Prospective Memory and Lucid Dreaming
I'm a bit compulsive on wanting to know how things work, and so when I became interested in lucid dreaming, I spent a month or two studying the hard science on perception, memory, and dreaming, as well as the popular books on the subject. When the smoke cleared one fact stood out above everything else I had learned. All lucid dreaming induction techniques rely upon prospective memory for their workability.
For those of you unfamiliar with "prospective memory" a brief overview. The two kinds of memory are retrospective and prospective.
Retrospective memory is the faculty we use to recall past events, for example, remembering how to bake a cake, or the experiences of your last vacation.
Prospective memory is the faculty we use to remember to remember something at a future time, for example remembering to remember to stop at the store and buy cat food on the way home from school... or remembering to remember your girlfriend's birthday.
Stephen LaBerge's breakthrough came about as a direct result of his realizing the role prospective memory plays in lucid dreaming.
In WILD approaches to lucid dreaming, we will ourselves to remember to remember to stay aware as we hit the various stages of falling physically asleep. If our prospective memory lets us down, the WILD attempt fails.
In DILD approaches we will ourselves to remember to remember to recognize that we're dreaming when certain reminders (dream signs) show up.
Retrospective memory is turned off in the sleep state. We don't flinch at the most absurd happenings because we don't remember what is normal.
Prospective memory, on the other hand, remains turned on while we sleep. This is evidenced by the fact that most people can successfully will themselves to wake up at a particular time, or perhaps they wake up seconds before the alarm clock sounds.
It's a self-evident fact that dream recall is essential to the success of any lucid dreaming technique, but beyond that it's all about the ability to use our prospective memories.
I was surprised to learn that in the ten years prior to LaBerge making known his ground-breaking discoveries, less than 40 peer reviewed papers touching upon prospective memory had been published. In the ten years that followed, over 300 papers on the subject were published. Obviously there was a lot about the subject that was not known when LaBerge wrote his book.
And so I spent the last month studying prospective memory, how it works, how to effectively use it, and why it sometimes fails us. As my understanding of the subject grew, I began to suspect, and finally concluded what to me was a rather remarkable find...
EVERY TECHNIQUE THAT LEADS TO A GREATER PERCENTAGE OF SUCCESSFUL LUCID DREAMING WORKS BECAUSE IT IMPROVES OR MORE EFFECTIVELY UTILIZES PROSPECTIVE MEMORY.
That discovery, coupled with one of those "bolt from the blue" moments of insight opened the door to a very direct and simple approach to the MILD technique that I just began experimenting with last week. So far my success record is 4 for 5.
After last night's success with the approach, I got really excited, and so this post to tell you guys about it.
More to follow...
