reality is like a dream

[Wells]

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Edited May 10, 2016 by Wells

[Karl]

A dream is a dream, reality is reality. The implications are that those who think reality is a dream are confused. Go to sleep, have a dream, you know it's a dream because you wake up and say 'I just had a dream'. If you wake up and think your dream was reality and reality is a dream you can test it. The things you do in a dream-flying, falling etc- try doing this when you are awake. Try leaping into the air and see how far you get :-)

[Wells]

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Edited May 10, 2016 by Wells

[Wells]

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Edited May 10, 2016 by Wells

[Karl]

http://deoxy.org/wiki/Great_Perfection

 

 

So you understand the nature of reality better than the Dzogchen teachers? Lol!

FYI, Dzogchen master practitioners liberate their personal reality into the body of light when they fully realize the truth in the statement this thread is about. Then flying is not exactly a big deal.

 

Btw, the question was which implications follow from the statement that reality is like a dream,

not if your insight into reality is deep enough to agree with it.

 

No implications follow because reality and dream are oxymorons. I know reality directly, I cannot say how it is possible to know it less or more. A table is a table, I cannot know better or less well that it is what it is. So, to say reality is like a dream is like saying a table is not a table. Same old subjectivism, different kind of example.

[Wells]

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Edited May 10, 2016 by Wells

[Orion]

I don't find it useful to classify things as real vs. unreal. It's all just what's happening, in any given moment. A dream is a part of reality that perhaps has a different texture, different sensation. But it's still happening. It's input that you react, learn and grow from, albeit in a different context.

 

The dream world and the waking world are one continuous reality, just different states.

 

And all of reality is empty regardless of what's going on.

[Wells]

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Edited May 10, 2016 by Wells

[Karl]

All right, as usual you proved that you are deeply asleep (to say it with fitting words to stay on-topic).

No further disruptions / leading astray of this thread (trolling) please.

 

You asked the question and I answered. It isn't trolling just because I disagree with you. I have stayed completely on topic. Your answer is that 'I'm deeply asleep'. What the heck sort of discussion is this ? It's in general, so I assume you expect a wider variation of view, not just those that confirm your bias.

 

[doc benway]

If reality is like a dream,

which implications does this have?

When we see reality as (or like) a dream at a deep level, we lessen our attachment to it.

We no longer are as easily buffeted by the highs and lows. 

There is somewhat of a detached acceptance, not in a cold and negative way but more in the sense that we are OK with circumstances as they are and they have less power over us.

 

Another consequence is that we feel more free, more able to change things in our lives we want to change.

In dream, we can do anything - fly, change our size, duplicate ourselves, change into another animate creature or inanimate substance. When we see reality as a dream, we feel less restricted by our self-imposed restrictions and are able to make changes in our habitual patterns we would not have thought possible. 

 

This idea is at the heart of dream yoga practices. Once we develop the ability to dream lucidly, the truth behind the OP's statement becomes more clear and the nature of awareness-dream-reality takes on a different feel. 

[Wells]

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Edited May 10, 2016 by Wells

[Wells]

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Edited May 10, 2016 by Wells

[ralis]

If I remember correctly, the 'Tibetan Book of The Dead' describes all 6 bardo states as dream like. I can't argue with that given my experience.

[Karl]

Not necessarily.

But if we realize during the dream that we are dreaming, it becomes likely possible then to do such things. 

It can become even possible to change the whole dreamscape into another location.

 

Very easy. It's lucid dreaming I've done that from childhood. This doesn't translate to reality. It is conceptual only.

[Marblehead]

A dream is real for only the dreamer.  Reality is real for everyone.

[Wells]

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Edited May 10, 2016 by Wells

[ralis]

http://deoxy.org/wiki/Great_Perfection

 

So you understand the nature of reality better than the Dzogchen teachers? Lol!

FYI, Dzogchen master practitioners liberate their personal reality into the body of light when they fully realize the truth in the statement this thread is about. Then flying is not exactly a big deal.

 

Btw, the question and topic of this thread is which implications follow from the statement that reality is like a dream,

not if your insight into reality is deep enough to agree with it.

 

As you are pointing out, some here get stuck on the absolute 'isness' of the phenomenal world which language can never absolutely define. Or, so called reality is a process/dream as opposed to a static black/white existence.

[ralis]

@Karl,

 

I challenge you to define exactly what phenomena are. There is no way you can given the limitations of Aristotelian logic which defines the phenomenal world as a static existence as opposed to a process/dream world.

[Wells]

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Edited May 10, 2016 by Wells

[ralis]

Can you be 100% sure that you didn't just dream me up as part of your dreamscape?

In Dzogchen, we are taught to see others as self-vision.

If we help them, then we in fact help ourselves.

 

Also, we (you and me) just live in the same reality because we share common karma with all our fellow human beings.

Beings with another common karma live together in other realities.

 

Very well stated!

[Old River]

We can't really know for sure-- in order to know we would have to be "outside" of the dream. Perhaps we are all like Zhuangzi's butterfly. However, if we imagined what it would really be like if our experience as if it WERE a dream, there are some interesting implications which serves as an excellent metaphor for nonduality, rather than as myriad reified objects that arise out of an essentialist metaphysics.

 

(Essentialism only "works" in a certain limited context-- the problem with essentialism is the conviction that such a view is the end-all and be-all of reality. It is the error of transposing empiricism (which works great in science) into the metaphysical. This generate a myriad number of problems which I can't even get into here.)

 

But consider this: I think most people have dreamed of family, friends, co-workers, people in the past or even those basic "stock characters" -- and no matter what our interactions are with them in these dreams, none of these "other persons" within the dream are actually "other persons" at all. If your father is, for example, angry with you in a dream, that isn't really your father expressing anger -- it is yourself, the dreamer, who is angry.

 

As a metaphor, this suggests to me that the "self" we believe exists (as an essential, reified, independent object) is actually a distortion of the unified whole-- and only through such a distortion do we make the error of thinking we can have good without bad, or beautiful without ugly, or pleasure without suffering, etc. These distortions then lead us to actions which do inevitably rebound upon us because we AREN'T separate from the whole. Ralph Waldo Emerson's essay "Compensation" serves as the perfect commentary for the second chapter of the Daodejing in this respect.

 

I think this is why stillness of the mind/body (via certain forms of meditation) is vital to "smoothing out" those distortions, so to speak. The less stillness, the more distortion, and the more distortion, the less clarity. Many of our struggles in life are really just struggles with this "self" which believes itself to be "real" -- as a reified, seperate independent being -- which is very similar to how we experience the "self" in dreams.

 

Such meditative practices don't get one out of the unreal and into the real because there is no "outside" at all. There is only experience. Maybe Zhuangzi's point is that it doesn't really matter if reality is "real" or "just a dream" -- in the end, there is only this one experience, the one life we are now living.

[Karl]

@Karl,

 

I challenge you to define exactly what phenomena are. There is no way you can given the limitations of Aristotelian logic which defines the phenomenal world as a static existence as opposed to a process/dream world.

 

Let's not get hung up on Aristotlian logic which has become some kind of bette noir for you.

 

I cannot define that which has no existence. It's pointless to begin to try. I can define only concepts in relation to existent reality. If I'm unable to define the concept I hold, then something is wrong. It's often the case that I believe I have defined a concept only to discover at a later stage that it is entirely foggy. That's one of the things I enjoy doing-discovering what I thought I had correctly integrated and then tearing it apart like a doughnut and putting it right.

 

I can define a dream as an altered state of consciousness. There are many. We have a plethora of alternate states of consciousness, but we should know when we are actively conscious and directly perceiving reality. If we are not, then we can't be sure of anything. Whilst this is a good defence against bad situations, it isn't permanent. We still have to get up, eat, go to the toilet, find food, mend the leaking roof, build the fire. We can avoid and evade, but we cannot put off the inevitable. It will come to you no matter how deeply you hug your pillow, squeeze shut your eyes on pull that blanket over your head. Learn to love it.

[Wells]

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Edited May 10, 2016 by Wells

[Wells]

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Edited May 10, 2016 by Wells

[Karl]

Following the initial hypothesis that reality is like a dream: The dream experience of life ends with death.

After that there are the possibilities of "waking up" (for example through rainbow body achievement in / after death)

or entering another dream experience (reincarnation) with another dreamt up protagonist and another dreamscape (possibly the same common dreamscape as before).

 

Nope, I know you wish to believe this, but life is life and death is death. There is no waking up. Once we are gone we cease to exist in every way except the lifeless corpse that remains. That's not to say I like the idea of death, most certainly I don't and won't come to terms with it until life itself has become a painful burden, or I wink out without any awareness.

 

It's difficult to come to terms with death because we choose life, we aren't animals and so we must gain knowledge to survive and do so volitionally. To contemplate the end of all that work, effort and values which is no longer volitional is hard/next to impossible to accept. However, it is that fear of extinction that drives us to do all we do. If we were ever lasting robots without need of food, water, love or shelter, then we would not do anything. There would be no requirement to try and survive, it would be a given, so no need to accumulate any knowledge or perform any action. Life would be a featureless plane of existence without soul. So, we must accept the end for the joy we can grab out of life. Live it now and to the full.