 So I got an interesting question the other day which was about whether you can use dreams, whether you can lucid dream or have a normal dream about something that you thought you didn't have a memory of and actually learn more about that memory. So let me give you an example before you click away and think this is too confusing. By the way my name is Steph and I teach lucid dreaming consciousness for everyone who doesn't know so yeah so welcome to the channel. So I got this question asking basically can you in a dream learn more about a memory that you had and learn about something that you didn't know you had a memory of. Let's let me give you an example of that because this question is based around your subconscious mind and it's basically asking can our subconscious mind record things that our conscious mind or our conscious memories are not aware of. So you know at this point in time we've been doing a lot of stuff in our lives okay we've been to different places we've met people we've had all these experiences. So the question is does our subconscious mind remember everything that we consciously forget. Can I in a dream go back to a scene where I was at a fun fair when I was 10 years old and explore or uncover bits of that memory that I didn't know I had and this question is actually kind of controversial there's a bit of science and a bit of pseudo science revolving around this and a bit not pseudo science but there's a few things which we can't really say for sure one way or the other okay so I'm going to give you now my opinion on that question. So firstly I want to preface this all by saying your brain knows incredible amounts of stuff in layman's terms right it knows a lot more than you think it does so let me just quickly explain your subconscious mind is the bit sort of below the surface that's always hidden your conscious mind is the tiny bit at the top which is kind of like the driver if you imagine like an enormous machine like a tank but much bigger than a tank imagine more like a commercial airline plane and then right in the driver's seat you have an ant that is kind of a good analogy if you imagine an ant driving a commercial airplane that is how powerful and big your subconscious is compared to your conscious mind. So your conscious mind is what you are watching this video with now you're aware of the fact you're watching this video you're looking around you're maybe glancing at the comments or looking at the suggested videos you know maybe you can hear things going on in the street around you or in your room that's your conscious mind that is aware of those bits of information and our conscious mind can take in and interpret and understand between 16 and 40, 40 bits of information per second which might sound like a lot until I tell you how much the subconscious mind can process per second have a guess leave a comment below what how many bits of information per second do you think the unconscious or the subconscious mind processes per second it's 11 million 11 million bits of information per second all the time is how much your how much information and data your subconscious mind is taking in interpreting analyzing and sorting out into what we know as our conscious experience of reality and I put it in quotation marks because I've made another video about what reality really is so as you've probably realized it's a lot of information and so there is a huge massive avalanche of stuff that we don't know we know stuff that we don't know that is in our unconscious and subconscious minds a lot of this is pretty pointless information okay things that we don't really need to know and that's why our brains have evolved to do it like that they've evolved so that we consciously are made aware of the relevant and most important bits of information out of that sea that ocean of 11 million bits of information per second our brains have evolved to show us and make us aware of what is important at least so our brains think of course we miss details and we miss a lot of the things that are important and we also let and this is kind of a big problem with today's society subconsciously we let things enter our minds that we don't really want in there programming conditioning negative or limiting beliefs negativity fear-based narratives preached by the media that's an entirely different topic okay and we need to be really careful about what ideas and thoughts and beliefs we let into our subconscious mind because we're being programmed all the time whatever you watch whatever content you watch even this video in a way is programming but I would like to think it's positive programming it's trying to help you as opposed to trying to instill a fear a belief the urge to buy something or whatever negative or manipulative programming is out there especially in hollywood and on the media so going back to my earlier point the subconscious mind takes in a huge amount of information every single second of every single day it was processing eight 11 million sorry 11 million bits of information per second so you can be very sure that within your brain within your mind is a lot more than you think now before the scientist among you get a bit angry in the comments and start saying things about that's not how short-term and long-term memory work I know that I understand I'm getting to that bit so the way that memories are encoded into your short or long-term memory works in a few ways so firstly we have what is known as an idetic memory your idetic memory is well I can show you right now let's say if you turn to your left right now look at what you can see and then turn back and look at the camera look at me or in your case look at the screen that is your and then think about what you just saw and sort of look at that picture in your head without looking back okay just try and imagine and visualize what you just saw when you turn to your left that is known as your idetic memory now if you go a month or even a day from now you'll likely forget what you saw unless it's somewhere you already know like your room okay if it's a new scene you'll probably forget within a day or so what you saw now your idetic memory is basically like a very temporary memory system okay and you can through the encoding process you can translate that idetic memory into long or short-term memory which then influences and enters your dreams now here's where things get a very debatable and by the way just a quick tangent here photographic memory that's where you're able to do what we just discussed look to the side quickly except you don't forget anything ever so you can recall details from what you just saw and from any scene you've experienced in your entire life as if you were looking at a photograph it's pretty impressive and usually not all the time but usually when someone has a photographic memory it's actually considered a bit of a disorder because in order to have that you're usually sacrificing something and in many cases it's that you're you have a damaged corpus callosum in your brain you have a damaged corpus callosum which is the basically the bridge between the two hemispheres of your brain i'm sure you know that we have two hemispheres in our brain two sides the left and the right brain the left brain is for critical thinking logic you know reasoning the right brain is more creative and taps more into your subconscious mind and your it connects dots in ways that the left brain just can't do your right brain makes well no i should say specifically when you connect the two together it really does show you how powerful your brain is now when you have a damaged corpus callosum you're basically only active in the left side of the brain usually or the right side but that's a different type of disorder um however when you have that damaged corpus callosum what usually happens is you become amplified you're one of your hemispheres of your brain becomes sort of boosted and in this case it's usually the left brain which means you can remember things very easily just by glancing at them and if you've seen the film Rain Man um then you'll know what that is like now going back to dreams so dreams are made from a few things and this is by the way just my opinion take this with a pinch of salt okay this is my personal opinion about the content of dreams and where they come from it comes from three places okay it comes from number one your memories so this this is tied into your idetic and then your short and long term memory uh but that's also involving things like day residue which is like leftover bits of memory from what you were doing during the day so that's the first thing the first way or the first source of our dreams is the memories the second way is through your subconscious and conscious mind creating things inspiration genuine inspiration uh and this can come from many different places in the brain many different systems are involved with that and then the third and this is where i'm going to lose half of you uh the third way the third type of content that can enter your dreams in my opinion is from higher planes of existence higher beings other dimensions you know your higher self your astral body and all of these different things these different um energies and energetic levels that can come into your dreams in the form of messages dream characters dream scenes and symbols and this isn't just me you know how to looted stuff talking crazy again uh this is actually document not documented but it's reported in many different civilizations the idea that dreams can be used as messengers from higher beings and all kinds of things dreams have messages within them and if you're interested in the messages behind dreams well i do actually have a dream meaning course now which uh i haven't announced it officially yet but it's pretty cool and it explains how to interpret and understand the meanings behind your dreams and interpret and understand and translate those messages from your subconscious mind your memories uh your internal processing structures and also from the higher beings that are giving you the messages as well so the link for that is in the description but that's where your dreams come from so the question is going back to my first question which i'm trying to answer in this long video okay is this can we learn more from our memories than we thought we knew in a dream can we explore the memory as if we were experiencing it for the first time in a new way yes and no okay the problem is when you have a dream you're not only experiencing things from your memory but you're also creating new things so if you were to have a dream about let's say let's give you a clear example okay let's say if you wanted you were dreaming about a memory you had when you were a child when you were walking through a forest and you only remember part of this thing you only remember sort of being in one area of the forest so the question is if you then have a dream about that scene that memory and then in the dream you walk over to the other part of the forest that you can't really remember in your waking life how do you tell the difference between if that is really part of your memory that your subconscious mind has stored but your conscious mind can't access and are you really experiencing that memory in a way that you have never done before or and this is really going to keep you up at night is it just your mind creating a dream or the third option is it a higher being sending you a message through the dream it's impossible to tell because if you can't consciously remember something if it's not actually a memory how on earth are you going to tell whether you've experienced part of a memory you didn't know you had in a dream or whether you've just had a dream about something new that you've just created and made up it's impossible to tell the only way of knowing for sure is to do an experiment like this this is the challenge to you today right you're going to need to work with your parents here or somebody who remembers details and memories about you when you were younger that you don't remember so set the intention to have a lucid dream or a dream about a scene a memory that you don't have full access to in your brain let's say if you only half remember the day when you went fishing with your mum or dad when you were younger you're only half remember the day so the memory in your conscious mind in your conscious brain is only partially there you can't remember what happened when you went or you know before you ended up at this particular part on the lake let's say your parent or whoever was with you at the time will remember maybe they even have photos so what you can do is you can before you ask them enter a lucid dream access that memory and then try and explore around a little bit and then write down what you remember when you wake up and then ask whoever was with you if that really happened and that's one way of proving to yourself whether you can through lucid dreaming access memories that you didn't know you had if you can that's pretty impressive and i have done this by the way i've done this a few times it's not easy because when you're in a dream your subconscious tries to do all kinds of things except what you want it to do so actually getting yourself to have that specific dream scene with that memory it's quite difficult in itself but if you can do it you'll be in for a surprise