One night last week, as I was falling asleep, in my head I told myself – as I’ve done before – I don’t want to have weird or bad dreams, I want to have fun dreams. I’ve done this as my intention before going to sleep, as I’ve kind of convinced myself that this intention-setting does influence dream material. (A comparison might be setting an intention before a psychedelic experience, and that preparation influencing the quality of the experience.) I feel this link between intention-setting and dream quality is real, as in, it’s helped me avoid having another night of disturbing dreams if I’ve had a string of them, and, in turn, it’s helped me have more pleasant dreams.
As I did this again the other night, telling myself I wanted to have fun dreams, I was suddenly able to recall many previous dreams in this category – what I call the ‘adventure/awe-inspiring’ category. I do believe that dreams can meaningfully reveal aspects of the unconscious, often in valuable ways – in opposition to my dad’s view that dreams are, in his words, “your brain taking a shit”, that is, they’re a waste product and not worth looking at. Perhaps these adventure- and awe-filled dreams occur because I want to have more adventurous and awe-inspiring experiences in waking life, so the dream acts as a form of wish fulfilment.
Sigmund Freud defended this theory of dreams in The Interpretation of Dreams (1899), although it has certainly had its critics. (I think it is simplistic to characterise all dreams as wish fulfilment – anxiety dreams and nightmares speak to this, which demands other interpretations – and I could even interpret some dreams as ‘the brain taking a shit’, but it seems obvious to me that some dreams are very much to do with desires being fulfilled, partly fulfilled, or frustrated.)
I value my adventure/awe-inspiring dreams a lot – I look forward to the prospect of having them, I enjoy them in the moment, and – if I remember them upon waking – something of their effect sticks around. (In other words, these dreams are typically hagioptasic, to use Daniel Laidler’s term for the inexplicable feeling of significance that surrounds certain experiences.)
In my soporific, falling-asleep state, I could recall the landscapes of previous adventurous dreams – the places that were akin to places I’ve known – cities, countryside, and the coast in the UK, but aesthetically heightened. The triggering of hagioptasia in the dream state gave all these places a feeling of wonder, excitement, thrill, novelty, and paradisiac quality, as experienced in childhood. The dream scenery is often more vibrant and colourful as well, which is also reminiscent of childhood.
A common type of landscape in these dreams is more mountainous terrain. This often involves travelling to a particular vista, being amazed by that vista, and, strangely, a recurring feature is trying to take a photo of the scenery but being unable to (the shutter click won’t work, the photo won’t save, or the photo doesn’t turn out right). I think that frustrating experience is something worth reflecting on – is it just a symptom of social media culture, in which all valuable experiences must be captured? Or is it just a general malaise about wanting to capture and recreate valuable experiences but being unable to?
In any case, I found it odd that I could vividly recall so many different dreams as I was falling asleep. The scenes came alive, and not just snapshots of them, but also some narrative structure, like the travelling to and from fun or awe-inspiring places. I could see myself on a walk through verdant terrain, going up a hill, seeing a sunset from an idyllic vantage point on this Cornish-esque coast, or taking a meandering walk through lush parks and countryside, which involved surprising and interesting features and situations along the way.
Why would sleep onset make this dream recall easier? Others have experienced this, too. Someone offered the theory of “multi universes and astral projection”, although I wouldn’t jump to such a metaphysical conclusion without having a good reason for doing so. While I haven’t come across any established theories or studies on the link between enhanced dream recall during sleep onset, I think we can still glean some insights from the science of memory to offer a speculative explanation (which is more parsimonious than adding assumptions about travelling to an alternate universe or astral realm).
In a couple of previous posts about the DMT experience (see here and here), I noted that the experience quickly fades from memory, just like dreams do (interestingly, the DMT experience has been compared to a ‘waking-dream’ state). I also touched on state-dependent memory: the phenomenon where it’s easier to access memories when we’re in the same, or a similar, state of mind in which the memory was formed. For example, researchers have found that information learnt while drunk is more available when someone is in that state later. It’s worth noting that this research does have limitations. Nonetheless, more recent research has helped validate the existence of state-dependent memory and its neurobiological underpinnings.
If information about the subjective experience of dream states is encoded while in the dream state, then it would make sense that recalling that experience would be easier in a future dream state, or a similar state. (I’ve personally been able to recall dreams while dreaming.) The night when I could remember previous adventurous and beautiful dreams I had, I wasn’t asleep yet. But I was about to fall asleep. Hypnagogia is the term for that trippy state of mind that sits between wakefulness and sleep. If you’ve ever experienced a sudden loud noise when falling asleep, such as a door slamming or hearing a voice call your name, that’s an example of a hypnagogic hallucination. Hypnagogia can be characterised by dream-like visions as well.
I don’t know if I’d class my sudden dream recall as ‘hypnagogic’, since it wasn’t that classic hypnagogic state where thoughts and images combine and transform into strange experiences (for me, hypnagogia often involves precisely this: initially normal thoughts turn into scenarios playing out, which are surreal, nonsensical, and in flux). However, falling asleep is still a transitional state, perhaps close to hypnagogia – loose, relaxed, and imaginative. As a state similar to sleep or dreaming, dream recall during it could be an example of state-dependent memory. There are certainly other ways to enhance dream recall, as lucid dream practitioners have found out. But I think state-dependent memory is an underexplored and underappreciated one. (This also got me thinking about whether oneirogens – substances and plants that induce a dream-like state of consciousness – may also help with dream recall. Indeed, many have found this to be the case.)
When I experienced easy dream recall while falling asleep, I was pleasantly surprised, as well as grateful, since I knew that these dream memories weren’t gone forever. As with other hard-to-remember states of mind, such as DMT experiences, it appears that aspects of many dreams may still be stored; we simply need to know the right circumstances and techniques that make them accessible.
