> I myself have
> had dreams where I had sets of memories in the dream only to wakeup and
> realize they were entirely false. Dreams also add to chaos and confusion
> when you try to remember events in your past which were actually dreams and
> never actually occurred. I have had dreams merge with my real memory upon
> waking up. Perhaps this is some sort of sleep disorder? I've had some of
> those spontaneously prefabricated dream memories grafted into my real
> memory bank and thus create confusion. One example is I've woken up and
> thought to myself, "Hey I just dreamed a continuation of a dream I'd had
> before" when I hadn't.
IAN: I too have had that perception, of being in a dreamscape that
I've been in in a former dream: redreaming. It's not occurred to me
that this might also be an illusion. I seem to recall upon waking
that they did mesh with true former dreams. "True Dreams" there's
a curiosity. Notice that there is no inverse word for "dreaming,"
there's waking, but somehow that doesn't cut it.
I think if the brain fabricated a dreamscape once, it's probable
that it keeps this dreamscape "on file" and may open that file
again. In this case, redreaming may not be an illusion.
Another very interesting dream observation is that in your dreams,
your mind operates as if other than you. For example: you don't
know what is in the other dream room, but your mind does, and
your mind someone subordinates "you" to a lower order of info
access. This is a radical measure of a hierarchical structure
of self, forcing the question: Who is this "me" ? It also
measures the fact that one can "hack" one's way into the knowledge
of the fact that my mind is larger than this thing I call "me,"
by simple deductive logic.
However, at the moment I can't think of examples where I've witnessed
this in dreams, but I have many times realized that knowledge was
"withheld" from me that had to have existed elsewhere, which I eventually
discovered in the dream. The mind is a miracle, and dreams are such
a powerful example of the miracle of the mind. That's what makes
lucid-dream access such an important thing for the investigator.
The next best thing to psychotropic agents, which we must not have
or big people with big clubs start hitting real hard.. ouch, me no
like. Banish the big stick. Curse the big stick !!
> I_really wish_ I could have more lucid dreams! I only have them when
> I'm sick with a cold or flu and thats even rare.
IAN: Interesting. I never had lucid dreams until I started doing
special meditations designed to invoke "astral projection." Sure enough,
they worked, however, I've generally concluded that I don't travel
further than the inside of my skull. |^( I want a refund on that book !!
There are sever astral travel inducing meditations. The one that did
the trick for me was an ancient kabbalistic meditation, from some
book on "Secrets of High Magic." I'd recommend doing any variety
of meditation, simply to induce an alpha-to-delta wave-state,
prior to going to sleep. Then, and this is the key, lay on
your back and just allow yourself to drift off, but begin
to imagine that your rising up out of your bed, even floating
upwards toward the ceiling. On of the first times I "got out"
I found myself gently bouncing off the ceiling. It's amazing that
astral project seems just like what it claims to be.
A key point is to imagine yourself moving in your body as you
rest motionless on your back. Not necessarily only imagining
getting up out of your bed. This seems to allow a smooth transition
from waking-->subdreaming-->dreaming through which the conscious
"self" is preserved. That alone is some kind of miracle.
Every time I "project" upon falling to sleep, I get up out of my bed
in another ghostly body. I can fly and sit lotus style above the ground
and move across space. It's way fun, but frightening at first. When
I travel around, I'm in my neighborhood but things are real different.
Spooky but I'm not spooked. It's like literally walking in your mind.
However, I usually try to avoid projecting, in fact, there was a time
when I'd tell myself, "I will go to sleep without remaining conscious."
This is because the astral trip is usually short-lived, and often
results in ones waking up a few minutes later, at least for me,
and when sleep is the objective, this can be a hassle. It seems
that once the conscious self enters the dreamscape, it can't
get "turned off" in the dreamscape, so it is thrown out.
Lot's of heavy stuff here for neuro-investigation.
Brain scans of a normal sleep induction and then of a lucid
dream induction should reveal what areas of the brain cause
"consciousness" to be, by the simple fact that in the first
case they turn off, but in the second case they stay on.
> Although usually any dreams of
> mine are _so bizarre_ to be incomprehensible to descramble and discover
> their psychological meaning. Also have you noticed that whenever you see
> printed words in a dream every time you look away and look back they say
> something different? Also through studying computer graphics and virtual
> reality and watching such computer graphics videos such as "Beyond The
> Mind's Eye" my dreams, when I _do_ have them are _extremely_ vivid with
> rotating camera angles, panning, etc, etc.
IAN: The mind learns. Have you ever heard if born-blind people dream?
I wonder how much mental imagery is "encoded."
>> I'll write something down on this dreamland pad of paper,
>> hay, the letters I just wrote are changing before my eyes
>
> Exactly! What causes this phenomenon?
IAN: ??? It seems to be an ideal example of the dreaming mind,
that it can't keep things consistent. It's perhaps the clearest
distinction between the waking state and the dreaming state.
BTW, I have had dream experiences that turned out to mesh virtually
100% with waking state events that came to pass after the dream,
where the dream was recalled prior to the events which unfolded
outside my control, such that it could not be that I somehow
cause those events to simulate my dreams. The force of these
experiences prevents me from rejecting the possibility
that there could be some kind of precognition, and
that perhaps astral projection is not 100% fantasy.
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IAN GODDARD <igoddard@erols.com> Q U E S T I O N A U T H O R I T Y
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