Thursday, September 27, 2007

Dream a Little Dream for Me

If I am but a dream, who or what is the dreamer?

55 comments:

Anonymous said...

Maybe you are the dreamer but what you call you is not really you.

Anonymous said...

And if you are both
the dream
and the dreamer?

Anonymous said...

There is only a dream. There is no dreamer. Technically a dream is an activity of countless brain cells, each of which may have a life of its own, cooperating to create the dream, which is an illusion.
Perhaps you can say you are the dream, which is a physical or chemical process creating an illusion. You, the dream, is dreaming that you are dreaming.
The same can be said of thinking.
You can also identify with the countless cells that make up your body. But you are nothing but an identification. Each of the cells having a life of their own and cooperating to create the illusion of you thru dreaming or thinking.
Well, something like that.
Sweet dreams!!!

Anonymous said...

You are dreaming!!!

Anonymous said...

Here is another way of seeing it.
The mind is inside the body. And the body is inside the mind.
The dream is inside the dreamer. And the dreamer is inside the dream.
Which came first the chicken or the egg.
Before the chicken the egg. Before the egg the chicken.

Anonymous said...

In other words:
Life is but a dream.

Anonymous said...

Here is a good question:
Why can't the bodies or "we" forget or get rid of the illusion or dream?
I guess it's because the bodies or the cells comprising them need the illusion or dream to survive and reproduce.
If the ameoeba has no sense of boundary it will not know what is food and what is enemy.

Anonymous said...

So if the body is sleeping or in suspended animation all the time, meditating or something like that, and never "wakes up", it will be eaten by predators, die of thirst and hunger, or die from the cold, etc.
If a particular physical living entity does not know what is right and what is wrong, it will be thrown out of the society and will be left outside to survive on its own. He will be left alone to dream his own dream.

Anonymous said...

Sorry about that! I'm just trying to scramble your egg. ;>)

Sophia said...

Hi,

I don't know if all these anonymouses are the same person or different people, so I will try to address everyone by using numbers.

OK, here goes, to anonymous #1:

If I'm the dreamer, then all of this, this world, the universe and everything in it would all be my creation. If I am not really me, then who am I? Wouldn't that make me God?

Anonymous said...

It doesn't really matter. We are now dreaming a collective dream.
God is the dreamer. You are the dream.
But the dream is not separate from the dreamer.
Without the dream there is no dreamer. Without you there is no God.

Anonymous said...

I am not talking about the God of the Our Fathers. Or the God of the Past. I am talking about the Presence. Whatever that means.

Sophia said...

Anonymous #2:

I'm trying to wrap my mind around this. I'm going to think out loud, here. When I am asleep at night, and dreaming, I am the dreamer, but there, I am not the dream. (Or am I?)

Now, I am awake, but possibly dreaming that I am me, so I would be the dreamer and the dream. The question is, if I am the dreamer and the dream, what am I really?

Are all the other people - who are also dreamers - dreaming the same dream that I'm dreaming? If the dream is the same for all the dreamers, then there is only one dream. And if there is only one dream, wouldn't that mean that there is only one dreamer?

Sophia said...

Anonymous #3,

How can there be a dream but no dreamer?

From your description, there is a dreamer - physical anatomy, or the brain. But if what we are dreaming is not truly physical, and instead a dream, then the dreamer also cannot be physical.

Sophia said...

Anonymous #4,

What is "you"?

Anonymous said...

I'm sorry for being impolite. I think anonymoi # 1 and # 2 are probably sleeping and dreaming right now. I am anonymoi #3 and the following. And Obviously I am dreaming right now. And having a nightmare.
How can there be a dream and no dreamer?
There is a dream but the dreamer is the dream itself. The dreamer is not necessarily the body or cells dreaming. It is more than these or less than these. Technically it may be the body or cells dreaming. But the body or the cells are not the dreamer. Altho you can say that.
The dream is both psychological and physical in nature or not at all. But it doesn't matter. A dream is a dream.

What is you?
You can be me and me can be you. It depends on who is speaking.

Anonymous said...

Dream, think, images, words, what else...
Dreaming, thinking, imagining, writing, speaking...
Sensing, non-sensing...

Anonymous said...

No .

Anonymous said...

Let's go back to staring at each other.

Anonymous said...

Brunhilde, wake up!

Sophia said...

Anonymous,

You weren't being impolite, and it is quite OK that you are scrambling my egg. To tell the truth, I like to have my egg scrambled; it makes me think.

I do not know if the amoeba has any sense of boundary. I think a sense of boundary comes with the mind; it is something the mind creates. I do not believe there is any boundary or boundaries, even though it might seem like there are. I'm hypothesyzing that everything is boundless. If there are no boundaries, everything is connected, everything is One. For example, there is no boundary between my skin and this computer chair. I only have basic knowledge of science, but atoms are moving around, full of energy, so what we see is the boundary of the chair, only appears to be a boundary, but really the atoms are moving around outside the boundary, we just can't see them. The atoms of my skin are moving around, and also a bit beyond my skin. Space only appears to be space, because we cannot see the connections between the atoms of our skin and the objects. Separation is only an illusion.

Sophia said...

Siguror,

I'm trying to keep up with you. :)

Anonymous said...

Was MLK the dreamer? Was God the dreamer?
They killed the dreamer but not the dream.
Just an illustration.
Well, I don't really know.
It was just a dream.

Sophia said...

Just as you and I are dreams, MLK was a dream. I'd say he was a dream that had a dream. Have you ever had a dream within a dream? I have.

Anonymous said...

I guess if you stop dreaming, you will be fast asleep. Or rather you won't be there anymore.
Or if you dream you are a butterfly, you are a butterfly. Well, if you really believe it.

Anonymous said...

Yes. I am dreaming right now. And I have a dream.

Anonymous said...

Back to the humble amoeba. I think the amoeba is a mind. Or has a mind of its own. But of course he is too humble to say anything.

Sophia said...

Ah, a little Chang Tzu. :)

What is your dream?

Anonymous said...

"Separation is only an illusion."
Yes. Maybe. But right now I am hungry and my body is aching.

Anonymous said...

I want to make money online. Seems like a good idea. ;>)

Sophia said...

Hungry? Get something to eat. At the moment I'm eating a blueberry muffin.

Body aching? Do you have fibromyalgia?

I once wanted a lot of money, but now I don't want it so much. At least, I never worked really hard to get it. I'm fairly unambitious.

Anonymous said...

That's very tempting! But I won't ask you.

Anonymous said...

Fibromyalgia? I will look that up. But I don't think so.
Maybe I'm just getting older.

Sophia said...

What about chronic fatigue syndrome?

And how old are you?

Anonymous said...

I think money is very important. Especially if you need it.
But what if I didn't need it. Then maybe I will be dreaming and playing around all the time. Sometimes or often I just want to stop working. But I guess that's life. You have to work or you will become lazy.

Sophia said...

I just missed one of your comments. It's very tempting but you won't ask me, as in it's related to your dream?

Sophia said...

I think it would be nice to live in a gift economy. Then, we could have whatever we needed whenever we needed it. Only, we'd have to do work for others whenever they needed it, too.

Anonymous said...

I'm just like an old women, I never tell my age.
But I look very young. At work I tell everyone how old I am and they are amazed everytime. Let me tell you a secret.
Back when I was a member of a religious cult, I was told I will never grow old and die. Amazingly I believed it at that time. But that's not my secret.
I do a lot of neck exercises to balance my face; my face is assymetrical. But less nowadays. You won't believe me, now I like my appearance better.
Even young teenage girls glance at me wherever I go. Just bragging. And several times young women were trying to approach me but I was too nice. ;>)
Now I tell eveyone I am going to be ...
A butterfly!
End of story. Bye, bye!

Sophia said...

Anonymous,

I am nonjudgmental when it comes to age. If you want to know the truth, most of my teenage and adult life I've had relationships with people old enough to be my parents. I just like it that way. First of all, it always gave me someone to look up to, to admire, and to enjoy and learn from their wisdom. Not only that, but (usually) older people are more mature than people my own age. But now that I'm almost 30, I'm starting to recognize that sometimes even people my own age are more mature than me. :)

Anonymous said...

By the way, be careful with the neck exercises. Don't overdo it. You might actually suffer from chronic fatigue syndrome, if you overdo it.
(And I seem to have a very strong neck.) Back to bragging:
There was this young men half my age who trained regularly with weights at a gym and he looked very fit. They asked him a few times to pull these heavy motor controllers out of their cabinet. But he couldn't budge a single one of them. So they called me to do it. And amazingly I did it with ease. My secret? I used my whole body or weight to do it. This guy had the habit of using his biceps most of the time. And he couldn't figure out how I do it. Well I did a lot of self-taught Taichi.

Anonymous said...

Well, let me tell you another secret, just to pacify your mind. My first girlfriend was a woman who could have been my mother. I didn't even know how old she was. I never asked. It never came to me.

Anonymous said...

I think we have many things in common. I know this; I seem to know a lot about you, including your secret life. But that's ok. I have more secrets than I can reveal. Like this one:
Did you know that at one time I thought I was The Messiah?
Well, now I think I am The Buddha.
Holey Baloney!!!

Sophia said...

When you said, "Bye, Bye" I thought you were gone, so I stopped checking. Sorry about that.

I'm guessing you are at least 40, maybe a little older. Don't be afraid of your age. When I was 16 I started dating men in their 50s.

Is this "self-taught TaiChi" some sort of impromptu tai chi? Do you just make up the moves as you go along? I've done that before. No rules to follow, all very flowing and smooth and natural... free.

I think the only secrets you know about me are the ones I've revealed on this blog. Or do you somehow know more?

What you have described sounds like the Jesus Complex. Have you ever heard of it? I'm not making it up; there really is such a thing.

Sophia said...

On Wikipedia, there are a few articles about the God Complex, and also the Messianic complex, but nothing about the Jesus complex. I guess the Jesus complex is the same thing as either the God or Messianic complex.

So you had a psychological illness. I don't judge those, either. I have issues myself, like severe chronic and episodic depression and social anxiety, as well as OCD.

Anonymous said...

You came very close. I'd like to say I am forty but I am older.
I did a lot of martial arts especially aikido. Taichi and internal or soft martial arts seem to be based on certain principles like using your whole body and your "center" or hara or stomach. Or weight. Or gravity. Mother earth's power. Ying instead of yang. I'm not really an expert; I just know a few things. And by soft style I think they mean controlling, grappling, wrestling, grounding and throwing techniques instead of punching and kicking. So much for that.
And I guess you got that right about free taichi. The idea is to learn to move or to move from your center or using your center. In other words being centered while moving. But it's more than that. You have to practice a lot to make it second nature. But if you do some skating, speed or figure skating, you will know what I mean.
About Messiah Complex, I have my own theories. I will not expound on these. Because they can be very controversial and intolerant. I tried to but now I think there is no point in doing it. Anyway, I don't really know. Maybe I am really The Messiah. Or maybe I am The Buddha. Just don't believe it.
I'd like to think I am a servant of The Messiah. But I don't believe in Messiahs anymore.

Anonymous said...

I am not a psychologist or a psychiatrist and I don't really know anything about the human mind or psyche or spirit. I just learned to accept a lot of things about myself. I think many people are not very kind to one another. We tend to judge and condemn individuals based on our race, culture, education, status, knowlege and experience. We tend to try to dominate one another. I'm not any better. But sometimes I wish I could change that.
Right at the present moment, people at my workplace would like to think I had lost my mind. Inspite of my self-confidence, relaxed manners, and serene countenance. People seem to want to see me break and lose my confidence. Sometimes it feels like I'm losing it. I guess this is fear. And everytime I have to remind myself not to be stupid.

Anonymous said...

To tell you the truth, my boss actually persuaded me to rest for a while, for a week or two. He even called my manager and told him I wasn't feeling and doing well. And I needed some rest.
I guess people aren't ready for me yet. ;>)
There is a lot more going on right now. So I decided to just take it easy and visit your blog as much as I can. Maybe it's just a coincidence. I'm going crazy.

Sophia said...

You're right. People sometimes don't seem to treat each other as though they are equals. On the news, I see so much of this, and it sometimes frustrates me. I know people who are bigoted, again race, gender, religion, and that frustrates me, too. The president of our country is like this, especially when it comes to religion. I do not see these people as being very educated or intelligent. Even some people in my own family are like this, and I am thankful that I am not like that.

Every time I slip into an episode of depression, I question my sanity. I even questioned my sanity when I started to become more aware of things, like synchronicity. I thought I was losing my mind. I guess we feel like this because we do not trust ourselves. We don't trust ourselves to be able to deal with and live in this reality, where greed and hatred are everywhere, in this world where the rat race is so important to everyone. Not everyone is as consumed with spirit as much as we are. (I am assuming you are, too?) I think philosophers were like this in ancient Greece. They probably could have cared less about wealth. I had an opportunity to learn how to become a millionaire. I had a mentor that was going to teach me how to become rich. I was so obsessed with spirituality that I stopped working with him. That's because what matters to me right now, and probably for the rest of my life, is spirit and finding truth.

I am not struggling financially at the moment, but soon I will be. Maybe then my attitude might change, but I doubt it.

Sophia said...

Maybe this will make you feel better:

Crazy people do not know their own craziness. They can see the insanity in others who are insane, but they cannot see their own. If you are saying you are crazy, chances are you are not, simply because it would be impossible for a crazy person to see their own craziness. You may be unique, and you may be suffering from some psychological dilemmas, but you are not crazy.

Anonymous said...

Sophia,
I needed that. It feels like it just renewed my strength.
I guess I really have nothing to worry about. Even my faults have been corrected. Well, I don't really know what to say.

I have no more jokes to tell you.

I will think of you!
:>)

Sophia said...

Hey, what are friends for? :)

I don't even know your name, but I've known you for months. You seem like a beautiful person to me.

Anonymous said...

It is not mysterious.

"You", like a night dream, is a mental concept or image which is completely made up inside your own head, and like a dream it seems to be a real.

The real you is not what you think about as you but what you might experience for a split second when you say "I am here now".

After this brief experience we generally start to have a mental picture (or dream) of ourselves being "here now" all of the time.

There may be many levels of dreams and it may be that ultimately the dreamer is God. But this is too far away to be of practical importance.

Sophia said...

Do you mean, "I am here now", as opposed to, "I feel happy", or "I feel sad"? When we think we are happy or sad, is that when we are dreaming? Hmmm... it's difficult for me to get my thoughts across. Wording these thoughts is not easy. What I mean is, we have a tendency to identify with our feelings. When we do this, are we identifying with our false dream self? Stating something like, "I am here now," is devoid of emotion. But isn't that still a thought?

What is of practical importance?

Anonymous said...

"I am here now" is just another thought, but some thoughts may help you to try to be more aware of yourself and your surroundings.

This trying is what is useful.

What is of practical importance is to know which way is up. Then we can take a small practical step in that direction.

Your thoughts are clear but eventually they must be replaced with acts. eg feeling your toes.

Sophia said...

Then it wouldn't be necessary for me to go into total sensory deprivation. (This is something I've looked into for a while, i.e. sensory deprivation tanks, or floatation tanks, wearing masks and earplugs, etc.) I was thinking that, if there's nothing to be aware of, no thoughts or feelings or even sound, taste, smell, that there might be something else for me to be aware of that isn't normally seen. What do you think of this? (I can't think of a way to get rid of touch, though!)