Thread: What if life actually is all a dream?

I'm a solipsist. I don't trust reality at all. I assume it's real but I don't 'know' that's it's real in the way that most people probably do. As a result, the idea of life being just a dream seems not so far-fetched. I don't think it's possible to prove. Hell, nothing is possible to truly prove under the idea that reality could be a figment of our imagination.

Personally I'm sure that our physical life is a Dream with its own laws. The only difference is the physical laws.
In dreams there is no limitation because our dream body or astral body doesn't have limitations except those we believe ve have. So we dream so many things or lifes at the same time. When we wake up from a dream sometimes we think it is cahotic, or not real, not logic... We think this because the physical brain can't translate so much informations.
The brain downloaded just what our subconscious accepts as possible.

Yes, I say brain doesn't produce dreams, it just translate non physical experience to the physical body.
Consciousness is all that is. Matter is made of data, informations (consciousness).
The brain is an effect of consciousness, not a cause.

I'm sure because first I read some "hindi" books, then I begin to practice meditation so I experienced my self what it is said.
I understood that I create my life with my mind, like in my dream. Our life is just a projection of our mind (thoughts/emotions/beliefs). Like in "dreams". Of course in this realm whe have Time and Gravity... so it's not instantaneous.
You can prove it to yourself, just look your thoughts and you'll see that your life is a perfect reflection.
Nothing more, nothing less. If you have thoughts of limitation you live limitation, if you have thoughts of peace you live peace, if you have thoughts of success you live success...
People who live in agression have thoughts of hate or fear. So they meet people who are like them. When you have fear in dreams you experience more fear.
LIFE is AMAZING. I can't be more grateful to know this. But there is a Greater reality beyond "dreams" and this life. We have to transcend dreams, physical life. Because all this is just an illusion.

In fact the movie "Matrix" is based on this hindi philosophy. Neo at the end began to believe that he can fly so he flew. He became to see that all is energy, all is connected, all is mind.

You are like the man in the cinema house, laughing and crying with the picture, though knowing fully well that he is all the time in his seat and the picture is but the play of light, It is enough to shift attention from the screen to oneself to break the spell. When the body dies, the kind of life you live now - succession of physical and mental events - comes to an end. It can end even now - without waiting for the death of the body - it is enough to shift attention to the Self and keep it there. Nisargadatta Maharaj

?What if Life is Actually a Dream?


If, in fact life is/were a dream:

1) The amount of space available would be infinate. I am talking about really crazy big, oh, say at least big enough to fit, what, a million,,, hmmm, miles, no billion miles; oh hell, if it were a dream, it would likely be so damb big we would need to make up terms to express its size. If life is a dream, then the available space would seem never ending. Really? Can we swallow that? No, seriously, if it were a dream, the available space would likely be over, say,,, ten million times 10 million miles across. So, if life is a dream, why is not the universe sickeningly big? Oh,,,,, hmmmm.

2) If life really was a dream, then all sorts of crazy things would become available to those who tried hard enough to manipulate it, long enough. I mean, honestly, if life were a dream, then eventually we could travel around the world,,, or even send someone to the moon. In fact,,, if it is a dream then maybe someone would dream up some crazy method of reproducing sound across thousands of miles, so you could talk to someone in another city. Let's really get far fetched, if life was infact a dream, maybe someone would dream up a way that you could actually see someone and talk to them in real time, despite them being a thousand miles away.

3)If this life is a dream, then the workings of physics would be infinately weird. I am talking about crazy stuff, like turning hydrogen into flaming spinning balls of carbon, lithum, oxygen, that were crazy big,,, see #1 for what is crazy big. Physics would not be limited if life were a dream. I mean there would have to be mysterious forces, such as say an invisable feild of crazy ? stuff that could move whole planets, maybe even stars,,, oh hell, if it were a dream, the crazy mysterious forces may be dreamt up so ridiculaously powerful (if a dream, why not) that it could say, whip the entire galaxy around.

4) Finally, if this was actually a dream, then surely crazy stuff would happen all the time. I don't know anything from two entire galaxies running into each other, down to bugs that glow in the dark.

Unless someone wants to say all that stuff is true, you may have trouble convincing anyone that this is a dream.

Your answer is based on your definition or perception of the word "DREAM"
When I say dream I dont mean "dream" like the classic or "mental" dream.
It is a dream with physical laws. A limited dream if you prefer, with different laws than the "classic" dream.
All that you said dont prove that this life is not a dream. Yeah I know there is space and time, there is rocks, flowers, universe...
But all is made of the same thing on the quantum level.
When I say its a dream I mean I create it, everything I experience is the projection of my mind. Everyone live different reality. There is no 2 same reallities. Even 2 people in the same situation have different reality because their mind is different.
Everyone lives in his own world (dream).
But yeah this subject is an very profound one... that's why debate is useless. For you its not a dream and for me it is. We can only tell what we think
Peace.

Originally Posted by astralboy

Your answer is based on your definition or perception of the word "DREAM"
When I say dream I dont mean "dream" like the classic or "mental" dream.
It is a dream with physical laws. A limited dream if you prefer, with different laws than the "classic" dream.
All that you said dont prove that this life is not a dream. Yeah I know there is space and time, there is rocks, flowers, universe...
But all is made of the same thing on the quantum level.
When I say its a dream I mean I create it, everything I experience is the projection of my mind. Everyone live different reality. There is no 2 same reallities. Even 2 people in the same situation have different reality because their mind is different.
Everyone lives in his own world (dream).
But yeah this subject is an very profound one... that's why debate is useless. For you its not a dream and for me it is. We can only tell what we think
Peace.

Even two people reading the same post could think they read the same thing, but with variations in experience and other issues, like language barriers, each person could get an entirely individual view of the subject.

So, I see what you mean. In this case, the dreamer (who ever reads the forum) forms an image of what the other person intends to say. We each form a world view based on things, so that we may have very different 'dreams' while experiencing virtuallly the same stimuli.

I think I can agree with you, Astarlboy. You have hit on a whole realm of thinking that seems very helpful to the whole question.

So basically the theoretical headliner on this one would be: What if real life is a dream and dream life is the actual reality?

You see this question is somehow connected to the question whether there is an afterlife or not. Because if there is an afterlife, then this life here would be temporary, equally to untrue/unreal/dream.
So what if the dreamworld would be one of the following: Either you exploring your inner self a ka your brain. Or you invading the realm of your sub-consciousness. Or you transferring into another dimension.

Considering the last one, the other dimension. All of the above would/could be true. Who says you can not enter your sub-consciousness or your stored memories/experiences if you were in another dimension?
I personally am very attracted by this. Because there are several keys (lets call them that way) to me, that prove or at least indicate this theory.

So let's get deeper into this okay?

Think about this: What needs to be done for you to be able to enter another dimension? You obviously can not walk through dimensions with your body, because your body is chained to the 3rd dimension, it can not exist in any other dimension. Also the frequency would change rapidly, I believe every dimension has it's own signature frequency-spectrum. Obviously a various amount of senses would change rapidly: your vision, your hearing, your speech, your tactile sense. Or as I say, they just adapt to the dimension that you enter to enable interaction in that dimension. Also of course your form of existence changes totally, hence you can not carry your body along into that dimension, your form of existence changes into a fitting one for the specific dimension.

Btw: These thoughts I am putting, all include the idea of several dimensions that are interlaced in one space and co-exist at the same time. You need to keep that as core-idea to be able to follow the thought-process.

So how in the world would I come up with such a viewpoint? Well, let's look at the things that happen when you WILD. First, there is the tingling in your ears, which is omnipresent, whenever you go to sleep, sometimes even when you are awake but sleepy/tired. What is this high frequency tingling? Well I figured this is your ears adjusting to that dimension which you are about to enter (lets call that dimension: x and the wake world: y). It only makes sense, because sometimes when you are half asleep you hear things from y, although you are fully inside of x. Same goes for your vision. Next up are your eyes, when you close your eyes, do you see "darkness"? I think that description doesn't fit that at all. With closed eyes you can see so much more than just darkness, you can visualize whatever you want, you can see patterns, everything is moving, as if it's alive, which brings me to the hypnagogic state, so basically these sudden pictures/scenes you see right before falling into slumber may be your brain starting to process experiences. Or it is you looking into various dimensionary scenarios. Or both. To be quite frank I am not that far regarding the hypnagogic state, but we may say it is like a pit stop, or the transfer plateau between y and x, ever witnessed how you snap out of an hypnagogic scene as soon as you focus on it? Just shows how you are shot back to y because you interrupted the transfer process.
So we linked the alternation of your hearing and vision already. What about the change of frequency, through which you slip through y into x? You guys know this incredible impossible-to-describe feeling you get when you are entering x? This insane strange sound almost like the sound of a broken canal on the tv but much more intense, and it's not only a sound in your ears, you also feel it, tingling all around your body, and while you are feeling this happening, the hypnagogic scenery is going insane twisting and swirling into colours and bizarre patterns, at the same time (WILD only) you feel how you are levitating out of your body. I hope you guys know what the F I'm trying to describe here.
But to me that exact process is me/you/the subject being pressed (it really almost feels like being pressed through sth, which is why some people freak out when it happens, or find it too disturbing/stressing) from y into x.
The radical change of frequency forces you to leave your body in order to enter x.

If we take this insane theory for granted, both y and x would be proven to be very real. If we now add the idea of "consciousness being indestructible", death would only mean that we are forced into another form of existence, ergo change of dimensions, since only our 3rd dimensional body dies, but not your consciousness. If we accept this addition it would mean that y is semi-real and x is absolute, provided the dimension we enter post-death is x and not another variable.

In that case, y would be the actual dream and x (and or any other variable) would be the actual "reality", but since the word reality, to me, is bounded to y, x (and or any other variable) would be "pure truth".

I am sorry if I mindfu**ed you and I'm ready to take all your counter-arguments and anti-theories on this topic

Cheers

Today in Church it occurred to me:

what if life is a shared dream shared by God and humans. I believe we were created in God's image, what if the power of dream creation is not just a faint copy of the power of creation? What if by dreaming we are actually changing the world somehow? What if, the tree of knowledge of good and evil introduced nightmares into our shared dream, so that humans after tasting that fruit can and do dream of good and evil, and that somehow changes creation from all good to a mixed bag. What if lucid dreaming is essential to redemption? What if the Holy Spirit within each of us allows us to become aware and through that awareness control our dreams to change the world for good?

Of course, all that is just a "what if" without proof, but wouldn't that be awesome on some level, and scary on another? The responsibility given to each dreamer would be enormous. If this were true, would we be up to the challenge? We can do anything we want in dreams. Some people say that what one does in dreams does not matter, and that morality does not apply, but what if it does matter that much? I don't think we have any proof that it does not. Of course, the likelihood that my musings are a true insight into the nature of reality are low, but not impossible.

See, I like the way you think about religion etc - as metaphor. When taken that way, I'm not really sure why a literal belief in God as a magic telepathic sky spirit is even needed - you seem to believe that what's really important is our own reflections on morality and on how we relate to other people. I'm totally with you on that!

You can say I "believe" that life is a massive shared dream but I haven't come to the point where I have faith in that belief! But dreams are always trying to help me with that faith.

In one dream, I was a part of high school band flying on a spaceship. Our band instructor led us on a fieldtrip - to the holographic generator. Like star trek! The band instructor plays music as the holographic generator is booting up.

We were riding on our imaginary holographic bus to our holographic vacation spot, when the bus crashes! The crash freaks the students out! They run out the bus, panicking, screaming!

Finally someone is like "chill out, its just a holographic projection, were not actually in a crash". But we were all in disbelief that the crash wasn't real, because it felt so damn real. I spent the rest of my dream testing the reality of the situation. All five senses checked out, this holographic place felt as real as anything else.

Me and the other students concluded that even though we knew ahead of time we were entering a holographic projection - that it became reality. I felt like I was sucked into the twilight zone! As I was waking up I asked 'what does it all mean?' and I asked 'whats the symbolism behind a high school band?'. Still in that last moment of the dream, the answer I got before opening my eyes was "sound".

I woke up with this immense feeling that what I call waking reality is no different, that its just a holographic projection created by sound. That intense feeling didn't stay with me long though, eventually I just got up like it was any other day.



My other reality crashing dreams were a series of dreams where I was lucid - but reality checks failed me! In one I was simply in the bathroom when it hits me that I'm dreaming. But I can't explain my sudden realization. After further examining the bathroom, I concluded it was real. I couldn't find any fault with the bathroom!

I continued the rest of the dream like this - with this feeling that its all a dream. But all of my reality checks were telling me otherwise - that I have a body. That it has weight. That there's gravity. That this is real. I remember waking up realizing that reality checks would still fail me, lol.

In another dream I was standing in a porch when I get this immense feeling I'm dreaming! And all I want to do now is jump! I stand on the ledge and I'm about to go for it when - WAAAIT! I must be crazy! This is real! I had to double check I wasn't going insane.

Theres wind rustling between the leaves. Theres crickets singing. I can hear my family in the living room watching TV. I walk around the porch a few times. I bang on the glass door - it sounds and feels like a glass door. But I couldn't shake that feeling. So I jump! Im falling fast! Im screaming in my head 'fuck im gonna die'. And at the last moment dream-physics finally kicks in and I fly away.

And I had another dream like that where I jump out my bedroom window instead - even after concluding that I couldn't prove the window wasn't real! When I woke up I was scared I lost all sense of reality, lol, that one day I'll mistake a real window for a dream window and jump for it. I remember that morning I examined my real window.

Yep. Identical to the dream one, damn. The only difference was that feeling I had in the dream - the feeling that if I jump I'll fly.

Hey juroara, here's something that might help with that faith, or with destabilizing faith in what we take for reality anyway - people who take certain drugs - psychedelics and certain anti depressants, go through what's called derealization, in which nothing seems real. This suggests that our sense of reality is caused by some circuitry in the brain - that the very 'reality' of something is little more than an illusion (at least our own personal sense of a thing's reality). This might help explain why we can be made to believe in things that are demonstrably untrue through brainwashing or self-hypnosis.

Note - I am NOT advocating that you start doing shrooms or acid, or take anti-depressants!! Only that you ponder the idea that our sense of a thing being real is an illusion that can be short-circuited.

“They say that dreams are only real as long as they last. Couldn't you say the same thing about life?” — Waking Life

That's a nice thought, but not very well reasoned. There are fundamental differences between waking life and dreams.

Non-lucid dreams lack any consistency, whereas consistency is a persistent fact of waking life. When you wake up things are exactly as you left them when you went to sleep, except of course for anything that's happened during those hours (people moving things around or whatever). You can't say that when you go back into dream things are exactly as they were when you were last there. Not at all.

Plus waking life has urgency - it's in waking life that you need to ingest food and liquids, and protect your body from diseases and harm in order to stay alive. Eating and drinking in dreams does not nourish you, nor in a dream can you protect yourself from anything happening in real life, such as an intruder approaching your sleeping body with a knife or a fire in your house. In waking life however it's no problem to ignore things that happened in dreams, unless you want to dwell on them for whatever reasons - maybe just for fun, for lucidity, or for psychological health.

The only way I could see around these facts is to say "well, who knows, maybe life itself is really an illusion, and we only believe we need to keep our bodies alive and healthy, and maybe when we die we move from this illusionary life into the real dream life?"

And who knows - it just might be true? But it seems pretty counter-intuitive. Why would the illusion be so much more convincing and consistent than the reality?

Plus we know that dreams are largely reflections of experiences we had in waking life. All in all the evidence is pretty strong, and if things really are twisted all around in incredibly convoluted ways so that illusion is more real than reality, then what's real about reality? Indeed, if this is the case, then nothing we know is right and we have no way to ever know what's reality, unless we 'wake up' from the dream of life and are enlightened.

And if we reject the reality of what seems real, then why pick one particular possibility of what might actually be real over any other? Maybe dreams are the true reality, or maybe heaven and hell is, or valhalla, or maybe it's something we have never even begun to imagine and can't comprehend.

But we only realize the differences between dream life and waking life because we already woke up from the dream or, in the case of a lucid dream, we remembered that the dream is inside a waking life. When we aren't aware that we are in a dream inside life all lack of consistency or logic is unnoticed by us.

That dream life is inside the waking life is almost unquestionable but we only realize this in a dream when we remember about waking life or when we wake up, if waking life were a dream inside another life but with no way of remembering this then there would be no way of knowing it until we wake up from this life

If illusions are real until unmasked then, like you said, nothing we know is right and we have no way to ever know what's reality, unless we 'wake up' from the dream of life and are enlightened

The relative stability of waking life versus the instability of dream life could be explained though if waking life was a shared dream built from shared expectations and shared fears and shared desires, as opposed to the dreams in our sleep which would be created by an individual's single mind, and thus much less stable. In such a theory waking life would still be more real than sleep dreams.

Originally Posted by GuitarShot100

... If illusions are real until unmasked then, like you said, nothing we know is right and we have no way to ever know what's reality, unless we 'wake up' from the dream of life and are enlightened

My point exactly, which means if there's some other reality beyond what we consider reality then we have absolutely no idea of it's nature. Why assume it's similar to the dreams that are nested inside the false reality? It could be absolutely anything, and like I said before, it could be something entirely beyond our comprehension. I'm not rejecting the idea that there could be a reality we don't know about - I'm just saying - if there is then we couldn't know about it.

Though I will go so far as to say that in some ways the reality of dreams is much more real to us than the mere facts of physical objects and laws of nature. Dreams are made of the stuff of our thoughts memories and emotions (though they're also fairly random most of the time). The physical world is really just a collection of brute facts we must navigate our way through since we have/are physical bodies.

@ Joanna - that is a very elegant idea and fascinating to consider. It's actually very close in nature to ShadowOfWind's idea of a collective reality in which each person is similar to a small twig on a vast tree of collective humanity, all in some sense joined at the trunk, but also each immersed in our own 'neighborhood' of those twigs close to us.

I love to ponder ideas like this, but I just see no reason to believe that any one idea is any more true or false than any other. And I'm not saying that to try to invalidate the thread or anything, just making a point that's maybe somewhat irrelevant to it.

Originally Posted by JoannaB

The relative stability of waking life versus the instability of dream life could be explained though if waking life was a shared dream built from shared expectations and shared fears and shared desires, as opposed to the dreams in our sleep which would be created by an individual's single mind, and thus much less stable. In such a theory waking life would still be more real than sleep dreams.

You hit on it in the post you made above this one. This reality, if viewed as a dream, is then a shared dream. However, something is also involved with the dream that is beyond our current understanding. The easiest way to refer to it is God. Perhaps it is not important to use the exact word god, as some people will connect all sorts of ideas to that word. I call it God, but lets place it in a non-relious theme, just as an alternative.

What we would be describing needs be no more complicated than a conciousness that is not currently repressented as a DC. In terms of LDs this is no weirder than dreams occuring in 3rd person. We have dreams in which we do not get a body, and are observers. Even in a 3rd person LD changes can be made to the dream through force of will. So what we could refer to as God, for simplicity, can also just be a theorized awareness within the dream that is experiencing a 3rd person prespective.

Now, we extend this theoretical awareness, by not imposing limits on how much awareness or force it may have. In the terms of Hindu mystisism, a great 'Godlike' awareness chose to begin a dream. It has grown and thrived in some other setting, what ever it may be, and is on a scale much removed from our smaller nature. It is there fore the creator of the universe. This need not imply good vs evil, or a judging father in the sky. Instead lets look at the movie 'The Matrix' which was based on the framework of this type of Hindu mysticism. That is right, none of the ideas in the matrix are new. They just used the idea of a computer, instead of what ever a primitve culture would have pictured (a dream).

So, in this version the actual computer provides the frame work for the dream, or in another translation 'the matrix' for the dream. The computer may or may not have a personality or personal motive, let's leave that up to religion threads. What the computer does for the movie is provides a source of emmence processing ability. It maintains all the data required to render exact detail across the entire dream/matrix. It also wil have default settings as far as what physical laws are enforced. The computer in the movie provides for gravity and chemical reactions.

Here is the short version. If life is a dream, it is not our own personal solo dream. It is taking place in a hosted multi-player setting. What the motives of the hosting server is, can be left to those who wish to think about it. Those who want an easy word for it may just go with the term God. Those who want to think about it, but choose to avoid religion need only theorize a source of processing ability removed from the DCs.

So, what are we? We are just about like the people in that same movie. I am not suggesting that we are lying unconcious somewhere. I mean we experience the whole thing 'from inside the matrix.' We have some direct control over what takes place in the dream. The goal of getting lucid in waking life, puts you more in the role of someone like Trinity. That is, experiencing the dream, but being aware that the rules are imposed, rather than a truth. In some cases an aware dreamer has extra influence due to their knowledge. If we accept that it is a dream, suddenly ESP and other oddities, are easier to accept.

Excellent post Sivason! I love when the people who have really thought deeply about this stuff take part in convos like this - personally I don't think about it all that much, but I do like to try to apply somewhat rigorous thinking to it just to try to shake off those more easily-dispelled fallacies and hopefully start to get to a deeper level of thought about it. A discussion like this is a great opportunity for us all to try to deepen our thinking in this way.

I wasn't aware of Hindu beliefs in The Matrix - I had heard it was based on Platos' Allegory of the Cave, which in itself is a brilliant way to think about possibilities beyond our common understanding. But I love that, like a dream, a movie can have multiple layers of meaning at the same time.

For what it's worth, The Matrix itself was based on the Wachowski brothers' experience in the world of comic books and maybe loosely on the work of Philip K. Dick, because they at least mentioned him once in an interview. Any other allusions to folks like Plato or Hindu mystics are completely accidental, as the Wachowskis were essentially idiots.

I remember walking out of the movie theater being in total awe of the Matrix, of its references to the deepest human suspicions that there's "something more" out there behind the curtain of our experience. I even forgave the absurd "coppertop" premise, sure that the analogy to Plato, classic mysticism, and, yes, Dick still held firmly... The Matrix had indeed portrayed the idea, the message, that life may be little more than a dream, a projection. Pop culture had finally managed to visualise the stuff I'd been thinking about for years (my wife was even pissed because she was sure "they" had somehow stolen the premise for a book I was about to publish). I was in lucid-dreaming, mystical euphoria: the world finally "got it!"

And then I watched an interview with the brothers. They had no idea, zero, zip, what the Matrix was about. All they cared about were the special effects, the fights, and the outfits. The Matrix was a complete, monkeys at the typewriter, accident. Don't give it more credit than it deserves. Unless, of course, JoannaB is right and the Matrix is not so much a creation of the two Wachowski bros but that perhaps they were merely a conduit, or rather a placemarker, for an idea that the collective dreaming mind really wanted to release in an understandable way to its constituents. Indeed, perhaps the idea itself was a great thing, and was actually diminished when it passed through the filter of the Wachowskis... that would explain the "quality" of the other two Matrix films as well, I think.

Sorry for the rant; this was the first chance I've had on these forums to bitch about the accidental nature of the Matrix's relevance and still remain at least slightly on topic. Thanks for bearing with me... now back to our show?

I think when ideas are known by large cultural groups, that some portion of them works its way into daily conversation that may be randomly heard at parties and on TV. I have no opinion on if the movie writers had exposure (unremembered) to the ideas and then thought they were coming up with new ideas. I am glad to have a movie that makes it easier for me to explain such uncommon concepts. It is much like how the Star Wars flicks can be used to talk about any number of deep thoughts.

^^ You're probably right, but it sure would be nice if the collective cosciousness would make itself known less clumsily now and then. It's almost like the truths tucked neatly into the Matrix (and, yes, Star Wars) are not so much revelations as errant leaks.

Maybe that big dreamer in the sky is occasionally dripping reality through those leaks, and any idiot standing under them can be soaked in that truth? Could be, I suppose. Of course, some people under the leak just get wet, unaware of that with which they've been dowsed, unaware of the powerful hints they're processing when they're making those "way cool" scenes in the Matrix.

Sometimes, I think, "Life is but a dream" may be the only valid explanation for, well, anything.

Good God I'm rambling.

I could believe all that. Great thoughts Sageous!

This is a quote that I used on another thread before:

Michael Toms: I have an experience that I recently had that I've never had before which I think supports the holographic model, and one could call it a lucid dream. I came out of the dream and it was the first time I ever, in coming into waking, thought that I was coming into a dream, and leaving the waking reality. The dream was so powerful, in other words, that it took a couple minutes to re-orient and realize that I was in waking reality, in other words I thought I was dreaming, and the dream had been waking.

Michael Talbot: So the dream was in a sense more potent than everyday reality so this seemed like a lesser, a paler comparison.

Toms: Exactly, exactly. What's the dream and what's real?

Talbot: Right. Well I think that's interesting because I talk a lot about near death experiences because another thing that the holographic idea suggests is that there isn't necessarily just one reality — that there are all different levels of reality. And I think near death research, and indeed, the entire mystical tradition has told us this is so. That this is just one channel on a cosmic television set that we're inhabiting here. And one thing that comes through loud and clear when people have near death experiences where their heart stops or are declared clinically dead and they experience some of these other levels of reality. They always come back saying that they are more real than this reality, that they're more vivid, they're more rich with information, and I think part of the reason that we're in physical life, that we're incarnate to learn here, is that we're not yet ready for some of the intensity of some of these other levels. That we're learning — It's like a child who's reading a primer is not yet ready for Dickens or Dostoevsky or whatever. We're not yet ready for that density of information, so we're learning... we're getting our sea legs, so to speak. You mentioned Helen Wambach. Wambach always said that she thought being in this life was kind of like walking in a swamp up to your waist — that we were here and it was really tough going — but the leg muscles that you developed in doing that, once you left this level and went to another level, you had all sorts of capabilities because you really developed these powerful leg muscles, figuratively speaking. And I think there's a lot of truth to that, and sometimes in our dreams we glimpse those other levels of reality, and I think what you may have been doing was experiencing that part of reality that is far more dazzling than this one, that we're preparing ourselves for.

Hope this helps! I've been living my life very very differently since my epiphany.

Maybe, life is a dream and you guys are my Dream Character, or Im your Dream Character. When we die, we reincarnate to another ego in this dream instead of waking up. Maybe in REALITY, you're just an AMOEBA, and you're dreaming.

You have to be careful what you give your attention to, if the mind gets an identity it will mould itself accordingly. The mind void of content moulds itself according to the environment. And it it so with a mind full of content; it is the content of the mind that creates the environment for the false self, the "dream" that takes shape in the mind. Out of desire fuelled by the imagination, your world appears to you in consciousness.

Per sa life has no meaning, life is simply the totality of consciousness. Consciousness is the dream, but you are the light in which all dreams appear and disappear. It is only the person that we've identified with that dreams, but you are not this person. And you have to carefully examine this to fully grasp what is being said. It is your memory, your imagination that forms the basis of dreaming. At no point in time is the actual remembered; there is a difference. The actuality of an event cannot be argued. Of course you can become personal involved in any event but then you are only referring to your memory which of course cannot be actual. Your involvement is the colour code you have use to overlay the actual - when we cannot accept things as they are, we colour to suite.

The actual is unique because it is your sense of being [which is not in dreaming unless you are lucid of course] neither can it be a product of your memory, memory and anticipation are mere mental constructs under observation. You know what you see; but then you are mistaken by thinking about what you see. So it cannot be you who dreams, dreams pass before you.
It is only the idea of the self that we experience in a dream world of objects, people, things and places; there is no objectivity to beingness The fact that we can observer these things points to something else. that something else is our original state which is beyond being and none being. That state is the reality, it is not a dream because it doesn't disappear or reappear like dreams do, it is always here. It is the sense we carry with ourselves at all times, which can only mean we are beyond time itself.

When we turn our attention to this world of objects we find ourselves in the dream. But by staying close to the self (by this I mean keep your attention on yourself as opposed to the others, things and ideas, this will keep you alert.
The problem with your state of mind is that you think yourself to be a mind/body born into this world. But i dear say not one of you can verify this without the use of your memory. Your body is only the space that the mind creates in time. When you examine and scrutinise your self, you will come to the realisation that you are not in the world, the world is in you. The world and everything in it is the dream you hold on to in the hope of finding the answers to your quest for life. You are in it too but only as a body/mind; that which bears witness to this aspect of consciousness is the self evident amongst the inferred. This is why we can say the mind and body are also illusions, but you are here as a witness to it all. To know the self as awareness only is all the proof we need to ascertain whether we are dreaming or not.

You may have your morals and values but they can only be personal and therefore relative, there is no intrinsic meaning to life because there is nothing that exists in it own right. Everything depends on everything else, so interdependency annihilates all purpose to life in particular; all particulars are relative.

To truly know if you are dreaming or not as the case maybe you must know the self. this knowing is not a positive aspect, as all positives are purely based on the memory, it is only by negation; knowing what we are not that brings us to self realisation. Staying with the self will bring you to the realisation of you giving birth to consciousness, rather than readily accepting the idea of being born into consciousness.