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Dreams and phenomena
Jeffrey
Veteran
If we can dream of a phenomena what is the difference between that dream and something in the actual world?
For example I dream of the taste of a pizza and experience that in my dream just as it is. Can that happen?
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Comments
I think the only difference is that it's only in your head, whereas waking experiences are between you and everything external (that's sensed). The nature of your experiences can be pretty much the same, but a dream is still a dream. It's not tethered to the kind of causality that your waking actions are -- if you kill someone in your dream, no one has actually died. Of course if you're a solipsist you wouldn't think anyone died in either case... but most people aren't.
So it is different in how beings are connected with other beings and actual physical relationships. For example you could dream that Jupiter could be visible from earth as the moon. That shows that it is different from the interplay in our waking life. Or we could dream we were some starlets boy friend. The causality means different connections. But we could dream we had reality in our minds like the quote of Chuang Tzu who said he was not sure if he was a person who dreamed a butterfly or if he is a butterfly dreaming he is a person.
Or I could say that dreams are the combination of a subtle level of consciousness (that's not aware it's a dream), memories, imagination, desires and fears. These together weave a fictional sequence of events that may or may not have any relevance to your waking life. Things that have been on your mind may be represented; things you saw or heard but didn't really notice may be represented. I don't think there's any good science of dreams, like the stuff Freud was saying, but there can be some meaning there nonetheless.
And then there are lucid dreams, when the level of consciousness is one that recognizes it's a dream, allowing you to take control and effectively become the dream-weaver. Those are nice.
Sadly there are also phenomena like Sleep Paralysis, where you are caught in an in-between state where you think you're awake but are not. I've suffered from this myself, where I was screaming in my head because I couldn't move or get my vocal chords to activate, thinking I was dying... and then I actually woke up. I think the stories about vivid alien abductions/encounters are caused by such problems.
In my experience it is a great enough challenge to try and sort out what is reality from what are delusions when I am awake. I disregard attempting logical analysis of my sleeping dream experiences which I know outright are distant from sensory participation with reality.
I've had sleep paralysis too. I've also had lucid dreams. Sometimes with sleep paralysis I realize I am sleep and just stay still and stop struggling sort of like that tangle root in the Sorcerer's Harry Potter 1 movie.
@Jeffrey That's great advice. That is also what I did after I found out what it was (it's happened to me a handful of times, but you can bet I was on Google after the first time trying to figure out wth happened).
I guess they are similar in a lot of regards, the only real difference is when we are conscious, everything is having the same dream
At root there is an absence of an explanation of what consciousness / experience of reality is. Therefore, what is being compared across dream and awake?
There are differences and similarities between dream and awake and these seem to depend on the particular context / angle of enquiry / focus of attention. I suppose the conclusions sit in their own state.
Most unusual to have pizza taste experiences during a dream state. I figure it is mostly signals from the visual cortex bouncing back from the eyes and being interpreted as phenomena.
You should become accustomed to waking dreams and sleep paralysis. My last two were purring cats. We did have cats at one point so you can imagine the confusion as 'there is no cat'. The cat is trying to settle and I am powerless to stop it! It seemed as though it was merging with my conciousness. My mind was making it a separate object!
It was possible to accept this was just a memory of the time when family pets wanted to share a comfy spot.
ChNN says that there is no difference at all between waking states and dream states.
That in fact consensual reality is another dream state..
My sleep paralysis always involves some sort of horrible hallucination.
Usually an ominous voice saying they are going to do awful things to me. I usually interpret this as: someone just broke into my house and now I can't move! The last time this happened, I could see my cat and (don't ask me why) I started crying out to him. I think that although you are technically "paralyzed" you can still moan/move a small amount and so, my cat actually noticed and started crying at me. His shrill cries were enough to kick me out of the paralyzed state. So weird, but I gave him the biggest hug after that.
But about dreams in general, I think they're just the mind's playground. Many famous people have said that some of their greatest inventions came to them in dreams.
In a dream state, we know we were dreaming only when we wake up. In the "waking state" there is a general consensus with those who share our dreams eg. the nation states, islamic caliphates, birth and death, soul etc. We only know we were dreaming when we truly wake up.
ChNN says that when we Awaken with a capital A..we will realise that consensual reality is another dream state @pegambara. That is is a difference in quality, not in kind.