Is It Possible for Two People to Share the Same Dream?

Photo by Pixabay: pexels.com

Have you ever wondered, "The world is so vast... could it be that two or more people dream about the same thing?" Sometimes we wake up with a strange sensation, as if the dream we just had was too vivid or too detailed. Then the question arises, "Who knows, maybe there is someone else somewhere who also had a similar dream." That is the nature of dreams, they are very personal, yet their mystery feels universal.

It turns out that this phenomenon has its own term, namely mutual dreams. This refers to a condition in which two individuals report dream experiences with significant similarities, from the location and atmosphere to the storyline. They do not have to be identical in every detail, but they are similar enough to make you wonder, "How can they be so alike?" Although it sounds like a film plot, reports of these similar dreams have come from many people from diverse cultural backgrounds.

A study by McNamara, Dietrich-Egensteiner, and Teed (2017) attempted to examine this phenomenon with a scientific approach. Their research revealed that mutual dreams do exist, but the cause is not necessarily supernatural. Often, people who experience this unconsciously share similar "elements" in their dreams, such as shared memories, similar experiences, or coincidentally similar emotional states. When we fall asleep, our brains reconstruct all these elements into narratives that sometimes overlap.

However, this does not diminish the uniqueness of the phenomenon. In fact, this is what makes it interesting. Mutual dreams show that even though we live in such a vast world, small patterns in our lives can intersect without us realizing it. One person's dream in one place can have a similar feel to another person's dream in a different place, simply because the human mind works in fundamentally similar ways.

So, is it possible for two people to have identical dreams? The answer is: it's possible. However, this does not mean that they literally "meet" in the same dream dimension. It is more like two minds that happen to be traveling along similar cognitive paths, then accidentally produce "nocturnal narratives" with almost the same direction. The world is vast, but the human mind is even vaster, and occasionally, there are rare moments when these two worlds seem to touch each other.

Reference:

McNamara, P., Dietrich-Egensteiner, L., & Teed, B. (2017). Mutual dreaming. Dreaming, 27(2), 87–101. https://doi.org/10.1037/drm0000048