The Mysteries of Lucid Dreaming (Part II)
Episode 17 - What Lucid Dreams have to say about Reality
Greetings,
Hope you’re doing well. Stay close to the fire. The night is long and dawn seems very, very far away. The only thing we can do in the darkness is dream.
If you’re new here, welcome to the fireside. I recommend you check out the Archive. Maybe you’ll find something interesting in there.
More Dreaming
This is a continuation of Part I because there’s more to say about dreams, especially given the upcoming release of my second Book! I’ve already discussed some speculations about lucid dreaming and given some examples.
One aspect of dreaming that needs more attention is the concept of Memory.
Now you may notice that every time you wake up in the morning the first thing that happens is a recollection of not only yesterday, but most of the past weeks, months and years. This memory databank forms what is your identity, alongside your name, age, status, location, etc. After you take this memory for granted, assuming ‘it’s always been there’, you carry on with your day.
You may be tempted to think that you can easily tell the difference between dreams and so-called ‘reality’ by noticing the presence of memory. Dreams don’t have memory: you simply follow some kind of ongoing script or scene.
But this isn’t true either, not in every case.
Let’s go on a journey together
While 80% of my dreaming experiences can be said to be without memory and completely unconscious, there are a few examples that stand out because there is memory, but a completely different one. I had several dreams in which I visited locations (sometimes more than once) that were profoundly familiar. Some were cities, some were natural places.
There’s one which really stands out to me because inside this example memory gets really confused. There is a location I visited multiple times in several dreams. Now what’s really strange is that while being there in the dream I remember having visited the place, but I can’t say for sure whether I remembered ‘another dream of that place’ or visiting the place in the context of that world. Basically the boundaries between one life (the dreaming life) and the ‘waking life’ were completely blurred.
This location was some sort of a giant building that I knew as an ‘observatory’ - some sort of place where you watch the stars, maybe? I’m not sure. It’s located somewhere on top of a green hill surrounded by more beautiful nature everywhere and I also know that it’s somewhere outside of a city. What or where is this city I couldn’t tell but every time I found myself there I knew the place.
What is inside this observatory? I don’t know. Sometimes people visit. It’s quite a big place and looks somewhat like a temple with metallic copper colours. I’ve never actually ‘observed’ anything from it, but the location has always stuck with me because, unlike other dream locations, this one seems very much real, but existing on some other dimension.
The Second Location: My favourite Restaurant
The second location that carries the weight of memory is a restaurant that serves fish and seafood, located somewhere ‘down a street’ - this street is located at the outskirts of a big, sunny city. I am certain I’ve been there more than once.
The restaurant has beautifully decorated walls with white and black textures. It’s really big too, with multiple rooms and I remember it being full of people. Every time I was there I simply explored around and, as far as I can remember, I don’t think I actually sat down to eat, which is pretty sad but, hey, maybe one day I will.
This dream, like the previous, is not lucid (I was not aware I was dreaming) but they both carry this incredibly powerful sense of memory and ‘reality’, as if these locations are not only real, but very familiar to me, in the same way your downtown is.
(I tried to use AI to generate something similar but I can’t figure out the right prompts for this so instead here’s some nice seafood, but pixel-art style):
What can we infer from all this? Frankly, it’s as mysterious as consciousness itself. If a completely different memory databank can exist elsewhere, then what would be the difference between dreaming life and this life?
This question was answered in another, extremely profound, vivid lucid dream I had in 2017.
Below is a description:
The Most powerful Lucid Dream
I was involved in some sort of scene, but became spontaneously lucid. By this point in my dreaming journey, I’d had several lucid dreams already, and so was a little better prepared. Knowing that time was short, I asked the dream to bring forward my personal ‘spirit guide’.
You may or may not be familiar with this concept. It’s a bit New Agey in many ways, but is part of the modern re-interpretations of folk and traditional ancient wisdom. According to his, it is believed that you, as an individual, have a set of spirit guides who know you very well and have agreed to help you out during this present incarnation as a human. All you have to do is ask for their help.
Is this true? Well, I’ve no idea, but I thought there was no better place to test it out than in this dream. And so I asked.
And someone appeared.
He was a young man, maybe in his twenties, short dark hair and white t-shirt. A very normal, friendly guy. Except nothing about this was normal: because I KNEW him.
Knowing
I’ve never quite felt anything remotely similar since that lucid dream. There was a sense of complete obviousness and familiarity about this person. I knew he was my guide in the same way you know that grass is green. There was no ‘remembering’, no confusion, no realisation - just complete familiarity. The only thought I remember having was ‘oh, of course it’s you.’
But who was he? I don’t know. Clearly, my present memory data doesn’t contain that information but there is another, somewhere, that does.
Anyway, back to the Dream. Given the presence of a spiritual guide who, ideally, knows stuff, I asked him: ‘What are Dreams?’
He replied not with words, but in some sense telepathically because it felt like my mind was interpreting his answer by translating it into language. This translation said something like:
“There are no such things as ‘Dreams’. What you call ‘Dreams’ are just different layers, closer to the Core.”
What’s a ‘Core’? I think he meant the ‘Core of Reality’, but that’s not an answer either and I’m also sure that word was just the closest thing my human mind could come up with in translation.
Anyway, his answer was extremely pertinent. Of course there’s no such things as ‘Dreams’. It’s just a word, another of the many labels we use to distinguish one set of experiences from another.
I haven’t seen my guide since that dream, but given my experience with dreaming, I can say with some degree of certainty that I did not ‘make him up’. Unless, of course, I made everything up, including you. Or maybe you made me up?
In which case, well, you did a pretty fine job.
Conclusion
As I already stated in the previous episode, we can’t understand Dreams because we’d need to understand ‘Wakefulness’ first, and we don’t. The two experiences are actually not distinct at all. The degree of quality in the environment is completely equal (I’ve tested it personally).
However there are some differences in the types of experiences available, suggesting that, if nothing else, one is more fluid (dreaming) and the other more ‘solid’ (this life).
One extremely important thing to notice however, is that in both you experience the senses. Reflect on that for a moment, and on the stories you’ve been told about ‘the Body’ and how ‘the body experiences the senses’. If you contemplate this with some seriousness you may start to notice that you don’t need a body to experience senses, because ultimately, like dreams, there is no such thing.
Heh. Quite the mindfuck, right?
Thank you for joining me on this trip. I’ve never shared these dreams publicly until now, and I hope you’ll treat these stories with respect as they are, quite literally, the most intimate of things.
More to come.
Blessings,
