This is a concept I've been wrestling with for a while now concerning lucid dreaming and the nature of reality.
For the last couple of weeks I've been thinking to myself all the time, like a mantra, [size=18][b]This is a dream I feel like I have just drunk a cool glass of water on a hot day. I feel centered, calm, balanced, lucid.
Last night I had a very light lucid dream - only my 3rd one ever. I believe dreams are very similar to our 'real' life and they are a good measure of how 'awake' in real life we are. To become lucid in dreams you must become lucid in life and vice-versa. You must work to build up your I-function (ego consciousness) so that it is stronger than your instincts/emotions as these are what make you attached to the world and percieve it as 'real'. You must become wise about the reality you perceive. Study, ponder, concentrate, question - use wisdom to fight yr base instincts that trap you inside the Matrix.
WARNING: If you do this you will find, much like the 'agents' in the Matrix, that your body-instincts will fight back HARD. We are evolutionary programmed to 'want' things (sex, love, safety etc) and to find meaning in the world. To go against these instincts is very difficult. Infact in my more pessimistic moods I sometimes wonder if it is impossible. By pursing this course, you are forced to confront the fact that everything around you that seems to mean something (often incredibly powerfully) is in fact 'nothing'.
This is intially quite demoralising and depressing. Extential doubts assail you from all sides "What is the point of it all? I wish I was never born then if thats the case". Its a well-known concept in buddhism where you are advised to only pursue yr spiritual journey if you are CERTAIN you want to know the truth. and are prepared to push through to the other side. Otherwise you are perhaps better off being asleep in this dream. If it wasn't so difficult we'd all be lucid dreaming every night with the greatest of ease. Eugene Ionesco writes about this painful dilema in his play 'Exit the King'
Here is the wisdom you need to know. for it to be effective. You must OWN it to throughly embed it into your pysche.Quote:
THE KING: Let go, did you say? Nobody, nothing lets go willingly. A stone resists the pickaxe, wood resists when you split or break it; everything resists, fights back, defends itself, everything holds on and persists in holding on. A rat or an ant is terrified of death, fleas defend themselves, and microbes, everything that exists would rather kill than be killed. Everything clings to its own integrity. Everything seeks to devour the rest of the world, cankers spread, armies crush whole nations and put the conqured to the sword; they all want to take eveything and give nothing...to destroy others and preserve themselves. Giving is the beginning of death.
Oh, if only molecules could separate from one another of their own free will! It's the cohesion of my molecules that is responsible for my anguish. If only I could find out where the stiches are, take myself to pieces, undo the ligatures as one unties a knot of string! If I were unfastened, it would be easy. How can I untie this knot, how can I give up my will, or else will myself to be like water that can be poured into any vessel, thrown to the winds...or a vapour, or the wind; these are things that seem to suffer less than others when they disintegrate, there are not knots in them. But I am made up of tight knots, knots that resist, that insist on being knots. I cannot, I will not, I cannot, I will not.
Question: If a tree falls in the forest, and there is noone there to hear it, does it make a sound?
Answer: No
Why? Because there is no such thing as sound. When things move (a tree falling, our mouths pushing out air when we talk or sing, amplifiers vibrating) it creates waves that move through the medium of air ie. the air molecules jostle each other in a chain like fashion. These waves then cause our eardrums to vibrate. Nerves then send information through to the brain about this vibration. We, and other creatures, are evolutionary evolved so that our brains convert this information into a 'sound'.
Its handy to be able to 'hear' a predator stepping on a twig. But in fact no sound is made at all. Its purely a virtual reality type thing going on in our brain that us creatures have evolved because its gives us some advantages. Sounds are an invention of our minds. In a vacuum, like outer-space, where there is no medium for these waves to be transmitted, there is no sound because there is nothing to convert.
"In space, no-one can hear you scream" :eek:
Its the same thing with colour. There is no colour. Not all creatures see colours. But quite a lot of species have evolved a way in the brain to convert incoming light waves of a certain frequency into a certain 'colour'. So the beautiful red sunset you are watching at dusk only exists in your mind. Its the same with taste and smell and feel and form and shade. In fact every way we perceive the world is just a virtual-reality creation inside our mind. Freaky hey!
This is why many eastern philosophies like Buddhism say that the way we percieve the world is an [size=18]illusion. An illusion doesn't mean something is not real (go jump out of an airplane without a parachute and you'll se how real the world is), it means its not what it appears to be on the surface.
Its a lot like when we dream. The virtual reality creation process our brains employ is triggered on during REM sleep for some reason. But instead of using data coming from outside, it uses memories stored in the brain to create a world that you move through. It is often incredibly real and we (usually) accept it as such no matter how bizzare things are that happen to us. In some ways it is no less real than how we view things when awake.
So what IS out there? Can we ever know what is out there? These are probaly the great philosophical questions of all times. Kierkegaard concluded that as we can only percieve the universe through the five senses, and these senses can decieve us, we can by definition NEVER know the fundamental nature of reality.
Descartes also said we can never be sure what we perceieve isn't some huge deception. He gave the example of a bored all-powerful manevolent devil Hume questioned even that asking "How do we know they are OUR thoughts? Maybe we are like characters in a book given thoughts to think by some outside agency"
Another example is the 'brain in a jar'. Years from now, you have had a terrible accident and they could only save yr brain by storing it in a jar in a fluid that keeps it alive. To stop you going insane they hook up incredibly intricate wires that trigger the neurons in yr brain so you see and taste and feel the world the way you do now. How could you ever know that you are only a brain in jar?
Many religions, mystics and occult philosophies teach that ultimate reality can in fact be known. This is often said to be acheived by transcending your conscious self (or ego) to access the more unconcious aspects of knowledge such as using prayer, meditation, yogic practices, chanting, fasting, pain, magic, drugs and many others.
Many descriptions of this 'ultimate reality' by those purporting to have become aware of it, is that it is an unbroken wholeness that underlys everything in the universe, a bit like a sea. Our egos decieve us into thinking of things as in fact seperate because we only see individual waves on the surface of the sea, not the whole sea that contains and unites all the waves. Despite having a poetical and evocative view of reality, I'm yet to be convinced as to how bona fide these reports are.
A lot of films like the Matrix, the Truman Show, Wizard of Oz, Jacobs Ladder etc feed off this idea that what we seem to feel, see, touch, taste and hear are not the fundamental reality we all just assume it is.
Next time you see a tree, try to question whether you are really seeing a tree 'out there' or if in fact you are seeing a tree inside your mind only. The tree 'out there' has no colour, it has no feel, it makes no sound, it has no shape or texture. Everything you percieve about the tree is being created by your mind. You are, for all intensive purposes, dreaming the tree. And you are dreaming everything else you see, smell, taste, touch and hear around you in the world.
Think to yourself "This is a dream" as you look at the world around you. You will begin to dettach from this world and become more balanced, more lucid. Life should become like a cool river flowing in front of your eyes. You should see this in your dreams as well for it is the exact same mechanism in action. But it is tough. Those agents are damn sneaky. Its so easy to let your instincts attach you to this world. They are incredibly powerfully and have millions of years of evolutionary design behind them. This is a fight for your very soul. :mad:
"I have overcome the world" said Jesus. "I am awake" said buddha. They claimed to have won the battle. Its what I am trying to do but I'm not sure I'll succeed. But I'm trying. God, how I'm trying. And when I lucid dream it encourages me that I am on the right track.
