what if life is just a dream

Discussion in 'Ethics' started by SuperQ, Dec 5, 2007.

  1. SuperQ

    SuperQ Member

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    k this is my 1st time in this forum i just think it fits here you can tell me if it does'nt also compared to the things i've read here it's not really ...well done.

    everything exists here but it's just all apart of somethings or someones dream and were all in it i guess the sleeper watch's us all at once as a whole and everything that happens effects it's dream in fact whats happened over the last billion years only feels like minutes but the sleeper understands it all. k so the choices we make begin to create the dream as we alter the path the future leads to a direction and once the magority of the world goes down and fills with a hate the sleeper begins to wake up because the whole time he was dreaming but now he is in a nightmare then when he is awake, he goes to someone elses dream slowly becoming a nightmare cause the dream cannot last forever.

    i've always imangined the sleeper as a big purple cloud in space and then a spark goes off in it and that was a dream, what appears to billions of year to us, is infact less then a second outside the dream.

    i know it does'nt make sense but i'm working out the screws and thought i'd share what i'm thinking.

    is there any books or philosophers that have a simliar idea/plot.
     
  2. MeAgain

    MeAgain Dazed & Confused Lifetime Supporter Super Moderator

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    I lsted some examples:


    Two tales from Taoism:
    Once Zhuang Zhou dreamed he was a butterfly, a fluttering butterfly. What fun he had, doing as he pleased! He did not know he was Zhou. Suddenly he woke up and found himself to be Zhou. He did not know whether Zhou had dreamed he was a butterfly or a butterfly had dreamed he was Zhou. Between Zhou and the butterfly there must be some distinction. This is what is meant by the transformation of things.

    How do I know that enjoying life is not a delusion? How do I know that in hating death we are not like people who got lost in early childhood and do not know the way home? Lady Li was the child of a border guard in Ai. When first captured by the state of Jin, she wept so much her clothes were soaked. But after she entered the palace, shared the king's bed, and dined on the finest meats, she regretted her tears. How do I know that the dead do not regret their previous longing for life? One who dreams of drinking wine may in the morning weep; one who dreams weeping may in the morning go out to hunt. During our dreams we do not now we are dreaming. We may even dream of interpreting a dream. Only on waking do we know it was a dream. Only after the great awakening will we realize that this is the great dream. And yet fools think they are awake, presuming to know that they are rulers or herdsmen. How dense! You and Confucius are both dreaming, and I who say you are a dream am also a dream. Such is my tale. It will probably be called preposterous, but after ten thousand generations there may be a great sage who will be able to explain it, a trivial interval equivalent to the passage from morning to night.

    Buddhism
    There is a range of beliefs in Buddhist thought regarding the question of the reality of the world. Some schools espouse that the world is illusory, as a dream.​

    Hinduism
    Maya is the limited, purely physical and mental reality in which our everyday consciousness has become entangled. Maya is held to be an illusion, a veiling of the true, unitary Self — the Cosmic Spirit also known as Brahman.

    Plato
    "The Allegory of the Cave"
    Humans are all prisoners and the tangible world is our cave. The things which we perceive as real are actually just shadows on a wall. Just as the escaped prisoner ascends into the light of the sun, we amass knowledge and ascend into the light of true reality: where ideas in our minds can help us understand the form of 'The Good'.
     
  3. killswitchjd

    killswitchjd Senior Member

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    watch "waking life"

    trust me
     
  4. Eugene

    Eugene Senior Member

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    two things:
    1. Who is dreaming the dreamer?
    2. Even if it's all a dream, if it's the exact same thing that we call reality now, what's the difference?
     
  5. mati

    mati Member

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    Art Kleps, author of "Millbrook, the true story of the early years of the psychedelic revolution" online at http://www.okneoac.com Kleps is a nihilistic solipsist and discusses his philosophy there.
     
  6. themnax

    themnax Senior Member

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    doesn't really chainge a thing if it is.

    within any total context how things work is how things work so conscience and self dicipline are just the same and just as neccessary, becuase how we affect how things are within that context is how we do.

    =^^=
    .../\...
     
  7. xexon

    xexon Destroyer Of Worlds

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    Life is a very interesting movie.

    Your mind can't take it's physical eyes off of it. It becomes so amused at what it sees, it pushes the nature of what you truly are into the background. It does so with such repetition, you slowly create a reality around you, becoming blind spiritually, in exchange for this vision through the eyes. What you see through the physical eyes, is a world created by the mind itself.

    Not the conscious part of your mind that you're aware of, but the larger portion you're not aware of. It has some interesting properties. It can create anything you can imagine, and it can project it in front of your human senses.

    You're awake, but barely. Being a human is like putting on a heavy diving suit. It limits you in certain ways. Since your human identity is just a creation inside of another creation, you could say it's a dream within a dream.

    All that you know, only has a reality because you believe it to be so.

    There's a higher part of yourself, that sits in the audience and watches the show. It greatly enjoys your antics here on earth.



    x
     
  8. MeAgain

    MeAgain Dazed & Confused Lifetime Supporter Super Moderator

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    According to my understanding of John Levy in The Nature of Man According to Vedanta,

    1. When viewed from their seperate states no difference can be found between waking and dreaming and both are real.
    2. When viewed from the waking state, dreaming is not real.
    3. Both the waking state and the dreaming state are a product of the mind.
    4. Waking and dreaming are states of mental activity characterized by a knower and a known, or thinker and thought, and are thus both a form of duality.
    5. Any thought must have a thinker and any thinker must have a thought. This is true in both waking and dreaming states.
    6. The ego, or "I", experience transends both states as it is the witness to the act of the thinker thinking the thoughts.
    7. The "I" experience is formed by the rememberance of the thinker and thought and is thus a product of duality.
    8. Recognizing the "I" experience to be a form of duality can only be done by a non-dual state.
    9. As the non-dual state transends the "I" experience AND both waking and dreaming, it is the "Real" experience.
    10. As the non-dual state is the only "Real" experience both dreaming and waking are not Reality.
     
  9. sunyatasamsara

    sunyatasamsara Member

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    xexon that first paragraph is so true. Perfect the practice of pratyahara(sense withdrawal), wake up and see for yourself.

    "i dream therefore i am not"
     
  10. Chill Hippo

    Chill Hippo Member

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    reminds of the Twilight Zone episode Shadowplay. Not really the same concept exactly but it relates in the dream sense.
     
  11. somethingwitty

    somethingwitty Member

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    Everything is a dream/idea/thought of God. The question isn't "if," but how to wake up from it. Many, many people have shown how and there are many paths to the same end.

    This is fundamentally not understandable, but one way to think of it is like a person having a dream or daydream. The person is simultaneously dreamer and dream (that is to say place, people, etc.) until they realize it, and wake up. In the case of God, the dream is all of the cosmos, including all qualities, and everything, but God is is also fundamentally beyond all ideas, imagination, thoughts, and qualities. Truth (capital T here) lies in paradoxes a lot of the time.

    Try reading the Upanishads translated by Easwaren (sp?) or maybe Shankara's "Crest Jewel of Discrimination," you might like them. If those picque your interest and you want a game plan, move onto Patanjali's Yoga Sutras and The Bhagavad Ghita. But remember, the only way to wake up is experientially witnessing/being the real reality, not just by thinking about it.

    Just asking the question means you're pretty far along! :)
     

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