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- Seen May 19, 2023
Dreaming fascinates me. I have often wondered whether I was dreaming, joked that I might be dreaming, or concluded without a doubt that I was *not* dreaming, only to wake up. Being truly scientific and open-minded, it is impossible to know if I might some day wake up from what is considered "real life". Or, as I call it, "waking reality".
In addition, I have had one dream experience that leads me to question the nature of reality to this day. Several years ago, I dreamt of being in aluminum shanty houses with a dream family. Later that dream (or perhaps in a following dream), I was in a motorcycle chase in which I found "the place where the highway ends", a quote from my dream log that night. In the final dream I remembered from that night, I was running from an unknown party. I ran down into a sort of open-top sewer, which led underneath a building. I climbed up into that building.
As I ascended, I saw many people sleeping on mats or in tents on the various floors of the building. After I had climbed several floors, I went out onto a balcony. A helicopter was right above me, and I simultaneously realized that it was the cops I was running from, and that I had been caught. At this, I awoke.
I remember many of my dreams, and often write them down. I didn't think this one was particularly notable until a year and a half after it occurred. I was driving home, listening to NPR, much like any other day. The news story that played that afternoon described the capture of the Mexican drug lord 'El Chapo'. Apparently there are large drainage ditches in Mexico, taller than a man, which run underneath buildings. Criminals often evade cops by running into these sewers. According to the report, El Chapo ran into one of these, and entered a resort hotel thereby. He climbed up several floors before being cornered by US authorities.
Now, not only did my dream match up with this account, and not only did I see drainage ditches in my dream which I had never heard of in waking life, but the dream occurred 18 months before the actual events.
Clearly, this does not irrefutably prove anything. It's an anecdote - a firsthand account of my own personal experience. But can such phenomena simply be written off as categorically wishful, delusional, or worse, irrelevant?
No, in the name of honest and accurate science, they cannot. Furthermore, as researchers such as Stephen la Berge and Tibetan yogis have demonstrated, rigorous scientific methodology can be applied to interior experiences just they same as they are applied to exterior, physical phenomena. The process is simply Injunction -> Experience -> Evaluation by Peers (peers are others who've also taken the injunction).
In the same way that you must physically look into a microscope that is set up properly in order to see the components of cells, you must follow certain procedures to have various inner experiences. And I feel that it is no more than a fashion or a lack of understanding to say that such information cannot be verified, or is somehow derivative of and less significant than purely physical phenomena. I'm venturing from the original topic, I know, but this is a bit of a sore spot for me.
My point is this: the more we discover, the more we realize how little we know. It is important to me to pursue that which fascinates the mind, and become comfortable with the unknown before deciding what is untrue.
In addition, I have had one dream experience that leads me to question the nature of reality to this day. Several years ago, I dreamt of being in aluminum shanty houses with a dream family. Later that dream (or perhaps in a following dream), I was in a motorcycle chase in which I found "the place where the highway ends", a quote from my dream log that night. In the final dream I remembered from that night, I was running from an unknown party. I ran down into a sort of open-top sewer, which led underneath a building. I climbed up into that building.
As I ascended, I saw many people sleeping on mats or in tents on the various floors of the building. After I had climbed several floors, I went out onto a balcony. A helicopter was right above me, and I simultaneously realized that it was the cops I was running from, and that I had been caught. At this, I awoke.
I remember many of my dreams, and often write them down. I didn't think this one was particularly notable until a year and a half after it occurred. I was driving home, listening to NPR, much like any other day. The news story that played that afternoon described the capture of the Mexican drug lord 'El Chapo'. Apparently there are large drainage ditches in Mexico, taller than a man, which run underneath buildings. Criminals often evade cops by running into these sewers. According to the report, El Chapo ran into one of these, and entered a resort hotel thereby. He climbed up several floors before being cornered by US authorities.
Now, not only did my dream match up with this account, and not only did I see drainage ditches in my dream which I had never heard of in waking life, but the dream occurred 18 months before the actual events.
Clearly, this does not irrefutably prove anything. It's an anecdote - a firsthand account of my own personal experience. But can such phenomena simply be written off as categorically wishful, delusional, or worse, irrelevant?
No, in the name of honest and accurate science, they cannot. Furthermore, as researchers such as Stephen la Berge and Tibetan yogis have demonstrated, rigorous scientific methodology can be applied to interior experiences just they same as they are applied to exterior, physical phenomena. The process is simply Injunction -> Experience -> Evaluation by Peers (peers are others who've also taken the injunction).
In the same way that you must physically look into a microscope that is set up properly in order to see the components of cells, you must follow certain procedures to have various inner experiences. And I feel that it is no more than a fashion or a lack of understanding to say that such information cannot be verified, or is somehow derivative of and less significant than purely physical phenomena. I'm venturing from the original topic, I know, but this is a bit of a sore spot for me.
My point is this: the more we discover, the more we realize how little we know. It is important to me to pursue that which fascinates the mind, and become comfortable with the unknown before deciding what is untrue.