Dreams & Awareness

Dreams and awareness
(posted to JCS-online @ 2010-11-14)

I want to share some thoughts over ideas inspired primarily by Tibetan dream yoga and Buddhism in general.

As some might remember, I have used the word "experience" to denote a cognitive aspect of mind and denote rebirth hypothesis as "experience will continue" as this seems most neutral to me. This post is a little bit more than reciting a few important points from Tibetan dream yoga - which is a field containing a lot of insight into structure of consciousness and it's relations to outside world.

Tibetan dream yoga, in short:

1. To be aware when dreaming [that this is a dream]. This is now called lucid dreams and was, for a long time, considered mystics - it was proven by signaling with eye movements when dreaming (in Rapid Eye Movement sleep).
2. To be aware in deep sleep. This is described as emptiness and unlimited potential (feeling of all kinds of potentials), which resembles Nirvana state from Buddhism or silent knowledge from Castaneda.
3. To be aware when awake. This is based on insights that being awake is a kind of dream state. Enlightenment is, by definition, waking up from this state - then, you are conscious between lives or when resigned.

Now, I could try to explain the following in terms of physics, but this does not seem appropriate. I will establish a very simple kind of physics-like system, where I can explain my thought.

Let's say that the reality is made from dreamers and experiences. For dreamers, there are dreams - dreamer is basically a dream without beginning and end, where a dream is flow of experience and experience is an element inside a dream. After setting up such metaphysical system, it's obviously correct to say that life is a dream - which, in itself, would be play of words unless it also sets up an important possibility; possibility to wake up from this dream (which will get a meaning). Waking up would not have a meaning in context of normal physical and psychological context as that event should be defined in some other way to fit. When we define an Universe as a set of dreamers and experiences, it fits.

Just having those three words - dreamer, dream and experience, where dreamer is a timeline or other particle-type object able to experience; dream is a subset of dreamer and experiences form a state of dreamer - would be a theory. It does not need a proof. I would use it as an alternative - the physical world-view - carries a burden of logic, which is hard to connect with the reality of (human) consciousness. We will be lost into non-science however hard we try - we just have to denote mind as a field, particle or some compound of those, which is today almost sure source of mistakes.

What follows is a bunch of fragments. I would not like to set up any clear hypothesis as I have fully expressed myself after giving a number of fragments, some of which might have their place in some complete hypothesis. Those fragments will both show what I mean by these words, give some vague starting points to some hypothesis and also show some alternatives about how things could be. I hope that you will enjoy some of them and get a simpler picture of some things, which are mostly parts of different well-known world-views aligned into system of those words, which allow to define them.

Written in common mood, they are actually non-assertive and meant just as ideas or memes, which some of you might like to combine into some bigger picture. I consider all of them important [to me]. They also coin some new terms (relationship, time), but I consider those less important; they are not so obviously parts of fundamentals.

* * *

Dreamers have relationships - take the word literally in all of it's meanings at once - with each others and experiences. The word "relationship" is alternative to physical word "force". It's a part of experience of a dreamer - conscious or subconscious. To some degree, relationship is conscious. Fundamentally, relationship might be a kind of experience.

Experience has angles of experiencing.

Experience might be a dreamer, in such case an angle is a relationship.

Dream is infinite. Dream might be a line - in case of linear time - or some other kind of space. Dream space topology refers to fundamental problem of time in philosophy and - to some degree - in physics.

Space should not be considered 3-, 4- or more dimensional as we have not got to such point, where topology of space could be researched (some, here, definitely say they are, but it's not yet a common agreement - we must start building from some neutral point easily understandable to all; this allows each to take pieces of their theories). For example, I am unable to understand theory of Leon Maurer as a whole - bit by bit by adding to a simple system, Leon Maurer can give us some basics and we can have a dispute over them. So, good way to set up space is through relations - as dreamers and experiences have relations with each others, if there are some rules of interconnectedness of relations, it's possible to form a 3D space, for example. But we clearly do not live in a world of 3D or xD space - if "space" is a notion of interconnections between things, then 3D space can explain only a strength of few types of connections; those are exactly the types of connections, which are extremely important of physics, but relatively unnoticeable when talking about connections between dreamers.

We can see many rules about how relationships form, evolve and break.

* * *

What Tibetan dream yoga calls awaking is actually creating a homeostasis of a dreamer - one strong enough to stay between dreams. This homeostasis is meant to keep an access to shared memory and have some mental state active through many dreams.

It's to be noticed that this disallows a large set of dreams where dream can only be complete if we are fully in dream world - awaking disallows the strongest dreams, which teach our souls the most. Here I note explicitly that there are strong reasons against this idea, which I will not list.

Why I did not define dream as a segment of dreamer (as line), but as subset of it - dreams are not segments in time. We are cycling between a set of dreams. Some dreams might begin or end, but we go through them circularly. For example, each day we are awake, we think this awake-dream is the most important one, we also remember other continuous segments of it. However, when we dream, we have less memories of this daydream and more memories of the dreamworld, which our dream is part of - thus, we may think it as continuing some other dream. In that dream, world of this dream is the most important and accessible memories are related to this dream. This is a very important fact, which counters the strongest arguments against rebirth.

Some dreams are synchronized and others are not. One of those two sets might be empty.

* * *

If experience is appearance of dream in dream, relationship is fundamental and experience is the result.

Space is formed from relationships.

If relationship is a form of experience, then appearance of dream in dream is a form of relationship.

Relationships can be consciously controlled.

If we form master-slave relationships with smaller dreamers, the cells, having shared experiences to some degree, then it's possible that everything can be expressed in those terms. Then it's visible that our experiences about our bodies are experiences of those smaller dreamers from some angle, whereas our cognitive experiences are experiences shared with them.

In case of having such relationships and memories, which can be shared between dreams, there is high probability in case of rebirth or sleep that the ones we meet in new dream really are the ones with who we already have relationships. The cells in our next body might have been our cells before; relatives might have been relatives and even ecosystem we live in might have continued experience from ecosystem we lived before (I did get this last idea from Rudolf Steiner's book - afaik it's not in Tibetan belief system -, which is otherwise quite unbelievable - I can't handle, if it's true, how could someone know that; usually I do).

As a hint: at summers, we remember previous summers better than winters. Set of dream might be not very strict set with no overlapping members.

* * *

Experiences might form their own space, where dreamers move around.

If simple dreamers are matter, then complex dreamers can not be detected with physical apparatus, which is designed to detect a flow of very similar particles. Similarly, when we measure random events in society, we will get reasonably good picture about psychology and movement of crowds, but as more intelligent and differentiated some specific person, as more invisible they get. This makes me believe that after all, a "mind" or "soul" might be highly charged and highly intelligent particle - such particle could, for example, have a movement pattern, which resembles a number of simpler particles; it could also use it's force on many other particles at some critical moments and thus have a strong effect. Then, movement of normal particle could be described as "stupid". There are obvious reasons, why simple electronic device would only measure movement of many simple particles even if it actually detects many others at some specific moments and positions - the generalized result will contain only the movement of masses.

* * *

Dreamer-dream-experience paradigm is, for me, allowing to solve the puzzle without messing with settled truths from other sciences. For example, even borrowing the space-time concept from physics means that for each detail to be put into puzzle, I have to solve huge number of relations with physics. This slows down a lot - better to build something from a number of puzzle pieces and when it starts really resembling something from physics, it's nice. Space and time, most definitely, have to be redefined for that - in such way that it could be used to easily describe cognitive events. None of my cognitive events could be easily described in euclidean space; not all can be described in standard linear time. Spacetime of relativity theory does not help me out in those matters - and I guess that complete understanding of space and time in string theory would neither be helpful (and it's definitely unnecessarily complex, mathematically).

Structure of time in imagination and reality
(JCS post @ 2010-11-14)

I will discuss some properties of time using the dreamer-dream-relationship paradigm I did explain in previous letter. It's mostly a play around structure of time, which does not pretend to assert anything specific about time - it rather tries to enter the topic and show some structures, which quite clearly appear around time in practice.

In general, time can be seen as motion. Motion can be seen as changes in experiences and relationships - as we measure time by those changes, slowing down the motion in some metaphysical "absolute" time would not actually slow down the time. Such kind of relations can be seen in theory of relativity - if we look only into some philosophical fundamentals of it, not the physics (as I'm not trying to synchronize anything with physics here and thus, talking about time, I won't mean physical time, but time as structure of events).

Motion appears from decisions, which are based on information available to dreamer and it's processing ability. As more intelligent the dreamer, as harder it is to forecast it's decision based on situation; for simple dreamers it's very simple and the result is an exact science. This simplicity also depends on intelligence of observer.

Relations between complex dreamers - as we humans pretend to be - are appearing as reality or as a game. We can really do something or we can play that we do it. This is a first level of scale of importance - lets call real events important and games less important. Games are imagined. Most events, which happen, are more or less games - we try out different situations, almost doing and checking the reactions. Then we fall back to previous situations. This could be called development of time. We see a lot of different cycles, each being repeated over and over. These things happen in awake-states.

Imagine that the following holds:

• Awake-state, for dreamer (perceiver) is no "better" than any of dream states. Our lives depend on it etc., so you can say it's more important - this is a topic, which might be discussed, so I leave it open. It might be more important. Anyway, from perspective of conscious experience, awake-state is no different from others.
• In dream state (or fantasy flow) you are having actual relationships with other dreamers, who appear in your dreams. You might also have some illusions (images of dreamers, which resemble some other dreamer, but are, actually, true imaginations). Those relationships might be conscious on both sides, unconscious (or less conscious) by one side or totally unconscious.

So, when we dream, we can have actual relationships (which are more energized dreams) or hallucinations. I would use the word "imagination" for any kind of dream as opposed to "potention", which refers to emptiness or the state of unlimited potential. Then, imagination classifies to hallucination or reality.

Hallucinations are dream elements, which look like some elements, but are not actually energized as such - for example, we might see an image of someone without having an actual relation; we can also meet a person and talk to her without having actual mental connection. In games, people are real, but the story is hallucination. This, also, is a scale - game can be more or less serious (when we joke, which creates a hallucination, we can still be somewhat serious or it can become serious; when we are serious, we can turn it into joke if it becomes visible that this story leads nowhere or when we understand that it's not in place).

Another scale would be importance. Generally it's visible that some awake-state events are more important than many dream events, but some events of some dreams are extremely important - failing them can mean failing in some relationships, which can lead to failure in soul or important events in awake-state reality.

Now, where the time becomes non-linear - an actual awake-state event is usually imagined several times before. Those imaginations generally are energized - they involve actual relationships between involved dreamers; we can dream about event in such a way that another side is actually dreaming about her part, consciously or unconsciously. Both sides can be more or less (un)conscious about the dream and relationships involved or they can interpret those in some way, which is not related to how those relationships will actually be.

When in dreams, the story can actually involve not only people, but - as I think the dreamer-relationship scheme applies to all existing things - it can involve the whole realities, which are actually testing out possible stories and bringing those to life. In memories, the situations will remain and it's possible that they will be brought to different realities, including the awake-state reality. It's obvious that life events are brought into existence by trial-and-error, also that in many cases we are wobbling between two different realities, two different situations - and it's not quite sure, which one will eventually be energized. It resembles the patterns of music - which, probably, makes the music so inspiring and worth listening.

Anyway, when we imagine all those effects maximized:

• Energized imaginations in awake-state (where they are what is commonly perceived as reality) and dream-states.
• Memory, which can recall the situations.
• Creation of situations - games -, which we play over and over, making the details more fit; fixing both before-event and after-event events of some event.
• Dreams, where we actually have energized relationships.
• True recalling will actually recreate the reality and involve all sides involved.

This, when we understand that this is actually the fundamental reality, will turn time into complex structure from simple linearized pattern - and very literally. If you can't see how it's literal (and in no way a metaphor or play of words) you probably should give it a deeper reflection.

* * *

I must also highlight that without some zen training (involving the emptiness and some ethical guidelines, which are actually quite important to not turn these things against you) the model described here is not much of use because of the following factors messing everything up in untrained mind:

• Projections - we project our imagined relationships unconsciously, turning them into reality.
• Wishful thinking - the line between creating the situation and starting to lie to ourselves is so thin that mostly any kind of "magic" using ideas described here will simply deepen the illusion; actual magic will still happen mostly subconsciously and maybe in opposite direction.
• Fears and doubts - energizing fears and doubting actual opportunities will create another layer of sansara.

Thus, I suggest to think about the theory, but if you want to actually use described effects - which are very real - you should look into traditions, which are thousands of years old and describe the use cases, which will not backfire.

( the last disclaimer is the standard one added because I did describe here also some base principles of most forms of magic, but not enough for practical use - just enough to allow intelligent people shoot their legs )
* * *

The funniest part about deeply understanding the "practical" parts of this story are the zen's side-effects, which are so fundamental that they simply equal to becoming conscious of these effects described:

• To get rid of projections, one must be able to become an observer. This involves stopping thoughts, feelings and wishes in such way that they will not cloud the vision anymore. This removes some barrier between self and reality, effectively turning into generator of compassion.
• Actual use of effects described here - to change something - needs a high level of free flow to not backfire. Only a free flow can give things the artistic quality of being perfect from all sides at once - this means, inspiration, holistic thinking.
• In zen, we can see that both being an observer (perfectly distantiated) and being wholly involved are not the opposites like they are for simpler kinds of rational minds. This kind of joint opposite is, especially here, similar to tao in taoism; solving such opposites is called solving a koan. Solving koans will trigger a free flow of new koans to solve from unconscious.