The Dreaming Newborn: Are We Born Remembering?

​I am writing this with a brand new life resting on my chest.

​He is 3 weeks old. As I sit here having a skin-to-skin cuddle, feeling the rhythm of his breathing against my own, it has been really interesting just observing him.

​Watching these incredible brand new babies and how they interact with the world, they seem far, far more aware and conscious than we take for granted or we assume.

​The first thing I noticed particularly was the dreaming.

He was dreaming vividly. It was like he was experiencing something real, not just from his world of the last 3 weeks, but something far deeper. He was responding and reacting to things more when he was asleep than when he was awake.

​It begs the question: Where is that coming from?

​Babies dream! But about what? Their eyes move, their breathing changes, they make noises. If he has no experience of this world yet, no memories of traffic or trees or faces, what raw material is he thinking about / experiencing?

He sometimes laughs, something he hasn't done whilst awake yet.  How can this be?  Are his noises and movements the first steps towards adult verbal speech and mobility? Have you ever heard someone making noises in their sleep or experienced them yourself?  I have woken up shouting as I was dreaming but as I woke realised my shouts in the dream were grunts or mumbles in the ‘real’ world. 

​Curious, I asked his brother, my three year old what he dreams about. He looked at me and simply said: "The sun!"

​It struck me how elemental that is. He isn't dreaming of cartoons or toys; he is dreaming of the source of life itself. And it made me look back at my baby. From a consciousness perspective, he is experiencing a dream in the same way we do, but based on no memory.

• ​Ask yourself: If you stripped away all the noise of your daily life, would your consciousness be as clear and elemental as something like "the sun"?  

​The Old Soul

This boy seems like an old soul. He seems to have a depth, a kind of wisdom and understanding to him.

​I don't know if it’s just me, but he just seems to have that sense that he knows more than he’s letting on.

​When he looks at me, he doesn't look at a stranger. He looks at me like he is remembering who I am. And strangely, I feel like I am remembering him, too. It feels like a reunion.

People talk of remembering, when they are being creative and also speak of receiving ‘downloads’ when they realise something or bring something new or creative, that really works or makes a difference.  

​Shaped by the Environment

Kids are an amazing reminder. You can watch them experience their environment and be shaped by their environment, constantly blossoming and growing as part of the experiences they have day in, day out.

​It really is telling that they are more shaped by the environment than you think. And in turn, you are more shaped by your surroundings and your interactions than you think.

​You are a product of all of that happening.

• ​If your environment is chaotic, your internal world becomes chaotic.

• ​If your environment is coherent, you blossom.

​The Flow of Feelings (Qualia)

Watching him has made me realise that consciousness is a product of that environment, too. All those connections and interactions taking place insight and outside your body create awareness.  But does it start with thinking or does it start with feeling?

​It is about the flow of the feelings. The qualia.

​Feelings are unique to you. They have a quality that is yours alone and no one will ever know your experience or how you feel. Right now, hormones are flooding my baby’s tiny system, oxytocin, warmth, safety influencing his feelings.

​Does it all start there?

Consciousness isn't a logic engine and we are not machines. Your sense of self, your ‘I’ is created by the levels of coherence in and around you on many many levels.

​It is the putting together of all of those connections into one. That is what creates consciousness; that is what creates awareness. It is that highly aware state, that high level of coherence between all of the experiences that are happening for you that makes consciousness appear.

​It’s almost as if it appears as a result in between all of those connections happening. The environment moves you, the biology responds, and the feeling emerges.

He is absorbing everything. He is connecting on many, many different levels. And perhaps that is what he is dreaming about not images, but the pure, unique flow of feelings.

​Welcome to the world, my boy. Thank you for the reminder.

The dreaming newborn, asleep on his Dad’s chest.