How can dreams Create memories??

[enoch]

It's been widely theorised that dreams are disorganised memory, sensory sorting offices.

But here's an example where dreams constructs can retain their memory.

Let me explain:-

I had a dream of a coffee shop. It's a coffee shop that I've never previously experienced in "real" life. It has unique features and two owners who I've never previously met in "real" life.

Now, if I'd had only one dream of this sort then I could have reasoned that this construct resulted from a muddle of thoughts, emotions, memories, etc. of my day and created this place and these people.

Fair enough. But I've re-visisted this coffee shop three more times in the past few months, the place contains the exact same unique features and the owners are still there and they are aware of how many times I've visisted the shop for coffee.

So now I could reason that the original muddle of thoughts, emotions and memories that created this construct have somehow retained their form and repeated. So, could I reason that, although the dream construct came as a result of my head sorting through the muddle and making some of kind of "sense" from the muddle, it has also retained a "memory" of the construct and allowed me to visit it again.

If dreams really are (as is theorised) just sensory sorting offices and dreams are just meaningless, fleeting constructs of emotion borne from a mind attempting to model some "sense" from the procedure whilst processing it, then why does our unconcious retain some of the constructs (as in the coffee shop) where are they stored, and why does it allow us to re-visit them?

Just a thought.

[enoch]

unless, off course, the first coffee shop is "constructed" from this fuzz of sensory garbage and then when I awake I remember the coffee shop and therefore I've just created another waking memory which is then fed back into the fuzz. But if it is fed back into the sorting office then it would not present itself as a construct but rather be split apart and discarded if it serves no meaning.

[CFTraveler]

unless, off course, the first coffee shop is "constructed" from this fuzz of sensory garbage and then when I awake I remember the coffee shop and therefore I've just created another waking memory which is then fed back into the fuzz. But if it is fed back into the sorting office then it would not present itself as a construct but rather be split apart and discarded if it serves no meaning.

I think some dreams are sorting of images and maybe assigning them meaning (I don't think this is senseless, though) since you perceive with your senses, make decisions with your conscious mind about what is happening, and then store them in your subconscious(or in some thought systems, store them in the collective unconscious via the subconscious). So if the second possibility is true (the subconscious is temporary storage, like a computer cache, which gets stored in the collective unconscious (AKA Akashic Records) Then when you experience the recurring area where you keep going to (your cofffeeshop) maybe where you are going is directly to that part of the C.U. where your particular memories are stored, and the 'random' dream images are actually the processing of these. Of course this is just a theory that I came up with (and others, I'm sure) to explain why we have 'areas' we revisit that are so familiar to us. I myself have a place I constantly go to, a house that is 'supposed to belong to me' but is sometimes inhabited by others and is often under construction. Of course this could also be symbolic of your subconscious itself, where you of course keep coming back to in a more direct way when you sleep. As you know, during the day we access our subconscious without realizing it, but at night, our conscious minds 'step away' and we experience the subconsious mind more fully, directly, and confusingly, since the subconscious (allegedly) has no language, but is only representational, and is all memory and emotions.

[Chris]

I think a key to this is research which shows the brain cannot distinguish between 'external' sensory input and internal generated imagery. Both use the exact same neaural pathways.
So if sensory data is remembered, surely its possible that internal data which uses the same neural pathways and brain regions could also be remembered?
What I mean by this is, perhaps the coffee shop was constructed from meaningless information. Even though its conception was without meaning, it was remembered as a memory the same way you would have remembered visiting a coffee shop in waking reality.

Personally I think dreams can hold some meaning, such as imagery and insights gained through the use of psychedelics can. I've always taken dreams to be a pretty direct route to the subconsious - and so through an awareness of dream situations we might be able to guage things about our current mind/life etc.

[Ziltron]

I think a key to this is research which shows the brain cannot distinguish between 'external' sensory input and internal generated imagery. Both use the exact same neaural pathways.
So if sensory data is remembered, surely its possible that internal data which uses the same neural pathways and brain regions could also be remembered?

How does that compare with the 'hand brushing' technique from NEW? You know, where you brush one hand with the other for a while and then continue the brushing sensation with your mind. It could be argued that the mental brushing action is a not 'new' sensation from interacting with your energy body, but an echo of an old tactile sensation.

To take the exact opposite stance for a moment, I've never felt anything like a chakra opening before doing NEW, so not everything can be a recalled sensation. But that just raises the question of why recalling the hand-brushing motion stimulates the energy body at all.

Is it possible that the mind simply interprets energy body sensations as 'touch' because it has no other sense to classify it under? Does NEW work by tricking your brain into feeling the energy body like Mr. Miyagi taught Daniel-san karate by making him wax his cars (oh, you know you've seen The Karate Kid)?

So, to tie this back to the coffee shop in question, some dreams may be meaningless emotional constructs, but sleep is also a time of high energy body activity. It's possible that your subconcious stumbled across something solid, internal or external, during its random gropings. Maybe this solid something is simply being interpreted as 'coffee shop' because that's the only way your brain can interpret it. The fact the owners recall your visits at least implies something solid.

[Chris]

How does that compare with the 'hand brushing' technique from NEW? You know, where you brush one hand with the other for a while and then continue the brushing sensation with your mind. It could be argued that the mental brushing action is a not 'new' sensation from interacting with your energy body, but an echo of an old tactile sensation.

This is a distinct possibility. Another possibility is when we relax blood enters the capillaries directly beneath the skin (tension and stress divert more blood to core systems, as the body gears up for a potential 'fight or flight' scenario). Having a keen awareness, and looking for 'sensations' in specific body areas, could allow us to feel this sensation - and when one applies the brushing sensations (giving rise to tactile memories) the effect might be quite potent.

To take the exact opposite stance for a moment, I've never felt anything like a chakra opening before doing NEW, so not everything can be a recalled sensation. But that just raises the question of why recalling the hand-brushing motion stimulates the energy body at all.

Is it possible that the mind simply interprets energy body sensations as 'touch' because it has no other sense to classify it under? Does NEW work by tricking your brain into feeling the energy body like Mr. Miyagi taught Daniel-san karate by making him wax his cars (oh, you know you've seen The Karate Kid)?

I agree. but the fact the imagination and sensory input use the exact same pathways does not mean everything we experience is a recalled sensation. Creativity is something we know little about, and the brain can 'invent' sensations which we might have no direct external parallel with.
I think this is a complicated area because there could be a lot going on. Such as recently it was dicovered that everyone has synaesthesia. This means that senses are interconnected ie previously we thought only a small percent of the population suffered from this condition, which might make them see sound, or see numbers, or taste colour or words etc. But it turns out that everyones brain is geared up this way, our sensations are linked on the most basic level, for the most part, this is below a persons sensory perception (apart from language skills) and the few who see this stuff in day-to-day life suffer from an exaggerated version of it. This discovery helps explain a lot, including potentially how language started, how we do internal mathematics, how we have an internal sense oc spatial and temporal concepts etc. Not to go into too much detail about this (i'll post a link below), but it seems this might be a major key in our creative abilities.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synaesthesia

Anyway, what this means is, its just possible that the sensation of chakra could have it's root in another sensory area than touch, and deep relaxation helps us become more aware of our normally hidden synaesthesia abilities - ie sowe can seem to feel things which seem novel and now - but they might have their routes in say sound.


There is also the possibility as you say, we interpret it how we do because we have no direct parallels (As yet) with chakras opening. A lot of people (astral Gurus) are of the mind that we interpret astral phenomenon using the knowledge we have to date. This is why we might 'mis-percieve' certain things, because we have no direct experience parallel - and so our brain interprets it as our nearest remembered parallel.

[Ziltron]

Huh! That is some freakin' food for thought. Thanks!

[enoch]

thanks for the info, chris

[darkrealmz]

My friend had a dream like that. He recalled everything, and apparently he tells me it was lucid. He was carrying his shotgun, whilst walking quickly through a narrow corridor filled with many randomly labelled doors. He tells me at the end was a locked safety glass door which he walked to and as his dream faded the door opened revealing a sillhouette. When the dream began he felt a rather nervous presence lurking among him and he felt scared and was too afraid to look behind him. He loaded his gun and at the end he felt reassured that he was safe and this made him happy, telling me that a special someone, maybe a loved one was there to protect him. He had this dream for weeks on end and absolutely nothing changed and something seemed to be preventing him from controlling it, although he knew he was dreaming at the time.

[Kalonek]

unless, off course, the first coffee shop is "constructed" from this fuzz of sensory garbage and then when I awake I remember the coffee shop and therefore I've just created another waking memory which is then fed back into the fuzz.

Hi enoch !

In fact I have had a few experiences that invalidates this and confirms your first theory I think. First, I must say that I am an active lucid dreamer and I try a lot of different technics for this, including reality checks of course in the dream. What I used to do was to think back to the events in the past hours or days that led me to this situation, to see if there were any logical links in the time continuum. But I started to experience something strange (or at least I remember it from my dreams now), which is that in some dreams I have the memories of past dreams that I don't remember at all while I'm awake. This tricks the reality checks into a perfectly logical thing, as some people in my dreams remember the past dreams (like your barmen), and the environment is also affected (if I broke something or did something etc.) It's really strange, almost a bit scary : and if physical life was the same ? 'Cause in these dreams, even with reality check I can't tell it's a dream because of these memories of past dreams which are only accessible at these times. It makes it almost impossible to become lucid when it happens.

Moreover, I have also noticed that in some dreams, I would have memories of other lives. I'm not talking about reincarnation, but of the fact that my mind creates memories out of the blue to make a logical environment. I remember I was a soldier if it's after a war, my hiring if I'm working etc., although I haven't dreamt of it before. On these occasions, my mind makes no difference between real and created memories. I guess it's the same process than when we share memories with relatives but 2 people have different versions of the same event, each one being sure he is right also there are contradictory, but pushed to it's extreme, ie. total creation of a life of memories.