Joining a thread this deep in a discussion makes it hard to keep track of all the different little things I wanted to say, so I'll start from nowhere and work from there...

Quote Originally Posted by dutchraptor View Post
Sorry if you stated this but what exactly do you believe you are talking about when you say alternate reality. Do you mean like a whole different plane of existence? Is it linked to the real world, an extension maybe? Do you retain all your characteristics when you go their? How is it that you reach this plane?
I have tonnes of questions really . What makes you believe that dreams are more than just a simulation, even if we can connect to other beings.
I personally think there is much, much more to dreams that your brain simply firing off random signals. I don't, in fact, believe that your brain has all that much to do with who and what we ultimately are as conscious beings. I think the brain is more of a transceiver, a radio that tunes in your consciousness and ideas from pre-existing external sources. When we are physically awake we are tuned into this body and this reality, but when we sleep that connection is loosened. I couldn't really guess at the exact mechanism of this, but I choose to believe that consensus reality is effectively indistinguishable from dream reality or astral reality or any other sort of sensorium. When I become lucid in a dream, 99% of my experience is me absolutely freaking the fuck out at how utterly realistic it all is. I know some people talk of limited clarity, blurry vision, lack of color vision, things like this, but for me, when I've stabilized a dream, my dreams are 100% as 'real' to my consciousness as this world is. People not experiencing this level of clarity are, I imagine, just not stabilized/tuned in completely. To me, viewing reality through an outside->in perspective, where we look at the body and brain and physical world and determine that our consciousness and minds ARISE from these things, is unwarranted. Every time I wake from a lucid dream, reality feels a little less "real" or concrete, because to me, there is no real way to distinguish the experiences between each other, and no real justification for granting this longer, more consistent dream as any more "real" than those we experience while asleep.

So I wouldn't say that when we sleep we enter an alternate reality, per se, because to me that implies that consensus reality is somehow superior. Rather, we exist only in ultimate reality, and our conscious perception is focused on this facet (consensus reality), and when we sleep, we shift to a different facet. Sorry if this ended up being rambling or a little off topic, hope it makes sense to someone