Reality being a dream

[Matthew85]

The analogy of a dream is often used when discussing the nature of reality. During lucid dreams I am amazed as I explore my dream landscapes how my mind is creating it and how similar it is to waking reality with all the seeming solidity and physicalness. My body often appears the same and feels physical with the same senses. I had a lucid dream the other night where I was in a movie theater full of people watching a film. Finding myself amazed at how my mind was constructing all of it. It was indistinguishable from a movie theatre in my waking reality. Lucid dreams can be a helpful tool to give us insight into the nature of consciousness and reality. While there are many similarities between the two realties, there are some distinct differences as well. For those of you who have had awakenings into the nature of reality, what distinctions, if any do you make between waking reality and our nightly dreams? Is your perspective that both are a creation of only your mind? 

[Someone here]

First of all... It's not possible to distinguish the two.. Unless you go lucid on a dream. But for now.. You can't tell which is which. That is.. You don't know if you are dreaming or awake right now. You might have just woke up from one dream to enter another dream. And this might go on endlessly. Which is interesting because it kinda show that there is absolutely no difference between dream and "reality" in terms of phenomenonal experience. The same thing.. Sights sounds and different kinds of perception are identical. Except maybe in the dream state its kinda unstable and dark.. And there is a huge lack of consistency. All of which are the opposite in the waking state. It's pretty solid and consistent. But dreams only seem inconsistent after you wake up and compare them to the waking world. So it's not highly unlikely that this world too might be highly inconsistent relative to a higher order of reality that you might wake up to.  Interesting. 

The dream argument (similar to simulation theory argument) is that  the act of dreaming provides preliminary evidence that the senses we trust to distinguish reality from illusion should not be fully trusted.. and therefore.. any state that is dependent on our senses should at the very least be carefully examined and rigorously tested to determine whether it is in fact reality.

But my answer to that is that dreams are all there is. Who said that dreams aren't real?  They are 100 %real since we experience them. They are just different kinds of reality. As in they come about (generated) differently than the waking world (as assumed) but they are phenomenally identical as I said. Which means there is no such thing as illusion vs reality. It's all just different kinds of reality

[JuliusCaesar]

1 hour ago, Matthew85 said:

Is your perspective that both are a creation of only your mind? 

Absolutely, I've seen into the future of the waking dream from sleeping dreams before, I even became God realized through my experiences in sleeping dreams. However, I recognize that given ordinary human consciousness, sleeping dreams are very different from the waking world from that entity's perspective. And I also recognize, from direct experience how difficult attaining lucidity can be at least when relying on conventional means. Finding a powerful method of doing this without either substantial risk, or herculean levels of effort, however, is something I've yet to accomplish. But I remain optimistic going forward.

 

1 hour ago, Matthew85 said:

During lucid dreams I am amazed as I explore my dream landscapes how my mind is creating it and how similar it is to waking reality with all the seeming solidity and physicalness.

Yeah, I remember how mindfucked I was when I had lucid dreams where I couldn't control anything and it just functioned 100% like the waking world. I would try jump flying and it wouldn't work, I'd try walking through walls and would bounce off lol.

 

[Matthew85]

@JuliusCaesar What is your perspective on waking reality being a shared dream with other sub minds of the infinite mind? 

[Matthew85]

@JuliusCaesar I am hesitant to believe waking reality is only a creation of my individual mind like in sleeping dreams. I have been recording and analyzing my dreams a long time. It easy for me to see my personal mind and emotions playing out in the narratives of my dreams. A lot more difficult to recognize those patterns in our world events. Also, if you and I were to compare our nightly dreams most likely they would be vastly different, but in comparing our experience of waking reality, our perceptions of our world and experiences would be very similar. This leads me to think sleeping dreams are a creation of our personal limited mind, where waking reality may be a shared creation. Not only my creation. 

Edited August 6, 2022 by Matthew85

[JuliusCaesar]

6 hours ago, Matthew85 said:

@JuliusCaesar What is your perspective on waking reality being a shared dream with other sub minds of the infinite mind? 

Of the dream, that much can be said, but it's perhaps prudent to bear in mind that the "sub minds" are but the infinite having dumbed itself down.

 

4 hours ago, Matthew85 said:

but in comparing our experience of waking reality, our perceptions of our world and experiences would be very similar.

Of many sleeping dreams we both have this can also be said. It's only on rare occasions that I experience something radically different from what you experience. As most of my life has been lived from a normal human state of being.

 

4 hours ago, Matthew85 said:

This leads me to think sleeping dreams are a creation of our personal limited mind, where waking reality may be a shared creation. Not only my creation.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe you've mentioned instances of you manifesting things in the waking world using your mind.

[Matthew85]

1 hour ago, JuliusCaesar said:

Of the dream, that much can be said, but it's perhaps prudent to bear in mind that the "sub minds" are but the infinite having dumbed itself down.

@JuliusCaesar Do you feel all sub minds in waking reality are part of your mind in the same way everyone in our sleeping dreams is a projection of our mind?

1 hour ago, JuliusCaesar said:

Of many sleeping dreams we both have this can also be said. It's only on rare occasions that I experience something radically different from what you experience. As most of my life has been lived from a normal human state of being.

Isn't this an indication you and I are in a shared dream in waking reality versus our dreams while sleeping being only a creation of our finite mind?

1 hour ago, JuliusCaesar said:

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe you've mentioned instances of you manifesting things in the waking world using your mind.

Yes I have many times. But I don't feel that necessarily means waking reality is only being created by my mind. In a shared or co created reality you could still have influence to change certain things. 

[JuliusCaesar]

10 hours ago, Matthew85 said:

Do you feel all sub minds in waking reality are part of your mind in the same way everyone in our sleeping dreams is a projection of our mind?

They aren't really "sub minds", it's more like their mind is mine, just confined to the darkness of my unconsciousness. Which of course is necessary in order for them to exist in the first place.

 

10 hours ago, Matthew85 said:

Isn't this an indication you and I are in a shared dream in waking reality versus our dreams while sleeping being only a creation of our finite mind?

No, the sleeping dreams are also a part of the collective dream. And we don't in fact have finite minds, that's an illusion.

 

I'm not certain exactly how capable you are relative to lucid dreaming. But if you're advanced enough, you should consult the Guardian about these matters.

 

10 hours ago, Matthew85 said:

In a shared or co created reality you could still have influence to change certain things. 

Okay, how is that different from the co-created reality of your sleeping dreams? Besides the obvious superficial differences that arise normally in the human experience of course.

 

 

[Matthew85]

3 hours ago, JuliusCaesar said:

They aren't really "sub minds", it's more like their mind is mine, just confined to the darkness of my unconsciousness. Which of course is necessary in order for them to exist in the first place.

@JuliusCaesar If others minds are a part of your mind are you also a part of their mind? It gets very paradoxical. Who is imagining who?

4 hours ago, JuliusCaesar said:

No, the sleeping dreams are also a part of the collective dream.

Who do you feel is creating the collective dream?

4 hours ago, JuliusCaesar said:

Okay, how is that different from the co-created reality of your sleeping dreams? Besides the obvious superficial differences that arise normally in the human experience of course.

I guess I don't view my sleeping dreams as a co creation. It feels more like only my personal narratives playing out.

[JuliusCaesar]

54 minutes ago, Matthew85 said:

If others minds are a part of your mind are you also a part of their mind?

Yes, I am as real as they are because they are in fact none other than me. That of course includes you.

 

54 minutes ago, Matthew85 said:

It gets very paradoxical. Who is imagining who?

I'm imagining them, but understand that I'm not just a human being, I'm everything and nothing. So nailing down with human concepts what exactly I am is not so easy though I've done a good job here. But I sense that when others read my words they don't really know what I mean. It's kind of like how when you were a prepubescent child, you had no concept of sex. So much so, that even if people tried to teach about it to you, you'd be incapable of grasping the idea until you actually feel sexual feelings yourself. It's a very similar situation with God, when I talk about God, the problem is only others who have become aware of God really know what I'm talking about, which somewhat defeats the purpose of discussing it in the first place.

 

But as to which sentient being is imagining which specifically, it's both. I'm imagining you, and you're imagining me, and I'm imagining you imagining me, and on and on ad infinitum.

 

59 minutes ago, Matthew85 said:

I guess I don't view my sleeping dreams as a co creation. It feels more like only my personal narratives playing out.

It may feel that way, and I understand perfectly well why that is. However, the reality of precognitive dreams, sleeping dreams affecting "real world" events, and physics all clearly indicate that ultimately we're talking about a superficial difference here when we distinguish between your human imagination and the imagination that is the waking world.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Matthew85]

10 hours ago, JuliusCaesar said:

the co-created reality of your sleeping dreams?

@JuliusCaesar You feel sleeping dreams are a co created reality too? If your waking and sleeping realties are all your mind, who are you co creating with? Other aspects of yourself?

10 hours ago, JuliusCaesar said:

No, the sleeping dreams are also a part of the collective dream.

What do you mean by collective dream? What makes up the collective?

5 hours ago, JuliusCaesar said:

Yes, I am as real as they are because they are in fact none other than me.

So you feel these other aspects of you are conscious, aware and having experiences as you are? Do you view them almost like parallel lives? 

5 hours ago, JuliusCaesar said:

However, the reality of precognitive dreams, sleeping dreams affecting "real world" events, and physics all clearly indicate that ultimately we're talking about a superficial difference here when we distinguish between your human imagination and the imagination that is the waking world.

Perhaps. It requires more investigation. There are many differences between my lucid sleeping dreams and waking reality. For example, I can completely change the environments and control people easily in lucid dreams. Also, when I begin to ask people in my dreams a lot of questions it becomes obvious they are not conscious in the same way I am. They often become nonsensical in their replies. 

 

[JuliusCaesar]

25 minutes ago, Matthew85 said:

If your waking and sleeping realties are all your mind, who are you co creating with? Other aspects of yourself?

My mind has morphed itself into an infinitude of other minds/selves that are me, for me to play with. It had to be this way because I'm a formless being of infinite potential, so I wanted to experience myself in an infinite myriad of ways.

 

27 minutes ago, Matthew85 said:

What do you mean by collective dream? What makes up the collective?

Well, the bedrock of it all is nothing, but that nothingness takes the form of the dream and the dreamer. A collective dream or a consensus reality arises when multiple dream characters share dream experiences.

 

28 minutes ago, Matthew85 said:

So you feel these other aspects of you are conscious, aware and having experiences as you are? Do you view them almost like parallel lives?

It's essentially a superposition of many different possible experiences. For instance, I can experience a bird as an external character to me. But I can also turn myself into the bird and live its life from its perspective. To understand this, consider that all of it boils down to the fact that the unconscious of man has no limits. So possibility winds up being the same as reality because reality is such an abstract and undefined thing that it becomes whatever we define it as.

 

43 minutes ago, Matthew85 said:

For example, I can completely change the environments and control people easily in lucid dreams.

I've mentioned this before but it occurs to me that the meaning of what I said likely isn't clear to you. Have you ever encountered a powerful voice in the sky in your lucid dreams before? This is the one I before referred to as The Guardian.

 

46 minutes ago, Matthew85 said:

when I begin to ask people in my dreams a lot of questions it becomes obvious they are not conscious in the same way I am. They often become nonsensical in their replies. 

Have you ever tried to command them to become more conscious? Or to define/command thought forms as not existing/ceasing to exist in a way something like this "All thought forms must disappear" and see what happens to the others in the dream as a consequence of that?

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Matthew85]

16 hours ago, JuliusCaesar said:

My mind has morphed itself into an infinitude of other minds/selves that are me, for me to play with. It had to be this way because I'm a formless being of infinite potential, so I wanted to experience myself in an infinite myriad of ways.

@JuliusCaesar Do you feel these other minds/selves that are you have an existence even when you are not interacting with them? Do you see them as having the same conscious awareness you have? 

16 hours ago, JuliusCaesar said:

A collective dream or a consensus reality arises when multiple dream characters share dream experiences.

Hmm...interesting viewpoint. Do you feel this applies to your sleeping dreams too? I don't feel my dream characters are co creating the narrative of my sleeping dreams. It seems to all be my mind. It's possible though. 

16 hours ago, JuliusCaesar said:

Have you ever encountered a powerful voice in the sky in your lucid dreams before?

No I haven't.

16 hours ago, JuliusCaesar said:

Have you ever tried to command them to become more conscious? Or to define/command thought forms as not existing/ceasing to exist in a way something like this "All thought forms must disappear" and see what happens to the others in the dream as a consequence of that?

No, I will try this and see what happens. 

[JuliusCaesar]

1 hour ago, Matthew85 said:

@JuliusCaesar Do you feel these other minds/selves that are you have an existence even when you are not interacting with them? Do you see them as having the same conscious awareness you have? 

I think my way of understanding and interpreting reality seems somewhat foreign to you. So I'll offer up a physics example to hopefully deliver some clarity here. Imagine someone asks you the question, is the Earth revolving around the Sun, or is the Sun revolving around the Earth? Any normal person has about an 80% chance of saying that the Earth revolves around the Sun, and the majority of the remaining 20% would say the Sun revolves around the Earth. If you however were to ask me this question, I would tell you that when you're on Earth, the Sun revolves around the Earth. If/when you're on the Sun, the Earth revolves around the Sun, if/when you're on the Moon, the Earth and Sun both revolve around the Moon etc.

 

The point is that all you have of reality is your experience which is done from a very specific perspective. If you alter your perspective, you're now experiencing a different reality entirely. So just as I answered the astronomy question with a highly relativistic response. So the same kind of logic applies here. I'd say that from my dream characters' perspective, I'm not as conscious as they are or as real because they perceive me to be other than them. That is their reality, and likewise the same also tends to hold true of them from my perspective as well. Now of course, you can have dream characters that have no independent consciousness but are just an empty shell much like an ai in a video game, but notice that you can't really tell from a third-person perspective if that's what they're experiencing or not(just as video game ai can be very lifelike, so can dream characters). The best you can do is gather evidence to determine if they're similarly as conscious and powerful as you from your own perspective. Or you could turn yourself into them, and obviously, that would be even better, because then you'd know concretely how their reality is.

 

1 hour ago, Matthew85 said:

Do you feel this applies to your sleeping dreams too? I don't feel my dream characters are co creating the narrative of my sleeping dreams.

Yes it does, however, some or maybe even most of the dream characters in your sleeping dreams may not be consciously creating anything, just as in your waking reality you're not conscious of how you're creating it.

 

1 hour ago, Matthew85 said:

It seems to all be my mind. It's possible though. 

These two aren't mutually exclusive if those characters "other" than yourself were you the whole time, which turns out to be the case.

 

1 hour ago, Matthew85 said:

17 hours ago, JuliusCaesar said:

Have you ever encountered a powerful voice in the sky in your lucid dreams before?

No I haven't.

In theory, he's likely to speak with you whenever you become highly conscious in your sleeping dreams. The reason I ask is that he's a very powerful being, and entities like him are at least in my understanding/experience incredibly useful in lucid dreams. He caused me to realize that I'm God simply by saying to me "YOU ARE AWAKE!".

 

More about the Guardian, and btw if you haven't yet I recommend you read Robert Waggoner's book on Lucid Dreaming also.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gf0g1YZa8co&

 

This is also a good read on the subject. https://www.lucid-dreaming.com/lucid-dreaming-articles/the-voice-from-the-sky/

 

 

[Matthew85]

5 hours ago, JuliusCaesar said:

If you however were to ask me this question, I would tell you that when you're on Earth, the Sun revolves around the Earth. If/when you're on the Sun, the Earth revolves around the Sun, if/when you're on the Moon, the Earth and Sun both revolve around the Moon etc.

So, you are saying you are the center of the universe. 

5 hours ago, JuliusCaesar said:

So the same kind of logic applies here. I'd say that from my dream characters' perspective, I'm not as conscious as they are or as real because they perceive me to be other than them. That is their reality, and likewise the same also tends to hold true of them from my perspective as well. Now of course, you can have dream characters that have no independent consciousness but are just an empty shell much like an ai in a video game, but notice that you can't really tell from a third-person perspective if that's what they're experiencing or not(just as video game ai can be very lifelike, so can dream characters). The best you can do is gather evidence to determine if they're similarly as conscious and powerful as you from your own perspective. Or you could turn yourself into them, and obviously, that would be even better, because then you'd know concretely how their reality is.

Interesting perspective. The question I have about turning yourself into them as proof to validate their having an experience, is how do you know you are not constructing that in the moment you experience it? It's very tricky. 

I have Roberts book. It's excellent. 

[JuliusCaesar]

27 minutes ago, Matthew85 said:

So, you are saying you are the center of the universe. 

Well yes, but really my point was founded ultimately on the understanding that real life is much like a video game. In a video game, the world forms around the player character for the sake of the player character, and all of the game's reality is grounded in the experience of the gamer. Real life is a dream that fundamentally operates on very similar principles.

 

In that, you're creating the entire universe out of nothing always, starting with your human self, then funneling out into everything that's immediately close to your human self like family and friends, and then out to things further removed from you including maybe your country and countrymen you've never met, and this process is ongoing until eventually, we reach things you've never before experienced as a human self and things you can't even imagine or conceptualize as a human. And at that point, things become so abstract and undefined that it's not really possible to put them into words anymore.

 

29 minutes ago, Matthew85 said:

Interesting perspective. The question I have about turning yourself into them as proof to validate their having an experience, is how do you know you are not constructing that in the moment you experience it? It's very tricky. 

It's perhaps tricky because there's not actually any difference between you imaging that the other has their own experience by you constructing them in real-time, and them actually having their own experience.

 

36 minutes ago, Matthew85 said:

I have Roberts book. It's excellent. 

Indeed, it contains accounts of human experience that if you were to ask me, everyone should be interested in discovering.

[Matthew85]

@axiom What distinctions if any do you feel there are between sleeping dream realities and our waking reality?

[axiom]

@Matthew85 

Hi Matthew, thank you for asking. 

I think there are no distinctions here at all. The nature of imagination is that of an infinite fractal. 

Try watching a Mandelbrot zoom. It’s such a helpful way to picture many of the aspects of imagination and of reality in general. I’m sure you’ve seen them before but maybe take another look as you consider what I’ll write here:

What if the dream characters that appear in your own nightly dreams in turn dream up their own dream characters?

That being the case, it could be said that they are all disassociated aspects of your own mind. They all have their own independent existence, unaware that they are really just shards of a greater mind. You aren’t aware of their existence ordinarily, just as you aren’t conscious of many of the bodily functions that keep you going from moment to moment.

We could say metaphorically (and metaphysically) that your heart and brain are imagining you - contributing to your existence - just as much as you are imagining them. 

You may get to meet some of these aspects of yourself from time to time in altered states.

The hierarchy is infinite. That is, infinite numbers of dream characters populate the hierarchy all the way up to infinity, all the way down to infinity, and all the way across infinity.

But it isn’t actually a heirarchical structure. All levels, of all sizes and depths of complexity, are imagining all other levels. They all contribute to the imagination of the whole.

There is no God at the top. There is no God overseeing it all. There are many gigantic (infinite in fact) God-like minds within it, and “God” could be said to be the structure of the thing in its entirety. But the entirety cannot ever be circumscribed, just as you cannot capture a galaxy in a butterfly net.

God is infinitely lost to itself.

And then there is a deeper level to all of this… which is nothing. This is where the liberation is. The rest of it, no matter how cool it may be and how endlessly self-reinforcing it seems, no matter how infinitely seductive and infinitely convincing it is, was never really anything at all.

Edited August 10, 2022 by axiom

[axiom]

@JoeVolcano Great film. Never really thought he was the best actor though.

[Matthew85]

13 hours ago, axiom said:

But it isn’t actually a heirarchical structure. All levels, of all sizes and depths of complexity, are imagining all other levels. They all contribute to the imagination of the whole.

There is no God at the top. There is no God overseeing it all.

@axiom I do seem to be at the top and in control during lucid dreams. I can completely change environment's and control people. It does appear my mind is constructing and controlling all of it. 

13 hours ago, axiom said:

What if the dream characters that appear in your own nightly dreams in turn dream up their own dream characters?

Interesting thought. I'm not sure. Where would those dreams be occurring? I assumed when I wake up the dream and characters cease to exist.