The Full Question:
If we could reverse-engineer the neural biochemistry behind dream formation and understand how dreams are structured, could we potentially design dream experiences that educate individuals while they sleep?
This is a serious question. I was only reading something from a chap I like to read, and my mind flashed back to this morning…
I was driving out of the village, up a hill. We've had around two weeks of non-stop rain, and rivers, dams, and lakes, have all started to outgrow their place. Things were getting wet that shouldn't be getting wet, like old bottles of red wine in the cellar, that had spent several years gathering a fine layer of dust.
But today was a dry warm day. The sun had heated the road, and as I drove along, a neighbour's cat, not the one that comes into my garden, but another, it was curled up asleep warmed by the road on one side of its body, and by the sun on the other. And I could see its ears and legs twitching to a dream, oblivious that I was driving passed in a rather rakish Fiat Panda.
And I immediately began picturing myself curled up in my garden, in a spot of sunlight, the birch trees tinkling in a late summer breeze, and the calming sounds of a forest stream gurgling passed my house. I wasn't concentrating on driving at all, yet somehow, I made it around the corner and up the hill.
And then later, following an evening nap, when my eyes opened once more to the dream, I saw your question…
If we could reverse-engineer the neural biochemistry behind dream formation and understand how dreams are structured, could we potentially design dream experiences that educate individuals while they sleep?
So, I went up the road and asked that cat if it happened to download anything interesting while dreaming. It said, yes, Dostoevsky's The Grand Inquisitor.
Not what I was expecting. Then the cat asked me something, and I was a bit put out by all this head stuff, because it was night time and my brain doesn't like long words like Reverse Engineering, especially on a Wednesday.
And it asked if I was downloading anything now during the dream?
And I looked, well not me looking, but you know, that thing that's always looking through our eyes, and at the thoughts we have, and I had to admit, the only thing I had downloaded recently was an episode of Rupert the Bear on YouTube.
I told the cat about your question and it feels certain that you haven't yet realised how the dream isn't happening while you are asleep but while you are awake. And I argued that you must have done because you seem to know a lot about the forming of dreams and neural thingymajigs and how can anyone do that while asleep?
And it said something else too but I'm not sure you'll like it…
The cat argued, we don't learn anything while awake or asleep. Nothing ever got educated. The Wisdom is already there. Nothing gets added to it. Not even books by Dostoevsky.
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