Dreaming someone else's life

On a couple of occasions, I've had dreams which felt distinctly like I was dreaming someone else's life. In every case, I was in the role of the protagonist. There doesn't seem to be any "purpose" to these dreams, other than to understand someone's story.

I've recently discovered that my adult daughter also has had dreams of this exact nature and quality, as well.

The first time this happened, it was so startling that I took it to be an "other life" memory, and, well, it is. It IS an "other life". I assumed at the time that it was "my" other life, but now I'm not so sure. I was so shaken by that dream that some years later, a play I was watching triggered my memory and I became deeply distressed. I had to get on the net and research the time period in depth, and I found out some startling evidence that supported the events of the dream in ways I didn't expect.

The most recent time it happened was when we were on holiday a couple weeks ago. The town in which we were sleeping was once a gold rush town, and so had a lot of interesting and unsavoury characters pass through it. In this dream, I was experiencing at least part of the life story of a woman who apparently lived there (it was definitely set in the 19th and probably very early 20th century). Her life was difficult at times, but ended fairly well, and I don't know why she would need to have her story understood. Perhaps she and I were just of similar character and I picked it up as a result. When I awoke, I most certainly had the clear impression that this was someone else's life (and it didn't feel at all like "my" life, even though in the dream, it was me in the role of the protagonist).

The dream my adult daughter had involved a young woman who made some very poor life decisions and my feeling is that her life ended badly due to her recklessness. My daughter even heard the girl's name (and even in the dream thought, "Wait, my name is what?"). When I heard the details of the dream I just knew that she was dreaming someone else's life (and apparently, her best friend said the same thing).

Since I learned that my daughter has had at least one dream of someone else's life, I've been trying to find out more about this phenomenon, but I haven't found a lot. The common use of the word "dream" as a metaphor for "goal you want to achieve" muddies the Google waters considerably. :(

As this board gets indexed pretty quickly and I know people find there way here via Google, I thought that perhaps a thread like this might help people looking for this kind of information. I also thought maybe someone who regularly hangs around here might have some thoughts on the matter. So here it is. :)

I have a friend who very occasionally experiences this waking but only for minutes. He'll simply be inside somebody else's body, seeing through their eyes. The time period is contemporary with his own, though he has had past life recall as well. The last time it happened, a few months ago, he was inside the body of a similarly aged man, a gardener watering the plants at a resort hotel.
Hank Wesselman has written books on this as an out of body experience, as did Monroe, except Wesselman's experiences were ongoing. In both instances, there seemed to be a two-way awareness.
Susan Austen Taylor has talked about similar OBE where she inhabited the body of a very stressed woman, taking over her duties, while the woman took a "holiday" from her life.
Clairvoyants often pick up on the energies of people past and I'm pretty certain that the experiences you describe are one way they do it.

I've had the experience a few times in my life, and think I've talked about it somewhere else.

Hello, CPW.

You might find an account of Robert Monroe interesting. In his initial adventures, I think it was reported in "Journeys out of Body," his first book, he used to identify different "locales." "Locale I" would be the RTZ, I think. "Locale II" would most likely be the astral plane. But "Locale III" was a total puzzler.

In this "Locale III," IIRC, he experienced episodes in the life of someone else, who led an existence independent of him. Whenever he was in "Locale III," however, Monroe would experience this person's life from the inside - as being the protagonist.

The phenomenon sounds very similar, as Monroe was clear that he was not that person, and even in the later books when he collects all of his selves from various timelines, this "Locale III" personality is not mentioned again, I think, so it would be not one of "his selves."

Cheers,
Oliver