Can dreams just be produced by the brain?

[Baotrader]

I am convinced that some dreams are spiritually orientational and show signs of future ( I got some). But can some dreams just be products produced by brain?

Last night I had a dream which I go to a store that sells armodafinil in PINK package. It's just because I once saw a guy on this forum posted that PINK packaged armodafinil and was curious because I always buy Blue packaged armodafinil. 

 

[seeking_brilliance]

I think its possible that all of our nightly dreams take place in the same astral or dream realm, but that it is personal to the individual dreamer, where your conscious and subconscious mind influences and builds the dream around you. But that's not to say its happening inside your brain... in fact I think it would be impossible to pinpoint exactly where its happening, if its happening anywhere at all. The only thing I can tell you for sure is that dreams are individual to the dreamer. How that fits into nonduality, I can't say....

 

Edited January 15, 2020 by seeking_brilliance

[Baotrader]

On 15/1/2020 at 8:22 PM, seeking_brilliance said:

I think its possible that all of our nightly dreams take place in the same astral or dream realm, but that it is personal to the individual dreamer, where your conscious and subconscious mind influences and builds the dream around you. But that's not to say its happening inside your brain... in fact I think it would be impossible to pinpoint exactly where its happening, if its happening anywhere at all. The only thing I can tell you for sure is that dreams are individual to the dreamer. How that fits into nonduality, I can't say....

 

It just takes place and that's it. I got the answer for my/this curiosity from my 11th trip

[Leo Gura]

The brain is a product produced by the dream.

[Arcangelo]

Pink is for girls blue is for boys

Bao you are the best!

[seeking_brilliance]

8 hours ago, Baotrader said:

It just takes place and that's it. I got the answer for my/this curiosity from my 11th trip

Yeah for sure, there is no 'where'. 

7 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

The brain is a product produced by the dream.

But why will no one answer how dreams are specific to individual dreamers? 

[Leo Gura]

5 hours ago, seeking_brilliance said:

But why will no one answer how dreams are specific to individual dreamers? 

Individual dreamers are part of the Dream.

[seeking_brilliance]

@Leo Gura yes, but that seems like a non answer... The same non answer I tend to get.  But go and check out my dreaming reports.  Those dreams are individualistic.  How and why? 

[Yog]

@seeking_brilliance

When you dream... you behave as if it were reality, you are 100% engaged in it, not questioning if its a dream. Right ?

Doesn't it seem familiar...ey. You are probably 100% sure that you are reading some internet forum in the "real" world right now without a question ? What if you were... dreaming, this.
 

Edited January 20, 2020 by Yog

[seeking_brilliance]

1 hour ago, Yog said:

@seeking_brilliance

When you dream... you behave as if it were reality, you are 100% engaged in it, not questioning if its a dream. Right ?

Doesn't it seem familiar...ey. You are probably quite sure that you are reading some internet forum in the "real" world.right now ?
 

Yes, but I don't really consider night dreams and day dreams to be separate experiences, just different kinds of experiences (flavored, or colored differently, so to speak)  with different rules and regulations.  Sometimes I am aware, and sometimes not. I'm not saying there is a brain, anymore than my nightly dream body has a brain. And yet somehow the dreams are individualistic, that's what I'm seeking. 

Edited January 20, 2020 by seeking_brilliance

[Yog]

@seeking_brilliance

Hm

Lets say. All is one
This "one", dreams and becomes many.
When it awakes, its one again.

There is only one thing that dreams. There is only one thing that awakes.
Individuals are only possible within the dream of the all.

Maybe I should also do less acid.

 

[seeking_brilliance]

54 minutes ago, Yog said:

@seeking_brilliance

Hm

Lets say. All is one
This "one", dreams and becomes many.
When it awakes, its one again.

There is only one thing that dreams. There is only one thing that awakes.
Individuals are only possible within the dream of the all.

Maybe I should also do less acid.

 

I think individualism is just one of those mysteries that perhaps can't be explained... Whether there is truly an individual or not, that's not what I'm asking. Something colors 'my' nightly dreams differently than 'yours' .  Individualism is stored 'somewhere/nowhere' even if there's no brain.  Even if that very storage itself is an illusion...an illusion through repetition? 

Edited January 20, 2020 by seeking_brilliance

[Codrina]

Maybe the nightly dreams are a story you create to help you figure out the story you experience in your daily dreams - at least that's what they look like to me

[Leo Gura]

@seeking_brilliance You are trying to explain reality without awakening, and that will not work. No explanation will work because all explanations are dualistic.

So try all you want, but you will always fail. The only solution is to awaken.

There is a good reason why Zen masters do not answer your questions. Because all your questions are misguided attempts by the ego-mind to maintain its dualistic delusional reality.

The solution to this problem exists on a new plane of consciousness from the one you're currently at. You will not be able to reason your way to that new plane.

[seeking_brilliance]

39 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

@seeking_brilliance You are trying to explain reality without awakening, and that will not work. No explanation will work because all explanations are dualistic.

So try all you want, but you will always fail. The only solution is to awaken.

There is a good reason why Zen masters do not answer your questions. Because all your questions are misguided attempts by the ego-mind to maintain its dualistic delusional reality.

The solution to this problem exists on a new plane of consciousness from the one you're currently at. You will not be able to reason your way to that new plane.

Ok I get you I promise.  Can you at least tell me if it's all related to the double slit experiment? Beyond that I think I'm ready to just go into experiencing mode. My mind  is too wrapped up. The questions are too heavy to carry... 

Edited January 20, 2020 by seeking_brilliance

[seeking_brilliance]

49 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

@seeking_brilliance 

There is a good reason why Zen masters do not answer your questions. Because all your questions are misguided attempts by the ego-mind to maintain its dualistic delusional reality.

And thank you for a direct answer... It's frustrating when you think you are asking curious questions and everyone just shuts down like I broke the Zoltar machine. (which is very dreamlike might I add) 

[Forestluv]

On 1/15/2020 at 8:22 AM, seeking_brilliance said:

The only thing I can tell you for sure is that dreams are individual to the dreamer. How that fits into nonduality, I can't say....

Another way to look at it: Who/what is this “individual dreamer?”. Is it the mind-body in which the dream occurs? There are many levels to this that eventually collapses into infinity. Starting off with a standard definition of a “dream”, I have a dream at night while sleeping. I wake up and realize it is a dream. I am the individual in which the dream occurs. Let’s add a layer. What if within the dream, the dream character wakes up and realizes he was dreaming (yet the dream is still ongoing). Who is dreaming? From the perspective of the dream character who woke up, he is the dreamer and the dream occurred within his individual. Yet then you wake up and have a meta view and realize there was a dreamer within a dream. Yet this is relative to who gets to define what a “dream” is. 

If the dream character determines this is real and identifies as the individual character, the dream character will not be able to wake up as “you”. He cannot imagine it or figure it out. Similarly, we could keep going and adding layers. What you call “a dream” is within a dream. If the character  you play in life decides this is “real” and is attached and identified he will not be able to be awaken to a “higher” conscious level.

A couple years ago, I started training for lucid dreaming. I would do “reality checks” throughout the day while awake. For example, I would look around and think “Is this real or a dream? If this was a dream, how could I tell the difference?”. I then pushed my forefinger into my hand. Since it didn’t go through my hand, it is not a dream. If this happens within the dream, the finger goes through the hand and we realize we are dreaming. In the beginning the reality checks were pretend. Of course I was awake and everything was real, I just pretended like I didn’t know. Yet over time a weird thing started happening. I started lucid dreaming at night, yet also during the daytime. I would be awake and go into states I don’t realize I’m awake or can’t tell the difference between real or dream. The “reality checks” took on more meaning. And sometimes the reality checks didn’t work in the dream, so when I was “awake”, I couldn’t be sure if I was awake. I can get myself grounded in waking life, yet sometimes it takes effort. My sense of dream or not dream has partially dissolved and there are no clear boundaries. This allowed space for a realization that it’s all a dream and all real. My ego mind could no longer maintain a delusional reality that “this is real and that is a dream”. I can sorta do it in real life, yet it can take effort. Now the script is flipped: rather than pretend I don’t know if I’m awake or dreaming, now I really don’t know. I can go either way. Not in a pretend way, in my direct experience. As if it is prior to whether my current reality is a dream or not a dream.

One thing that became prominent in the transition was with memories. There were times, I could not determine if my memories and thoughts in my head came from a dream or real life. I would be reflecting on something that happened in my life and then “snap out of it” and I didn’t know if it was daydreaming or if it really happened. Like did I actually date that gal or was that a dream. Not in a playful pretend kind of way, in a very real way. I would look on my phone or through my house for evidence that something happened in real life and it wasn’t a dream. I became really scared that I was going insane. That maybe I have early dementia or did too many psychedelics. I was afraid to tell anybody about it because they would think I’m crazy - I could lose my job or get locked up. 

[seeking_brilliance]

@Serotoninluv thank you we have similar experiences  with dream work? 

(speaking solely in dream talk, as if I'm someone asking you on a random forum) Do you think that the dream self/character becomes lucid and is one and same as waking character, or is still just a dream character who will poof away upon awakening? Of course this depends on lucidity level... I am typically never fully completely my waking-self even when lucid, except that one time that I stepped into the dream fully lucid. 

Yes this waking reality can act very dreamlike and I don't trust it's 'realness' ... funny because realness is an imaginary idea... ??

Edited January 20, 2020 by seeking_brilliance

[Inliytened1]

1 hour ago, seeking_brilliance said:

Ok I get you I promise.  Can you at least tell me if it's all related to the double slit experiment? 

To me the double slit experiment is analogous to the relative and the Absolute.  The Absolute cannot be grasped by the relative.  Light is both a wave and a particle but you can't catch it as both simultaneously.  If you want to see if its a wave and leave both slits open it will act like a wave.  If you want to see if its a particle and cover one slit it will oblige and act like a particle.    Ya just can't catch it as both because the very act of performing the experiment forces it into one or the other.

Or with quantum mechanics in general a wave/particle is in a superposition when unobserved.  But as soon as you observe it the wave function collapses into a particular particle.  You cannot capture the wave function in its super position because as soon as you try it collapses.

So you can't get to the Absolute with science of course but you can glean stuff from it.   Ya have to become a mystic and collapse yourself from the finite to the infinite

 

[Forestluv]

31 minutes ago, seeking_brilliance said:

@Serotoninluv thank you we have similar experiences  with dream work? 

(speaking solely in dream talk, as if I'm someone asking you on a random forum) Do you think that the dream self/character becomes lucid and is one and same as waking character, or is still just a dream character who will poof away upon awakening? Of course this depends on lucidity level... I am typically never fully completely my waking-self even when lucid, except that one time that I stepped into the dream fully lucid. 

I’ll assume here that by “awakening” you mean awakening fro sleep. 

My dream characters feel like manifestations of my primary waking character with different degrees of identification. Usually when I awaken, it sorta feels like it was “me” in the dream to various degrees. Yet I may add in the identification when I awaken. For example, I may dream about people that I worked with in the past and I might act like myself, yet it doesn’t feel like “me” during the dream. Rational thought isn’t operative. Yet when I awaken, it often feels like it was me in the dream. Like I actually had that experience. So in that sense my waking and dream character is the “same”, yet it also seems like a different character.

I often find myself in odd places having odd roles in dreams, yet I wouldnt say I was a completely different person. For example, in one dream I was a leader trying to help a poor community survive an onslaught form an army that would arrive in a couple days. This isn’t the type of role I would play in real life. And in the dream, I wasn’t questioning “who am I?” When I awoken, it felt like I had the dream and I was the character. It’s more like different scenes rather than different characters.

To answer your question, I would say it feels more like a continuous lucid state that has a core character finding itself in various different settings and situations. This is has some similarities and some differences with my psychedelic trips.

The two things I would like to further develop in my dreams is to be able to become a wider diversity of characters that don’t seem like “me”. For example, a female magician. Secondly to increase my conscious awareness during the dream.