Thread: What makes you think dreams are fake and waking life is real?

Is it because we are not sleeping? Or is it because you can't do crazy things like we could in a dream. In my opinion the truth is this. Dreams and waking life are both just as real as the other. When you leave the dream is that world still there? I can't answer that but while you were there you obviously thought it was real because if you didn't then everyone would be able to lucid dream without a problem if they can easily see it isn't real. Think about it like this. What makes something real is if you are able to experience it WHILE you are there. Waking life is real because everyone reading this is experiencing in the NOW. You may think the reason a dream isn't real is because it is in your head but the truth is LIFE as we know it is in our head as well. Everything we perceive is interpreted by the brain in waking life. Everything we perceive while we are asleep is interpreted by the brain. The brain treats both waking life and dreams as the same thing. The reason why it is hard to remember dreams for some is because you did not have a high enough awareness while you were in the dream to even remember.
This applies to waking life as well. If you don't have a high degree of awareness in the moment you will have a hard time remembering what happened during that time. For example you party all night and get drunk. By getting drunk you just seriously lowered you awareness but you still party. The next day you remember next to nothing because while you were partying you had little awareness. Its the same for a dream.


What makes a dream real is the experience. Just because it isn't physical doesn't mean it isn't real. Like I said earlier the brain doesn't care if it is a physical sensation or something occurring in a dream, it treats it as the same. The experience is what makes something real. If you can see,hear,touch,taste,smell it it is real! It doesn't matter if you perceive something another doesn't. Not everyone is the same and therefore cannot experience the same thing another person could experience.

One last thing. I am NOT saying this is the truth or how everything is. This is MY way of viewing things. Feel free to post what you think what makes something real or not real. Sorry for the long post. I just love talking about this sort of stuff.

Hi Daredevil. I think your thoery is very cool. I am not a scientist by any means but I am fairly sure this is false. I say this because the characters in are dreams are creations of our own mind, are mind also reflects things in reality in our dreams. For example, I was watching this TV show dexter constantly and eventually I had a dream about it. I also used too be a drug addict and I frequently do heroin and meth in my dreams as drugs are "burnt into my mind" (not literally).

How Do Dreams Work?

The brain will 'flush out' emotional arousal by creating a dream of a scenario that parallels the real-life experience - a metaphor. So, the work colleague from above might be symbolised by a monster and your anger would be allowed expression as you attacked the dream creature.

If you ruminate angrily over the same issues the next day then you may well have a repetitive dream as the brain solves the same problem in the same way.

Dreaming is an amazing demonstration of your brain’s ability to 'simulate reality' and a clear indicator of why hypnosis works. It is fairly common for a hypnotized subject to vividly experience an imagined reality, less so than in dreaming perhaps, but absorbing nonetheless.

The rapid eye movement (REM) of dreaming is also often observed during hypnosis. And indeed, a traditional way to induce hypnosis was by swinging a watch in front of the subject’s eyes.

Since dreaming is largely concerned with ‘clearing' the brain of emotional arousal, it is not hard to see one reason why hypnosis is so good for helping people with emotional problems.

Nothing is true. Everything is permitted.

All of our perceptions create an illusion. Therefore, anytime one is actively engaged in creating their own worldview, they are creating illusion. It is a great question: Can we experience reality? And by reality I mean a true, objective reality. This would be beyond our dreams would it not? Or perhaps it would just be another dream...

Originally Posted by Chimpertainment

Nothing is true. Everything is permitted.

Gotta love assassins creed

To answer your question, I do not think that. I used to because that's what I was taught.

Originally Posted by Chimpertainment

Nothing is true. Everything is permitted.

All of our perceptions create an illusion. Therefore, anytime one is actively engaged in creating their own worldview, they are creating illusion. It is a great question: Can we experience reality? And by reality I mean a true, objective reality. This would be beyond our dreams would it not? Or perhaps it would just be another dream...

True perhaps it would be. Reality in all respects is just a much denser dream which would explain why you can't just materialize things from just thought. It's called the 'physical world' for a reason. We got to actually work for it. But our thoughts DO affect the world to a certain degree.

In scientific terms there is really no such thing as dream reality, it is just a simulation created in walking life. None the less I still think a dream experience is just as worthy becuase all our memories are created by how we percept them.

Originally Posted by dutchraptor

In scientific terms there is really no such thing as dream reality, it is just a simulation created in walking life. None the less I still think a dream experience is just as worthy becuase all our memories are created by how we percept them.

I know science has its own take in this. But when you think about it there IS a such thing as a dream reality. Reality is what is happening in the current moment. In the NOW. Right now this is our primary reality because we are awake and reading this forum right NOW! But as we are asleep we are NOT (consciously) in the physical world anymore. Our body may be asleep but are awareness is not. While sleeping our primary reality would be what we are experiencing in that current moment which would be a dream. Lucid or not a dream is still just as much of a reality of its own IMO. Maybe I am just ignoring science but I do understand science goes into this too so it's not like I am just disregarding it. I am glad you agree that the experience of a dream is legit.

I kind of understand what you are implying but in a dream one can realise that they are not in the real world, they know its a simulation. You can't say the same about real life.

OK, yeah I understand what you mean. Thanks for clarifying

I don't know...

To say that a dream is as real as waking reality because you are experiencing it "as real" seems kind of narcissistic and lacking in self-awareness to me.

Yes, the ends of our perceptions in dream and waking reality are the same, but the means of that perception are very very different. If something seems real to us in a NLD, does that really make it real? I don't think so.

Why? Because we sentient types have been blessed with a cognitive ability to be self-aware, to reasonably understand that we are a part of reality, but not reality itself. The universe, we discover by the time we're about seven, is not all about us. Dreams, being universes created by our minds exclusively for our minds (aka. all about us), are by definition and mature inspection not real. To call dreams real just because our perception is briefly confused by their projections both reduces the importance of reality, and flies in the face of our own self-awareness, I think.

Now, if WakingNomad is still listening, what I just said should not be confused with the actual reality that may find its way into our dreams, through things like dream-sharing, AP, magic or transcendence. Though there are lots of opinions on both sides of actual reality existing in our dreams (or rather accessed through our dreams), I think that is a different subject than the OP posits. So no need to object along those lines.

^^Wow i sounded smart there. Thats a first

Originally Posted by ThAtaInTmE

^^Wow i sounded smart there. Thats a first

Okay arguement time XD. Reality is the state of how the unniverse actually exists and not how we percieve it. The unniverse is our minds cinema, everything is taking in externally from that we percieve an image, however in the dream world everything is created by our expectations of our brain, the dream world is composed of manipulated pieces of the real world.

To clarify reality starts with real because it does not matter how one percieves it, it does not change. One could argue that this doesn't matter as someone who is blind percieves reality differently, but this doesn't matter because reality is still the same we just see it differently.

Hey dutchraptor,

I think I got you here

" however in the dream world everything is created by our expectations of our brain,"

Everything we perceive is decoded from our brain. What we see is what the brain thinks it is. In that sense reality isn't objective but subjective because what we see is what the brain thinks it sees (or perceive in any other sense).
This is the exact same thing in our dream state EXCEPT in the dream world it is VERY fluid in the sense that what you expect actually does happen. However like a dream our thoughts actually control this world to a much lesser extent. Think of this world we are experiencing right now as a VERY dense dream and in order to 'control' it you have to go to much further extents. Not only do you have to think it you have to do it which is why this is called "Physical reality".

Originally Posted by Daredevilpwn

Hey dutchraptor,

I think I got you here

" however in the dream world everything is created by our expectations of our brain,"

Everything we perceive is decoded from our brain. What we see is what the brain thinks it is. In that sense reality isn't objective but subjective because what we see is what the brain thinks it sees (or perceive in any other sense).
This is the exact same thing in our dream state EXCEPT in the dream world it is VERY fluid in the sense that what you expect actually does happen. However like a dream our thoughts actually control this world to a much lesser extent. Think of this world we are experiencing right now as a VERY dense dream and in order to 'control' it you have to go to much further extents. Not only do you have to think it you have to do it which is why this is called "Physical reality".

It's only morning here so this answer may seem a little messy, sorry.
Okay I'm not sure how to phrase this anymore, The actual term reality indicates what is the real world and it is not subjective in the manner that it never changes, now how people percieve it is their reality (emphasize on their). But seeing as there is no one way to look at reality this doesn't matter.
Our dreams are composed of the pieces of how we interpret reality but the limitations of our brain are still layed down by true reality. So infact when we dream we are not in a different reality at all. Off course none of this indicates that dreams are a fake experience (Like I said earlier) but more so that dreams should not be considered a reality to begin with.

Originally Posted by Sageous

Though this might seem a good example at first glance, I don't think so, because a surgeon cannot practice during his dream the most important thing he must master as a surgeon: dealing with the unexpected. One of the reasons surgeons' (and other similar highly skilled professionals') skills are so highly valued is that they were able to learn to perform a task that is extremely difficult to master simply because so much of it is a dive into the unknown. A surgeon cutting into your body depends more on his knowledge, confidence, and steadiness than he does on all the practice he got making incisions (though he did plenty of that as well, of course).

Basically, if they practice surgery in their dreams doctors will never be surprised, or challenged by unexpected complications. Why? Because they can only operate on DC patients who are performing exactly as expected. Also, there is no way to learn muscle memory like that in a dream, because surgery is a matter of touch, and the muscle memory learned to perfect that touch comes specifically from teaching the muscles to do a thing they never did before. If a surgeon is cutting into a DC, he is basing his entire dream incision on what he already knows, so his muscles are learning nothing new ... not to mention that muscle memory requires the use of actual muscles, so, since the surgeon's physical body is not participating in the dream, his muscles will learn nothing.

So sure, a surgeon might practice cutting in a dream, but surgery in reality is so much more -- I'd rather be under the knife of a doctor who got his experience navigating the challenges, surprises, and emergencies of waking life, I think!

I had a thought about this myself a while back, I'd say what is really being gained is the self confidence to operate on the patients, the fact that he experienced succes in his dreams gave him confidence to do it in real life.

Btw just want to say I agree with everything sageous said, probably what I was trying to say, I just don't have a way with words like he does.

I respectfully disagree with you Sageous

" Dreams, being universes created by our minds exclusively for our minds (aka. all about us), are by definition and mature inspection not real."
In a physical sense yeah your right it isn't real. But just because something isn't physical does that not make it any less real than physical reality? Like I said earlier what makes it real is not because it's physical but because the experience you gain from it. Let me give you an example. A doctor uses lucid dreaming to perfect the way he makes incisions. This experience is real because not only did he learn something that he can apply in the physical world but also the muscle memory of doing the incisions remain with him. This is what I mean by 'real'.

Another example of this is our emotions. They aren't physical but you can definitely experience them so once again in that sense it is 'real'.
I do understand where you are coming from and can see why you aren't really sure about it. But hey, I can't tell you that I am right. I am just speculating just like you and everyone else. Thanks for posting your view on this.

You make good points, Daredevilpwn, but there still might be a couple of pieces I can't agree with. Let me make noise one more time -- I hope you'll bear with me:

Originally Posted by Daredevilpwn

" Dreams, being universes created by our minds exclusively for our minds (aka. all about us), are by definition and mature inspection not real." In a physical sense yeah your right it isn't real. But just because something isn't physical does that not make it any less real than physical reality?

Yes, it does. Every time. Something may seem real in a dream, but that does not by any measure mean that it is real. There truly is a stark difference between dreaming "reality" and waking-life reality. You can absolutely believe everything in a NLD is totally real, but the moment you wake up it is gone, and seconds later you confirm to yourself that all that stuff you were sure was real was "just a dream." When you go to sleep at night, the waking world you're leaving behind does not disappear; regardless of what your own perception "sees," it is still there, with or without you. And, when you wake up in the morning, your mind quickly re-establishes its position in reality, and it fully expects what was there when your eyes closed to be there when they open. I think this difference is significant, and understanding it is critical to getting the most out of your lucid times in dreams. ... In my mind this statement reflects reality itself, but if you want to continue calling it an opinion, I'll respect that.

Like I said earlier what makes it real is not because it's physical but because the experience you gain from it. Let me give you an example. A doctor uses lucid dreaming to perfect the way he makes incisions. This experience is real because not only did he learn something that he can apply in the physical world but also the muscle memory of doing the incisions remain with him. This is what I mean by 'real'.

If you ever meet a surgeon who claims to have learned, or even successfully honed, his skills in his dreams, you are likely also meeting a liar, or a very bad surgeon.

Though this might seem a good example at first glance, I don't think so, because a surgeon cannot practice during his dream the most important thing he must master as a surgeon: dealing with the unexpected. One of the reasons surgeons' (and other similar highly skilled professionals') skills are so highly valued is that they were able to learn to perform a task that is extremely difficult to master simply because so much of it is a dive into the unknown. A surgeon cutting into your body depends more on his knowledge, confidence, and steadiness than he does on all the practice he got making incisions (though he did plenty of that as well, of course).

Basically, if they practice surgery in their dreams doctors will never be surprised, or challenged by unexpected complications. Why? Because they can only operate on DC patients who are performing exactly as expected. Also, there is no way to learn muscle memory like that in a dream, because surgery is a matter of touch, and the muscle memory learned to perfect that touch comes specifically from teaching the muscles to do a thing they never did before. If a surgeon is cutting into a DC, he is basing his entire dream incision on what he already knows, so his muscles are learning nothing new ... not to mention that muscle memory requires the use of actual muscles, so, since the surgeon's physical body is not participating in the dream, his muscles will learn nothing.

So sure, a surgeon might practice cutting in a dream, but surgery in reality is so much more -- I'd rather be under the knife of a doctor who got his experience navigating the challenges, surprises, and emergencies of waking life, I think!

Another example of this is our emotions. They aren't physical but you can definitely experience them so once again in that sense it is 'real'.

Absolutely true. But do emotions really define reality, or are they simply our reaction to whatever we're currently experiencing, be it real or not? By extension, what you're saying means that movies, video games, even books and music become concrete reality if you react to them with emotion. When you're watching a movie, do you really believe it is real simply because it is scaring you, or making you laugh or cry? I doubt it. Why are dreams different, from this perspective? I agree that emotions are a powerful thing, and are very "real" on a personal level wherever you're experiencing them. But I don't think the fact of their existence means that whatever you're responding emotionally to must be real.

I hope this made sense, Daredevilpwn, and I hope you understand that I'm not trying to be confrontational. I just wanted to be clear that physical reality is a "real" thing that exists regardless of our presence, input, or reaction to it. Dreams may seem utterly real, but they cannot exist without our presence, input, or reaction. When we wake up, they're gone, completely (even the memory of NLD's tends to fade rapidly). Reality simply does not do that. I guess I was just trying to say that you can believe something is real all you want, but if it isn't real, it isn't real. If your entire dreamscape vanishes the moment you wake up, then it was never real. BTW, you're waking up into a place that is essentially the same as you left it when you went to sleep, which is the difference I'm describing defined.

And again, all this pertains directly to my premise that dreams are an invention of our minds, and nothing more. Should actual reality find a way into our dreams, then we'd be discussing something altogether different.

Originally Posted by Sageous

Yes, it does. Every time. Something may seem real in a dream, but that does not by any measure mean that it is real. There truly is a stark difference between dreaming "reality" and waking-life reality. You can absolutely believe everything in a NLD is totally real, but the moment you wake up it is gone, and seconds later you confirm to yourself that all that stuff you were sure was real was "just a dream." When you go to sleep at night, the waking world you're leaving behind does not disappear; regardless of what your own perception "sees," it is still there, with or without you. And, when you wake up in the morning, your mind quickly re-establishes its position in reality, and it fully expects what was there when your eyes closed to be there when they open. I think this difference is significant, and understanding it is critical to getting the most out of your lucid times in dreams. ... In my mind this statement reflects reality itself, but if you want to continue calling it an opinion, I'll respect that.

I would disagree, but only semantically. Dreams certainly are real, but they are purely subjective and only happening inside your head. That doesn't mean that they aren't real, it just means that everything that is happening, everything you see taste touch smell feel and hear are a projection of your mind and are not created by the interaction of external stimuli and your senses.

Originally Posted by StonedApe

I would disagree, but only semantically. Dreams certainly are real, but they are purely subjective and only happening inside your head. That doesn't mean that they aren't real, it just means that everything that is happening, everything you see taste touch smell feel and hear are a projection of your mind and are not created by the interaction of external stimuli and your senses.

Except that your reply, semantically, only confirms what I said: dreams may seem real, and be filled with physical sensations (imaginary sensations, BTW) which certainly compound that sense of realism. But, as you say, "everything you see taste touch smell feel and hear are a projection of your mind and are not created by the interaction of external stimuli and your senses." That is almost a textbook description of something that is not real, isn't it?

You guys do make one important point on which I failed to touch: Dreams my not be real in themselves (though I like Dutchraptor's consideration of them as an extension or interpretation of reality itself), but they are by no means "fake." Fake, it think, is a word that implies that dreams are false, and are in no way tied to reality or your own personal truths, and therefore it is not a word that describes dreams at all. They may not be their own reality, but dreams are definitely not fake! I just needed to mention that...

Also, I just had another thought: We're all LD'ers, aren't we? Well, isn't the core of a LD that "Ah-ha!" moment when you realize that this place you are in isn't real, that it's a dream? Isn't an RC simply a state test to determine the "reality" of the moment, and if it fails, then you're dreaming? And, of course, isn't a LD truly just the application of reality -- bringing your waking-life awareness and memory into a dream -- to the unreality of a dream? Isn't that how LD'ing works, and why it is so cool? I'm not sure that thought belongs here, but I felt a need to mention it as well.


... Nice chat, guys; thanks for putting up with me!

We are limited to defineing reality, because we are living. All we know is what we percieve. There is likely infinitely more senses availible, that we do not understand. Think of it this way: Could you describe sight to a blind person? No. How about touch to a person who cant feel. These undescribable senses are all we know in our world, so we will never have the full picture.

Dreams aren't fake, they are just an experience that has no external stimulus whereas waking life is an experience made up of external stimulus.

Dreams are real, but dreams are dreams.

My point is that the word real is very vague and not well defined despite seeming so obvious and common to all.

Think about memories. Close your eyes and remember back to when you were a kid. Is that real? I would say so. It's real, but it's a memory, not... we don't really have a good word for it. Objective reality maybe.

Something doesn't have to arise due to external stimuli to be real. Let's say I think about a memory or an abstract idea or even just daydream and this causes an emotional response. Is that emotional response real?

I don't think "this isn't real" but rather that this is a dream.[when LDing]

^^ Relax, Gills; regardless of what Daredevilpwn might personally believe, that is not what we've been talking about here. About the only mention of dream-sharing was in confirmation that it was not part of the subject. In fact, I so failed to notice it, I don't even know where you managed to find that quote!

We're having (or at least had) an interesting, and I think very relevant conversation that happily did not include conversation about the veracity of dream-sharing. It would be great if you helped to keep us from entering that loop again, perhaps by contributing to this conversation and not that one.

Wow sorry Gills. I put "fact" by accident. Didn't mean to get you mad. I didn't meant to make it seem like I am saying dream sharing is a fact and can be done. Like I say at the end of my post. I am not saying what my theories are are true. I am just giving my speculation.

Originally Posted by Daredevilpwn

Is it because we are not sleeping? Or is it because you can't do crazy things like we could in a dream. In my opinion the truth is this. Dreams and waking life are both just as real as the other. When you leave the dream is that world still there? I can't answer that but while you were there you obviously thought it was real because if you didn't then everyone would be able to lucid dream without a problem if they can easily see it isn't real. Think about it like this. What makes something real is if you are able to experience it WHILE you are there. Waking life is real because everyone reading this is experiencing in the NOW. You may think the reason a dream isn't real is because it is in your head but the truth is LIFE as we know it is in our head as well. Everything we perceive is interpreted by the brain in waking life. Everything we perceive while we are asleep is interpreted by the brain. The brain treats both waking life and dreams as the same thing. The reason why it is hard to remember dreams for some is because you did not have a high enough awareness while you were in the dream to even remember.
This applies to waking life as well. If you don't have a high degree of awareness in the moment you will have a hard time remembering what happened during that time. For example you party all night and get drunk. By getting drunk you just seriously lowered you awareness but you still party. The next day you remember next to nothing because while you were partying you had little awareness. Its the same for a dream.


What makes a dream real is the experience. Just because it isn't physical doesn't mean it isn't real. Like I said earlier the brain doesn't care if it is a physical sensation or something occurring in a dream, it treats it as the same. The experience is what makes something real. If you can see,hear,touch,taste,smell it it is real! It doesn't matter if you perceive something another doesn't. Not everyone is the same and therefore cannot experience the same thing another person could experience.

One last thing. I am NOT saying this is the truth or how everything is. This is MY way of viewing things. Feel free to post what you think what makes something real or not real. Sorry for the long post. I just love talking about this sort of stuff.

I've always been told that the dream world is the real world, and the one our mind is anchored to (this waking world) is fake. The difference between the two is our freedom of perspective. If you consider the idea that atoms are 99% empty space, touching smelling or feeling things is entirely sensory. That, and the idea of the double slit experiment shows that in this world we are indirectly influencing the atoms around us, meaning that we exist not only within our bodies but in the 99% of the space we are not aware of. Which clearly implies that we are in a superstate of awareness, like subatomic particles which move and stay still at the same time, we are both dead, alive, sleeping and awake all at the same time, meanwhile only the focused intensity of perception is deciding what we are consciously aware of. (choice/belief) (Schrodinger's cat)

Considering the scientific aspect it's easy to connect lucid dreaming to waking life, as they are technically the same thing, just with less concrete beliefs in dreams.
I think that this waking life is no different than the dream life, because if you could forget a dream almost as real as real life, what's to argue that the memories which found our belief of this life are any more fake than dreams?
What's really interesting about this is, when you become lucid within a dream you're able to almost completely control everything around you, even go into perspectives beyond anything in "real life". However if you become lucid in real life you start to see the supernatural world. (emotions/beliefs controlling you)

Furthermore, false awakenings are almost identical to waking life, which is a bit confusing if you consider that maybe you never do wake up or go to "sleep", you just go in and out of your body consciously. I think it's a bit close minded (literally) to speculate that dreams are within the subconscious mind and not external. It seems to me that every dream is completely different during the experience, timeless if you will, but when you wake up your ego (belief system) attempts to decipher the 4-5th dimensional experience into a limited, time based, 3rd dimensional, story line we call "dreams".

What i'm trying to explain is that this entire life, dreams, memories, experiences are simply our physical (computer) minds attempting to contemplate the real world, the translation of which results in our metaphorical perception.

So dreams are actually far more complicated yet simple and real than anything we could contemplate in this illusion world, but our (ego's) attempt to understand, reconstruct and remember them results in an interpretation of this astral plane more relative to our earthly perception than to the actual world. This is why I think people forget dreams, it's too complicated for the ego to recreate an imperfect timeline for something timeless and immaculate.

Maybe this entire "subconscious" idea is a schematic of how to escape the prison of beliefs which trap our minds into limited space and time. It's sort of the "big picture" encompassing our entire bank of memories, which if compared to other world views such as religion, the big picture is simply the connection to everything/everyone else, it's death, birth, dreams, memories, experiences not divided by time, beliefs, or egotistical attempts to interpret the infinite.


“We have forgotten the age-old fact that God speaks chiefly through dreams and visions.”
― C.G. Jung