False Remembrance In Dreams

Original video by Stephen Berlin. Official website of Stephen Berlin's Lucid Dreaming Discourses: here, YouTube account here. The following text in this entry is a transcript.




Greetings, my fellow ants on the anthill—or, if you prefer, Great Cosmic Beings—depending I suppose on what you think is our status is in the universe. I’m Stephen Berlin, I’m going to be talking today about false remembrance in dreams. Now, this is a topic that will always be near and dear to my heart. Why? Because I had an individual get angry, even hostile toward me—I know that’s hard to imagine—some years back, by using that expression. He vehemently thought that I should use a term like dream remembrance because by introducing the word “false” I was essentially closing the door to any discussion before the discussion even begins.

All right. I understand that perspective, chill. “Dream remembrance”. That’s fine with me. Who cares? We’re talking about the same thing. That’s what’s important.

Now, I also want to point out, while we’re at it, that I didn’t coin the term. The term was used by Fredrik van Eeden, and he was the same guy who coined the term “lucid dreaming”. Now, there’s a lot of people that don’t like the world “lucid”. They think it should be called “conscious dreaming” so, for those of you out there that get your underwear up in the bundle about terminology, that’s okay. Kindly go dig up his corpse and kick it. And leave this one that’s still breathing—alone.

Okay, false remembrance! Here we go! I was talking down a street in my dream, and around the houses and the lawns, and this wave of nostalgia came over me, and I thought, “This is my old paper route in upstate New York when I was growing up!” And it was great to be back in the neighborhood. Then I woke up, and I was recalling my dream, and I thought, “Whaat? That street I just saw doesn’t look like my little paper route! As a matter of fact, it doesn’t look like any street I’ve ever seen, anywhere, any place, any time in my entire life!” So, for lack of a better explanation right now, let’s call it false remembrance.

Now, how about the people in our dreams? There’re familiar faces. Our family, friends, coworkers. There’s a lot of strange faces also, in our dreams. What I want you to begin noticing in your dreams, is that some of these strange faces in your dreams, you’re pretty tight with in your dreams. They’ll be your comrade throughout the whole dream, your associate throughout the whole dream, and you’re going to feel like—in the dream—When you wake up, you’re going to realize, “Man, in a dream, I really felt that he or she was my best friend! I mean, we had a connection, and I could feel it! I’m sure I knew him or her, but I can’t—the face—doesn’t match any face in my waking life at all!” False remembrance. Now, an offshoot of this is how we watch movies and TV and we feel like we know people, you know, by seeing them on the screen. So, I’m going to use myself as an example, here. Let’s say, for instance, you dreamed of me tonight, tomorrow night, whenever. Now, I think it would be fair to say that you would probably, in your dream, feel as though you knew me—because I feel like I know the people I see on TV, although I know I don’t really know them, and that they don’t really know me. Now, a curious phenomenon in dreams is that if you saw me, not only would you feel like you knew me, you would (emphatically) believe also that I knew you. We would interact as though we knew each other.

You would feel a sense that we had some kind of history together, and that would be a false remembrance. Now, let me give an example that would show you how common false remembrance is in dreams, at least in my opinion. We’re all taught, when we become lucid dreamers, to look for anomalies in our dreams, things that are kind of strange or out of the ordinary, and then use those anomalies by various methods to recognize you’re dreaming and become lucid. Now, to get to where I’m going with this, let me give an example: I’ve got a patio door, right here. Now, I had a dream—And I live out in the middle of the desert, okay?—I had a dream, and I walked out of this patio door, I opened it up, and I stepped up onto my deck. Which I don’t have. And I looked at…the ocean! Which isn’t there. And I didn’t wake up, I didn’t become lucid, it seemed okay with me, evidently—and I went on with my dream. Now, clearly, that had to have been a feeling of, “This is okay. I remember this as always being this way.” A false remembrance. Okay, now, what are some theories on how false remembrances might really be true, for those of you that like, you know, the appearance of truth in your life? (aside) Good luck with that.

All right, one of the examples that I’ve heard—a rational example, going back to the street that I remembered, like my paper route. One example is, okay, your mother, when you were young, was rolling you down the street in a stroller and your mind took in the vision of the street, and you forgot it because you in your pre-(00:00:37) wanted to, and now many years later your mind dishes it back out, and so you authentically recall it. You just don’t remember it, because you were so little. And so, that’s why you had that feeling of such strong remembrance. Okay, well, that’s plausible. Now, there’s quite a few people—and this is a very plausible theory—that we have a bank of dreaming memories and a bank of waking memories and they’re not easily accessible one onto the other. There’s actually been some studies on this. Now, therefore, that street I saw in my dream isn’t accessible—that memory wasn’t accessible to my waking memory, but maybe I dreamed about that street before, maybe multiple times. Therefore, when I was in the dream state, and I saw the street, I remembered it, because I had a previous dream memory of it. That’s also plausible.

Now, we get into the metaphysical things. A lot of religions and metaphysical schools of thought believe in reincarnation. And just like the déjà vu experience in waking life, if you see something and you really feel a strong sense of having been there before, well, logical conclusion: “must have been in one of my past lifetimes.” All right, now how about parallel universes, parallel realities? You know, in physics, that’s almost legitimate to talk about now! We’re going from string theory to M theory and mutiverses, it’s fascinating! Okay, well, maybe that street I saw in my dream exists in a parallel universe or reality, that’s there, then, now, intertwined, the past present future—you know! Maybe! It’s possible! I had one lady tell me once, “Oh, I had a dream and my friend had the same dream the same night. I had her memories and she had mine.” Really. Okay, that’s cool. And, how about aliens? Well, maybe we’re organic computers put here by aliens, and, we’ve got programs going on in there, and so memory’s an executable program to keep it all glued together, and—or maybe aliens just like to bother you at night and plant false memories in there and somebody’s sitting on Mars with a mouse. You get what I’m saying.

Now, I’m not making fun of any of these, I’m really not, because—Why am I not making fun? Because, as I pointed out before, your reality, your experiences, in your lifetime, and I used the expression before, “from the cradle to the grave”—in the package of your life, let’s say…it’s real! What you believe is true, is true for you! And what’s going on in me is mine. And sure, maybe I’m you and you’re me, but that’s—we’re getting too far into philosophy there, and I’m here to talk about dreams. So, I’m not making fun of anything. Whatever you believe is great. I have no issues with that. But, the point I’m, trying to make for the purpose of this topic is that if we want to make false remembrances true somehow, it’s going to be because of a belief system that we attach to that!

If you’re s scientist, you’re going to think false remembrances are brain chemistry and you’re going to want research and scientific method and statistics, and if you’re metaphysical, you’re going to put that spin on it… and, you see what I mean, and so, it all boils down to us attaching a belief system to it, and belief…and belief systems… (begins to grumble) are what cause all the friggin’ wars in the world, the hatred, the conflict, the bigotry, the—

(sighs)

Can’t mankind just get over this, you know?

(gestures a cessation)

Okay, I’m philosophizing again. So, that’s it. Next, I’m going into the geography and navigation of dreams. How to get around, and boy, I make these things so long, that they really push the limit, so I know that’s hard to do, so next time you’re in the grocery store, make sure you buy yourself some pop corn!