If I'm jealous of Sash, it's that she can remember her dreams so vividly. She tells me about them in such great detail, that I'm left dumbfounded how I'm unable to recall anything. I know I dream, because I see very vague hints of what I dreamed, but still not clear enough to associate a few descriptive phrases.
"It's OK, you just had a bad dream", people will often say to each other when one wakes up in the middle of night yelling. It's way to calm someone down from thinking they are about to be physically harmed.
Certainly dreams are real. But are they reality?
To answer that question, one must define what reality is.
But reality is difficult to define because each person has their own belief of what is real. One man believes that God is real, simply because he believes it to be true. Another man may contend that physical evidence must be gathered before one can declare something to be real.
But "physical" is a conditional term. It's limited to what our five senses can detect. Are there other forms of information out there that we cannot detect?
We know sharks can detect the presence of other beings via electricity. Birds can navigate by magnetism. Bees can see objects via ultraviolet light. Mosquitoes can detect the presence of carbon dioxide. Certainly there is lot of information out there that humans are blinded to.
God and Heaven could be right there in front of us, but we don't believe them to exist because our five senses can't detect their presence. But what if our bodies possessed the mechanism to detect their existence? Wouldn't we then consider God and Heaven to be within the realm of science?
So are dreams just as much a part of the physical world? Do dreams not affect the physical body (stress, movement, vocal, sexual,)? Do we not learn and grow from our dreams just as much with everything else in our lives?
It makes we wonder if there are people who spend most of their existence within their dreams.
A vagabond who hauls a motorcycle around the country in a toy hauler, earning a living as a website developer. Can often be found where there's free Wi-Fi, craft beer, and/or public nudity. 
Steve, great post.
ReplyDeleteMy take on dreams:
Dreams are actual existing visual experiences in one's mind during sleep.
I've heard people talk about how God gave them a vision for a calling of ministry.
Dreams are real in that they are visions coming to us in our sleep, like receiving messages.
I've had some very disturbing nightmares that, to me, were an attack on my spiritual being.
There's dimensions that exist that are not visible to the naked eye. They interact with the world around us. Even though we're not able to visibly see them, they do exist.
That's my 2cents worth.
"Dreams are real in that they are visions coming to us in our sleep, like receiving messages."
DeleteBut maybe dreams are more than just visions, maybe they are reality. Maybe it really is PHYSICAL. We don't think of dreams as physical because they don't touch us through our five senses. However, we know that there is a lot more to Earth and the Universe than what our five senses can pick up. Perhaps, dreaming is a way for us live in another PHYSICAL state, perhaps a sixth sense.
We can't really say that dreams are not physical, because they do in fact affect our physical body.
That is was too deep for me to comprehend on a Friday morning without more coffee.
ReplyDeleteMust injest caffeine then contemplate...........
Great post Steve.. Definitely makes you THINK about it...
ReplyDeleteSteve, I'm with you. I get frustrated because my dreams are unclear and I don't generally remember them. Although at times I encounter something when I'm awake that seems so familiar, like it's happened before. Who knows maybe I had experienced it in a dream and was relivng it. Maybe dreams are an alternate or parallel reality.
ReplyDeleteAnother interesting thought piece. Thanks for sharing. ~Curt
Many years ago I read a book about an American Indian tribe that believed our dreams are another life just the same as our so-called reality. Because of that book and more research on dreams I've been able to teach myself to alter, start or stop and restart my dreams (especially when I have to get up in the middle of the night and pee).. It's a great deal of fun because I can live any life I chose anywhere I choose in 'dream world'. My dreams are in color and quite vivid. Sometimes I can even smell. I usually go to bed with ideas in my head from which to work . About a month ago I was talking with my 15 year old daughter and found she experiences the same abilites with her dreams. Now we compare dreams and what we did in them regularly. We're also trying to figure out a way to connect in our dreams so we can share the same dreams. So far we've been unsuccessful but we're still working on it. Thanks for bringing up the subject of dreams. Nice stuff. Remember Einstien once said what good is knowledge without imagination.
DeleteGlassman
Do dreams exist? What is reality? God?
ReplyDeleteWhat is the "physical world"? That which you can touch and feel? Your senses? But you've just tip toed into the idea that reality might be an illusion. Is it? How can you know?
Do your senses deceive you? Is there a veil over your eyes?
Is there any way to know what is true?
This may help.
There is not an internal world and an external world. This is a way in which many people divide up and think about the world. Their mental internal world, and the external physical world.
The more accurate way to define it is that there is what you are conscious of right now. Then there is everything else. Other things, such as an idea stored in your brain which you are not currently aware of.
And is a dream reality? It may be better to first ask if it is true that there are dreams. After all, dreams may represent a very vague idea for some people.
The existence of dreams is experienced with consciousness. You and I are conscious of dreams. We experience dreams.
Keep in mind that just because there is not yet a way to quantify or measure something, does not prove that it does not exist. In fact, it's the opposite. With a "scientific" way of thinking, you are only able to prove and work with that which you can measure.
I know that a dream is something I am conscious of while sleeping. It seems to be similar to reality, but somehow I know that it is not the same. I awake from my dreams each morning and sometimes I do not dream or remember having dreamed.
Is this right now a dream? Perhaps. Yet I know that I have awoke from all of my dreams so far into this - what I call reality.
Reality seems different from a dream though, in that I do not wake from reality into what seems to be a higher state of being beyond reality.
I also know that I and other conscious beings, such as yourself, experience a shared reality.
But when I am sleeping, I seem to be experiencing something else.
And as far as I know, dreams are stored in the brain.
Where do dreams come from though? Where are they generated or created? Or what is the source of the dream? Is it created within the brain? Or does the information come from somewhere else?
“You have to help another person. But it's not right to play God with masses of people. To be God you have to know what you're doing. And to do any good at all, just believing you're right and your motives are good isn't enough.”
ReplyDelete― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Lathe of Heaven
God is all knowing, among other things. And to know what is Good does not imply that one is God.
DeleteThe quote you posted gets it right about a belief not being enough to know what is true.