Giraffey
Your Orange Crush
- Mar 7, 2020
- 439
This will be long and rambling and probably make little sense. If you don't want to read - it's about lucid dreaming and my thoughts on how my dreams might actually be an alternative reality - as real as the world you and I are living in right now but contained entirely within my mind. We all have such an alternative reality. This line of thinking has left me with a painful question about CTB.
- Begin Rambling Pseudo-Scientific Philosophy -
I had a thought earlier, what if reality was relative? What if our experience of reality could be defined as simply as the input from our five senses, and the content of our brain - our past knowledge, memories, emotions etc.
I know that the world isn't quite that simple, I'm sure somebody will kick my quantum ass sooner or later... But for the time being, bear with me, I promise that there is a point.
Lucid dreams, for those that don't know, are when you fall asleep, experiencing a vivid, lifelike dream - only partway through you become aware that you're dreaming. You 'wake up' in the dream and can navigate the dream world, interact with the environment, objects and people almost exactly as you would in the real world (subject to some very bizarre restrictions, no turning lights on/off). The imagery of your dreams are composed entirely of the content of your mind, thoughts, feelings, memories, imagination etc. But for the duration of the dream, that world inside your mind is your reality.
So imagining that reality is composed of the input from our senses etc, memories become snapshots of reality (relative to us). So imagine if you could pick your happiest memory and relive it, or your worst memory and relive it - but this time, do something differently. Imagine if you could reunite with a lost loved one, hug them, feel the bristle of their favourite fluffy cardigan again, smell their perfume, hear them say "I miss you" and get to say "I love you" one more time - with practice, in lucid dreams you can do this.
Back to my concept of relative reality one last time, even if there is no such thing as an afterlife, our loved ones still live on in our minds. Every aspect of them captured in our memories, our subconscious, the most insignificant details and traits saved (although we often don't realise it) - a record of every sense, every component that makes up our personal reality recorded and captured in a memory.
If lucid dreaming is a way to access that, to revisit that saved copy of reality then it can surely act as our own personal time machine, albeit an imperfect one. We are simply visiting a point previously in time, a location that exists only in our own mind accessible only to us whereupon waking up the changes and consequences we make will have no effect in our waking world. When you begin to look at it in another way, it starts to sound a lot like the afterlife, except you don't get to live there, you can only visit.
- An Example -
The other night I dived into a lucid dream and visited my daughter (who passed away a while ago). She had grown up now and was talking, she was intelligent and vibrant. I held back tears, she saw my straining eyes and wiped her finger across my cheek and the tears fizzled away as if by an angel's touch. I told her how much I miss her and how proud I am of the young lady she is becoming, she laughed and told me I was silly - she reminded me that our loved ones never really go away. She is continuing to live and grow amongst my memories, nurtured by my emotions. She may not exist in the reality that we all share, but in my own personal, relative reality - she is alive and well and to see her again I just have to look inside.
- A Painful Question -
Quite honestly, this realisation has me torn about death. Do I stay alive and suffer the pain of wakefulness so I can use my dreams to enter the alternative timeline saved in my mind where those lost that I love and adore are alive and well, or do I take the chance that I'm wrong about the afterlife - perhaps it does exist and everybody is waiting for me to see them properly?
I've been practising this kind of 'time machine' dreaming for years and visited loved ones many times but this is the first time I've ever thought about these dreams as being real. Maybe I'm a philosopher or it's the onset of psychosis
- Begin Rambling Pseudo-Scientific Philosophy -
I had a thought earlier, what if reality was relative? What if our experience of reality could be defined as simply as the input from our five senses, and the content of our brain - our past knowledge, memories, emotions etc.
I know that the world isn't quite that simple, I'm sure somebody will kick my quantum ass sooner or later... But for the time being, bear with me, I promise that there is a point.
Lucid dreams, for those that don't know, are when you fall asleep, experiencing a vivid, lifelike dream - only partway through you become aware that you're dreaming. You 'wake up' in the dream and can navigate the dream world, interact with the environment, objects and people almost exactly as you would in the real world (subject to some very bizarre restrictions, no turning lights on/off). The imagery of your dreams are composed entirely of the content of your mind, thoughts, feelings, memories, imagination etc. But for the duration of the dream, that world inside your mind is your reality.
So imagining that reality is composed of the input from our senses etc, memories become snapshots of reality (relative to us). So imagine if you could pick your happiest memory and relive it, or your worst memory and relive it - but this time, do something differently. Imagine if you could reunite with a lost loved one, hug them, feel the bristle of their favourite fluffy cardigan again, smell their perfume, hear them say "I miss you" and get to say "I love you" one more time - with practice, in lucid dreams you can do this.
Back to my concept of relative reality one last time, even if there is no such thing as an afterlife, our loved ones still live on in our minds. Every aspect of them captured in our memories, our subconscious, the most insignificant details and traits saved (although we often don't realise it) - a record of every sense, every component that makes up our personal reality recorded and captured in a memory.
If lucid dreaming is a way to access that, to revisit that saved copy of reality then it can surely act as our own personal time machine, albeit an imperfect one. We are simply visiting a point previously in time, a location that exists only in our own mind accessible only to us whereupon waking up the changes and consequences we make will have no effect in our waking world. When you begin to look at it in another way, it starts to sound a lot like the afterlife, except you don't get to live there, you can only visit.
- An Example -
The other night I dived into a lucid dream and visited my daughter (who passed away a while ago). She had grown up now and was talking, she was intelligent and vibrant. I held back tears, she saw my straining eyes and wiped her finger across my cheek and the tears fizzled away as if by an angel's touch. I told her how much I miss her and how proud I am of the young lady she is becoming, she laughed and told me I was silly - she reminded me that our loved ones never really go away. She is continuing to live and grow amongst my memories, nurtured by my emotions. She may not exist in the reality that we all share, but in my own personal, relative reality - she is alive and well and to see her again I just have to look inside.
- A Painful Question -
Quite honestly, this realisation has me torn about death. Do I stay alive and suffer the pain of wakefulness so I can use my dreams to enter the alternative timeline saved in my mind where those lost that I love and adore are alive and well, or do I take the chance that I'm wrong about the afterlife - perhaps it does exist and everybody is waiting for me to see them properly?
I've been practising this kind of 'time machine' dreaming for years and visited loved ones many times but this is the first time I've ever thought about these dreams as being real. Maybe I'm a philosopher or it's the onset of psychosis
