DREAM GALAXY

Research case · Water

A classroom becoming a boat with dolphins

Not stated · Date unknown · contemporary study

I am not really sure whether I had a lucid dream. What I remember is that I was absorbed in working on an anthropology project and discussing it with some classmates. For some reason, it turned into a competition with the others, including a physical one. At a certain point, the professor gave us some advice. I turned around and the scene changed: were we on a boat? I am not sure; it was not very clear. What I do remember is turning back and seeing the sea and some dolphins swimming. I then said out loud, "I want to pet one," and it happened. I think it was a kind of lucid dream because I was very conscious and made a series of deliberate choices, which normally does not happen in my dreams.

Original text — Virtual reality as a metacognitive training tool for lucid dreaming — Supplementary Materials, Andrea Signorelli, Francesco Tormen, Bruna Dal Bianco and Nicola De Pisapia

Open this dream in the galaxy →

Source
Virtual reality as a metacognitive training tool for lucid dreaming — Supplementary Materials — Andrea Signorelli, Francesco Tormen, Bruna Dal Bianco and Nicola De Pisapia, 2026. Supplementary Materials, Semi-lucid Dream Reports, Report S3.1
Rights
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0
Record type
Research case
Place
Not stated · Italian
Date
Date unknown · contemporary study
Uncertainty
Moderate — De-identified lucid-dream report. The English text is the study authors’ translation from Italian; the calendar dream date is unknown. Chinese title and translation are AI-generated editorial drafts, not human-verified.
Imagery
Exam · Boat · Sea · Fish · Water

Another way to look at this dream

Notes on the images in this dream from psychology, myth, folklore and semiotics. Each names its source.

Exam

Is it an exam you already passed long ago? What, right now, feels like being tested?

Jung · Compensation

Read through Jung’s idea of compensation, an exam dream may bring up a worry the waking mind is keeping quiet — or an old confidence it has forgotten.

C. G. Jung, “General Aspects of Dream Psychology”, Collected Works 8

Psychoanalysis Depth psychology

Freud noted that people tend to dream of exams they actually passed, and read such dreams as reassurance: “you got through it then”.

Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams (1900), “typical dreams”

Modern dream surveys Dream research

In questionnaire studies of “typical dreams”, school, teachers and studying are reported by a large share of respondents.

Nielsen et al., “Typical Dreams of Canadian University Students”, Dreaming (2003)

All perspectives on exam →

Boat

Were you steering, a passenger, or simply being carried? Did you know where the boat was going?

Jung · The night sea journey

Borrowing the ethnologist Frobenius’s phrase, Jung wrote about the “night sea journey”: a hero swallowed by the sea or a monster who travels in the dark and comes out changed.

C. G. Jung, “Symbols of Transformation”, Collected Works 5

Ancient Egypt Myth & scripture

Egyptian funerary books such as the Amduat describe the sun god sailing a barque through the twelve hours of the night before rising again at dawn.

Amduat (New Kingdom)

Daoist thought Philosophy

The Zhuangzi praises one who wanders “like an unmoored boat” — drifting here is ease, not loss of control.

Zhuangzi, “Lie Yukou”

All perspectives on boat →

Water

Was the water clear or muddy, still or rising? Which water in your own life — a place, a swim, a flood — does it bring back first?

Jung · The unconscious

Jung called water the most common image for the unconscious: something deep, below the surface, that we can look into but not see through.

C. G. Jung, “Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious”, Collected Works 9i

Classical Chinese medicine Historical medicine

The Lingshu pairs dream images with the balance of yin and yang: when yin is excessive, one “dreams of wading through great water, and is afraid”. This is a historical theory about the body, not medical advice and not a way to diagnose anything.

Huangdi Neijing, Lingshu ch. 43 “Yinxie Fameng”

Hebrew Bible; Babylonian myth Myth & scripture

Several creation stories begin with primordial water — “darkness was upon the face of the deep” in Genesis, the fresh-water Apsu in the Babylonian Enuma Elish. Here water is what exists before order.

Genesis 1:2; Enuma Elish I

All perspectives on water →

Exploration notes, not a diagnosis, a prediction, or evidence of real events.

Dreams that share its images