Thread: Is life a dream?

The morning after the Buddha had achieved enlightenment, He was sitting under a tree. Because of the great amount of peace coming from him, a man stopped and stared, unused to seeing someone so tranquil, so radient. He knelt down in front of the Buddha, who was meditating and asked him these questions:

"Noble Sir--Are you a god?"
The Buddha smiled and replied, "No I am not a god".
The man asked, "Are you an angel?"
Once again the Buddha smiled. "No, I am not an angel."
The man, puzzled then asked him one more question; "What are you then?"

And the Buddha replied,

"I AM AWAKE".

So not a dream, then?

everyone knows that life is not a dream...
its a nightmare
that you cant awake from...

...Merrily merrily merrily...

One day Mark the Bonehead was sitting under a tree.
A man walked by and asked "Are you a god?"
To which he responded, "No, you're thinking of Numbass."
Then he asked "Are you an angel?"
To which he answered "Nope, their wings aren't so bat-like"
Then the man asked "Well what are you?"
To which he responded "I'm the guy that stole your wallet." at which point he mugged him.

True story.

What makes the dream we call life difrent from the dreams when we "sleep"? Simple... The rules. it´s not our dream so we dont make the rules. we are mearly Dream carecters in someones dream.

Oh I just knew that it was going to be appallingly close to 50/50.

Originally posted by Raz
What makes the dream we call life difrent from the dreams when we \"sleep\"? Simple... The rules. it´s not our dream so we dont make the rules. we are mearly Dream carecters in someones dream.

There are no rules in a dream. It doesn't matter who's dreaming it. That's the point!

IN life, what we do affects other peoples' lives. Also, there are limits to what we can do or be. In dreams we can do or be anything without affecting anyone but our selves. Life is not a Dream.

I'll say Life is Life is Real is Constant whether one views it as a dream or not.

We'd have to take into account the humans inhabiting this Earth, or at least the ones that we know of. Would they be Dream Characters?

Sure, in a dream DC's can question their own reality when it is the Dreamer's mind that is supplying the script. If this life were a dream, who's mind is behind it?

This is absolute reality...I'm less I'm someone's DC. Heh!

Well I've always wondered if maybe we are a dream...of god? Then again as a Hindu this really doesn't line up with my religious beliefs so...

There's book called Sophie's World, and Sophie thinks she's a real person but it turns out shes a character in some other persons book and like its weird, but somewhat like this question. Is our reality our's or someone elses?

I dont think like is a dream...it just is.

Although if this really is a dream i dont have to worry about college then or my 4.0...hmm tempting...

A good proposition is falsifiable. Emphasis on the "able" part, which does not necessarily mean that is true or false. Just that it can potentially be shown false.

Consider the proposition, "life is a dream." How would we go about showing that is false? We could consider the properties of dreams, and then if we could show how life doesn't have those properties, we would show that it doesn't have the properties of dreams and, therefore, is not a dream. It can get messy if the independent meaning of "life" and "dream" are in flux for you. Is your mind naturally trying to absorb one concept into the other? Put that to a halt and decide what each means to you separately. They are separate words, after all, and separate vessels for meaning.

Consider the proposition, "life is God's dream." Now it's more complicated. Now we've added a third concept that is in extreme flux. The falsifiability of this statement is remote if you do not have some static idea on what each of those things are in the first place.

Well, I vote yes. Follow this logic if you want to know why:

It's reasonable to believe that one day, in all infinity of time, we would be able to create a virtual world, with truly intelligent 'creatures'.
Those creatures, in the infinity of time, could in turn create their own intelligent creatures.
And so on, and so forth.

This results in an infinity of intelligent creatures, where only the infinite minority are in the 'real world'
Whats the chances that you and me are those creatures?

Originally posted by Ex Nine

There are no rules in a dream. It doesn't matter who's dreaming it. That's the point!

Ah! But you are wrong there! In your dreams you can make your own rules (or have no rules, how ever you want to put it). In this dream of life the dreamer goes by the rules of physics and logic (mostly). As a DC you cant brake the rules of the dream, mearly make the best of given situation. This dreamer is experiancing everything living on earth all at once. Hard for us humans to think of a dream on that scale as we always dream and live from our own point of view...

Originally posted by Placebo
Well, I vote yes. Follow this logic if you want to know why:

It's reasonable to believe that one day, in all infinity of time, we would be able to create a virtual world, with truly intelligent 'creatures'.
Those creatures, in the infinity of time, could in turn create their own intelligent creatures.
And so on, and so forth.

This results in an infinity of intelligent creatures, where only the infinite minority are in the 'real world'
Whats the chances that you and me are those creatures?

Very thoughtful Placebo. I wonder, in creating this virtual world, what boundaries or laws would have to be placed. The intelligent creatures will figure out that their world had an origin and will wonder who the intelligent creator is and what purpose they were created for.

If no way of crossing into our 'real' world is made available to them, will they have the capability of breaking out of theirs and into ours?

Would this really be considered a dream if they are living their 'reality'? Oh I forgot, this is the question!

Originally posted by Genjyo

Very thoughtful Placebo. I wonder, in creating this virtual world, what boundaries or laws would have to be placed. The intelligent creatures will figure out that their world had an origin and will wonder who the intelligent creator is and what purpose they were created for.

Yep, much like us.

If no way of crossing into our 'real' world is made available to them, will they have the capability of breaking out of theirs and into ours?[/b]

If our parent civilisation facilitated this, wouldn't this be the same as being 'taken up to heaven' ?
Kinda like being placed into a robot in order to experience the world above ours.

I am willing to say when we live we are asleep and when we "die" we wake up. I vote Yes, and I too like Placebo's inductive argument.

I find it incomprehensible that I have lived a life tens of thousands times longer( by saying that 8 hours of sleep really equals 16 years) than my current life and have no memory of it.

I believe when I die I will be dead and not alive

I believe that life is not a dream. It may be just a step on a journey, but I sincerely doubt it is a dream.

Err.... This is some deep philosophy, and one I'm not that good at discussing... I think I'll just leave it at what I've said so far. I can't think up any good point to either support/refute my theory.

interseting placebo. unfortunately i cant have this discussin with you becuase im a dumb ass and hasnt had time to form his own opinions or think about like that much yet. (im only fifteen). thtas no good excuse, but i l really wanna talk about this! oh well. soon, maybe.

The argument has been made that real life has rules and therefore cannot be confused with a dream because they have no rules. Those concrete and infallible rules have been broken a time or two. Changeing matter, controlling the weather, levitating, and even bringing the dead back to life. Proof? It's in a well documented book one can find almost anywhere. There are many as well that agree, everything in this book is true. Ask just about anyone, it's the bible.

Not a Christian, don't believe in God, need more proof?

How about the US government? There are many studies that are well doucumented. Used top researchers and the scientific method with pages and pages of data for those that need something stale and clinical. The US government thought it was a good idea and put many to work that could bend the rules so to speak. The government likes to bend the rules.

Don't trust the government? I don't blame you.

How about your local police force? There are many that have used the employ of so called phycics that bent the rules and knew things they shouldn't know. There are many well documented cases of those as well that have led to successful arrests when all other leads were used up.

Hell, even old Albert E. with pure mathamatics showed us that time is an allusion of perception.

I say life is a dream only as an analogy for lack of a better word. It is what it is no matter what term we tag it with. We think as a society that we pretty well have it all figured out. What a laugh! I think for the most part we haven't even a clue.

willthepathfinder, nobody knows all the rules for reality. What you call breaking or bending the rules can just as easily be called an exposition of the rules. Einstein didn't bend any laws of the universe that I know of.

Remember, I'm seriously into investigations of the paranormal too. So, don't read me as antagonizing when I say, for the love of Christmas, just because the government does something, that doesn't mean they made a smart decision. That's the second time today I've seen someone make that fallacy. It's just rampant in the paranormal community.

The same goes for cops. And there are plenty of documented failures of psychic investigations too. Time will tell on that one. I'll be glad to see more attempts and obviously more success, if it can be had.


Those of you who think life is a dream are open-minded, right? From now on, every time you watch The Matrix, make an effort to spend the same amount of time watching The Mechanical Universe or something similar. You can watch it for free at that link after signing up.

Yes. The way we percieve reality in life is very similar (if not exactly the same) as the way we percieve reality in a dream. It would be a huge benefit to us not to strictly differentiate between the two the way we currently do. To view the world as if a dream would go a long way to us overcoming our biologically ingrained attachment to the world of the senses that can cause us much pain and misery. Everything is temporary in this universe. Refer my rantings entitled "Battle for your Soul"
http://www.dreamviews.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=23149

fluid phil, the next time you watch The Matrix, will you match it by watching two hours of The Mechanical Universe?

In tibetan tantric dream yoga practices, one moves through the stages of awareness in different states of sleep--dream, lucid dream, active dream, awakened dreaming and a state of total lucidity or Clear Light.

Lucid dreaming as is practiced by most of us, myself included, is just one of the first stages in dream yoga. Like physical yoga, it just takes time to stretch those muscles and tendons by practice, practice, practice.

Life is an unconcious dream for most of us, a nightmare for some of us, a lucid dream for others. Then there's those few doing something else....

Now I thought I made it clear. I guess I didn't.

I didn't say old Albert bent any rules, I just said he showed us mathmatically reality is not the way we perceive it.

As far as the government goes, I thought I implied well enough that I don't trust them very well at all. I guess I should have said it outright.

Psychics in the employ of law inforcement? Yes, there are charlatans every where but, what about the ones that solved the case when disciplined and educated detectives couldn't?

I was simply trying to give documented examples of reality not being what it seems for those that need plausable proof, if they cared to look into it.

The world of concrete laws are not as concrete as they may seem. If one cares to look and not just blow them all off. Reason is a good tool for debunking just about everything without truely answering anything. Yes, I said it. Perhaps that is another thread in the making but, I don't think reason alone can answer all questions.

As far as life being some sort of dream, I said it already, it's an analagy for lack of a better word.

We have no idea what life is really about, so trying to find one simple word to define it is next to impossible.