Proving or Disproving "Lost Memory Retrieval" Abilities During Dreams

Hello All!


As a disclaimer: Although I am nowhere near new to Lucid Dreams - I learned about them six years ago or so and have been fascinated ever since - I haven't had more than a few semi-lucid experiences that only lasted for short bits, so I am by no definition an experienced Lucid Dreamer.

My name is Toby, and I study at UC Berkeley. I took a DeCal (taught by students, for students) two semesters ago that centered around "Altered States", meaning different states of consciousness (i.e. sleep/dream/drugs/sensory deprivation/meditation etc.). Part of the class was to design an experimental project and conduct it as scientifically as possible.

My project was centered around the question:
Can we recall memories inside lucid dreams that we otherwise have no access to through conscious processes?

The project assumed two statements to be true:

1. The unconscious stores vast amounts of information that we usually cannot access.
2. Lucid dreams give us conscious access to the unconscious, possibly similar to hypnosis.

This is the concept of the research project:

1. Enter a Lucid State in your dream.
2. Create a person or place that represents your unconscious (could be a library for example)
3. Ask the place/person to show you your earliest memory
4. Verify the memory with your parents or other adults that were present during the memory.
5. If your dream-recalled memory turns out to be true and not documented in photos, this would provide a high likelihood for lucid dreams to be a powerful tool of memory recall.

I bought a Zeo Sleep Tracker (they recently went out of business, unfortunately :/ ) and tracked my own sleep patterns. I wrote "Dream" on my right hand every day, tried to do dream checks, looked for dream signs, tried to immerse myself into the topic. Unfortunately, presumably due to my extremely irregular sleep patterns and lifestyle as a filmmaker and full-time student, I was unable to achieve prolonged lucidity during that semester.
Nevertheless, I posed the project to some fellow students in the class that had relatively regular lucidity. One of the students was able to try my experiment.


He said that he posed the question "What is my earliest memory?" but was not able to read some text that was presented to him. Based on this singular outcome, I assume that memories would be much more accessible if accessed through a purely visual approach rather than a "coded" one, like language would be (i.e. before you are able to write or read memories would most likely be stored as visual information).

Most of these are all assumptions, but I will further pursue the project and would love to see if anyone in this forum that is a regular lucid dreamer could try out to conduct the experiment during a lucid night. I searched the forum for similar topics but didn't find any relevant threads. It'd be really cool to get some input from you all.


Nice to be part of this forum - I spent most of my teenage years in forums, and find them amazing places for exchanging and advancing knowledge and skills.


Thanks for taking the time to read!


So again, the experiment is:

Get into a lucid state, create a character/place that represents the unconscious and ask: Show me my earliest memory. Then confirm its validity with adults that were present during said memory.


Gentle

I suggest asking more than one question or else you're not taking full advantage of the rare opportunity. Also, question a person who witnessed your childhood and work out some good specific questions. For example, if you don't remember any toys that were in your crib but your mother remembers some then a good question for the dream character you create would be "show me a picture of a toy from my crib when I was a baby."

Good luck with this, Gentle! I think it is a good idea to seek the memories via symbol or metaphor rather than straight language... the unconscious seems much more likely to cooperate if you're willing to "listen" to it metaphoricallly.

Interesting. :D

I will try, :)

So I was in the midst of a long LD this morning, a little frustrated that I wasn't going to achieve my planned goals (long story for somewhere else), when I remembered your experiment, Gentle. What the hell, I thought, and stepped up to the DC nearest me -- a matronly woman with soft, dark eyes. I asked her for a forgotten memory.

She just nodded, but in an instant I had an image in my head of a moment with my mother that had to go back to when I was 4 or 5 (I am well past 50 now). It faded quickly, so details are unavailable, but a feeling survived; a feeling of security and warmth that only a child can know.

Intrigued, I asked another passing DC -- a young man this time -- the same question. He laughed and said, "Well, there was that time a dog bit you right on the forehead!" Sure enough, I immediately remembered a fairly traumatic (and long forgotten) event that definitely happened when I was around 5: we were at someone's house, and while there a little dog did indeed nip me in the head.

I tried a couple more DC's, but that was all they had for me.

Sadly I cannot prove anything, as my parents are long gone. So empirically-speaking I got nothing for you, but from an anecdotal perspective, I'd say your thesis is sound.


Full disclosure: I have done this sort of thing before, and have found that the unconscious does indeed harbor -- or perhaps secure & maintain for future need and wisdom's sake -- a great store of experience that is generally long forgotten, or simply left behind, by our consciousnesses remains to be tapped if ever necessary... when it comes to knowledge and experience, we tend to discard nothing.

It's not reliable unless someone confirms it happened or unless it beings back a memory when you're awake, and if the memory is available when awake then that limits the significance of it. In one of my first posts here I said:

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Dohan

The things I've experienced are...remembering a past event in a dream that, when I work up, realized never happened...

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^^ I believe I already said what I experienced wasn't reliable; I was simply sharing the experience, offering a bit of encouragement, and not trying to prove anything. Ease up.

This is now at the top of my agenda.
Yes, I have an agenda.