by Pants Elk » Thu May 19, 2005 1:10 pm
This here board is as good as any for an investigation into sleep. We all do it, and none of us knows what happens - exactly - when we dream, or why. But each one of us enters into another type of reality - another universe, another dimension - when we go to bye-byes. Sweet dreams. I haven't had any lately.<br>For my own input, I'd like to mention JW Dunne's "An Experiment With Time", a fascinating and unique work by a fascinating and unique mind. Dunne wasn't happy with the received knowledge of the nature of time, and didn't want to let the subject drift by, as it does for most of us, without giving it a bit of his own rigorous intuition. His understanding of time is dependent upon the world of dreams. He's not interested in the meaning of dreams, in a Freudian or symbolic sense, but rather the different framework of time itself within the dream state.<br>It's been a long time since I read it last, but I'll try to offer a synopsis. Basically he's saying that we try to impose a waking understanding of time (that of the "now" instant, travelling along a timeline) to a state that doesn't work by those rules. That is, another dimension. The frequent hopping back and forward in dreams is the result of our lack of ability to widen the "now" instant into a broader focus, where events happen simultaneously. He maintains that our dreams are informed/shaped by waking events, which is not a new thesis, but that these waking events happens both before and after the dream event, which is; that is to say, we dream of the future in the same way we dream of the past.<br>He offers ways of proving his theory, which is something I did, and found astonishing. Again, I'm paraphrasing him (go to the source, as ever), but when we, in a waking state, make a connection between a dream we had last night and the "causal" waking event a few days ago, we make that connection even if the waking and dream events are different; because that's the nature of dreams. That dream we had about drinking a glass of wine with the Queen of England on the rim of a volcano was "inspired" by a sequence of trivial waking events; a glass of wine with a friend who told us about a trip to a volcano, and the sight of Our Blessed Queen on the television. Whatever - the connection is there and understandable. Which is not so when the events happen in the reverse order; our sense of logic prevents us from making the dream connection when the event that "inspired" it happens three days after the dream. Not many of us remember our dreams that long, anyway.<br>So I followed his simple instructions, and I proved to my own satisfaction (and I'm pretty cynical) that his theory is at least part right; we do dream of things before they happen, but in the same distorted way we dream of things in the past. You just need to learn to join the dots.<br>It's something I don't consciously do any more (I'm just too darn busy), but it still happens. I'll be (say) standing in a busy market, looking at an old watch with a painted face, and I remember dreaming of this very watch.<br>So: if my own half-hearted experiments with time lead me to think Dunne's theory is correct, don't you think this is an area that has been investigated by the Dark Priests of the CIA or whatever spook organisation you care to think of? And I'd imagine they'd taken it further, if their results were as clear as my own.<br>Imagine, then, a world of sleep inhabited by government spooks with the power to consciously control their dreams. And yours.<br>Like I say; sweet dreams, kiddies. <p></p><i></i>
