Thread: Are dreams and reality really thath different?

Dreams are formed by our perception of reality.
I suppose that's why a lot of techniques such as ADA and reality checks work so well.
If we base our dreams off of reality, it's easier to become aware.

That being said, though, they are very far apart from each other.
Don't confuse them. It ends badly.

[QUOTE=SinisterDezz;2127883]Dreams are formed by our perception of reality.
I suppose that's why a lot of techniques such as ADA and reality checks work so well.
If we base our dreams off of reality, it's easier to become aware.

That being said, though, they are very far apart from each other.
Don't confuse them. It ends badly.[/QUOTE True we should never confuse them but i meant more like how we experience them. Perception of reality is formed trough memories. If you didnt have any then you wouldnt know anything about reality or dreams and didnt have anything to exceptation. The idea was that we experience both of them inside our brains.
Allthough reality is also happening around us but we see it only trough our senses and brain working together. Dreams happens completelty inside us using.

I think you got the idea. I also think that its very unhealthy to confuse them or escaping to lucid dreaming from reality.
I also think that its unhealthy to think that you know anything about reality.

Waking life is constructed the same way as dreams - that is, your senses receive information and construct a more or less accurate simulation of everything.
We don't experience the physical world "directly", we just experence our brain's simulation of it.
That's why you can hallucinate and "hear things" - because for some reason your brain has problems creating an accurate model of the world at that moment.
If you experienced the world directly then you would never hallucinate, since hallucinations don't actually exist, except in your own brain.

It's pretty fun to pretend that waking life is a kind of dream, because it practically is a dream.
Like Stephen LaBerge said:

"Dreaming is perception unconstrained by sensory input;
perception is dreaming constrained by sensory input"

Well yeah, technically your experience of "reality" in waking existence is the same as in dreams. Only difference is our brains create the experience without the external sensory inputs of the physical body.

That's why they feel/are experienced exactly the same, because in a way they are. They're using the same mechanism, one interprets external sensory stimuli and creates from that, the other creates from memory(I think...?). That is what strikes me in every lucid dream, how ridiculously real it is. Could be awake for all the difference it would make.

That brings question: is reality really reality or it is some kind of dream? Is existence sum of different levels of dream?

Originally Posted by Psionik

That brings question: is reality really reality or it is some kind of dream? Is existence sum of different levels of dream?

Depends on your definition of reality, lol. And on your definition of dream. We humans like to think that the body, planet and universe we experience are inherently real and just like we experience them, but really there is nothing "out there", colors don't objectively exist as we know them, we each create our own universe in a way.

Reality is the experience we have within our brains (or "mind" I suppose is more accurate), so yes, the experience of waking and the experience in dreams are both "real." If dreams were not "real", you wouldn't have them!

Yes, yes, I know. But in my dreams I believe that they are reality. In LDs I know I'm dreaming which means I know, that I will wake up from it. But it could also mean, that this reality is basic state I can exist in... and all others are possible for me only for a short time. In OBEs I know I'm NOT dreaming. And I know it will not last as long as I want. But I can return there. I can do all the things I do here also in my dreams and OBEs, or more. Depending on state of mind... Life could be only recurring dream. Maybe we exist in parallel in everywhere we can get in our experiences, only that all that states are dormant in comparison of existence on this world...

This doesn't mean I must believe at 100% about this. I take it as possibility.

I can't explain it good enough in english. Sorry.

I've stopped using the term "reality" to mean "the waking state" a long time ago . There is "wake" and there is "dream" and they're both real. Yes the dullness and the amnesia (Allan Wallace's terms, I really like the way he describes it) of the dream state is tricky to pierce through. That's why we must strive for focus and mindfulness in the waking state, to overcome the haze of the dream state and become lucid there.