On Sat, 21 Nov 2015 12:07:15 -0800, Jim Vassilakos
<xxxxxx@gmail.com> wrote:

>Jeff, sorry for coming in late to the thread and also sorry if this has
>already been covered. Under the section on Visitors, you write, "It has
>been established that, even though natural laws may not apply to dreams (or
>apply in different, possibly unique ways), the ‘environment’ of a dream is
>in fact self-consistent, and generally extends beyond what the dreamer directly
>perceives. The Visitor may perceive more of the environment than the
>dreamer does, possibly from a ‘third person’ viewpoint, and all sensory
>input consistent with the dream environment is available."

>Later, in the section on how dreamwalking works, you write, "...if the
>Visitor asks who was following, the referee should reply that the Observer
>couldn’t actually see who was following, just a vague shadowy figure, but
>it is possible that it was any of a list of individuals that might have
>reason to follow the dreamer (and provide at least a partial list)." Here I
>assume that you were talking about Visitors throughout, and that the
>mention of the Observer was a typo.

Good catch, it was a typo, and it should have been Visitor throughout.

>Now, what I'm seeing here is that the second paragraph doesn't really
>conform to the first. If the dream extended beyond what the dreamer
>perceives, then one would think that the shadowy figure would be
>potentially identifiable by the Visitor. In other words, there would be an
>actual follower who would have some sort of real existence outside the
>perception of the dreamer. But this creates problems, because it gives
>dreams a sort of independent reality, which I'm not really sure you want to
>introduce. (Well, maybe you do, in which case you can ignore the rest of
>this.)

No, it's not an independent reality; it's sort of an implicit extension
of what the dreamer (and Observer) would see - if the dreamer is
standing in the middle of a room, and what s/he sees looks like the
living room of his parents' house when s/he was a child, implicitly, the
entire room is there, including the part of the room s/he can't see
because it's behind him/her, and beyond that, the rest of the house
(although that can be less certain; maybe by walking through the door
that would normally lead to the hall, the dreamer will transition to
someplace different - it's a dream; it does. If the dreamer feels s/he
is being followed, but doesn't know by who, then the Visitor should be
able to see that something/someone is following, but can't identify by
who/what, just that there's something there ("a shadowy figure"). To the
extent that the dreamer _does_ know who it _might_ be, the Visitor can
and will also know that, but it doesn't necessarily make the figure more
distinct.

>Nonetheless, it does make sense that a Visitor should be able to get more
>information than a mere Observer. Interestingly, your mention of there
>being a list of individuals that might be available to a Visitor (but
>presumably not the an Observer) seems to underscore this point.
>
>Hence, what I would do if I were you is that I'd modify the first
>paragraph. Instead of talking about the self-consistency of the dream
>environment and the extension of that environment beyond the perceptions of
>the dreamer, it might be a better idea to simply say that a Visitor is
>privy to the significance and implications of the dream to the same extent
>as the dreamer, whereas the Observer is not. Hence, if the dream involves a
>shadowy figure, an observer would be left at a loss as to what exactly this
>means, whereas a Visitor would understand the meaning of the dream
>potentially up the same extent as the dreamer, perhaps even having a list
>of people who the dreamer is afraid of. By the same token, if there is some
>symbol in the dream that is meaningful to the dreamer, a visitor would at
>least have a chance to recognize its significance. whereas an observer
>would not. In this way, you can significantly put the powers of Visitors
>well above those of Observers without having to extend the the dream-space
>into some sort of alternate reality.
>
>Just a thought.
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