Dream and Reality
In dream we are aware that things are happening and we feel and experience. However we are not aware that things are happening to us, or rather, I cannot pinch myself in my dream and acknowledge that I am experiencing the events that are happening in my dream. When I wake up from my dream then I immediately can relate to the feelings and experiences that happened in the dream because I take the help of memory to remember the dream. And therefore only when I am awake that I can claim that I experienced all the feelings that happened in the dream and this I am able to do because my memory is able to point me to the moment when I felt the experience and so with the help of the memory I can acknowledge I felt it at the time when I am dreaming.
The ability to experience that “I am feeling…”, “I am having pain” etc is termed as meta-cognition. We have meta-cognition only after waking up. Does that mean memory is cause of meta-cognition. I think the answer is “NO”. Because in dream also there is memory involved (otherwise i can’t dream with relation to events in waking state), and even then I don’t have meta cognition. Well then what is the cause of meta-cognition? What is responsible for the existence of meta-cognition? That’s a million dollar question and we are trying to figure that out.
So one of the big differences between waking state and dreaming state is that though in the waking state I can acknowledge to myself that I am experiencing whatever is happening around me, however in the dreaming state I can’t acknowledge to myself that I am experiencing the events happening around me.
Now the interesting thing is that if after waking up, I don’t have the luxury of my memory, I won’t be able to recall that dream. And in a way that dream doesn’t exist at all.
The experience in the dream is a kind of experience where there is no “I” or where there is no identification with the ego. But the pain is there but there is no realization that I am going through the pain… it is only the pain that is there. For example I am dreaming that my examination is after 2 days and I have not prepared anything and I am sweating and panicking. I am suffering. But actually I say I am suffering because it is only when I wake up I think I suffered as I superimpose the dream-events with the help of memory on to my indentificaton of self. So memory helps in meta-cognition but doesn’t mean that memory is the only essential ingredient to give birth to meta-cognition.
As already stated, memory is there in the dream which actually creates a dream event that is based on some fear or other feelings in the actual waking state and waking memory. So that which feeds on to the dream is basically the memory.
Now if I remove memory then I will not dream as well because if I remove memory, then there will be no recalling of emotion or feeling in my sleeping state which was in the very beginning giving rise to the dream.
So you can see that removal of memory also removes the anxiety-filled dream and you can say that it reduces suffering. Does it not look like suffering and pain of the mind is related to memory only then?
If we think a little bit deeper, we will find that in the waking state, it is not possible to get rid of memory and therefore the chatterbox of our mind is always on. Because memory is the engine that fuels the birth of endless thoughts.
When we are very much absorbed in something which we love to do, we have noticed that how time flies. Or in other words, it is also called that one is in flow in these situations. Is it not true that in such situations, we have managed to bypass the memory as well as the “I” or the “ego” feeling (that I am doing something) and therefore we are just submerged into the activity we are doing completely, thereby losing the track of time.
When we are out of that flow and then we try to remember that time we were totally absorbed in that activity, we find that it was so joyful. Because at that time the drag of ego and memory was absent. So the experience is like a freeflowing object moving in the absence of gravity. Here gravity is like memory and ego. It’s just an analogy.
Just like in the absence of gravity you don’t need to provide external force to an object to move because if it is moving it will continue to move, similarly when you are in flow you are also not forcing yourself to be in flow… you are just in flow without the awareness of time.
So we arrived at 2 conclusions.
- Memory aids in meta-cognition. (The experience that I am experiencing and also the ability to experience that I am experiencing that I am experiencing)
- Memory also generates worry, anxiety, suffering.
The 1st point is positive (that which distinguishes we humans from robots) and the second is negative, which gives rise to suffering.
The goal should then not be to get rid of memory as a whole but to get rid of that part of memory which gives birth to suffering.
That part of the memory which gives rise to meta-cognition can remain. What’s the harm?
But wait. Why do we need meta-cognition in the first place? It also gives rise to another question. Can it be possible to have meta-cognition without memory? Again a million dollar question. But we can’t answer that because to answer that we need to experience it and then recall that experience and answer. But since that experience doesn’t have memory involved so we can’t recall and so we can’t answer. May be that is the reason we can’t say for sure whether in deep sleep there is meta-cognition. May be there was, but since we are now awake and having to recall that part where there is no memory involved, we can’t access that and so we can’t answer.
And that is also proof to the fact that dreams have memory involved because that allows us to access it when we are awake. So we have the waking-memory, dream-memory, dream-experience, waking-experience. When we are recalling a dream, the waking-experience goes to waking-memory which goes to dream-memory and fetches the dream-experience. This is how waking experience fetches the dream experience and this is what happens under the hood during “the recalling of a dream”