Can it be that people live in dreams?
Is a dream personal or not?
Society in dreams
Re: Society in dreams
This is interesting... I'd say it's definitely personal, as you can trigger a dream by thinking about x or y.
Re: Society in dreams
There are a number of ways to interpret this question so, I’d say: it depends.Can it be that people live in dreams?
I think that other people, as in others who are alive, yes, can be met in dreams. The concept of shared dreaming hasn’t been widely accepted in the psychological community.
I agree with the skeptics that the evidence presented in current experiments of such techniques are flimsy (They need stricter protocols, for instance, and more samples. But then the other side’s evidence in the debate is based on such samples as well (which lists has outdated experiments), so meh). This concept, however, is as I’ve seen actually quite a common skill in magical communities. The practice is often used for instruction (interacting through dreams, sending "lessons", etc) and method of magical working (such as calling a person in through astral to participate in a ritual).
I think also that you can dream of other places and planes. This idea has been around in one form or another since the time of Enkidu dreaming of the soul soup of the afterlife. Basically this means that from the perspective of the dreamer they live there, in the dream.
I’d say that, if you mean private, my answer would be in reality no, but in practice yes. From what I’ve seen around and experienced, most dreams, and most people’s dreams, most likely are. For the most part, the dreams of others' holds little interest for me at least. This does not mean that I don’t fuck with people and their dreams or visions. I’m just selective.Is a dream personal or not?
When I program the dreams of others (I don’t know how others would do it), it is a co-creation thing. It means that as the dream progresses, I’m both watching and in communication with the subconscious or spirit mind of the dreamer. I can see everything they are doing and can appear as various people to them. But at the same time, choices within the dream, some of the surroundings (they can shift areas, such as from a farm to their bedroom to the kitchen suddenly still) are created by the dreamer. These dreams are personal, as in the individual personality of the dreamer participates in the events, but they are not private.
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Belial
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Re: Society in dreams
Your questions hold merit, however I am unable to discern the context of your inquiries, at least in regards to where it stands between the literal and philosophical. I will respond accordingly.
The inquiry of living in dreams can be seen as either, asking if an individual can live inside a dream state, something with variable scales and levels on it's own, or asking if reality as it is known is actually a dream that people are living in.
Dreams don't often have a firm continuum, thus the ability to live on it depends on those living it. To start if you simply reduced yourself to a perpetual dream state your physical body would deteriorate while you were withdrawn from the material focus. If your body deteriorated in the process you would eventually die physically, which would make you a spirit, at which point you would be capable of existing in a perpetual dream state through death. It would not ensure existence after physical expiration, you'd die like anyone else and have the same opportunities.
On the other level, building a life in dreams is possible. It would take a conscious adherence to your desired continuum if you wanted it to remain stable. It would of course be perforated with the necessary breaks of material existence to sustain your body. If you go through that much effort though it may be better to simply extend your reach a bit into the other levels of existence instead.
Maintaining a shared dream continuum would increase it's stability, but still you're going to encounter points one and two above. Either your material presence would waste away, or your dream presence would be interrupted with episodes of material existence.
On the other point, if reality is really all a dream, has metaphorical and philosophical merit, however things are hardly ever that simple, and the matter stand at greater complexity than that, regardless of how well the concept may seem to fit in idealistic interpretations. For starters the material world would be the most stable dream continuum restricted by mundane principles ever. A highly restricted collective dream doesn't quite sustain the theory either, seeing as the development of mundane principles and physics hold reasonable objectivity outside of human reproach, thus the dream would have to be shared by something much more intelligent and much less creative than the human element. There comes a duality conflict as well when you try to explain something greater by likening it to a facet of one of it's parts. If reality is a dream, and people dream in that dream, the dream of dreaming would hold the same relative value in translation, unless a code of levels were enforced. The conflict arises where the theorized continuum splices off from the shared to the less shared and individual branches, also capable of multilevel continuum splices, leaving two significant errors, the first being the nature of dreams themselves as understood in relation, and the next being the volume of complexity this brings to the table requiring the collective dream of reality to compound physics to rationalize this, either way you broke something.
Regarding whether reality is a dream people live within, my conclusion would have to be that dreams are something that occurs in reality, a function of it but not the definition of it. The level of thought exists just beyond the scope people use to define the material reality. Reality could be likened to such, philosophically proposed that reality is like a dream, but it's something more complex and objective than this alone. Applying this philosophical model actually complicates theoretical existence rather than simplifying it, which shouldn't be a rational proposal unless you run into a ideological impasse. At least it does unless the mystery card is played, explaining away the depth of wisdom with what is essentially the theoretical chaos of nobody truly knows anything so the idea is still possible. If reality is a dream it has to be a different kind of dream, and if it is then how is it still a dream.
The point of whether a person in physical reality can live a life within dreams encounters the two great problems relevant to them as well. Either you die and end up with that common fate, which contradicts the entire idea of "living" in a dream, pending your use of the term living, or you're dream life is going to be subject to material interruption and need it's continuum enforced to maintain the integrity of it's existence. If any workarounds are found then go for it.
Dreams can be a powerful tool for engaging various aspects and facets of things, and is a way to get closer to yourself, work around the restricting dimensional scope of perceived and or individual reality, and a platform for reaching things beyond that scope. Since I'm keeping the stance that there are things beyond that scope, and thus beyond the scope of defining that scope with things within that scope, my vote is to not stop there. I have to agree with the previous post on this matter.
As the previous post also notes regarding the privacy of dreams, I also agree, but feel the need to take that a stab further, stating that in application, your personal thoughts and memories, while they are (usually) your own, are not necessarily as personal as one may like. As all these things can be shared in certain contexts it removes an element of being personal in that regard, and because these things can be shared it poses a risk to privacy. It's something that isn't restricted solely to that example, it can be personal at times and at other times not be. Introduce the right (or wrong) thing and it can change pretty quickly.
Ultimately I suppose at the end of this large ramble it comes to the two decisive answers. The abridged version of it comes out to-
That depends on what you mean.
That depends on the situation.
The inquiry of living in dreams can be seen as either, asking if an individual can live inside a dream state, something with variable scales and levels on it's own, or asking if reality as it is known is actually a dream that people are living in.
Dreams don't often have a firm continuum, thus the ability to live on it depends on those living it. To start if you simply reduced yourself to a perpetual dream state your physical body would deteriorate while you were withdrawn from the material focus. If your body deteriorated in the process you would eventually die physically, which would make you a spirit, at which point you would be capable of existing in a perpetual dream state through death. It would not ensure existence after physical expiration, you'd die like anyone else and have the same opportunities.
On the other level, building a life in dreams is possible. It would take a conscious adherence to your desired continuum if you wanted it to remain stable. It would of course be perforated with the necessary breaks of material existence to sustain your body. If you go through that much effort though it may be better to simply extend your reach a bit into the other levels of existence instead.
Maintaining a shared dream continuum would increase it's stability, but still you're going to encounter points one and two above. Either your material presence would waste away, or your dream presence would be interrupted with episodes of material existence.
On the other point, if reality is really all a dream, has metaphorical and philosophical merit, however things are hardly ever that simple, and the matter stand at greater complexity than that, regardless of how well the concept may seem to fit in idealistic interpretations. For starters the material world would be the most stable dream continuum restricted by mundane principles ever. A highly restricted collective dream doesn't quite sustain the theory either, seeing as the development of mundane principles and physics hold reasonable objectivity outside of human reproach, thus the dream would have to be shared by something much more intelligent and much less creative than the human element. There comes a duality conflict as well when you try to explain something greater by likening it to a facet of one of it's parts. If reality is a dream, and people dream in that dream, the dream of dreaming would hold the same relative value in translation, unless a code of levels were enforced. The conflict arises where the theorized continuum splices off from the shared to the less shared and individual branches, also capable of multilevel continuum splices, leaving two significant errors, the first being the nature of dreams themselves as understood in relation, and the next being the volume of complexity this brings to the table requiring the collective dream of reality to compound physics to rationalize this, either way you broke something.
Regarding whether reality is a dream people live within, my conclusion would have to be that dreams are something that occurs in reality, a function of it but not the definition of it. The level of thought exists just beyond the scope people use to define the material reality. Reality could be likened to such, philosophically proposed that reality is like a dream, but it's something more complex and objective than this alone. Applying this philosophical model actually complicates theoretical existence rather than simplifying it, which shouldn't be a rational proposal unless you run into a ideological impasse. At least it does unless the mystery card is played, explaining away the depth of wisdom with what is essentially the theoretical chaos of nobody truly knows anything so the idea is still possible. If reality is a dream it has to be a different kind of dream, and if it is then how is it still a dream.
The point of whether a person in physical reality can live a life within dreams encounters the two great problems relevant to them as well. Either you die and end up with that common fate, which contradicts the entire idea of "living" in a dream, pending your use of the term living, or you're dream life is going to be subject to material interruption and need it's continuum enforced to maintain the integrity of it's existence. If any workarounds are found then go for it.
Dreams can be a powerful tool for engaging various aspects and facets of things, and is a way to get closer to yourself, work around the restricting dimensional scope of perceived and or individual reality, and a platform for reaching things beyond that scope. Since I'm keeping the stance that there are things beyond that scope, and thus beyond the scope of defining that scope with things within that scope, my vote is to not stop there. I have to agree with the previous post on this matter.
As the previous post also notes regarding the privacy of dreams, I also agree, but feel the need to take that a stab further, stating that in application, your personal thoughts and memories, while they are (usually) your own, are not necessarily as personal as one may like. As all these things can be shared in certain contexts it removes an element of being personal in that regard, and because these things can be shared it poses a risk to privacy. It's something that isn't restricted solely to that example, it can be personal at times and at other times not be. Introduce the right (or wrong) thing and it can change pretty quickly.
Ultimately I suppose at the end of this large ramble it comes to the two decisive answers. The abridged version of it comes out to-
That depends on what you mean.
That depends on the situation.