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While the world’s waking attention will be directed to the Olympics in Beijing, researchers on the other side of the planet will be investigating the games’ effect on dreams. “We intend to measure the influence of this event on the consciousness of dreamers worldwide,” said Dr. Barbara Condron. Condron is project director for the GLOBAL LUCID DREAMING EXPERIMENTS being conducted by the College of Metaphysics, a private 501(c)3 educational organization in the United States that has been investigating dreams for almost four decades.
“We are asking people to record their dreams throughout the time of the Olympics, August 8-25, and send them to us by email,” she said. “We expect to see trends in thinking that may well reveal underlying attitudes that will influence the future of global communication, human rights, and economics.”
“The Olympics in China this year represents much more than declaring who are the best athletes in the world. They symbolize an opening of a culture that has been largely closed for centuries,” Condron explained. “China wants to present a certain face to the world so there will probably be coverage on everything from Chinese society and ethics to politics and the recent natural disasters.”
Last month the Office of the Spiritual Civilization Development Steering Commission of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee called upon citizens “to improve their professional ethics and adopt good manners to create a sound social environment for the upcoming Beijing Olympic Games.”
“With real time media, the world is going to be treated to an educational course unlike any we have known.” Condron observed. “Dreams are often a way to process our waking experiences so our researchers are eager to see what dreams during this time reveal.”
This is the fourth experiment of its kind. GLiDE researchers expect an increase in the number of participants from the “moon” experiments conducted at the beginning of this year. The results of that experiment are published in the book The Moon’s Effect on Dreams edited by Dr. Christine Madar and catalogued online at www.dreamschool.org.
Participating in the experiment only requires internet access. Instructions at www.dreamschool.org enables dreamers to provide the demographic information needed for the research. “Age, sex, educational level, profession provide the scientific basis for the our research. The dreams will provide the content for the consciousness study.”
Will more men remember dreams than women? “It’s possible,” Condron said. “In the previous three experiments, the ratio of female/male participants was 2/1. Perhaps with the emphasis on sports, the numbers will come closer to being the same.”
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