Can We Only Dream Of Faces We've Seen In The Past?
"We can only dream of faces we've seen in the past, whether we actively remember them or not. The brain cannot invent these."
Do you agree with this quote? - From Caspi
Rebecca Turner: Well I think this quote is interpretive. On the one hand, yes your brain can "invent" a new face, for instance by mashing different features of different people together. Or by making the features preposterous: adding a giant mole, changing the eye color to purple, and so on. Or let's go all-out: ten eyes down the left, eleven eyes down the right, a giant nose and a mouth coming out of the nostril. I'm confident I've never seen that guy before.
On the other hand, our dreams are drawn from real world experiences and unconscious interpretations. Even our imagination, in dreams and in waking life, is based on our attempts to thrust remembered images into new realms.
Salvador Dali, perhaps the most famous surrealist painter, conjured up elephants with thin stilt-like legs and melting clocks. Despite this remarkable creative expression, we have to admit that elephants and clocks are not light years away from our own reality. Even our imagination is based on concepts derived from the waking world.
To illustrate this limitation within the dreamspace: congenitally blind people do not dream visually as way we do, because they don't have a visual palette from which to "paint" their dreams. Instead they dream as they "see" the world, through their other senses. It's not possible for them to visually dream new faces, because they've never seen any before.
So I think what the author was trying to say is that our imaginations, however spectacular, are still limited to our realm of experience. Thus our dreams, too, are mental extensions of our waking experiences.
Perhaps the analogy of dream faces was not the best choice to illustrate the point, because faces are made up of composite features. It's not hard to imagine drawing different features from our memories and then creating a new face with mix-and-match techniques.
However they are making a fundamental point about the nature of creativity. Is it really possible to have an original thought? To bring this home, perhaps the quote could be improved to say:
"We can only dream of colors we've seen in the past, whether we actively remember them or not. The brain cannot invent these."
About the author
Rebecca Turner is a science writer, illustrator, explorer of consciousness - and founder of World of Lucid Dreaming. She is currently studying for a biology degree in Auckland and blogging at her site Science Me.
The Anatomy of a Dreaming Supplement
A lot has happened in the last 5 months. But how did we go from business as usual to changing the face of the entire lucid dreaming supplements industry? It’s a story that I think will interest you – and you might even learn a thing or two in the process. When I was first taken on-board as Chief Lucidity Officer in 2016, one of the first things I was tasked with was taking a good look at our operations and giving things a bit of an overhaul.
How a Lucid Dreaming Community Was Born
Gather round. I’ve a story to tell. It’s a story of tragedy, re-birth and fresh beginnings... But fear not, it has a happy ending! Our forum had some pretty impressive stats at its peak: 60,171 posts, 134 people online at once and over 10,000 registered users.
How to remember your dreams
To lucid dream, I recommend being able to remember at least one vivid dream per night. That will boost your self awareness in dreams (making lucidity more likely) and also means you can actually remember your lucid dreams. Which is nice. Here are four detailed tips on how to remember your dreams more frequently. And if you don't think you dream at all - trust me, you almost certainly do. It takes an extraordinarily rare sleep disorder to deprive someone of dream sleep.
What Do Lucid Dreams Feel Like?
Years ago, before I had my first lucid dream, I had a very specific idea about what a lucid dream would feel like. I thought it would be intense and magical and a little bit spooky. This turned out to be a pretty accurate representation. Becoming aware in the dreamstate is like entering another world. One where physical laws can be manipulated (there is no spoon, Neo) and your fantasies can come true in an instant. There's definitely something magical about that - and it's as if the lucid dream world is a living, breathing organism that can react to your very thoughts.
How to have amazing lucid dreams
Experts agree that everyone is capable of having lucid dreams. Dreaming itself is a normal function of the mind. We all dream every night, even if we don't remember. And we all achieve conscious awareness while awake every single day. So what does it mean to combine these states? Why, the amazing ability to have conscious - or lucid - dreams. Sounds simple, doesn't it? So why do I keep hearing from people who say they can't achieve their first lucid dream?
Mugwort: Dream Sage of the Chumash Indians
It is estimated that these wise and wily Indians have been using mugwort in their healing and ritual practices for 13,000 years, where it is known as the ‘dream sage’. They use the herb to promote good dreams, which they consider an essential aspect of normal human functioning! But that’s not all...
