this post was submitted on 29 Nov 2024
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Showerthoughts
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What if we're all lucid dreaming. Right now.
Neuroscientifically speaking, we all experience our own custom hallucination all the time, and 'reality' is just the shared aspects of our hallucincations that we agree on.
https://www.theatlantic.com/video/index/577087/neuroscience-perception/
Or you can go the Taoist route:
This view is outdated and goes back to Descartes‘ view out of the window. No, we‘re not in our head observing the outer sphere.
We‘re within the sphere/ world and interact through our body. We influence and got influenced. We position ourselves by our body movements in the world. There is no such thing as we‘re just our mind. We are a mind-body-thing.
In lucid dreams there‘re no body feelings as it’s in your mind only. That is btw. one of the control mechanisms :to check if your body sleeps but your mind not. If you don’t feel the bed and duvet on your skin. Another check is writings. There‘re never the same, they aren’t consistent.
Your mind-body can be hallucinating all the time just as a mind can, its just a more complex hallucination.
As for lucid dreams not having body feelings, being completely produced by the mind?
I guess I'd like to see a source on that.
...
Ever met a sleep walker?
They have that 'control mechanism' break down, they don't wake up when their body no longer senses it is in bed and safe to dream... and they'll often also talk whilst sleep walking,.
You can even have conversations with them, and when they wake up later, they'll remember parts of the conversation, but basically everything their body is experiencing during the sleep walking is a kind of garbled input into their dream.
The things you said to them may have been said by you, in their recollection of their dream, or maybe another person, or maybe multiple different people.
If you touch them, or they interact with things, this will also be incorperated into their dream, but again, exactly how is unpredictable.
They may have a recollection in their dream of grabbing their keys, starting their car, and then picking up a package from somewhere, but what they've actually done is grab a TV remote, sat down in a chair, and then grabbed a book off of a shelf.
With sleep walkers, the body is very clearly still part of the input process for dreaming, its just... confused.
...
Have you ever had sleep paralysis / 'locked-in' syndrome?
Where you mind is awake and aware, but the parts of your nervous system responsible for intentional muscle movement just... don't work, are not active for some reason?
That's a non lucid dreaming experience which is pretty much totally reliant on the mind, your mind is basically disconnected from your body.
...
How about neuropathy or nerve damage, where your body feelings just do not really actually correspond to what it is actually experiencing, your body doesn't feel things that it should, and does feel strange sensations and even extreme pain with no obvious external stimuli?
That's your body functionally hallucinating, again not in a dream, but you experience it as reality.
Source: Some books of Carlos Castaneda who taught me lucid dreaming https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlos_Castaneda
Btw I said you that you aren’t feel the REAL body senses in your lucid dreams. For sure, one can dream/ hallucinate some. Though it’s rarely standards such as a foot on ground, a hand on door knob or such. That’s too boring. It’s more about flying, diving, running, and so on.
I’m not sure what all your other points are about. What are you trying to say or prove? Do you second the former threads argument, that
I do not support this view. Reality and interactions with reality is real and not hallucinated.
Well I can control things in a dream so yeah… not so much.