Thursday, February 3, 2011

Dreams: The Blueprints of Reality

Hello everyone!

I want to talk about lucid dreams, and whether or not they are real. Let us start off with the definition of lucid dreaming; most would define lucid dreaming as becoming aware in a dream in which what you are experiencing is not real. I do not believe that is what lucid dreaming actually is, but rather I believe that lucid dreaming is becoming aware in the dream that what you are experiencing is your own manifestation. Skeptics would probably come back to me and tell me that that definition outright proves that dreams are not real, because if you are manifesting it yourself, then how can it be real? But of course, if anyone is familiar with quantum physics, it is the exact same thing. Quantum physics has successfully theorized that in our day-to-day life we create and manifest what we are seeing through conscious observation. This is a generally accepted scientific theory; therefore, if you consider our dreams to not be real because we are creating them, then you must accept that our waking life is also not real. So, with the evidence I have presented so far, we must all accept that either our waking life and our dream state are both "unreal," or that our waking life and our dream state are both "real." Like I said, with the evidence I presented there is no distinguishing between the two.


It's funny because our ancestors once believed our waking life was also a dream. There are so many myths that show our ancestors did not think our waking life was real. Maybe none of this is real? Maybe everything is just a dream. However, it is not as simple as that. What does it mean for something to be a dream? Does it automatically demote it to 'not real?' Not necessarily, and this is the point that I'm trying to get at. We need to try to define the term 'real.' But before I do, let us discuss the science around perception, and our perception of waking life. If anyone has done any research about perception, he or she will know that everything we are seeing is actually just a construct of the brain. We don't actually see with our eyes, we see with our brain. So, everything we perceive is our mind's take on what is actually out there. It is not what actually is out there, though. Once we are in our bodies, we are stuck in them. We can never actually leave them. There is no way of getting out (well, there arguably is, if you believe in OBEs [Out of Body Experiences], but let us not go there, because that is another topic). So, we have to accept that in our current scientific scope of knowledge, we are stuck within our bodies, and we cannot get out of them. So, like I said, everything we perceive is merely our brains take on what is actually out there, but it's not truly out there. To put it simply, everything we see and experience is actually happening within ourselves, not without. An easy way to prove to yourself that what we see is an edited view of reality is to realize that we only see a very small percentage of what actually is out there. Some of the things we don't see are radio waves, micro waves, ultraviolet rays, gamma rays, etc. These are all 'proven scientific fact,' so, irrefutably, we are seeing an edited view of reality that is actually occurring within the brain, not outside of ourselves. So, once this begins to sink in, we have to accept that our waking life is in fact an illusion of the mind. 

What exactly is real, then? Let us try to define real first. I first thought of the definition of 'real' being 'something that is tangible, and solid.' If that is your definition of real, then certainly your waking life is not real, as per the fact that you only perceive objects in your mind. As quantum physics has proven to us, everything we perceive in our waking life through our eyes actually isn't the object, but is an image of it rendered by our brains. Everything we might touch may feel solid to us, but it's just another illusion of the mind. Everything in the universe is pretty much empty. I cannot remember the exact percentage, but it is about 99% of everything in the universe that is just empty space. My second attempt at the definition of real is 'something that awakes a strong emotion within us.' By that definition, you then must define your dreams as reality, as well. Undeniably, we all experienced very intense emotions within our dreams. So, with the evidence I presented, either both dreams and reality are real, or both dreams and reality are not real. Finally, my third thought on the definition of what 'real' is, is that 'real is a constant; a running constant.' Now, this actually does seem like more of a better definition of reality, because reality seems more coherent/cohesive compared to our dreams. However, is the constant we experience in waking life really enough to demote dreams as unreal?

Please follow me if you've enjoyed this read, I'll continue to post material like this!

14 comments:

  1. Great read man, really puzzles the mind. Got me to thinking. A+ stuff

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  2. A beast of a post, but an excellent read overall. Points of some pretty good points that hurt the heads of even the best scientists.

    I'd like to think that there's something to reality, but that it's more than we can perceive. I'm an agnostic, so that sorta explains it, haha.

    ~Randall A.

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  3. First half of this post reminded me of the movie "The Secret", which is an awesome movie if you haven't seen it. Also, I would probably define reality as something that more than just yourself in an isolated scenario can experience. This reminds me of something funny that my psychology professor said about believing in certain traits about yourself. You can be thoroughly convinced in your mind that you're a nice person and internally actually believe it and maybe be a nice person, but if you're externally awkward or simply can't convey those inward feelings properly, are you actually the nice person you believe you are?

    following and supporting,
    CrustyCollective

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  4. I love where this is going, great post!

    In fact, everything is real. Even if it's fake, it's still real, we just labeled it as fake or unreal. It lives in our thoughts, so it exists.
    Also, what we percieve with our brains may only be a distorted image of what actually is. Perhaps you see the color orange like I see the color blue, but we'll never know, 'cause we just have no way of finding out (yet).

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  5. Very interesting read bro. Followed.

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  6. Everything is real. Dream or not.

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  7. Really interesting post and blog. I think that all dreams are "real" in the sense that they are real for the individual observer at that moment in time. They lose their reality on waking, and they were never real for other individuals who did not experience them.

    I guess it more depends on your definition of "real" or "reality". All of my dreams are a part of my reality, and are therefor real, but how frustrating is it when you try to explain a dream to someone? That's because they didn't experience the dream and so it can never be part of their reality.

    Great blog man! Followed.

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  8. Like Waaaoi said, reality is just about perception.

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  9. I do like the way to laid eveything out. And I do agree with you in regards to the reference to Quantum Physics. It is true.

    "Life is about perceptions, it just depends who's"

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  10. Such a longggg post! So thought provoking as well!
    Reality is something so hard to define , I think.
    We can assume what we know as 'reality' is wrong.
    They say perception is projection, so if what we perceive to be real, we consider real then surely our dreams, are real to some extent?

    Too much thinking.
    Looking forward to more!

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  11. Never been able to manage a lucid dream myself,always wanted too but...

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  12. Wow, that literally blew my mind. That part where you wrote about real meaning 'something that awakes a strong emotion within us' really hit home with me. Excellent post from an excellent blog!

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  13. Neuro, if you haven't lucid dreamed before stick around on my blog because I'll start releasing tutorials and facts on how to lucid dream. Once you can actually lucid dream you'd be captivated on the things you learn about yourself. :)

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