(Previously posted on October 15, 2005)
Arf, mein kleine freunden, arf! Wurf, even. The scintillating Angellica Lemieux has given me a gift, the likes of which cannot be purchased: a new idea.
If you've not read the last post (and if you haven't, go ahead, I'll wait.
...
*starting to whistle to pass the time, then realizing that I can't whistle because I'm a wolf with no pucker-able lips*
...
okay!), I was offering up my thought on the origin of dreams as actual experiences in a separate reality, rather than merely lightshows your brain conjures up to keep you amused, as seems to be the current popular wisdom. However, the sweetness embodied within Angellica mentioned in her comment to that post that her take on dreams is that they're suppressed memories of past life experiences.
How have I never thought of that one before? Seriously, I read a lot, and I've not come across that particular interpretation. Thank you, Angellica; I owe you a portrait (ask me when I'm in-world next). Okay. So, to continue this line of reasoning, let's say that we have access to what Jung called 'racial memory', or 'collective unconscious', the concept that some of what we know has been transferred to us via the chain of ancestry that makes up all of our genetic inheritance (except for mine, being a figment and all; everything that I am I blame on the RWS).
How would these transmissions work? Well, we know, first of all, that what we call cerebration seems to occur through the firing of synapses in our brains. Thus, thinking is electrical in nature. We also know, second of all, that matter and energy are merely two sides of the same coin; destruction of matter releases energy, and the condensation of energy creates matter.
Thus we have for ourselves an interesting scenario: Life experience is recorded in our brains as electrical impulses. Upon our death, these impulses are released from the now-defunct matter in which they used to reside. Being energy, these impulses either enervate and wink out, or they follow the path of least resistance to find a host which will contain them, i.e., another, similar, brain. As genetic science has established, the most similar type of brain to the one you have would be your closest relative, whose genetic material helped create you.
Therefore, your living brain is probably likely to contain the same impulses that your parents' brains did, including their memories of their past experiences.
Now, the question here is, 'If that's true, why am I unable to more precisely remember any of that stuff?' Well, consider the path that the impulses must take to get to your brain. Any way you choose to consider it, and I leave this for stranger minds than mine to figure out, somewhere along the line, there must be an attenuation of signal, a gap that the impulse must leap, and in doing so, lose much of its strength and cohesion. What's left after it gets to you is scattered, fragmentary. Bad signal.
How do we strengthen this signal? Well, that'll have to wait for my next post. All this thinking makes my skull burn. If you've ever smelled burning fur, you know it's time for me to go to sleep.
"I think we dream so we don't have to be apart so long. If we're in each other's dreams, we can play together all night." ~Bill Watterson, Calvin & Hobbes~
Akela