For 6 months or more, I've been recording my dreams quite closely in an attempt to have more lucid dreams. I have had more lucid dreams as a result, however, the more I wrote my normal dreams, the more I found that even without lucidity, they were fascinating, quite often full of detail.
Gleaning details
One morning I dreamt I was having a conversation with my parents about a movie, standing out the front of what seemed to be their house, on a hill, in some country that they don't live in. When I examined my memory of the dream, I realised that the street was clearly in a beach town, even though I didn't necessarily see the ocean from my perspective.
I wondered what else I might know about this town, and I noticed I did know little things... For example, I knew that if I continued in the direction I was facing, I would find little of interest to much - just more residences. If I went the other way, maybe 600 metres down the road I would find a small corner store, with a man in his late 60s out the front, probably wearing a singlet or no shirt.
These memories more or less had the firmness of regular memories, the feeling that I was recalling something, rather than inventing it in that moment.
Psychic techniques
I thought about my experience with remote viewing (RV), the process by which one can supposedly see other places, times and events within one's mind - normally developing a picture slowly by getting a feeling for the gestalt, then certain feelings, smells textures, shapes, sizes, and so on, until one can draw the target location. One technique used during RV is to ask questions of oneself such as "Where is it going?" or "What is the purpose?" I found these sorts of questions were often helpful in my dream recall, getting to greater levels of detail.
Another simple technique I started to use was simply to describe things in more detail. Now it is common for me to draw maps and to state the height, hair colour and skin colour, of dream characters, to state distances, widths and lengths of areas in metres, and so on.
Last week I had a dream which stood out in its level of detail in the narrative and visually.
Case Study: The Trainhopper Prophecy
I'm sitting in a lounge room, at some kind of party. My friend Dave is explaning a kind of conspiracy or prophecy, a wacky idea that he's been researching a lot. He's clearly been obsessing about it for weeks. He's literally on the edge of his seat just telling me about it.
His girlfriend is present, she is much younger than in real life, about 19 years old, with braces, and thinner, maybe 5'9" and 45kg. She is shy and doesn't say anything while Dave talks.
Dave continues. There is a book, likely presented as a novel, that tells the story of a certain man, who, when killed, leads to the expression of a new era on Earth. The challenge for the writer was, how to tell this man's story in a way that is compelling, because his life was so unremarkable. The writer knew what would happen to the man and knew its consequences, years in advance.
The man was likely killed by police or some other state authority, thus causing riots and whatever happened next.
As a youth, he hopped trains as a means of travel... Surely that's something interesting. He died homeless...
Now I am in the morgue. It is quite modern, perhaps built in the 80s. There are green-turquoise tiles on the walls, up to about 5 feet from the floor. The halls are very bright, with cylinder fluorescent lights. The examination room is much darker. Estimated time - 2:30-4:30. It is very quiet, and there seem to be only two people in the entire building.
They are in the examination room with the body, both wearing white coats. One is obviously senior in the role, presumably the coroner. She is white, has short blonde hair, about 10 cm long. She stands about 5'11", 60kg or less, quite slim. The assistant is 5'6" or shorter, is white, has brown hair almost to her shoulders, a timid appearance, perhaps she wears glasses, and is chubby, ~70kg. I don't get a good look at her face.
I don't look directly at the body either. He would stand about 5'9", a long mass of beard and hair all but covering his face. The hair frizzes out almost in a ball around his head. He seems to be white with a tan and dirty face. 90kg or more, quite fat, about 43 years old. He is still clothed in an overcoat.
The coroner and her assistant don't seem very concerned with the body, and more interested in gossip.
I am in the lounge room listening to Dave again. He says he's very interested in what will happen next. The death of the human being involved doesn't seem to phase him or me, perhaps because the whole conversation has this cosmic or epochal context.
The implication is that the death of this man will spark riots, leading to a revolution... and then, something else. Dave doesn't tell me what the new age will look like.
Now awake, I reflect: What will the world look like after that? The idea that comes to mind is, humanity arrives at a crux, "a point of significant imagination", where more possibilities are available. The future is unwritten.
Commentary
It is interesting that even now reviewing the dream, I can continue to add detail, for example the age of the trainhopper. So many details normally lie just barely in our subconscious, able to be reached as soon as we ask the question.
Sometimes when I ask myself a question about a dream, I get a clear answer, sometimes a fuzzy answer that comes into focus, rarely an abstract answer such as the ""a point of significant imagination" above, and of course, sometimes I get no answer.
As I continue the habit, I expect that eventually I'll be asking things even in my dreams, to try to glean more detail, as normally daily habits tend to spill over into dreams.
I don't know what the goal of this type of exploration is, where it will lead or what practical use it has. I do know that to explore is its own reward.