Friday, July 02, 2010

Outer Knowledge in Dreams?

In my dream last night I was visiting Garden City and I was late for a concert (Jars of Clay if you want to know what band). Well, it turned out I was really late because it was 8:20pm and the concert started at 8, oh, and look, the concert is in Hutchinson. OK, here is where it gets interesting. In my dream I didn’t know how far Hutch was from Garden, like I just had no reasonable guess, and when I did guess I said about an hour, but the people riding with me knew it was about three hours, which turns out to be correct (three hours and seven minutes on Google maps).

So here is the question: who am “I” when I dream. Obviously the characters in my dream had knowledge that I know when awake, even though when I was sleeping my first person self did not remember that fact. This makes sense - I am making up this whole world in my sleep so these people must have my knowledge and not their own, but I had always thought that the other people in my dreams were more of “rag-dolls” that I can interact with but not really gain any knowledge, at least knowledge that my first-person self in the dream did not already have.

Does this mean that really anyone that I dream about is just different aspects of myself in that dream? Do they know things that I don’t know consciously, and that knowledge turns out to be (more-or-less) correct? If all these other people are more of me, why am I still stuck to myself in my dreams, why can’t I dream from the direction of anyone else and see myself in third person? I never really took much of dream interpreting to be real, but since others in my dream have knowledge that I didn’t consciously leads me to think that there may be at least something at a very basic level that could be true about it.

Also; sorry Dave for bending the rear spoiler on your car when I jumped on it in my dream… I was just trying to jump over the car so I could get into the van to go to the concert, I didn’t think I would bend it so bad.

4 comments:

Julia said...

Many people believe that the people in dreams are just different aspects of the self. Do you ever see yourself in your dream or is it like you are looking through your own eyes? I usually see myself in third person like I'm watching a movie of my life. I think that is bizarre since you never really see yourself like that. Dreams are so fascinating. They seem to play important roles in consolidating memories, but no one really knows how or why...

Ookami Snow said...

Nope, it is almost always first person for me... there may be some times of "movie shots" but I don't ever see myself in my dreams.

Irene said...

Me too. I don't think I've ever seen myself in my dreams either, But I do have a theory on our dreams. I think that most of our memories and our knowledge is untapped. Kind of like we outwardly remember parts of conversations but somewhere in our heads subconsciously we remember ever word and detail of our lives. People with 'photographic' memories just use that part of their brain better than the rest of us. I believe in our dreams, all the charactors are created by us and their knowledge comes from us, some from the subconscious memories. things we don't remember we know. Imagine if we tapped into even 10% more of our brain power what we could do.

Kat said...

I believe there is a fine line with analyzing dreams. That which lies between self prophecy and self awareness. I know I have had many dreams that are glimpses of my future. Or maybe they are just deep rooted truths that unconsciously I am aware of but to busy and cluttered to notice from day to day. If you pay attention to your dreams you'll find there are many questions and answers that will lead you in the right direction for your waking life. And the more you pay attention, the more your dreams will reveal. Cognitive dreaming is like an awakening of your subconscious. There are certainly layers to our thoughts and memories and certainly a lot of processing of information that is always going on. It's your mind so if you choose to pay attention to it then only the answers you seek will reveal themselves and no one can/should tell you anything different.
btw...nice to see you again. I dropped my sniper kitty and have been spending more time on my food blog again.