Vita Somnium Breve: Is life but a dream?

Abstract

In view of my finding that dreams are the precursors of waking life, its blueprint in fact, dreaming and waking must be seen as an interdependent unit.  Both are equivalent occurrences with the dream being the primary aspect. This interdependent relationship can best be compared with Einstein’s famous formula of E=mc² where E stands for the dream and mc² for waking life.

            For mystics, both states are solipsistic projections. The world is not an objective reality. To argue that it is a permanent and shared experience is

based on a double premise. We can’t have the sleeper’s point of view and that of the waking individual at one and the same time. In other words, just as dreams come and go, the waking world disappears as we go to sleep and resurfaces as we wake.

Clearly, the world, like our dreams is a cerebral projection. Karl Pribram agrees when he sees the brain as a holographic machine that projects the universe as we wake, in the same way as a holographic plate projects its images in 3D outwards when a laser light strikes it. He states: “The rules of quantum mechanics apply all the way through to our psychological processes, to what’s going on in the nervous system – then we have an explanation perhaps, certainly we have a parallel to the kind of experiences that people have called spiritual experiences”.

The precursor of the holographic plate ‘containing the world’ may be found in a poem by the mystic Shabistari who writes: “Know that the world is a mirror from head to foot, in every atom are a hundred blazing suns”… And as in quantum mechanics, this projection is characterised by ‘omnipresence’ much as it is described in Hindu mysticism: “In the Heaven of Indra, there is said to be a network of pearls so arranged that if you look at one, you see all others reflected in it. In the same way, each object in the world is not merely itself, but involves every other object, and in fact, is every other object”.

All this is only possible because we are ‘suspended’ in an all-pervasive medium: CONSCIOUSNESS. Indeed consciousness is the sine qua non of existence. It is therefore the prime factor in any theory of existence. It is in fact that which lends reality to all there is.

This is in perfect agreement with quantum mechanics, which states that ‘energy’, typified by an interactive dualism, only ‘coalesces’ to matter as we focus on it. In short, the world cannot exist as such, but only unfolds in a living medium, the mind - in consciousness. In turn, the necessity of a living matrix for the ‘creation’ of the universe underpins the argument that the world only exists while we are awake. It also demonstrates how right Chuang Tzu was when he said: “I and the universe are one”, and such oneness is not just a theoretical unit, but a living whole.

In a theory where the world is an objective reality, consciousness emerges from complex computations among neurons. (Hameroff) But the medically induced NDE of Pam Reynolds that was observed by twenty staff assigned to Dr. Spetzler’s operation on Pam and is recorded in detail, demonstrates in incontrovertible terms that consciousness exists outside the brain, and is in fact the fundament of existence.

It also demonstrates that consciousness is non-intermittent and hence the only entity that can claim reality status. In fact as E, the creative energy that in quantum mechanics is typified by an interactive dualism, where photons and particles are an ‘hermaphroditic emulsion’ of potentialities, where unitive E is better described as ‘not two’ than as ‘one’, we understand at once that mc², the material expression of E, is never pure matter, but also energy, and ultimately a form of consciousness. 

Such toppling of our antiquated western perceptions is rocking the foundations of our science. Clearly, a massive paradigm shift is under foot. East and West are moving closer together, paving the way for a new worldview and a new kind of spirituality.

In that climate the dream and its function as a messenger will gradually be saved from confusion and underestimation. Indeed, like Hermes, it will eventually be recognised as the messenger of life’s most fundamental information. Instead of being dismissed as Prospero’s vacuous wisps of smoke, it will be recognised, once again, as the DNA of life on earth.