Thread: The mystics on dream like reality

This post is like one big Deepak Chopra sneeze.

I am scientific and skeptic kind of person, but as you can verify from top notched science evidence, the ego is an illusion. I am not claiming anymore than that. We suffer this illusion wether awake or dreaming.

From what little I read, it sounds like someone took the Hermetic teachings of the Kybalion and used them in conjunction with some other stuff to come up with this. Most of what they wound up writing seems to be entirely irrelevant to their point and makes what they are trying to say more confusing. If they are trying to say that we are essentially dreaming during our daily lives, they are not necessarily incorrect. If they are trying to say that reality itself, and not our experience of it, is a dream, they are making a grave error in interpreting the implications of what we know about dreams, dreaming, and how the brain functions.

Technically a dream is a faulty perception of reality. The mechanism behind what allows us to experience dreams is what allows us to construct and experience reality. The difference between being awake and sleep, and what that means in regards to brain activity, are the main difference between these states and what this mechanism results in. You could say we are "dreaming" reality, but that's misleading and and considering what we call a dream, not quite accurate in describing what is happening. Typically saying things like this lead people to think we are still sleeping and that waking reality has no objective reality that it is based on. It simply doesn't make sense to describe it this way. We are not "dreaming" our reality up as we are awake right now, but we are most definitely constructing it. To dream means to be in that specific state, where parts of the brain that normally have activity while awake, are off. It names a specific phenomenon. The only thing there really is left to discuss is why the author would so willingly use such a confusing way to describe what he's saying.

You said it yourself parts of our brain is off, so this is why it's very hard to remember our dreams and try to describe it coherently but when it's a vision you have thousands of words and you go on and on intill you bore your audience
And for myself dreaming is one thing and reality is another, I like better your analysis,a dream is a faulty perception of reality,I think most people in their dreams satisfy their egos,they are heroes,rich,beautiful,evil if they are weak
You name it its for all tastes exept as I said for vision or precognitive dreams this is a sophisticated brain at work .
Dreaming our daily lives means we do not exist we live in another planet another universe we vegetate we are not conscious but we are real we are not dreaming our lives we smile we cry we love each other we hate we hurt WE FEEl
But I hope I will keep dreaming as long as I live

Originally Posted by Amedee

You said it yourself parts of our brain is off, so this is why it's very hard to remember our dreams and try to describe it coherently but when it's a vision you have thousands of words and you go on and on intill you bore your audience

We fail to remember our dreams simply because we are not placing value or attention there. With the right techniques, a person can remember most of their dreams.

Originally Posted by hermine_hesse

We fail to remember our dreams simply because we are not placing value or attention there. With the right techniques, a person can remember most of their dreams.

What you say here is true, but it's incomplete. I never saw Amedee's post or I would have responded to it, but selectively placing our attention on our dreams and training ourselves to remember them has to work by some mechanism, as does forgetting the dreams in the absence of this selective attention and training (except in the occasional exemption, in which something else is going on brain-activity wise). I'll get back to the brain activity with some links and hopefully a synopsis of what they say and not an equally long explanation. I need to look them up first (as I'm writing this I mean). So, first, just to get it off my mind, I'm going to respond to Amedee.

I feel like some of what you are saying is difficult for me to understand due to language barriers. More precisely, English isn't your first language (I don't mean to assume but given all the corroborating evidence it's, well, evident, lol), and some of what you are saying is contradictory... or, at the very least, is very confusing to logically say in combination with other things you say right after. Here's what I mean, "Dreaming our daily lives means we do not exist we live in another planet another universe we vegetate we are not conscious but we are real we are not dreaming our lives we smile we cry we love each other we hate we hurt WE FEEl". I actually wrote a few sentences trying to figure out what you were saying and pointing out why it was confusing to me, but I think I understand now. What you've done is misunderstand (or at least, I feel you have--let me explain) what I meant about constructing a model of reality, and that this same process is more or less responsible for dreaming. From that statement, it appears as though I am saying that reality is just a dream, and that we aren't real. What you are saying with this statement is that this simply isn't true, that we don't just dream our daily lives, and that we really feel the range of emotions we do and experience some form of objective reality.

Let me just make two statements regarding that. It's important to realize that there is no way to know for certain that there is an objective reality and that what we experience is real, let alone what is really happening in the objective reality we inhabit (assuming we inhabit one). However, I definitely believe that there is an objective reality that we inhabit, and that we aren't simply "dreaming" reality. When I said that a model of reality is constructed in and by the brain, and that this process is related to dreaming, I am not trying to conflate our waking conscious experiences with dreaming experiences. There are enough marked differences in brain activity that the two are far from synonymous. What I am saying is that sensory information must be transmitted to the brain either via nerve endings connecting to the spinal cord and then to the brain, or directly to the brain (basically sensory input from your body vs. from things on your head, like your eyes/ears/nose). This information is sent at and received different rates due to the limitations imposed by physics (the speed of light, the conductivity of the materials we are composed of, neurotransmitters/hormones/second messenger systems, etc.), yet we experience things that happen "at the same time" simultaneously. This information is received in different parts of the brain before and after each other due to the placement of functional brain structures, and these structures react to this information at different times as a result of this placement... yet, we still apparently experience things simultaneously. Reactions in these earlier brain structures that are closer to the brain stem or to the optic and olfactory nerves all cause behavioral differences to stimuli before we have a chance to consciously acknowledge that we've even experienced something yet. Once all the sensory information is gathered, the brain pieces these together through circuits that eventually allow us to consciously experience the full conscious experience, and even analyze what we've just experienced and make decisions based off of it. As it's put, the phenomenon of piecing together the sensory input into an experience is known as bottom-up processing, because the information must be collected from sensory organs and transmitted to the brain. Once the experience becomes whole, we are able to understand, analyze, and make decisions off of this bottom-up processing using what we call top-down processing. In other words, the brain makes use of information it has already collected in a separate process. Without top-down processing, we would be automatons, or in other words, like a robot or a being or object that merely reacts to what is happening to it, without being consciously aware that it is experiencing or reacting to anything.

This entire process that the brain goes through requires that lots of information about the world around us is pruned or flat out lost in transmission. As a result, our perspectives are very incomplete pictures of what is happening. Therefore it must be recognized that what we experience as reality is really just an approximation... just the best guess that the brain can come up with for what is really happening. So, what is the difference between when you thought somebody did something wrong, and then later on found out that it was really somebody else that did it? Which reality is right? To you, at one point in time, both were. This isn't proof that there isn't an objective reality, just that we can never experience it objectively. Well, in this same way, when people hallucinate or have a dream, which reality is right? Hallucinations, dreams, and visions can be hyper-realistically vivid, and utterly convincing. Yet, they are not accurate representations of reality. We may not be able to represent reality completely accurately, but there are varying degrees of accuracy to what it is we experience to be sure. Given what we know about brain activity, dreams are a highly inaccurate representation of reality. A majority of sensory input is completely ignored or flat out isn't processed. The experience we have from dreams is still related to the same brain circuits that process reality, but since there is an absence of sensory input or sensory input processing, dreaming is much different than experiencing waking reality. I know at this point I am repeating myself a lot, but I'm trying to articulate different things at different times for different reasons, lol. To sum it up, don't mistake what I was saying Amedee. I wasn't saying we dream reality, but that the core processes involved in experiencing waking reality are also involved in dreaming.

God, on second thought, I'll go ahead and provide the links and explanations of the info on brain structures that are active during dreaming in another post. This one was so much longer than I wanted it to be.

Hi snoop like you said English isn't my first language,maybe you got lost in translation,but I try to express myself the best I could but my best wasn't good enough for you! Ok ok I'm joking!
I will tell you one thing and from a personal experience and due to extreme stress things got really bad for me that something strange happened to me when a difficult situation rises I just pass out its like paralysis but my hearing
Is so strong that if people in another room whispers I could hear every word and I try so hard to open my eyes but in vain and at the same time I feel like I'm in another dimension,like if my soul leaves my body and wonder away sometimes I stay like that for two hours sometimes more ,I will talk about it longer in another thread ,so there's tow realities one we choose to acknowledge and one we refuse to admit that it does exist for fear of going in to deep water . snoop it's a short answer I know it won't satisfy your curiosity but I will get back to you when you will ask questions without prejudice and come on stop being condescended.