These days, I am conducting an experiment. I am the sole apparatus needed for the experiment, whose "readings" get taken while I am sleeping, and "inferences" are done when I am awake. The stretch goal is to understand how the mind, in its uncontrolled state, connects data elements stored in your memory into a story-line that manifests in a dream. The minimal goal is to find amusement, during the waking time, about the memory of the dream experienced. Luckily, I have been night-dreaming these days more than I used to, to add to the day-dreaming that will consciously continue.
What I have inferred thus far is that my dreams pull from distant memories of past life experience events that have current relevance - it is as though each such event is stored with tags, and the dream is a "filter" using some of these tags. The tag has current relevance - a theme that may be occupying my thinking in my waking state. The dream pulls together events from memory that pass the filter. It then weaves together those experiences in what seems a current situation. What is missing in the dream is the detail of the context. Upon waking, when the memory of the dream is fresh in my mind, I find that applying the contextual filter to the dream exposes its lack of current relevance.
The open question now is whether my mind will eventually learn to apply the contextual filter in the dream, just as it has learnt to filter by the tags. A bigger question is whether that process is a natural process that may take its own time, if at all, or whether I can consciously make an effort to train my mind to be smarter in my sleep than what it seems to be. Furthermore, is this a repeatable experiment - i.e., can I document its steps for me or others to follow and reach similar results? Will I be able to implement steps followed by others to reach other experiences that I haven't yet experienced?
The achievement of such mind control has fascinating possibilities - to be able to put your mind in "cruise control" when you sleep, but still achieve a journey from point A to point B and have some real solution scenarios ready in the morning for the "problems" on your mind when you slept.
The research continues ... and, until such time that I am able to plan my dreams, I accept them as they come and add to my wealth of experiential observations.
2 comments:
You must read about experiments of Richard Feynman (Nobel Winning Physicist)on dreams. In his book "Surely you are joking Mr Feynman" he describes how he prepared himself to be deliberately and fully aware that he is dreaming.
Thank you, Bal! Feynman is one of my favorite authors. If you haven't already, please read his philosophical treatise, "The Meaning of It All".
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