Reality exists in your brain (page 5)

jay88

No amount of testing can compensate for delusion.

Curtains

I'm not sure if I have got this right

lucid dreaming while awake and during the day is akin to day dreaming?

Crux

I've been rewatching Buffy The Vampire Slayer series the last few weeks, there's an episode where Buffy gains the ability to hear thoughts, this quote is applicable to this thread:

Oz: [voice over] I am my thoughts. If they exist in her, Buffy contains everything that is me and she becomes me. I cease to exist. [out loud] Hmm.

:D:D

@Curtains - Lucid dreaming is very much like day dreaming but much more vivid and real. More...uhhh...lucid. :P One of the methods for lucid dreaming actually makes use of day dreaming in a way. The idea is to mediate solely on the dream you wish to enter and with enough practice you can fall asleep into your day dream essentially.

Curtains

crux

@Curtains - Lucid dreaming is very much like day dreaming but much more vivid and real. More...uhhh...lucid. :P One of the methods for lucid dreaming actually makes use of day dreaming in a way. The idea is to mediate solely on the dream you wish to enter and with enough practice you can fall asleep into your day dream essentially

thank you crux. I might suggest this to a friend of mine who has awful night terrors every couple of months.

Crux

I would suggest to your friend the book "Exploring The World Of Lucid Dreaming" by Stephen LaBerge. He's the foremost acedemic in the field of lucid dream research. I specifically suggest his book because not only does he go over all the techniques to induce lucid dreams but there is one chapter that specifically covers how to use lucid dreams to effect your waking life. In particular confronting and defeating nightmares. The book is one of the most often referenced works in the dreamer community.

You can buy a used copy of the book for a couple bucks on amazon.

Twitch

Where our brains depart from reality is when nothing physical is being represented, when we interpret intangible things like another person's emotions or thoughts, for example, or when our brains go on spontaneous journeys as in lucid dreaming or in magic mushroom or LSD illusions.

btw Nickolas I find your posts extremely arrogant, LSD, schiz, sleep paralyses, what your saying is anyone is either crazy, imagening it or on drugs lol

But just to be clear, I mentioned halucinagenic drugs in support of the post by Twitch as a trigger for spontaneous illusions that the brain interprets as real.

Nick is correct in summarizing the LSD or shroom "trip" as a departure from reality, as it's commonly interpreted in day to day life by one not on drugs or subject to mental illness such as schizophrenia.

Psilocybin and LSD are chemical agents that induce a state of altered awareness but not a "reality" per se. One comes back to reality after a trip, to the "normal" state of being and one's usual and natural perception of the world and oneself. There is reality and one's interpretation of it and often the two are not necessarily the same, especially where intangibles are concerned, which is Nick's point. A moot point I might add, considering the title and course of the thread. Though I enjoyed experimentation with altered states and perceptions, I choose to live in the natural state of my mind and body, such as it is.

Nickolas

Welcome to MY "world", dear Nick - LOLOLOLOLOL! Peace to you!

Thank you, Shelby. I am, at least, in good company.

Seems we're essentially on the same page, Terry (but in the interests of full disclosure, in a recent thread your name and mine were mentioned in the same sentence with the word "kooky".)

Crux, the shared, drug-induced experience I referred to on the previous page that caused two individuals I know to become Jehovah's Witnesses was something like what you describe that might cause you to change your rationale. These two men, one of whom is my b-i-l, were passengers in a van along with a few others all doing hallucinagenic drugs. The driver of the van lost control, causing it to leave the road and roll several times before coming to rest on its roof in the ditch. Both my b-i-l and his friend report having been standing on the shoulder of the road watching the accident happen in slowmo and then looking at one another in wonder when in a flash they found themselves strapped in their seats in the wreck, unhurt. They were convinced that this was a message from God so changed their lives from hopeless reperbates to dedicated family men and, not incidentally, Jehovah's Witnesses. My take is they were both high on drugs and coincidentally experienced the same halucination because they were both studying TM and astro-travel at the time and their minds were disposed to the out of body incident.

lucid dreaming while awake and during the day is akin to day dreaming?

Not quite, curtains. Lucid dreaming happens only when you are asleep. The thing that differentiates it from "normal" dreaming is lucidity - recognising that you are asleep and dreaming while the dream is happening. It feels as if you are awake and physically experiencing the dream, but it isn't real and you know that it isn't real. Sort of like the holodeck on Star Trek or maybe more like the situations depicted in the movie Inception, but not quite. Day dreaming is perhaps similar but happens not nearly as deeply in the mind. And, yes, as Crux says, you can use lucid dreaming techniques to control nightmares,(and as Mad Sweeney discusses on page 1 of this thread.)

Nickolas

Psilocybin and LSD are chemical agents that induce a state of altered awareness but not a "reality" per se. One comes back to reality after a trip, to the "normal" state of being and one's usual and natural perception of the world and oneself. There is reality and one's interpretation of it and often the two are not necessarily the same, especially where intangibles are concerned, which is Nick's point. A moot point I might add, considering the title and course of the thread. Though I enjoyed experimentation with altered states and perceptions, I choose to live in the natural state of my mind and body, such as it is.

When one can attribute a cause to an altered state of consciousness, whether it may be drug induced or in a dream, that altered state of consciousness does not persist. It goes away when the drug is oxidized by the liver or when the individual either recognises he is dreaming or wakes up. It does not form part of the person's reality but for the brief time he is experiencing the altered state. However, when a person fails to recognise that an altered state of consciousness is not real (schizophrenia has been mentioned as an extraordinarily stark example but it certainly does not apply to people generally) then it will become part of the person's reality. Like my b-i-l and his friend, who continue to believe to this day that their out-of-body experience was real.

I propose that the realities that all of us hold onto are at least to some small measure affected by perceptions that may not be entirely rational. Maybe it is only a fraction of a percent of what we hold to be real, but it is still part of it.

ballistic

"My sense of "red" may be completely different from yours. We never would know because it's total reality to each of us."

""

As a partially colour blind person, I've done a bit of research into this. Now colour is a frequency (like a curve), it hits your eye where there are three types of cones for different patches of the spectrum. In colourblind people, the pigment in 2 of the 3 of these types of cones can be the same or you could be missing one pigment and so on. It is highly unlikely that one indiviual colour like red would be substituted with another like blue without a whole third of the spectrum being somehow misinterpretted. The circuitry (membranes) in the retina (and not the brain) determines colour by comparing the electrical output from these three types of cones with those surrounding it i.e. to see if it is more blue yellow or red.

The rest of how the electrical signal is transmitted to the brain and understood by the brain is very complex but fascinating to read if you have the time.

But there we go, as far as I know, no one is walking round seeing red as blue and blue as yellow etc.

Curtains

nickolas

Seems we're essentially on the same page, Terry (but in the interests of full disclosure, in a recent thread your name and mine were mentioned in the same sentence with the word "kooky".)

kooky= big dominating personalities that we dense ones must not disagree with because when we do we are really attacking your character and not your posts ;D

you can't have it both ways, my friends

crux

yup it is only a couple of bucks on amazon

Reality exists in your brain

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