Last night i had a vivid dream and woke up with some revelations about sleep, i lay there bemused and fascinated at the same time. I'll try and explain... when you sleep you experience ego loss and are not attached to this reality, you are free to experience an alternative existance in the form of dreams. For example when you become aware of these dreams you are as we say lucid and usually come back down to earth, and awaken. It's as though sleep is a tool by which we can periodically experience death, to see what is on the other side of this so called reality, to explore other worlds of consciousness. One other thing... as said above when you realise you are dreaming you become "aware", but in a dream, who are "you"? For example if you were in a dream and looked in a mirror what would you see? Your reflection like you do in the bathroom? I doubt it.
I just wanted to write this down and see what peoples views were, please share your views
-------------------- LSD: Defrag for the brain
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States of consciousness are infinitely fascinating. Ken Wilber summarizes the three major states of consciousness (waking, dreaming, and deep sleep) in this snippit:
Quote:
To begin with, why do Vedanta/Vajrayana maintain that the waking state contains one level of consciousness but the dream state contains 3 levels of consciousness? According to Vedanta/Vajrayana, the item that most defines the waking state is that you are aware of gross sensorimotor bodies: you can see rocks, trees, rivers, towns, cars, planets, etc., all of which are gross sensorimotor objects or bodies (hence, the gross realm). There are other things that you might be aware of in the waking state, but if you can see rocks, you are aware of the gross realm.
When you dream, however, you are not aware of rocks, trees, rivers, towns, or any other gross objects. You can, however, be aware of emotions, images, ideas, visions, archetypes, and so on?in other words, the 3 middle levels of consciousness can all appear in the dream state, and that means that the 3 middle levels of consciousness can all be supported by same subtle body. (This is not to say that this subtle body/energy cannot be subdivided, which clearly it can, inasmuch as both Vedanta and Vajrayana do so; but it is to say that all forms of subtle energy are genera of this family [see below]).
When you enter the deep dreamless state, however, even those levels of consciousness and energy fall away, and there is only a vast, almost infinite overmental consciousness?a blissful-radiant and nearly formless consciousness (anandamayakosha)?which is supported by a causal body/energy (which Vedanta terms "causal" and Vajrayana terms "very subtle"; i.e., the body/energies for Vedanta are called gross, subtle, and causal; for Vajrayana, they are called gross, subtle, and very subtle; I will follow Vedanta, although it is clear that they are both referring to essentially the same phenomena, inasmuch as they both explicitly identify these states/bodies with waking, dreaming, and sleeping).
http://wilber.shambhala.com/html/books/kosmos/excerptG/part3.cfm
-------------------- "What is in us that turns a deaf ear to the cries of human suffering?" "Belief is a beautiful armor But makes for the heaviest sword" - John Mayer Making the noise "penicillin" is no substitute for actually taking penicillin. "This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or their revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow it." -Abraham Lincoln
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