Zhuangzi

Zhuangzi, the ancient Chinese philosopher, once had a vivid dream in which he was a butterfly, fluttering happily here and there. Suddenly he woke up, but afterward was never certain whether he was a man who once dreamt he was a butterfly or a butterfly dreaming he was a man.


I thought this was interesting =D

I heard of people being .. well in a lucid dream .. waking up, falling asleep, doing RC's .. but in the end, getting stuck in their dreamworld, because they weren't able to distinguish the real world from the dream world. They couldn't tell if the people they saw in real life were dream characters or not ..

Thanks for the sharing.

I saw an episode of Kung Fu about the scroll that he wrote :yumdumdoodledum: hehe

he should just try to count his fingers... :D

This could be a dream in the same way that the dream I had last night was a dream.
This could be a recurring, very vivid dream; one in which I've convinced myself that I'm unable to change the preset laws of physics and what not, which makes me unable to exercise any real control over it.
Maybe the reason I never remember my "true" reality in this dream and become lucid is that this dream presents me with a brain that has drawn a strict set of rules around what can and cannot happen, thus memories involving realities in which these "impossibilities" occur aren't compatible with my brain's concept of what "is" and what "isn't."
If this is the case, then in dreams where I have a "higher" brain, that is capable of actualizing things that the brain given to me in this dream is unable to, I would imagine that I write down this very interesting, recurring dream in my dream journal, in some other reality, and laugh at how constrained I become.
Also, if this is the case, then I would assume that in said alternate reality or dream, whichever you would like to call it, I am working rather diligently on a way to make myself become lucid in the dream that I am typing this forum message in, for all of you to read.

This line of thought has always made me smile.
And actually, since I've never put it down in writing, I may make an extended post about it this afternoon.

^^^ Somebody's watched the Matrix way too many times. :wink:

Seriously, after exausting countless RCs it seems as if eventually you would figure out whether you are awake or asleep. Though, I suppose it is possible for an already mentally unstable individual to be confused by the 2 worlds or perhaps just try to stay in their dream forever or something along those lines, but other than that I really don't see it happening. Most people are rational enough to distinguish between the waking world and the dream world.

In the Matrix, both of the realities can be processed by the human brain.

What I'm speaking of is a separate type of reality completely; not merely taking the reality that we know and tweaking the laws of physics at will.
It's so separate that memories from said reality are completely incompatible with the human brain; the data that makes up the sensations and experiences aren't of a readable format.
So, all that the human brain gets are memories from this and other compatible phantom realities. We think this is the correct one merely because it is the standard recurring reality for the pool of them that falls under the realm of "human-brain friendly."

I assume there are some that aren't "human-brain friendly," but that are backwards compatible, and can retain memories from "human-brain friendly" range along with memories from whatever "higher" realities they exists on.

There is a CD that comes with the book: Lucid Dreaming, a concise guide to awakening in your dreams and your life by Stephen Laberge. On that CD he has some exercises, two of which resemble hypnosis/guided meditation (one for daytime, the other for before bed). In both of those tracks he guides you to "the bed of your dreams" where, after falling asleep a butterfly floats out your open mouth and makes its way outside where "you cannot tell if you are you, dreaming that you are a butterfly, or if you are a butterfly dreaming that you are you." I never knew the significance of it until now.