dreaming life: exploring the mind through lucid dreaming

How well can you read in your dreams?

April 23, 2007 on 5:31 pm | In Lucid Dreaming, Dream Reports |

reading I had a dream last night that Rob Bryanton from Imagining the Tenth Dimension wrote me a long letter. The pages were oversized and his handwriting style created big, large letters, making it appear almost comically cartoon-like.

I knew I was dreaming when all I could read was the first line on each page, which started with Rob stating where he was at the time of writing the letter. (This is often how I begin my own journal entries.) The rest of the letter I just couldn’t read, and I knew it was because my mind wasn’t coming up with anything!

A few months ago I had a really great lucid dream where I was very much in control of the dream and my surrounding. I purposely willed into existence a newspaper to test my ability to read it. No matter what I did it just didn’t work. The letters would do strange things, like be upside down and appear to be written in a different language!

And the more I’ve thought about my capacity to read in dreams – lucid or not - I’m unable to recall any instances where I’m able to do it. I don’t mean read a sign or a few words but actually a dream where I’m truly reading something, like a letter, a note, or a book.

All of this thinking about dream-reading are a result of Bahbee writing to me asking:

“I have noticed recently that I can read things in dreams, but many people tell me it is impossible to read in dreams. Yet I distinctly remember reading text in a dream. Any thoughts about this?”

On the same note, Shane writes:

“I have to say that I can read in dreams as well…I distinctly remember an episode of Batman (a great source of information ;)) where it said you could never read in a dream because you dream with one half of your brain and read with the other. Since then, though, I’ve found that this isn’t true at all for one reason or another. You’ve failed me, Batman…again…

Perhaps it is because you already “know” what you’re reading since your own brain is the one putting the metaphoric text on the paper. You look at the paper in your dream and your brain tells you that it’s this color, this combination of letters, etc. It would then be more like a representation of subconscious thought through a medium we’re all familiar with from an early age, the written word, although the words could end up meaning anything or nothing at all.”

I’m curious to hear about other peoples experiences reading in dreams, both lucid and non-lucid.

Are you able to do read in your dreams?

How well? For how long? Does it make sense?

How often does reading in a dream lead to lucidity?

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In fact my first lucid dream was triggered by reading a book in a dream. I can perfectly remember that I really COULD read and make sense of the text. At one point, in the dream I read a cool paragraph which I want to read it once again. This is when the strange things start happening. I suddenly realize that the text has somehow changed because I can’t find the lines I’m looking for. I put my finger on the text and see that when I slide it sideways the text changes as if my finger has some magical properties. This is when I become lucid.

In another dream I couldn’t read at all. In it, I’m in a restaurant with my friend Sara. (Sara and I used to go to the same high school in Seville, Spain. When I left Spain and came back to Poland, I totally lost contact with her). I become lucid and I tell her that it’s great to see her in a dream. I also ask her if she can give me her e-mail address so that we can stay in touch in real life. She agrees. I tell her to hurry because I feel like I’m about to wake up. She takes out a pen and writes the e-mail address on a napkin. When she hands it to me I realize that this whole idea is absurd because I can’t read it. The address looks quite real - it even has the @ sign somewhere in the middle and .com at the end - but the letters shift places and are sometimes replaced by incomprehensible signs. At one point I decide to stuff the napkin into a pocket and read it after I wake up - but then I realize that this is even more absurd!

Comment by yellowish haze — April 25, 2007 #
i have heard alot about literature becoming the jumping point into a lucid dream…i have just started trying to attain lucidity so i am keeping a dream journal at
http://oneironautlog.wordpress.com/
if you think you can help me out or give me advie let me know thanks

Comment by David — April 28, 2007 #
I have read in my dreams numerous times before, it’s been getting better each time, at first, only a few words, then a few sentences, and now I’m trying to keep focus long enough in dreams to read more than a ‘few’ of anything.
The first time I truly became aware of reading text in dreams, it made no sense [once lucid]. It was a book on herbs and their uses, as well as some background data on them. I was stuck in a library for the night and my buddy wasn’t so extroversive, so I read. I understood everything up until the part where I became lucid. The name of the leafy green pond/forest plant was forgotten. I tried to re-read it, now fully aware of the dream. The words began to change as I read! I struggled to keep reading the test until it became German [which I have a limited understanding of]. I awoke my friend and showed him the moving text, amazed as ever. He brushed it off. I would have really liked to have remembered it’s name to see if it was real… But, aside from that time, reading hasn’t made me lucid for now text doesn’t change or move on me, whatever I can’t read is due to a loss of interest/focus.

Comment by Michelle — May 6, 2007 #
Michelle I find it really interesting how you say you “understood everything up until the part where I became lucid.”

It makes me wonder…what’s really happening (pre-lucid) when someone is reading in a dream? Are we really reading in the same sense as we read in waking life? If so, why does conscious awareness that one is dreaming sometimes lead to not being able to read anymore?

All this reminds me of a dream I had many years ago. I was hiking in the woods listening to a tape on my walkman (whoa, sounds dated and I was listening to an album of music that someone had made that I know. In my dream I was really getting into the music and was amazed that my friend had written it.

When I woke up, I desperately wanted to remember what all the music sounded like, but I could only remember it in the vaguest of ways. As someone who plays guitar, it intrigued me that maybe my subconscious mind had written this awesome music that I liked and played it in a dream….

…or did it? Did I really hear it in the dream? If I became lucid would it become all jumbled and weird? Maybe the music sounding good - the experience of it, maybe it’s not a linear experience like we think it is in memory, and when we interrupt it live with lucidity, that’s why it becomes messed up.

I’m having a hard time putting this into words!

Comment by Ben — May 6, 2007 #
Funny, I too had a lucid dream triggered by reading in a dream. I remember I came-up to a sign that was upside down. I remember telling myself that in order to read it I had to turn myself upside down. So, I did and therefore I was able to read it!

Comment by Sophia — May 7, 2007 #