Common Remembering dreams?

[magic]

How often does people in general remember what they dream?
I almost always remember my dreams, I usually dream about stuff I experience in my daily life but in a distorted reality.
For instance when I was with my girlfriend i dreamt about me following her to work.
And yesterday I saw Star Wars, Episode 3 and I dreamt I was witnessing a huge battle.
When I practice AP I dream about going out of body, ( and I may do so ).
How come some people remember their dreams more than others?


/Magic

[CFTraveler]

How often does people in general remember what they dream?

Usually people remember the dream they were having when they wake more than any other time. So how often? Once a day. If they are 'quick wakers' they probably slip back into alpha right away and don't let the dream memory settle in. But if you wake up slowly, 'stew in the dream', possibly have hypnopomps when you wake, you probably give your brain time to let the memory settle in while it goes up to alpha. That's my 'educated guess'.

I almost always remember my dreams, I usually dream about stuff I experience in my daily life but in a distorted reality. For instance when I was with my girlfriend i dreamt about me following her to work.

Most of the time what you dream is what your subconscious understands. The subconscious witnesses and stores in the form it understands. What we know from the subconscious is that it's 'language' is symbolic, and completely accepting. So what you think when you see the movie has a lot to do with how you experience or process it in the dreams.

When I practice AP I dream about going out of body, ( and I may do so ).

Remember that dreams are forms of projection- so when you dream about projecting you're creating a model of being out of body. Chances are that you're actually projecting- just into a self-created environment close to you.

How come some people remember their dreams more than others?
/Magic

Many reasons. If something in your environment is not letting to sleep deeply enough you may wake at more frequent intervals, fixing the memory (see the beginning of my answers). So if I wake four times in one night, as opposed to one, I'll probably have four dreams remembered (or parts of them) as opposed to one.
Also, when you make it a mission to Astral Project of Lucid Dream, you train your mind to let your conscious mind into your subconscious mind, and that improves recollection also.
So there's many reasons.

[Alaskans]

Nice observations... ditto

[mreee]

I remember my dreams most times, but if I dont "process" what I have dreamt just when waking,
there is a chance I forget it, unless i really try to think about what I dreamt.
Seems like dreams recall are stored in a different place than our every day "normal" recall,
and that we need to fetch the dream data and store it where its easily accessed in the physical realm (physical brain).

There is some strange thing with dreaming and obe, if you cant remember it, it didn't happen.
Well atleast thats what the effect is to the ego. Just kind of puzzeling to think about, I mean if you
interact with something through an obe that your physical brain cant remember, it didn't happen to you,
but it happend to whatever you interacted with in the astral, if that entity rememberd it?

I am not entirely sure that memory is a part of the physical brain, I have a theory that it is the spirit part
of us that hold our memory and I dont believe that the memory is being downloaded from the "silver cord"
to the brain when we enter our body after an obe.
My view of it is that when we obe or dream and leave our bodies, the memory which is a part of the soul will leave with it
and when reintegrating with the body after ending the obe, we forget the things we did because the brain (not the memory),
tries to filter our experiences, and if it cant for some reason comprehend what it has seen it will be filtered out so to speak,
much like when people experience some kind of trauma, some mechanism in the brain filters the experience out.
The memory is there but it has been filtered out.

So that means, the more you experience in the astral or in dreaming, the more "acceptable" it seems to the filtering brain,
and the more you "remember" or lets say are allowed to remember, because the memory is there.

The idea that the astral body memory is a copy of the brain-memory and will be reintegrated on entry is an idea I find unlikely,
my hypothesis is that there is no copy, there is 1 memory and its an attribute of the soul and not the physical.
The physical brain is just a filter in regard to memory.

Just my thoughts.
Mreee

[CFTraveler]

I have a different theory and it isn't dependent on 'where' memories are stored, more on 'how'. In my idea memories are stored in the frequency they are experienced, so waking memories are experienced at a different frequency than dreaming memories. So when you're awake your brain is working at the frequency in which you can easily reference the waking memories, but when you are asleep, the only memories that are really accessible are the dream memories, that is, the memories you have experienced while dreaming/projecting, since they are experienced at a different frequency. This 'sort of' explains why you can go to previous dreaming memories when you dream, and then you wake you realize that what you remembered in the dream happened before in the dream, not in waking memory.
Anyway, this makes more sense to me than reality-filtering download problems and explains more of things like 'knowing you've been there before'- because you actually did.
Just my opinion, obviously.

[Alaskans]

There is some strange thing with dreaming and obe, if you cant remember it, it didn't happen.
Well atleast thats what the effect is to the ego. Just kind of puzzeling to think about, I mean if you
interact with something through an obe that your physical brain cant remember, it didn't happen to you,
but it happend to whatever you interacted with in the astral, if that entity rememberd it?

IMO that is why even though OBE's feel 'more real than reality',but once you reenter your body they suddenly feel like a dream. (maybe thats just for me?) I absolutely believe memory is external, at least in part, and I also have the same view as CF about memories being on different frequencies.

If the dream is important enough, somone, my 'higher self' maybe, will make me remember my dream even if I had no idea I even had a dream, it could be 20 seconds to 10 years later that I remember the dream I never remembered having. Seem like proof of external memory. To the ego, things you dont remember didnt happen, but they did happen, and in a sense are still happening since they still exist as an imprint on the universe. If you really want to get deep, all things that are, have ever been, and ever will, have already happened and exist somewhere in the space of the universe. Why are we seperated from that eternity? That could really crack open time-space I think.
These are just my theories and I dont have evidence for some of it.

[RyanParis]

The reason it's hard to remember dreams is they aren't a conscious activity. Your conscious mind doesn't have dreams. That's why when you wake up consciously again, you can barely remember what you experienced.

That said, there are some things you can do.

You can, before falling asleep, repeat to yourself that you'll remember your dreams.

[Korpo]

I disagree.

Consciousness explorers like Charles Tart and the people at the TMI think that everything we do is conscious, however memory from one state of consciousness can be hard to retrieve in another (concept of state-specific memory). Dreaming/OBE and physical waking life are different states of consciousness, but recall can be improved.

Or go with Robert's concept - the problem is usually not that you are not having OBEs, but that you don't remember them, which is for your mind the same as if they didn't happen. OBE and dream recall and memory downloads are therefore important building blocks in Robert's MAP program.

Oliver

[Alaskans]

I pretty often lightly sleep with awake style conciousness and yet dream, or listen to (astral?) people talk, or continue my train of thoughts into and through deep sleep. I think it depends on the person/circumstances if conciousness and dreams take place at the same time. Lucid dreaming is all about dreaming while "concious". Thank you for sharing the theory though, we're here to discuss right?

[Korpo]

we're here to discuss right?

No, really, the fact that there seems to be something to remember indicates that you were conscious. Degree of awareness - that's another thing. IMO, as soon as you can say "I recall" or "I remember", you were conscious. Not necessarily lucid, but conscious.

Oliver