are we deaming or are we awake?

[ShadowShifter]

has any body ever wondered if this is the deam world? what if theres two worlds when we sleep in this world we wake up in the real world but when we sleep in the real worl we wake up here. has any body got any other thieroies?

[Serkat]

Deep philosophy...

[Slacker]

If this were to be true, the other would would have to be a lawless world, where anythign can happen. Kind of like a blank screen, it could be anything you draw on it.

[DJA]

Boi thats deep. I have met people in my dreams, people I've never heard of, and I get to know alot about them, but it seems like it's never the same people.

[AnonymousTipster]

I was thinking a little on this, and maybe there are 'tiers' of worlds, maybe the 'greater real' world above this one would be more strict then this one. Think about it: Lucid: Low Gravity, can manipulate everything in the world at your whim RL: Normal Gravity, can only manipulate things you come in contact with (e.g hands) but not everything (e.g you can't pick up a car) Which may mean that the 'Greater Real Life' would be: Higher Gravity, less manipulation of the world around you (e.g can only manipulate light objects). To further improve this, I read that some people who 'dream in a dream' experience a very high level of lucidity, which would give 4 levels, each more restricted than the last. It's a little different to the 'dream is reality and reality is dream' scenario, but it is similar. Would 'waking up' be death? Just my thoughts.

[Cassandra]

I have always been thinking of this theory actually.I really don't know.What if there are many dimensions...Or what if the real world is the one in our dreams...?If I think of it too much I 'll go nuts, I swear!

[Been There]

This is the awake world. Your experience in this state is strongly oriented to Physical Reality to the extent that other realms are completely blocked out, at least for most people. The dream reality is far greater than the awake one. The difficulty is translating that reality into something that your physically oriented waking conscious can make sense of. This is why our memory of dreams sometimes seem to strange to be real. The concepts have to be translated into ideas our wake state can understand if we hope to remember any of it. If we were designed such that our waking conscious could easily perceive that greater reality that we find in the dream state we would then lose focus in Physical Reality and fail to grow our experience there (here). Growing our experience in Physical Reality seems to be the general purpose of our lives.

[Canon]

One day about the sunset, Zhuangzi dozed off and dreamed he was a butterfly, a fluttering butterfly...he flapped his wings and sure enough, he was a butterfly. What a joyful feeling he had, doing as he pleased and fluttering around freely. He did not know he was Zhuangzi. Suddenly he woke up and found himself to be Zhuangzi. He did not know whether Zhuangzi had dreamed he was a butterfly or a butterfly had dreamed he was Zhuangzi? ...Thats an old taoist proverb. Pretty much everyday i wonder if i'm dreaming...i try to remeber what i did before i fell asleep like this, other times i wonder if i was born into a dreamlike place...(like the matrix) and that maybe everything is a part of my or someone else's mind. . . .But i think therefore i am, i guess. 8) Either way its nice to know that theres somebody out there thats as crazy as i am.

[AnonymousTipster]

Originally posted by Canon i think therefore i am That is the only thing we can truly be sure of. Because we are thinking right now, whether asleep, awake, or in the matrix we know that somewhere we exist in some form. Whether we ever get to find ourselves in this base form or not (if we aren't already now) is a different question, but the point is that we do exist However, I was using 'we' which may be inaccurate, as I can only tell that I exist because I am thinking. For all I know, you could just be DCs in the long dream that is life. Which is reassuring now isn't it

[Kc7ooo5]

Basically i highly doubt that were just in a dream world. I just really doubt it. All these crazy things ive heard in these fourms sound nonsense, but its cool im still highly interested in dreaming, science, ahh its all so interesting. I sometimes get the feeling that everythings just a dream too lol, but i still highly doubt it. (like 99.9% doubt it.)

[bradybaker]

Originally posted by Canon other times i wonder if i was born into a dreamlike place...(like the matrix) and that maybe everything is a part of my or someone else's mind That's actually a very common misinterpretation of The Matrix. It was never meant to be an updated version of the age-old philosophical question, "how can I know I'm not dreaming?", this was the more obvious theme used to explore the deeper political idea of 'the spectacle'. Basically, 'the spectacle' is the mode by which capitalism is said to subordiante everyday experience. It takes every human expereience out of 'the real world' and turns it into a commodity. Pay attention to the 'white rabbit' scene when Neo hands the book to the other dude, the title on the spine of the book is the key.

[Oneironaut Zero]

Originally posted by ShadowShifter has any body ever wondered if this is the deam world? what if theres two worlds Maybe the more pressing question is, is there really a cosmic difference between a dream world and a waking world? Are these two worlds even "different" worlds at all, or simply individual extentions or interpretations of a one true 'reality' that only seem "different" through problems of perception?

[benkane1077]

Several people have tried to come up with this answer. Most likely, we are more than we realize and can create a fantasy world. God created all things and made in His image, maybe we got something beyond just being walking clay and dust.

[wombing]

Originally posted by bradybaker That's actually a very common misinterpretation of The Matrix. It was never meant to be an updated version of the age-old philosophical question, "how can I know I'm not dreaming?", this was the more obvious theme used to explore the deeper political idea of 'the spectacle'. * Basically, 'the spectacle' is the mode by which capitalism is said to subordiante everyday experience. It takes every human expereience out of 'the real world' and turns it into a commodity. Pay attention to the 'white rabbit' scene when Neo hands the book to the other dude, the title on the spine of the book is the key. i was told to note the title of the book by a friend a couple years ago, but forgot the sole time i rewatched it since..what is the title/author? i couldn't find it on google... it seems there are varying themes running through it. i know that i made many connections between it and gnostic christianity while seeing it the first time, and only later heard the creators were influenced heavily by gnosticism. could be heresay though...

[bradybaker]

I believe the book is La Societe du Spectacle by Guy Debord, but I could be mistaken. I'll confirm that in a couple days, I have it written down somewhere in my place in the city.

[xcrissxcrossx]

I dont think so, because people in the real world can wake you up by moving your body. But if a giant dog thing bit your body into multiple peaces in your dream world and you were awake, you wouldnt wake up into the dream world.

[bradybaker]

Originally posted by I I believe the book is La Societe du Spectacle by Guy Debord, but I could be mistaken. I'll confirm that in a couple days, I have it written down somewhere in my place in the city. My bad, the book is Simulacra and Simulation by Jean Baudrillard, and it's the cover not the spine...and he doesn't give the book to the guy, he gets the disk-thing out of it.

[Gwendolyn]

Carlos Casteneda was of the opinion that if dreams are molded to replicate absolute reality, than they could be used to change our consentual reality. Of course, I don't really know if this is true. I don't think this, life, everything else is a dream. I think dreams are a whole seperate reality. This, our consentual reality, is one sector of our lives, and dreaming is another.

[Belisarius]

What about the concept that reality is just random perceptions, and that we automatically view them as an organized system, no matter what they are. Dreams, then, are those perceptions that are, for whatever reason, not fit into the system's structure. Perhaps while dreaming, waking life plays the same role as dreams do in waking life, the factor that doesn't fit into the system. Lucidity, then, is when these percptions overwhelm our capacity to organize our perceptions into a system and the laws we have found in our reality dissappear. I guess then lucidity would be possible in waking life.

[LucidDreamGod]

The real world and the dream world a totaly diffrent and have nothing to do with each other exept for the fact that the dream world uses information from the waking world to shape it. The real world is stable and constant, it follows laws it's made from physical matter that effect senses, it's matter is constant and physical and links all minds, the dream world is just a bunch of imagery in your head basicly just a picture painted by your thoughts.

[cybereality]

I wouldn't be so quick to segment the experience of dreaming from that of waking life. At all times your brain must accept close to 6 billion signals per seconds, filter this through the subconscious mind and recreate a subjective perception of this "reality" for you to experience. When you are awake, the so-called "real world" seems very stable only because your brain is relying on its sensory input to create the perception. When you are dreaming, this device is allowed to roam free. But make no mistake, the physical world and the dream world are "percieved" by the brain in exactly the same fashion. Subjectively, the experience is idendtical. All stimuli must first be processed by the mind in order to create the perception of reality. And that is all we really can speak about; our "perception" of reality. So lets say you are holding a gun and aiming at a target. At the moment you pull the trigger, you think that you hear the gunshot and feel the kickback of the gun. But in objective physical reality, that sound wave had to travel through space/time to reach your ears before you hear it. Then factor in whatever time it the brain takes to process that sound, pattern match it to your memory of the sound of a gun, send to to your subconsious and then to your conscious mind. So by the time you "hear" the shot it is actually a fraction of a second (maybe more) after the physical event took place. By the time you realize what has happened that particular sound wave may have already dissipated. So what you experience isn't the sound, but your minds re-creation of the sound. Once you experience it, it is merely a memory of an event. It is no longer happening. It is no longer "real." It is now made up of the same stuff as memories, dreams or even hallucinations. Empirically, there is no difference. Hear me out for a second. I will only speak of my own personal experience, for that is all I know. When I am awake, I can verify its realness by asking other people to affirm the reality. For example, I am holding a book in my hand. Say it was 'Simulacra and Simulation' since that was mentioned. I am sure I am holding it. I ask a friend what is in my hand. He says it is a magazine, say 'Popular Science'. At first, I think my friend is just pulling my leg. So I start asking other people. If everyone I ask agrees that what I am holding really is 'Popular Science' then, for all intents and purposes, that is what I am holding. That is reality. I hope you can see where Im going with this. All experience is subjective. As others have mentioned, all you guys may be figments of my imagination or some sort of avatars from a higher level. I have no way to be sure. Think of it this way. In the dream world, you have limited memory of the real world. Memories can also be fabricated. For example, you may be hanging out with your "best friend" in a dream, but it is someone you never met in real life. When you are awake you have a limited memory of the dream world. You may only recollect bits and peices. So what is to say that the brain doesn't use this same technique of altering and blocking memories while you are awake? In all honesty, the real world is not a stable as people think. I have been fortunate (or unfortunate) enough to recognize some of these anomalies. These experiences I had in the so-called "real world" (which are outside of the scope of this post) were things that would be strange if they happened in a dream. Try staying up for a day or two and you'll see what I am talking about. While you are sleeping your brain smoothes out the memory. So any anomalies will be erased or filled in. It does this as you are awake as well. For instance, how many times have you swore you saw something out of the corner of your eye, only to look and it wasn't there? The mind has a way of homogenizing the physical reality based on our senses. I think some of the sensory deprivation experiments they were doing in the 60's would support this theory. Believe whatever you wish, but just know that we haven't even began to scratch the surface of consciousness. // cybereality

[Graeme]

i am working hard to try and come up with a viable theory to work under using the idea that when we dream we are in reality these are the ideas i have come up with firstly if all is a dream i should be able to interpret waking reality like a dream and this should say something about me in the dream world. if the dream reality is real it must have a past you can remember lucid dream control must be some sort of error, like suffering from insanity but in a different reality, or that it is destructive, violating laws causes dream reality's to be destroyed. there are some things in physics you might want to study to help the heisman uncertainty principle trying to view the dream world from our world makes i hard to understand Feynman's sum over histories if we live in two dream world we should live in others and all others simultaneously weak/strong law of censorship views are sometimes blocked by something and other stuff about quanta i am really very serious about my work on this and would love a college to bounce ideas off of