Thread: An Interesting Theory About Dreams

I've died in a couple of dreams before. Nothing happened in real life.

I've been shot in the chest. I'm pretty sure what I felt isn't like what it would really be like, though it was interesting.

I've had amazing sex in dreams and amazing sex in real life. I've also had unsatisfying sex in real life and dreams, but the sensations and experiences never fully correlate.

I wouldn't necessarily say we have a data bank in our mind of feelings the same way a computer would give you a certain output for a specific input. Rather I would say our mind has the ability to understand how situations we have never experienced before may feel and depending on the person it "takes a guess" and gives you an output, though it may not be the correct one.

For example, I've never lifted off the ground in real life, spread my arms, and gone flying through the air, yet my mind has offered me the perception of it. I 'know' this feeling without ever experiencing it.

The mind is good at taking guesses based on what you see, feel, and hear, and applying that to other situations without direct experience, both in waking life and in dreams. Pain is something your body knows before you even know your own name, and the ability to feel pleasure and even orgasm is something your mind can comprehend (and guess at) without ever having experienced the act of sex.

TL&DR: Your dreaming mind uses your real life experiences and perceptions to create realistic dream experiences.

To add on to that, it's not just the totality of Experiential Learning that the unconscious is better at processing compared to our conscious mind that could process maybe 5-9 ideas at once, but a lot more. Whether it's:

- Looking at a television and seeing people kiss

- Imagining yourself running just before an explosion occurs in those action films

- Having sex

- etc.


The unconscious will be better at storing those body languages, the grunts, the sighs, and everything even if we're not paying much attention to it. Although us experiencing it in real life solidifies the experiences in the dream for the unconscious to extend the intensities, with how books or any medium of information with good sensory descriptions, our unconscious imagination is pretty good at making a model. It's an understatement to say it's just "guesses," more like "calculated guesses that can deviate into limitless scenarios" that we usually can't fathom all at once. Although the human mind clearly can't be defined on concrete terms, how people apply certain inputs, the results based on the totality within the input can give a general result, so it can still be like a computer in this case. It's simply a matter of how one presents the information and being able to slip it in with suggestions.

This is why when we're lucid dreaming, we somewhat lifted off the critical factor a bit (or the "guard" that analyzes information coming in before it slips into the mind) or lulled it to sleep. Which is why we can conceptualize things like 360 vision, switching forms, etc. in dreams that would be hard to process and define in reality. It's like seeing the unconscious as this vast collection of treasures, gold, and such, while our conscious is us going through a dark cave with a flame torch on our hands. Our perception is limited based on how far the torch can expand more light, and even if we can train ourselves to become more aware, ultimately, the unconscious is the going to be the epitome of "universal" or "collective" awareness of our selves.

Is it possible our mind and nervous system know what these feelings really feel like, but have to be trigger in order to apply them?

No. The thing that the brain does perfectly is trying to recreate them. I won't refer to "psychological" pain because I consider it a tricky subject which I don't know much about, but it's very clear that your brain can imitate scenarios and sensations even though you never experienced them. This is a classical example of how memory affects experience.

Take the example that melanieb mentioned (flying). It would be impossible for a human being to fly without any kind of device, but from all the experiences we have regarding this "super power", along with other ideas/emotions that might be connected to the term, we have a pretty good notion of what flying is like. What the brain does is gather this bits and pieces of information and construct the experience. And this is why our dreams are unique: memories are not replicas, but constructs. This ultimately dictates that every single experience in your life might have some influence on your dreams of flight.

And there's not a single documented case of people dying in the waking life due dying in dreams. Why? How could we know the person was dreaming of dying if she died before waking up?

Edit: Seriously Linkzelda, your post (especially the last paragraph) was a huge pleasure to read, really like how you explained it