Misc. Mental Musings

Dreaming Into The Future

S. G. Lacey

  

Most of my written content is sensibly curated and founded in scientific fundamentals.  However, the concept of time travel, or at least subtle manipulation of its perceived passing, has been on topic of whimsical fascination for most of my life.  The entire conversation to follow relies on some acceptance of the occult, but does follow a logical progress of factual observations.  The human brain is a cunning mistress.

 

One of the most amazing features of dreams is their ability to transcend time.  The illuminated blue numerals on your bedside cellphone have no correlation to time in the imagined realm.  A minute can become an hour, a second a day, a millisecond a year.  As it turns out, the only duration limitation is your ability to store and recall the activities of the latest visions once you wake up.

 

I would argue that this experience is the closest homo sapiens have gotten to time travel thus far.  Time does not just occur as a tangible, quantifiable item, but also as a more malleable construct in the domain of the mind.

 

I’m lying in bed, early rays of morning sun glinting through the curtains in a dull glow.  I glance over at the clock, which reads “7:57”, in flashing red digits.  The alarm is set for 8 AM, but an instinctive weekday routine is so engrained, I always wake up before it goes off.

 

Three minutes of glorious sleep remaining.  Rolling over, I immediately drift back off, returning to a light REM cycle, which is optimal for dreaming.

 

I’m back in high school.  We’re out on the main field, which is used for both varsity football and soccer.  Not a full stadium, simply the playing surface, ringed by a rubberized red track, with a block of wooden bleachers along one sideline, which are empty.  This must be a practice day.

 

The grass is impossibly lush and thick, a brilliant emerald green in color.  Where is the riding mower, I wonder?  I pick up a football and try to throw it, but for some reason my right arm isn’t working, hanging limp at my side.  As a former soccer player, I’m more comfortable kicking anyways.

 

However, with the dense turf, and my unexplainable bare feet, I’m unable to make a solid impact, even leveraging a bright orange tee.  When the inflated object does go airborne, it’s immediately impeded by the heavy rain which is pelting down, thus coming up well short of the goal post target.

 

Seconds later, I’ve transitioned into the classroom.  My clothes have changed, from muddy athletic gear, to khaki cargo shorts plus a gaudy stripped golf shirt, both completely dry.  The desks are tiny, like something found in kindergarten.  My knees are cramped under the built-in drawer, with my back hunched over to reach the writing surface.

 

We’re still playing football, apparently, but now the paper variety, using small triangles created by folding a full sheet of paper.  My dominant arm seems to be fixed, which is great, but these origami swatches still don’t fly very far, no matter how hard I flick them.

 

An idea blossoms in my calculating mind.  I should create a hollow ball in more elliptical format to improve float.  What formula will allow me to generate the desired curvature? 

 

Some sort of cropped parabola certainly.  There’s an X2 term for sure.  And maybe a Y2?  Nope, that would be a circle.  How can I move the swooping vertex below the horizontal axis to denote the desired swatch trim line?  Is that the X-multiplier term, or the trailing integer?  I know these details for a straight line, but parabolas are more complicated.

     

Before I can solve the problem, or my mind explodes, I’m whisked to a new lesson.  This one’s more of a lecture hall format, a bowl-like amphitheater.  At least the chairs are appropriately sized for my scrawny teenage frame.  Leading the discussion from a forward podium is a young female teacher, who I have no historical recollection of.  But, she’s very cute. 

 

Based on the ongoing discussion, this must be an English seminar.  Or maybe Social Studies.  The format feels more like college, but my close friend from high school is sitting next to me.  We’re both drinking light lager in fancy glassware, garnished with a large cube of ice, which seems odd in many regards.

 

The conversation centers around a debate on climate change, with passionate points made for and against.  My usually shy pal suddenly chimes in with a moving life anecdote, which I wasn’t aware of until now.

 

Apparently, his uncle owns a seafood business down on the Gulf Coast.  The recent flooding has decimated his retail shop, but the quantity of fishy fare to harvest has expanded markedly in recent years.  More white shrimp.  More red snapper.  More blue crabs.  A very patriotic cornucopia.  The shifting oceanic conditions are clearly both a blessing and a curse. 

 

Contemplating the relevance of this story, I realize my beer is empty.  I should probably return this fluted highball to the cafeteria.  I have no idea what direction this facility is?  What’s that loud ringing noise?  A fire drill?

 

The above mental musing is of my own creation, experienced this past week, once I decided to document the details for this post.  How did this crazy sequence of events become manifest in my brain?

 

Some of the input variables leading to the amassed absurdity are near term and easily traceable.  The bottle of Belgian ale consumed the prior night.  The Pacific Northwest’s ongoing transition to the rainy fall season.  The recent rearranging of furniture in our apartment.

 

Other connections are harder to make.  An acquaintance from high school, recently reconnected with online.  Family health issues, now presenting over multiple generations.  Childhood artifacts, discovered again after years lost.

 

Then, there’s the elements buried so deep, their origin is inconsequential, and their recent recall completely random.  My love of sports, in all form factors.  Enjoyment of food, encompassing various cuisines.  An analytical mind, which craves mathematical challenges.

 

The most compelling factor of a dream state is how these threads, short and long term, comingle in a way never even conceivable when awake and aware.  The mind has a clever way of presenting preposterous scenarios only when the observer is too distracted to doubt the contrived scheme’s factuality.

 

Personally, I find my most lucid dreams stem from a combination of stimulating outdoor adventures, implausible science fiction content, and several glasses of red wine.  Not exactly a recipe for a healthy lifestyle, but the next morning’s inspiration can be compelling. 

 

Others discover their imaginative sweet spot through alternative avenues: new culinary experiences, social media engagement, playing with pets, slasher horror films, severe sleep deprivation, or any of infinite other mental stimuli.

 

There’s a whole field of science around how to rest and recover better each night, but that’s not where this discussion is headed.  Here, we’re exploring the realm of awake, as opposed to asleep.  Or more accurately, the blurry boundary between these two distinct states of being.

 

The silliest, and scariest, part about dreams is that they are usually grounded in factual memories.  While the content of most visions may seem abstract, awkward, and even absurd, the plot is really just an amalgamation the information housed in your brain.

 

Granted, the resulting contrived scenarios are often truly weird. 

 

You and your deceased grandfather touring through Europe during the Middle Ages, on giraffes.  Revisiting your wedding day, except you don’t recognize any of the guests, or your newlywed partner.  Thinking you’re a fish, racing through the colorful ocean, even though you can’t swim.  Enjoying a lap dance at a strip club, where all employees and patrons are cartoon characters. 

 

Dreams are intimate, and personal.  The subject matter is often drawn from topical experiences, but warped and manipulated into a convoluted, primarily self-centered, version of a memory.  The storyline becomes the way you wished it was, instead of what actual occurred in the historical physical construct.  This is why dreams as so enticing, and mesmerizing.  It’s the world, as we want it to be.

 

One might scoff that there’s no way dreams have any relevance to quantifiable items like possessions or productivity.  I would argue otherwise.  Provided humans are able to leverage the activities in their visions, and use this content for beneficial output in the real world, then a hallucinogenic state can be considered equivalent, if not superior to, thoughts while awake.

 

Homo sapiens sleep in a predicable, now-well-known, trajectory.  This medically-established cycle is comprised of 4 sequential stages, all tied to REM.  REM, or rapid eye movement, is a foundational element of modern sleep science, determined by decades of mind monitors tracking electrical synapse stimuli.

 

This acronym is inconveniently used to describe the quartet of facets related to resting, in confusing terminology, leveraging a negative suffix: non-REM (#1 - #3), followed by REM.  The progression is numerical, with the commonly cited REM format the last in the order.

 

Depending on duration in bed, individuals cycle through 4 to 6 rotations of the mind each night.  Normies spend nearly half their dozing in non-REM #2, with the subsequent non-REM #3 being the deepest, and thus most restorative, segment of the nighttime journey.

 

Most important to this conversation, traditional REM sleep is associated with vivid, realistic dreaming.  This portion on the process is crucial to managing emotional stimuli, and consolidating experiential memories.  As the last stage of the trajectory, folks exit out of, and can often return into, this mental state in the early morning hours.  Especially with a little practice.

 

The standard sleep cycle can be disrupted by all manner of factors, ranging from addiction to aging.

 

It’s clear the human mind has incredible processing capability, far beyond what’s needed or used on a daily basis.  While the supposition that we only use 10% of our brain has been debunked by scientific research, various regions of this organ alternate between shooting off and reloading throughout the course of a normal day.  The available firepower housed in the head is immense.   

 

The most advanced supercomputers in the world would be jealous of a young child’s brain.  That’s because our cognitive cortex has the ability for complex thoughts, including imagination, simulation, responsiveness.  With decision making happening nearly instantaneously.

 

While AI computer processing is currently making great strides with regards to fact recall, conversational dialogue, and image generation, there’s one realm that will be difficult to replicate.   Innate creativity, which draws from each individuals’ unique life experiences, often mixing disjointed past memories into a dynamic slurry of future inspiration.

 

As with many elements of life, the ancient Greeks were very perceptive regarding lived experiences, coming up specific words to describe each unique sensation.  With regards to perception of time, Greeks interpreted this reality through the lens of two gods, Kronos and Kairos.  These fellows represent a pair of disparate conceptions, one sequential and the other haphazard.

 

Kronos, the origin of the English word chronography, represents the steady, relentless pace at which the modern world perpetually turns.  It’s not surprising that the entire wrist watch industry has adopted this vocabulary.

 

Kairos, in contrast, adopts a much more amorphous approach to life.  Activities have no beginning, or end, with participants able to seamlessly transition between different paths, and personas.  This sounds like a drug-induced rave, which isn’t that far from what some affluent Grecians back in 400 B.C. enjoyed.  Or, a lucid dream, in the 21st century.

 

The Greeks clearly grasped human life progressed on a linear trajectory, from birth to death, in a inexorable, oft difficult, march.  More insightful was the revelation that, to keep commoners happy, an alternate universe, and opportunistic path, was needed.  Enter Kairos’s imagined land of illusory karma.  Which perfectly describes the act of dreaming.

 

No rational person can debate the serendipity of Kairos is more enjoyable than the inevitability of Kronos.  Which is probably why our whimsical pursuits more enjoyable than our work projects.  This represents the obvious difference between opportunity and obligation. 

 

We all must be able to function in a society dictated by clocks and calendars, dates and deadlines.  Which is what makes ventures into the realm of imagination so enticing, and important.  Dare to dream.

 

It’s obvious that our regimented construct of linear time already has flaws.  Consider the annual celebration ushering in each new year of the Gregorian calendar.  This partying, complete with fireworks displays and champagne bottles, occurs at sequential hours, moving westward around the globe, tracking the perpetually rising sun.

 

There is no singular second when the January 1st starts, but instead a progression, dictated by the rotation of Planet Earth.  The movement of our home in the solar system has dictated tracked time since the beginning of humanity.

 

Circadian rhythms are the body’s natural internal clock.  Many corporal functions like sleeping and waking, eating and digesting, moving and sitting, are dictated by this ingrained chronology.  Essentially every internal regulation system, from cardiovascular to gastrointestinal, endocrine to lymphatic, operates on this cycle. 

 

As with most elements of the body, this timeline is monitored by the brain.  When bright light is perceived by the eyes, the mind jolts into action, ceasing production of hormone melatonin, which is a homeopathic sleep aid.  In unison, the rest of the internal organs also ramp up their function to full capacity.

 

Predictably, this timing mechanism is based around light and darkness, sunrise and sunset, tracing back to the historical experiences of cavepeople.  The mental monitoring system was even able to account for the changing length of the day through the progression of seasons at different latitudes around the globe.  Quite impressive in a world most inhabitants perceived as flat.

 

In this modern era, with interior lighting and bright screens, the normal solar cadence can become substantially distorted.  There are many factors in today’s overstimulating existence which impair one’s circadian rhythms:  drugs, exercise, obligations, stress, temperature, travel, and myriad other distracting stimuli.

 

When functioning properly, it’s amazing how accurate the timepiece located in the brain’s hypothalamus can be.  This mechanism allows regimented folks to wake up at the same hour each day without an alarm, have stable bowel movement each morning, crave food around lunch time, reach peak energy in the mid-afternoon, and begin winding down at sunset each night. 

 

Granted, few individuals are able to impart such structure into the chaotic bustle of contemporary life.

 

Harnessing the power of one’s natural circadian rhythms is a key to healthy sleeping, and thus productive dreaming.  New bedroom innovations like blackout curtains, chilled mattresses, and technology lockboxes are all meant to avoid impairment of the mind’s impressive timekeeping.

 

Sleep is meant to be a period of rest for our incredibly overtaxed brain, which must manage visual stimuli, motor function, and sensory cognition, all with the goal of not getting the host subject killed.  Not to mention all the basic operations required for simple corporal continuation: breathing, circulation, digestion, etc.  Even when sleeping, these activities must continue to whir in the background, like a cellphone charging and getting software updates while pugged in at night.

 

Slumber is critical to human health, and not getting enough can cause all manner of adverse consequences: binging, emotions, forgetfulness, sickness, and stress.

 

Lack of sleep is an epidemic in the United States, and most developed countries, where the pressure to perform in all facets of life outweighs the bodily benefits of rest.  The lofty expectations of modern society don’t help provide people with the daily rest they need.

 

There are all manner of scientific suggestions for improving sleep quality: no booze, no caffeine, early dinner, limit screen time, temperature controls, consistent routine.  Most Americans completely ignore all these recommended guidelines.  Which can lead to lack of dream occurrence and comprehension. 

 

Essentially all other mammals on Planet Earth are more discerning and committed about their sleeping regimen than us.  When an entity’s goal is physical survival, as opposed to phone settings, priorities regarding rest and relaxation shift substantially.  One can’t help but wonder what visions materialize in the heads of these other creatures when they doze off.

 

Lucid dreaming is the practice of intentionally realizing you’re in a dream state, and remembering what occurs in this alternate realm when you return to reality.  Which sounds a lot like a science fiction novel.

 

However, there are fields of medical study, of debatably professional ilk, focused specifically on this topic.  Take the MILD technique, short for mnemonic induction of lucid dreaming, which is meant to reinforce consciousness while asleep.  Which may sound a bit contradictory to the normal goal of listlessly lying down.

 

As with any rote memorization, structured practice is key.  Telling your mind it’s supposed to acknowledge and remember dreams, while obvious, is important.  Researchers suggest techniques like nightly practice and bedside journaling, akin to reading scripture from the Bible before bed.

 

As a personal example, I keep a notebook and writing utensil on my nightstand.  Granted, the concept of documenting words with physical pen and paper already makes this process archaic.  I’m sure there are all manner of cellphone apps viable for documentation.

 

Automating the dream recall process results in procedural memory, the same regimented reinforcement that allows us to ride a bike or drive a car without actively thinking through the complex required sequence of motor skills.  One surprising key is to tell yourself you’re dreaming, to ensure the mind safely separates the real and imagined realms.

 

The concept of combining lucid dreaming with a memory palace takes this talent to the next level.  In this phase, you’re attempting to actually learn things while asleep.  Now that’s how to increase productivity. 

 

For those not familiar, a memory palace is a technique used by individuals to absorb and recall information, like the order of a shuffled deck of cards, of the value of pi out to hundreds of digits.  It essentially entails creating an imagined building, throughout which memories can be stored and accessed later on. 

 

The key is to make the rooms of the “palace” realistic and tangible, typically leveraging a well-known space in real life, to allow ease of virtual movement through.  A crazy concept, but one leveraged by the top memory practitioners in the world, and worthy of a future blog post.     

 

Being able to place interesting elements of a dream into the memory palace has the added benefit that they can be quickly stashed while asleep, then recalled in the morning, without need to physically wake up and write the details down.  This allows for both longer dreams and, of course, improved sleep quality.

 

The prefrontal cortex is the portion of the brain used for high-level cognitive functioning.  Think problem solving, decision making, social interaction, and all the other elements we struggle with as teenagers, since this is the last section of the mind to fully form and function.

 

During REM sleep, the prefrontal cortex essentially goes dormant, which wouldn’t normally be a good thing.  However, this powerful processing center, like all elements of our body, needs to rest at some point.  With the decision-maker down, the rest of the brain is free to conceptualize all manner of disjointed and deviant concepts.

 

This mental interplay explains why dreams often defy traditional logic, progressing down impossible pathways well outside the scope of reality.  If more engaged, the PFC would inform its host of such impossibilities, but when it rests the inmates get to run the asylum. 

 

Modern sleep research has also found a connection between the prefrontal cortex and lucid dreaming.  For these lucky folks, they engage the PFC enough to inform the brain they’re in a dream state, but don’t allow rational checks of this safety system to become too constraining.  Which requires some delicate mental gymnastics.

 

Often, in the mornings, I get inspiration for new stories.  Almost exclusively, my ability to capture the dreamt content is limited by memory.  Frequently, I know there are other elements of the simulation which occurred, but the harder I rack my brain, the deeper the imagined experience recesses itself.

 

However, it does make some sense that dreams are hard to capture when viewed through the time travel lens.  Imagine your brain has slowed down perception of physical time, allowing you to an hour of simulated scenarios in only 5 minutes on a ticking clock.  I’m sure many of us have had such an experience when hitting the snooze button.

 

When that alarm goes off, you’re roughly pulled from a hopefully pleasant, virtual state into the cold, dark reality of morning.  Generally, if most folks are given a chance to document their lived activity from any waking hour in the past day, using a computer keyboard or phone dictation, they can do a pretty good job of memory.  If the previous period happens to be especially engaging from a physical, visual, or emotional standpoint, as most dreams are, then this recall activity is trivially easy.

 

However, try writing down your travels in a dreaming state, and you’ll likely find a surprising hindrance to only travel back so far in the conceptualized experience.  For some, they can really only remember the last element of the envisioned scenario, like a snap shot, with almost no context of the activities that led up to the final scene.  Others can evoke events encompassing several minutes, again working back in fake time, at which point details get fuzzy.

 

Dreaming can be an incredibly vivid and emotional experience.  There are even ways to teach oneself how to shape and navigate the dream world.  This can allow for replay of regrets from the past, and realization of aspirations in the future.  The world is your oyster, or mussel, or quahog, in the imagined land.

 

The possibilities in dreams are unlimited, by definition.  The only constraints are an individual’s lived experiences, augmented by each brain’s creativity to generate new scenarios.  Physical traits from many different people can be combined.  Disparate locations traveled to instantaneously with no transit time.  Creatures and objects of unworldly origin become commonplace.

 

Dreams are often tied to current conversations, occurring in recent hours or days, but pull from buried historical memories, months or even years back.  Reflecting on a vision the following morning is a great way to determine what’s top of mind for the slumbering subject. 

 

The nice part about dreaming is that there are no paradoxes which can’t be solved, but not paradigms that will actually be changed.

 

Still, one needs to be careful, as this form of mental time traveling can be associated with folks looking to escape the real world, often tied to excessing alcohol and drug usage.  Thus, individuals must tread lightly when entering the pretend realm.

 

Additionally, dreams can sometimes fall into doom loops.  This is typically a harbinger there are underlying mental issues, prying the participant back into a sketchy space for various reasons.  While each session may be different, recurring themes can be a sign of deep-seeded memories; these are typically punishing as opposed to pleasant.

 

Dreams that are reoccurring often signify deeply engrained material, usually associated with a very important life experience.  Completely avoiding pain in the real world is not a solution.  But leveraging the engagement afforded by sleep simulation is quite beneficial to health and wellness.

 

One awesome element of dreaming, tangentially related to time travel, is the ability to jump into different periods of one’s own life.  Often, in contrast to the traditional life trajectory, the merged timeline includes experience, knowledge, insights, skills, or traits not available in the physical moment.  Reliving the past can be both a blessing or a curse, depending on a person’s mental disposition.

 

The ideal state, where time travel actually begins to occur, is to identify details from the beginning of the progression, and be able to work forward through time rather than backwards.  In this case, you can start to weave strings of logic connecting the various imagined activities, providing easier recall and an opportunity to extract more of the story.  

 

Taken to the extreme, imagine a supercomputer that can execute billions of calculations per second.  If you compare the efficiently of this machine at something simple like multiplication tables, the time value of mental speed becomes clear. 

 

While a 5th grader can accurately execute 50 such calculations per minute, the laptop in his backpack can now do billions of such mathematical minutia per second.  However, even if the questions were already entered into the computer, the kid cannot physically write down the answers on paper as quickly as she can do the mental arithmetic.  Dream documentation simply takes this analogy to the next logical level.  

 

The real question is, how can we harness this immense ingrained processing power and use it?  There needs to be additional research on brain waves during dreams, and people’s cognitive function in this lofty state. 

 

Ideally, if we could stay in a prolonged REM dream realm, and come up with a live method of documentation, there’s potential to substantially extend the total hours of mental acuity we have per day.  And that’s before accounting for the fact that our physical body is at rest.  If that’s not time travel, I don’t know what is.

 

Scientific-ish Studies:

Outlining the 4 REM-related stages of sleep.  [REF]

General overview on sleep dynamics and means of improvement.  [REF]

Background of Kronos and Kairos, the Greek gods of time.  [REF]

Blog about time travel based on dreaming, written by former pro baseball player Jose Conseco.  [REF]

Using a memory palace within a lucid dreaming.  [REF]

Overview of natural circadian rhythms.  [REF]

Lucid dreaming recall technique video with Anthony Metivier.  [REF]

Excellent book on memory palaces and the world of competitive memory.  [REF]