subtle vibration and then saw a mist begin to develop around the socket. In the middle of the mist, I saw what appeared to be in embryonic white form, which was not fully developed. It was floating in the middle of the air. Then I looked away and saw gifts began to appear all around me all wrapped in colorful paper. A woman who is standing nearby eagerly took one and was going to open it when I said to her, "Please don't do that, yet; let's wait until the process is complete." She agrees to wait, and I look back to the area where the mist had been forming, and now instead of some protoplasmic form, I see a small gazebo that was colored white and red about 2 feet in diameter which had a spire that reached seven or 8 feet above my head. The spire is open at the top, as if the ribs of the spire are supporting the tip, allowing me to see the 1st foot or two of the space at the end of the spire before it became fully enclosed again until it opens at the base. In the space between the very tip and where it became enclosed, I see that there is a golden liquid flowing from the tip toward the base, which appears to be liquid gold. The source of it, however, is puzzling, because neither does there seem to be gold flowing from the sky into the tip, but there doesn't seem to be any way for the liquid to get there from the bottom part of the gazebo, either. I am fascinated by this riveting image, and want to touch the golden liquid. So as it emerges from the base into a pool right in front of me, I reach out and put my hands into the flow of the liquid. I then withdraw my hands and look at the back my hands, only to see that they were covered with gold liquid which has the consistency of water, not metal. I am immensely delighted, and then find myself back in bed.

I think it's interesting that the dream culminates in such glorious fashion after having the two female dream characters promise to reach out to me, or to accompany me in my world. It's as if their willingness is expressed by the bounty of the golden fluid that flows from their world into mine. There's a lot here, but regardless of what it all means, this dream is another chapter in my ongoing quest to understand the identity of lucid dream figures (or persons!).