Are We a Constant Dream
I posted this a while ago on another forum, when I originally wrote it it was 2am so just keep it in mind when you come across it.
Note: This thread is really only for people who are into philosophy and or dreaming.
Is life all a dream? Is there any difference between what we call waking life and sleep?
If you've seen the movie waking life, you'll probably understand where I got this 'idea'. Is life a dream? Are we living or are we dead? If you're into lucid dreaming you'll understand this better, but if you're not or have no clue what it is, I'll summarize it; Lucid dreaming is concious dreaming. You're sleeping but conciously aware that you're dreaming. What does that mean? You get to play god, in a way. You can do whatever you want in your dream because you know you are dreaming. So, how can we tell the difference between real waking life and our dreams? Can we or can't we.
When you're awake, you believe you're in real life surrounded by real people. You have choice and free will. But that also exists in dreams. While dreaming (I'm not talking lucid here) what you see, hear, feel, touch, everything you can process you believe is real. You can walk down the road and see a giant man throwing donuts at people, and you'd believe its real, that is untill you wake up. But do you really wake up? There are such things called false awakenings, which is when you're dreaming you 'wake up'. You may go pour some cereal and orange juice and begin to eat, only to realize you're still dreaming. Usually the dreamer realizes he/she is dreaming and becomes lucid. If there is not to mcuh excitement and you stay asleep, you'll say, begin to fly and have sex with whomever you want. Or you can simply wake up for real. But how do we know any of it is real?
To get to the main point, they say (I'm not sure if it's been 'tested') or not, that when you die there is 6-12 mins of brain activity even after everything shuts down. To steal directly from the movie Waking Life, that's alot of time. Think about this though. You can wake up in the morning and go check the mail. You bring it in and throw it on the table. You lay down in your bed and fall back asleep and it's 9:06am. You enter back into a dream (if you understand how REM works you'll know how it's possible), then you wake up. You check the clock and it's only 9:10am. Within those 4 mins you've had a dream which seems to have been hours. Now, considering you do believe that we enter an endless dream when we die, or at least untill our brain dies out, you're in a dream forever. Maybe we're all dead already? Maybe I'm dead and this whole site is nothing more then a dream. Maybe none of it exists. Maybe I did die as a kid when I got hit by a car, and this is nothing but a dream. Is there any true way to find out? Since dreams are so realistic, lucid or not, how can we know for sure? Simple things like attempting to fly may help (you can fly in lucid dreams no problem), but are we awake or not? Who knows, really.
To sum things up, I highly reccommend you rent the movie 'Waking Life' from where ever if you're into philosophy, you'd love it and wouldn't regret watching it, guaranteed.
It's 2am, and I've really poorly written this up, so it may seem like gibberish to you, or you may simply think it's a stupid concept, but ask yourself this - Am I dreaming?
I have also heard this philosophy, Life is a DREAM and you really WAKEUP when you DIE!!!!
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DREAM, don't SLEEP!!!
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