Lucid Dreaming, Gateway to forgotten memories?

I wonder if you could use lucid dreaming for experiencing events in your past again, like meet a dead grandfather who died when you were very young, who you can't really visualize rigth now, but whose face you know must be in your head somewhere still, voice, scent, all of it.

Or how about something like this: I know what a giraffe looks like enough to recognize one when I see it, but I couldn't draw it. But what if I went and found a giraffe in a lucid dream, and memorized what it looked like, could I then draw it in real life? (and I probably could do that if I went and saw a real one, observed it for awhile, and drew it later. I could probably do that)

So I dunno, just some thoughts. Anybody done anything like this?

Well whenever you achknowlege things you think (almost instantly) things about them like if you see an apple, you see it's an apple, it's green (or red), it smells like an apple etc and so I guess that unlocks your subconcious mind because you don't actively think of these things, for example, if you do not smell the apple you still know it will smell like an apple so your mind is working both on an concious and subconcious level.

When you're dreaming you can access things that you subconciously thought of like once in a dream I could perfectly smell a musty smelling book I picked up during the day but I never thought anything of it when I picked it up but when I smelt it I knew exactly what it was.

So I guess to remember somebody like a dead grandfather you'd have to unlock both your concious and subconcious thoughts about him. How would you go about this? I don't know. But it's interesting all the same

It has been proposed that you are closer to yourself than you'll ever be in the dream state, meaning that you could pull memories that are deep within yourself. If you can't, your mind will probably fill in the missing parts anyway. :)

Some people maintain that it is possible to recover and/or reexperience past events while dreaming. It is more likely, however, that you are creatively reconstructing it as you go.

This is the same controversy as with recovering memories via hypnosis - there is some pretty darn convincing evidence that the hypnotizee is actually creatively reconstructing the memory, rather than uncovering some dusty old memory as if it were a photograph or home movie. Hypnotists have even experimentally altered people's memories and implanted completely fictional memories in people. Recognizing this evidence, U.S. courts no longer allow hypnotic "memory retrieval" for eyewitnesses to crimes, and in fact if a witness undergoes such hypnosis they will not be allowed to testify at all.

thanks for the responses guys!

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Originally Posted by DuB

Some people maintain that it is possible to recover and/or reexperience past events while dreaming. It is more likely, however, that you are creatively reconstructing it as you go.

This is the same controversy as with recovering memories via hypnosis - there is some pretty darn convincing evidence that the hypnotizee is actually creatively reconstructing the memory, rather than uncovering some dusty old memory as if it were a photograph or home movie. Hypnotists have even experimentally altered people's memories and implanted completely fictional memories in people. Recognizing this evidence, U.S. courts no longer allow hypnotic "memory retrieval" for eyewitnesses to crimes, and in fact if a witness undergoes such hypnosis they will not be allowed to testify at all.

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That is interesting, maybe it is true. But I have also heard that the mind remembers almost everything, it just gets stored away in the subconscious. And when we are dreaming, I believe we have greater access to such stored information. Who knows? Hopefully somebody will respond to this topic who has some exerience that will clarify this for us.

Oh, I think it's definitely possible.

When I was young, my family visited a place in Vancouver to have lunch. That was the only time I've been at the place, until a few days ago when we got our passports reapplied.

But a couple days before our second visit, I had a dream of the place. Of course, since it was so long ago, I didn't associate the dream with the actual place. Then when we went there again, I realized I had dreamed of it, and every detail was exactly the same. Keep in mind I had only been at the place once before when I was younger before the dream. Kind of like a precognitive dream.