Dreams

[Red_Wire]

I was trying to write a dream sequence in my short story (It's the last thing I have to write on it. Joy! I'll post it in prose when I'm done editing and such) but I realised that the entire thing is very dream like so I was trying to figure out the following...

- When one is inside a dream and falls asleep, does one then dream about reality or just another dream?
- Are we inside a dream right now?
- Is there a possibility the dreams are real?

- What would Zhuangzi (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhuangzi#The_butterfly_dream) think of all this?

...and feel free to talk about any other kind of dreams. What do they mean? Have you had any interesting dreams? etc.

[Mr. Blocks]

Interesting idea that I have visited myself right now. Each and everyone one of us has our own little reality, it's what we make and understand of the world.

Those questions we all answer in our own way, and perhaps never being able to really prove which is correct.

The most interesting idea I came across was the posibility that we are all in a computer simulated world, we were created by other advanced being and.. here we are. Who knows the origin of our being here, there is still no true answer.

Dreams I am sure are a way of figuring out/playing back things that have happened to you. It would be difficult for anyone (I'd imagine) to say they haven't had an interesting dream.

[pagan1]

- When one is inside a dream and falls asleep, does one then dream about reality or just another dream?
- Are we inside a dream right now?
- Is there a possibility the dreams are real?

I think that sleep is natures way of preparing us for death and that although dreams may serve some purpose in resolving issues,they can perhaps have a life of their own.
Reality is such a subjective experience,your perception of it will always be unique,and since reality is the totality of all that you experience,where does waking conciousness end,and the dream begin?At this moment how do you percieve yourself?A lot of what we take as being our identity,when analysed is only a dream like construct.Every thought arises only to disappear,even the cells of which we are made are constantly changing in an almost dreamlike way.Where is the magic line that seperates your conscious state from that of your dreams?The mind itself is a dream within a dream...

Once Zhuangzi dreamt he was a butterfly, a butterfly flitting and fluttering around, happy with himself and doing as he pleased. He didn't know he was Zhuangzi. Suddenly he woke up and there he was, solid and unmistakable Zhuangzi. But he didn't know if he was Zhuangzi who had dreamt he was a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming he was Zhuangzi. Between Zhuangzi and a butterfly there must be some distinction! This is called the Transformation of Things.

Who or what was Zhuangzi to begin with?Did he have any real substance or existence outside of his own dream?How do we seperate ourselves from what our mind percieves?
Everything is in a constant state of transformation,so in essence Zhuangzi and the butterfly do not exist,and perhaps never really existed...they are the dream of a dream...without in effect there having ever been a dreamer...

[fluffyspikebubbles]

i think what we call our dreams are actuelly the reality which would explain irony and such things, its a great fantasy if nothing else

[Yog]

Concerning sleep and dreams

In recent years scientists have started developing computer systems that are modeled on the human brain. These systems are called neural net systems. Possibly the first such system is called the internet. If you send a message across the internet—an e-mail is the best example—it is routed all kinds of places before it ends up where it's going. There used to be, and still are programs that follow an e-mail for the purpose of seeing where it goes. Sometimes it's fun to run one of these programs and see what happens. A message going from Washington DC to London will often bounce through Tokyo, Singapore, Cairo, and/or Moscow before ending up in London. The reason for this is simple. The system can loose up to half of the nodes in the network and still effectively transmit data to any surviving node. The human and other neural net brains function the same way. We can loose up to half our brain cells and still function mostly normal. I know, what does this have to do with dreams? I'm getting there, be patient.

In recent years the developments into neural net systems have created machines that can learn. They can't learn a great many different things but they can learn a select few things they are designed for. At MIT they are developing a computer system that teaches itself how to read. One of the mars landers carried a tiny six-legged robot that taught itself how to walk. One of the things they noted in all these learning neural net computers is that after they run for a while they start to make mistakes. Yep, if you keep them up too long they start to screw up. The solution? They have to shut down for a little while. They go to sleep. When they wake up they are good as new and function properly for a while. A group of scientists got curious and started running tests while the machines were asleep. You probably guessed this next part but it looks like they dream. They go through bouts of brief and intense bouts of activity that mimic REM sleep for humans.

The result of all this is that it looks like all neural net systems including humans dream to purge errors from their brains. Dreaming is the human reboot button. Take from this what you will.

[Red_Wire]

Morph Phoenix - That sounds very Matrix-ish, and how I adore the Matrix for that reason. I'm not sure if dreams help me to understand things as much as they just help me cope. I sleep, I wake up dazed but less concerned. No more or less knowledgeable, just kind of less worried about figuring everything out.

pagan1 - did Zhuanghi and the butterfly never exist or have they both always existed is the question you've got to ask yourself. You can almost always boil it down to everything being one or an opposing extreme, and in contrast to the sentence it could most likely pretty much always be somewhere in between. An assorted box of chocolates.

Yog - The robot story kind of scares me, though I'm not sure if it's because it makes humans seem robotic or robots seem... humanic? :P
Our way of functioning is both unromantic and romantic, I think. So it's always a possibility. But why dreams? Is that some kind of side effect of sleep that images start flashing in front of us or is there a purpose behind that?

[Yog]

There is a variant of this is known as Solipsism. It doesn't involve dreams but the logic is very similar. Solipsism starts with Descarte. "Cogito ergo sum" or "I think, therefore I am." Descarte used this as an apriori principle. (Apriori is essentially knowledge before experience or knowledge without experience.) Solip took this statement of apriori knowledge and made it into a circular argument. It goes something like this:

I think, therefore I am. I am sure that I exist because I think. What else exists? Whatever thinks must therefore exist. I cannot prove that anything else thinks, therefore I cannot prove that anything else exists. What is left? The rest of the world might be an illusion.

How are these concepts similar you ask? Zhaungzi is what he can prove himself to be. If he can prove he's a butterfly then he's a butterfly. If he can prove he's a man then he's a man. How about this, can you prove that Zhaungzi is? What if you just imagined that you read about him. What if you imagined the whole philosophy. What if you created this entire thread out of your imagination.

Back at the dawn of western philosophy there was a philosopher named Parmenides. Parmenides was the first to conceptualize the atom. His thought experiment went as follows:

Take a sheet of paper. Tear it in two. Now take one half of the sheet and tear that in two. Keep tearing the paper in two until you can't physically tear it any more. Continue the experiment in your mind. Eventually he reasoned that you must come to a point where the paper can no longer be torn any longer. At this point you have one thing. This thing is indivisible. It is. Whatever is is, and whatever is not clearly must not be. There can be no in between.

Now take the sheet of paper. It's been torn into all manner of tiny things until you have one indivisible thing. Take another thing with your indivisible thing and pose a question. Is there something between them or nothing? If there is nothing between them then they are one thing. If there is something between them then what is it? If it's indivisible then it must be the same thing. Either way there is only one thing. That one thing is indivisible.

Now take movement. To go from point A to point B means travelling from one thing to another thing. If all things are one thing then there can be no travel. There can be no moving from one thing to another thing if all things are one thing. So now you can't move and you are composed of only one thing. If all things are only one thing and there is no such thing as movement then what else is there besides the self? Again we are back at Solip.

But I also ask you this, if life is an illusion then what are dreams?

[Red_Wire]

According to Solipsism, I'd say illusion also :P

I've read up on it before. Did you know it's considered a sin in LeVeyan Satanism? Random fact for you. From wiki.
Projecting your reactions, responses, and sensibilities onto someone who is probably far less attuned than you are can be very dangerous for Satanists. It is the mistake of expecting people to give you the same consideration, courtesy and respect that you naturally give them. They won’t. Instead, Satanists must strive to apply the dictum of “Do unto others as they do unto you.” It’s work for most of us, and requires constant vigilance, lest you slip into a comfortable illusion of everyone being like you. As it has been said, certain utopias would be ideal in a nation of philosophers, but unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately, from a Machiavellian standpoint) we are far from that point.
Perhaps they think Solipsism evokes some kind of horrendous Nihilism. I'm not sure yet. and I'm quite fond of Nihilism anyway (I think. haha, Wiki is wayy too important to my sense of philosophy)

Parmenides conceptualised the atom... but what about Sub-atomic particles? I think everything can always be divided into more, just sometimes we don't have small enough fingers, or perhaps the strength. Perhaps putting the pieces back together into a nice A4 sheet is more difficult. Paper big enough to draw (or write, which is probably more appropriate for this forum) your personality onto.

If life is an illusion than what are dreams...
They're dreams, as life is still life. Illusion or not it's interesting to watch.

It's like the whole... If you pick up an object, you can sense it. Your nerves tell your brain that its smooth/rough/hard/cold/warm. Your eyes tell your brain that its colourful/blank/big/small. etc... and then your brain figures it all out. But is the object the signals? the messages in your brain? If the only way we perceive the object is in our brain, then where is the object? In our hands or not at all?

[Yog]

Actually to be fair to Parmenides it could be said that his thought experiment is the foundation for the concept of an elementary particle. The elementary particle was first expressed in Greek as atom. Today super-strings are at the forefront of elementary particles. These little guys are plank-length (10^-30 cm) and only have mass because they are in motion. Light, gravitons, electrons are all believed to be elementary super-strings. The concept of something having no resting mass but still having mass because of motion is a very strange concept. I suppose you could say that since everything with mass has infinite mas at the speed of light then light having no mass at rest has calculatable mass at light speed. I don't know about you, but from what I learned of math 0*infinity is still 0 and not something. So how you can get something, I don't know but from what I understand is if the contradictory case isn't true then what we know about the universe ceases to be. :D

[Wizardwind]

We can wander aimlessly in a dream or take it by the scruff and guide it where we will.
Complex ideas have always been put forward to try an quantify the use of dreaming.Its an unknown quantity,guided by individuals for there own use.I say guided,simply to reassure those out there who feel dreams just happen.They don't...
There are the play out dreams ,where day to day annoyances crop up as dreams,but in fact are still being analysed by the brain on a lower voltage and perceived by the individual as a dream.Real dreams are taste,touch, real awareness of surroundings,wind in hair,temperature etc,and being able to sit back and see everything around you.Not sure i've hit the hammer on the head in my description,but i can tell the difference.It is a broad subject and takes in all religious and faith beliefs as well,spirit guides etc...
If i die and can still dream,i'll be one happy bunny..

[Musical-Mind]

hmm. since i'm new to this thread i'll just say what i believe and think. i personally think that what ever emotions you have when you are about to sleep affect you dreams. if you're angry or aggiated you'll might have a dream that's fast pace and confusing to you while you may feel the same way if you go to be with out any real emotion at all. plus things that may have happened through the day may affect you in your dreams which is your subconscience. and i do believe that the way your subconsciece works in dreams is a way of trying to figure out what went on through the day and sometimes may even be things that we don't remember. kind of like in the movie called 'The Island' where one of the clones was having original memories of the cloned person. so dreams are just a way of sifting through the things we feel and can be full by them. so dreams can work either way.

[Wizardwind]

'Believe and think'.
Both words,as simple as they are, carry fundamental human characteristics that guide us through life......:)

[Red_Wire]

I've thought a lot about the theory that it's your mind sorting out data from the day... I've actually come to a phase where I think it's more... the subconscious overlaying familiar images and people and sounds to help you cope with that switch between reality and dreams.

Maybe.

[Musical-Mind]

i kind of agree with that since alot of scientist say similar things to that. but dreams are what they are...a mystery.