December 21 2013
Last night I saw my brain, all of its contents, and navigated through it like a search engine.
It began as normal dreaming. Nothing interesting.
Until I started falling in and out of lucidity. At any point through the dream that my mind began to shift into random thoughts I would become aware and say “stop”.
I would then “pull up” a search bar and enter words into the bar. Whatever it was that I was dreaming before I got distracted. I would then be shown a page of images from what I was just dreaming. I could scroll through them and find where I wanted to pick back up. I would “click” the image and it would start the dream back from that point and play out normally.
Then, if something became confusing, or interesting, I would become lucid again, say “stop”, and pull up the search bar, type the detail in and look up more about it.
When these types of search pages would appear, it would also have all things related to them pop up, memories or thoughts or feelings related to that topic. Facts that surrounded them, ways they connect to other things in my head. The entire web of my knowledge , perspective, and process. All accessible and navigable.
The further down that I would scroll on any given results page, the more dark and strange the images and text would get. I would quickly stop scrolling and return to the dream if I went to far. As I could see that the darkest depths of my subconscious were in the further searches.
When I woke up and recounted all the details of my searches, they were accurate, from memories that I had forgotten, to things in the real world I didn’t even know that I knew. Things that I only imagine were part of that well of subconscious information we take in without knowing. The quick and peripheral, or unrelated things we soak up each day through life that stays somewhere, buried in archives.
I was truly and accurately searching through my memories, and subconscious, lucidly, in complete control.
And I am going to spend the rest of my life trying to figure out how to do it again.