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Are You Responsible For Your Dreams?
Over the course of the past year or so, my conception of what dreams are has really changed a lot. I used to see them as simply symbolic reflections of different drives within my own mind. As such, they were interesting and often worthy of exploration, but I never quite considered them “real.”
Somehow, something changed though. Somewhere along the way my perspective shifted and I became aware of things which I’d never been aware of before. Namely, the spiritual reality of things. I am still sorting out how to communicate what I mean by that exactly, which is why I’d like to put the following question to a larger audience than just my own internal machinations:
If you accept that what happens in the dream world is “real” (and I know that’s a big ‘if’ for most people), then doesn’t that make you equally responsible for how you behave in your dreams as for how you behave in real/ordinary life?
I’m not saying you can always control the setting or circumstances of your dreams. Outside of lucid dreaming, most people simply cannot. Further, the actions that we seem to perform in our dreams often seem almost automatic. But what about when they are not? What about when we find ourselves in a dream confronted with a decision we have to act on? Are we held responsible for the choices we make in that other world? If not by God or by some higher force, then should we hold ourselves responsible? Do we need a separate moral code for dream worlds?
The question right now seems like idle speculation, at best. But what happens when we have access to fully immersive virtual reality environments? Will there be rules and restrictions and penalties against certain types of behavior or will it be anything goes? I started writing a sci-fi short story a while ago which kind of deals with this: a man both envies an fears his neighbor because when their families get together for VR simulations, the neighbor plays according to a set of rules neither man would ever live by in normal life. The man finds himself unable to go beyond the normal bounds of his everyday morality, even in the virtual worlds. So it’s a speculative line of questioning that I think may have a lot of real life repurcussions, especially as technology ramps up and threatens to make our dreams into concrete realities…
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August 18th, 2006 at 7:11 pm
Your story idea reminded me a little bit of David Cronenberg’s eXistenZ. It talks about similar themes and supports his thesis that all of reality is virtual.
Anything goes in dreams? I certainly hope not. Freudian sex with children or family members should deeply be forbidden. As well as random violence such as killing people for pleasure- although of course video games get people off.
I think virtual reality worlds pose a greater threat than any drugs and will need to be banned by governments. People are screwed up enough as they are, we don’t need more schizotypal personalities walking aimlessly around.
‘In The Shaman’s Doorway, Stephen Larsen quotes the French missionary Ragueneau’s Jesuit Relations’
http://www.webwinds.com/yupanqui/iroquoisdreams.htm
August 18th, 2006 at 7:17 pm
Hummm. A good question. One of my favorite ideas about dreams is that they are alternate realities which your mind visits. You “sit in the passenger seat” and watch this alter-dimensional you do whatever it is he’s doing (i use he ’cause i’m talking about my self)
But I had a dream a few weeks ago that really through that off.
It started out normal, a normal day (i don’t think i even realized it was a dream)
Somewhere along in my day, I was eating lunch with the people I usually do, when the universe ripped it self apart. I was left in a swirling blue void. After a long boring time doing nothing, I tried visualizing myself in a better situation. When I opend my eyes, it had materialized around me. After expirimenting around making little worlds (like in the Myst computer games, very deep games), I decided to “explore the void”
I don’t know. It made sence at the time. Anyway, I found the consiusness of one of the friends I was with when the universe blew up. I made them their own custom little world, a crazy good present. After I finished with them, I tried looking for other people, but to no avail.
This really bothered me. I remember the dream ending with me cutting and pasting all the little worlds together.
The point is, I was definetly making desisions along the way. And even now, weeks later, I still am agonizing over the desisions I made, afraid I screwd stuff up in some reality, that people somewhere are suffuring because of them. I’m a wierd kid.
August 18th, 2006 at 7:22 pm
if VR is banned by govmts, say hello to Prohibition 2. Point me to the nearest speakeasy! I wanna blow my brains out and lose touch with reality! No one will be suprised, you know how we gnostic folk are.
August 18th, 2006 at 7:40 pm
Actually, from a conspiratorial/government perspective, I might be able to argue that the opposite is true, that the powers that be would in fact encourage us to become demented and destabilized and that shunting us off into unreal worlds is the best deal for them in the end…
Why would you want to do that?
August 18th, 2006 at 9:49 pm
Hello,
I’ve never poted here..I hope its ok? Kind of feel like im jumping into a conversation with a bunch of strangers. Oh wait I am.
I think this is a fascinating topic. I have the same problems sometimes in my dreams (breaking barriers). Im one of those types of people who analyzes my dreams as Im having them. So Im basically conscious of myself and the fact that Im dreaming…though I do get confused sometimes and question that.
So in my dreams I am constantly trying to overcome the barriers that I feel are keeping me imprisoned in my everyday life…these barriers being fears. Mainly the fear of what everyone else thinks of me. My favorite recent dream:
I was back in college and I was taking a test. I pressed too hard on my pencil and it broke. People started laughing at me…under their breath, covering their mouths. Everyone was laughing and trying to hide the fact. I started panicking and went nuts saying a bunch of weird shit. Things went over board and the situation got more and more charged.
I remember I told myself. “Alright this is the part where you take control of the situation….come on, it doesnt matter, its just a dream.” I took a deep breath…and went for it.
I jumped out of my seat and looked at everyone real mean like then I stomped over to the proffessor’s desk. I stepped up on the chair and then jumped on the desk real hard like i was trying to break it or sometime. Then I got real calm and smiled. I bent slightly and put my hands on my knees. I started doing that stupid dance where you wave your legs outside than in switching which hand goes with what knee when the knees come togather so that it looks like your legs are going through each other. Then I sang…
“When I was young,
I wished I had courage
To dance on my teacher’s desk.
But now Im just a 30 year old
I-diot.”
August 18th, 2006 at 10:22 pm
BTW, It was a hit. Everyone was cheering and laughinf. One of the best moments of my dream-life.
I love this website!
August 18th, 2006 at 11:28 pm
all of reality is a virtual one. the senses provide very little sensory distinction between experience of the conscious awake sort and the video game sort and the dream sort.
i have a passing interest in x-box games and have fun playing halo II with my boys, but recently i bought them fifa soccer 2006 and being a soccer nut from the time i was three i got totally drawn into the game to the point of actually forgetting that it was a game at all.
it will be a slam dunk for society once v.r. is perfected……..but maybe it`s happened before. alan watts tells a story about a race of super-beings who decide to create a v.r. reality whereby they could play at being human for a while……..and the they forgot they did it………….
August 19th, 2006 at 10:49 am
That sounds like a cool short story. Do you really think the same moral code applies to the dream world? For that matter, haven’t ethics changed over time? What are the ethics, if you want to stretch this, in other solar systems, etc?
Shamans are quite comfortable with the dream realm and I’m sure there are different beliefs and ethics based on the tribe. Would be a curious thing to research more….
August 19th, 2006 at 3:30 pm
Anybody have any web-sites they could recommend on taking control while dreaming?
Since I quit smoking 3 months ago, I’ve been remembering a lot more of my dreams, at least two a week. Last night I had a real wild one which entailed me getting taken (perhaps arrested) and then quarantined not because of some act I had done but simply because of the thoughts I was holding agaist the Powers that Be. Maybe I shouldn’t have been watching that brutal Russian documenary about the Soviet Gov’t during Lenin and Stalin before I went to sleep
I agree that dreams are spiritual. Visions perhaps. I’ve had multiple dreams in the past that came true weeks later. Two of them involved being shown the winners of sports matches, one with Babe Ruth showing me the Cardinals vs Red Sox series and the other one a celebrating Detroit Pistons win agaist the Lakers. (and I don’t even follow sports) I also had wild dreams before 9/11 and 7/11006 (the day before israel went into Lebanon).
Frankly I used to skip over your dream posts Tim because I didn’t think they related to anything that would affect my own reality, but I’m leaning now that it just might not be true.
August 19th, 2006 at 11:28 pm
Hey ya”ll, awesome website here! There seems to be a very fine line between consciousness, dreaming, perception and the energetic threads which weave all this together. After experimentation with below threshold dose of Psilocybin coupled with a twilight snooze, on several occasions have confirmed a fusion of local weather/location with the dream imagery. Its like one is out of body, but not able to leave the immediate area, however the area( in this case my house and yard)is infused with “that particular type” of raw energy, like been plugged in a socket. Also if there’s rain or a thunder storm outside, it’s there in the dreamspace, even though I’m unaware of the weather before snoozin. These fusions of setting/dreaming happened first without shrooms, while camping in rocky areas. Power-places, piezoelectric discharges, probability as standing waves, electric universe, kundalini… its all there somewhere. As for V.R. I wouldn’t touch it with someone elses bargepole
August 20th, 2006 at 1:10 am
I detect two misconceptions in your idea that in dreams you should behave responsibly. Without adopting any particular convention of dream interpretation (Freud, Jung, etc) I take it as given that in a dream all the characters represent parts of me. I am not just the seeing participating eye.
Secondly, I take it as given that the dream is a way to reveal to me those parts of my overall being which are beyond the gravitational orbit of my will. I take it that within me is some wisdom which even my tricky intellect is not able to mess around with - otherwise I’d be quite lost. The dream is one way to recognise those parts.
Lucid dreaming, as you hint, is something else.
August 20th, 2006 at 2:22 pm
I didn’t say that you should. I asked: should you?
August 22nd, 2006 at 1:10 pm
You’re all so much better than me