Life Without Memory is Oblivion:
Mapping the Memory Palace
By Sarah Janes
MNEMOSYNE
Ancient Greek people adored the Titan goddess Mnemosyne. Mnemosyne was the personification of memory, of remembrance, sense-making and eloquence. Today we might call her the goddess of consciousness. Mnemosyne was also the daughter of Heaven and Earth (Ouranos and Gaia). She was the mother of the Muses and therefore the source of all divine inspiration in the world. She was invoked in the dream incubation rituals at the Asklepion Sleep Temples, so that supplicants would remember their dreams. She was called upon at Oracles and Mystery ceremonies as a psychopomp. She guided souls on their journeys through life, dream and underworld.
No doubt there was an archetype that predates Mnemosyne, but she stands as an enduring symbol of memory as consciousness which is just as valid in today’s world and will continue to be relevant, as long as conscious beings exist.
What are we without memory? How do we make sense of the world around us if we have no recollection of our past? No awareness of our place in space and time. What exists beyond the sphere of time’s influence. Once we transcend the cycles of day and night, the rotations of the planets, the pulsations of stars and vortices of galaxies? What happens to time when we dive into the quantum realm? Is this where we go when we die?
THE MEMORY PALACE
The Memory Palace, or Method of Loci is a mnemonic device described by Greek and Roman rhetoricians and orators such as Cicero and Quintilian. The technique is used by memory contest participants and chess players to this day, as an effective way of developing memory super powers and recalling vast amounts of information from memory. I think it is also often a naturally evidenced coping mechanism for the small percentage of the population that have been assessed as having HSAM (Highly Superior Autobiographical Memory).
The Memory Palace is an imaginal technique in which one memorises a location and then ascribes data to the discrete loci contained within it. When the subject then imagines themselves walking through this location, they are able to recall the data stored there.
PSYCHIC ARCHITECTURE
The Memory Palace technique is an ideal guidance system for us to think about the way memories can be accessed in the dream state. Over our lifetime, whether we remember it or not — within the dream state — we are constructing the psychic architecture of the location that contains all of the information about who we are as individuals, and how we interact with the world. Dreams contain within them the imaginal, physical manifestations of our psyche, our lifetime of memories and our experience of reality.
For many people that remember their dreams, there is often a continuity throughout the dream experience. One that can be mapped. There are recognisable features, landmarks, architecture and landscaping. These features, under scrutiny, tend to reveal the nature and experience of the dreamer. Becoming lucid in a dream is essentially — remembering who and where you are.
Experienced conscious dreamers report that in dreams they can know multiple timeline arcs, that memories of entire dream lifetimes can converge. Conscious dreamers can plot and track the development and evolution of their dream realm and its characters. They sometimes remember their earliest dreams from babyhood, which are often all white and get ‘filled-in’ as a sense of self develops.
DREAM MAPPING THE MEMORY PALACE
Dream journalling helps many people to remember their dreams. The act of committing dream memory to conscious memory by re-membering the dream experience as you write it down or speak it out loud, seems to re-create the dream experience in a different mental dimension somehow — and this seems to have the effect of strengthening the ability to recall subsequent dreams. It is as though the remembrance of dreams forges a link between subconscious and conscious memory, making the passage between these realms easier to navigate with awareness.
Dream mapping is a very similar process, it involves re-imagining, re-membering the dream experience and perhaps, returning to the idea of Mnemosyne, creating a sort of memory eloquence in which one makes sense out of dream qualia to form a coherent picture or map.
One thing which is noticeable, when I have created these dream memory maps for myself, is that I have general sense of orientation. An intuitive sense of cardinal direction — there are no paths or roads that join the areas together, they are linked by rivers, streams, bridges and vast oceans. Perhaps this reflects the nature of consciousness. I believe the precepts we uncover or develop as we map out our dream territory will serve to expand and evolve our dream realms and perhaps help to more deeply integrate them with our waking awareness of the world.
To begin, bring to mind a place you dream about. A house, a location, a structure or design of some sort. Draw it, close your eyes and re-imagine it. Try to remember as many details as you can. Luxuriate in this detail. Contemplate how this fits in to the story of your life and your sense of self. Where did it first arise in your dream memory? Why is it important? Expand this practice to incorporate as many dream locations as possible and think about whether they are part of a coherent dream realm, or whether they exist independently of one another. If they exist together, how are they connected, where are they in relation to one another?
The next time you go to sleep and you find yourself there, remember where you are, remember who you are.
Sarah Janes runs Dream Mapping workshops for children and adults. Find out more:
https://www.ticketsource.co.uk/theexplorersclub/t-nxrqym
Email: sarah@awakeandaway.co.uk
