Some time ago, I dreamed I was walking toward a local movie theater. The marque seemed to display 5 or more lines of informtion until I (in my dream) focused my attention on it to determine what movie was playing. When I tried to read the marque, it seemed to convey no information. In thinking about remembered dreams, I realize that I have never actually read a book, magazine, or newspaper. I have had dreams in which I went through the motions of reading, but do not remember seeing the written words of a novel, an instructive article, or a news item. The most I have ever read in a dream was one or two lines from an advertising billboard. Has anyone at this forum ever actually read a book, magaziine, or news item in a dream?
I've tried but usually the words change on me and / or garble. The only time I have had luck with anything even remotely resembling stable text was being able to look at a store sign in a dream which consistently read as "Target".
One of the standard tests for reality in a lucid dream is to try to read; it never works. Another way is to turn light switches on and off. They generally won't change the illumination.
I know for a fact I HAVE read in dreams as I often take notes when I wake up from some dreams. I have also seen numbers in dreams. My big question about dreams is how often they have very developed plots and storylines. Perhaps this needs its own thread. You could be on a 747 and you know you must reach your destination to win a contract to sell 100 various cars to an oil rich sheik. Then you end up hiring drivers to drive them across the desert as that is the only way they can get there as air/truck and trains have been ruled out by some incidents. The stories sometimes are in great and vivid detail, and i also know for a fact I have dreams in colour. Sometimes the stories are incomplete, or sometimes they seem to have several chapters, but it is amazing how much detail and planning dreams seem to have. I doubt some authors could have as sophisticated character development and plot outline. It does seem to be a marvel. It is also interesting how a rational mind interprets dreams as we awaken. Some very odd things make sense sometimes. Like if you see a caterpillar building a cocoon and realize you need to wrap 3 lightbulbs in toilet paper in order to get your new car. I'll be yelling at my wife. Get me a pen. I need to remember to wrap the lighbulbs before I lose my car deal. This reasoning may make perfect sense while I am half asleep. These things puzzle me much more than reading, however I can confirm I have written about reading in my dreams upon awakening. LUCID DREAMING: I consider lucid dreaming a different subject entirely. Waking up you may experience it slightly but in my vocabulary lucid dreaming i more of a controlled dream done on purpose. It is not difficult to lucid dream, although you may fall asleep after several attempts and forget what you have done. The sneaky method to do it without any training is simply wait up until you are sooooo tired. Then sit in a Yoga Position and start flying in your mind. If it works this will take on actions sequences of its own, You can control the subject matter, but often lose control as dreams take over
the strangest thing about dreams in my opinion is the ability to incorporate real world events into the dream. in my opinion this is evidence of some sort of "precognition"
The lack of text utility in dreams is because language is processed in the left brain. This would imply that dreams are much more right brain and tend to use the visual-sensory language which is more 3-D. Dreams uses a language called symbolism, where things mean more than left brain representations using language. If you think about the non sequential order within dreams (jumps around), it is similar to way we surf the internet. We may start out with a certain topic. As we read, it may bring up something interesting, so we hyperlink. That then shifts us to another topic breaking the vertical sequence, in favor of a horizontal branch. The ads placed on each page are also designed to break sequence. You might read about dogs and click on an ad for a new car. I would guess dreams inspired the way the internet was designed, and evolved, but unconsciously. This is faster and more efficient, which is the nature of the faster language of the right dream. Dreams are the approach march to the gateway of the right brain.
this is very interesting. unfortunately the answer is no for me. Dreams feel real while we're in them. It's only when we wake up that we realize something was actually strange -Inception
I seldom recall my dreams but I do recall years ago, when I had just started my job as price checker for a retail grocery that I dreamed that I was actually doing the label run at the store, which involves a quick read of the label and then locate the product and change the existing label, a visual matching of information that is more highly reliant on the numbers than the letters to confirm a correct match. When I awoke, I was as exhausted as if I had physically been doing the work instead of just dreaming that I was doing it. The dream seemed to last for hours, just like the job, lol, and when I woke up, I actually had to go in to work. There was so much to learn and I suspect this was one of the ways in which I learned to memorize the location of products which I was previously unfamiliar with. The brain focuses on numbers quite differently than it processes words. I wonder if that makes a difference in dreams?
Psychologists tell us that we cannot read in our dreams because reading uses an area of the brain that is offline during sleep. Nonetheless a few people have the experience. This may be because reading is such an important part of their life that the skill has seeped out into other brain areas. They also say that you cannot speak or understand a foreign language unless you have become fluent in it, for the same reason. Until you become fluent and think in that language, rather than translating in realtime, it too is processed in a turned-off brain center. But I have heard and understood people speaking Portuguese in a dream, and that's not even a language I know very well. But I am an amateur linguist, so perhaps, like Kwilborn with reading, linguistics has expanded into my other brain centers.
