A dream guide is a

spirit guide A spirit guide, in Spiritualism, is an entity that remains as a discarnate spirit to act as a guide or protector to a living incarnated individual. Description In traditional African belief systems, well before the spread of Christianity ...

dream character encountered in a

dream A dream is a succession of images, ideas, emotions, and sensation (psychology), sensations that usually occur involuntarily in the mind during certain stages of sleep. Humans spend about two hours dreaming per night, and each dream lasts around ...

, particular a fully

lucid dream In the psychology subfield of oneirology, a lucid dream is a type of dream wherein the dreamer realizes that they are dreaming during their dream. The capacity to have lucid dreams is a trainable cognitive skill. During a lucid dream, the dreamer ...

. On the scale of lucidity, "full" lucidity requires that all characters in a dream, not just the dreamer, be aware that they are in a dream. In this case, "another dream character not only becomes lucid before the dream-ego, he also possesses a higher degree of lucidity than the dream-ego later achieves." Anthony Shafton gives the following example of encountering a dream guide: Generally, the stage of capacity of a dream guide to put in such an appearance so as to inform the unwitting dreamer of the fact that this is a dream; must be preceded by the stage (achieved in some previous nights) of the witting dreamer informing (in a manner acceptable, or course, to themselves) prospective dream guides of the fact of this being a dream, and securing their agreement to this fact. This stage will in turn have quite likely have been preceded by a still earlier stage in which the witting dreamer will have endeavored to secure the agreement, by prospective dream guides, of the fact of this being a dream, but having been rebuffed by them (the rebuff have been due merely to the statement's not having been made in a style suitable to their literary fashion, which can be quite punctilious).

References

{{Dreaming

Guide A guide is a person who leads travelers, sportspeople, or tourists through unknown or unfamiliar locations. The term can also be applied to a person who leads others to more abstract goals such as knowledge or wisdom. Travel and recreation Exp ...

Lucid dreams Kardecist spiritism