Reality or just a dream?

I don’t…and I don’t care, because in any case the dream would comprise my entire world, and there would be no reason to act differently.

There is no such thing as “reality”, it really is all a dream.
you must have taken the blue pill

I gotta go with Jayne on this one. I have no idea, but I’m not convinced that it matters.

I’m with Jayne, too. Just go on the assumption that it is reality.

Again with Jayne- It is what it is.

But then again this morning I was wondering if we were all part of a huge “Sims” game.
yeah- I know I need to keep the turpentine lid on tighter

WATCH WAKING LIFE. Then you’ll understand.

I know everything in my world is real because Morpheus told me it is. Of course, this is after he and Trinity pulled me out of my cocoon.

Dreams can feel, smell and even taste real. It stands to reason that all our senses are driven by interpretation by the brain and thus all can be illusion. But regardless of what is real or illusion or perhaps delusion we are still not in control.

Of course then again I did not choose to take the blue pill…. yet.

@TitsMcGhee: Waking Life is awesome.

@petethepothead: I existentially orgasmed the first time I saw it… and the second… and the third… and…

so what your telling me is waking life would make a good movie to watch with a date.

Depends strongly on who your date is.

Yes, Waking Life.

“Row, row, row your boat…....”

What is the definition of reality? Most people act as if it has something to do with a fundamental underlying permanence that is there whether or not humans are around.

Another definition, and one that I prefer, is that reality is that which we have evidence for. If we test something over and over, and it behaves the same way each time, we call it reality. If we have other ways of testing things beyond what we can directly perceive, and they behave the same way, over and over, we call that reality, too.

We call dreaming reality, since we have correlated certain kinds of brainwaves to what people say is dreaming. However we do not think that all of our thoughts (including dreams) are reality, since we often think of things for which there is no evidence.

If there is a thing for which there is no evidence, but you can get a sufficient number of people to say it exists, a lot of people are willing to call that reality, despite the lack of reproducible evidence. Personally, I don’t include such ideas in my understanding of reality.

We could call things for which there is reproducible evidence any other word we want. We don’t have to call it reality. We could call it a dream, but the underlying definition remains the same, no matter what we call it. Reality and dream are just words. Reproducible evidence is the best way of understanding, and, more importantly, predicting the future behavior of our environment.

The question, grasshoppa, is not, “Is this reality?”.
The question is, “Which level of reality is this?”.

Here’s an easy way to tell. Take a staplegun and shoot a few staples into the back of your hand. If it doesn’t hurt, its a dream. If it hurts, its real. Because in dreams, I have had horrible accidents happen, and felt no pain. In real life, not so much.

I’ve thought about that long and hard, ever since I was about 12.

There is no real way to tell, how do you prove you even exist? The proof we could use is still part of the reality we live in. When you’re dreaming everything in that world is real, from who you are to what the world is about. As for why you don’t feel things when you dream its because you are the creator. You might feel it but you’re immune to your own mind so to speak. So are we the people in the dream to some overly imaginative being? who knows, just live like you think it should be as if it was and wasn’t.

@evelyyn’s pet zebra
But there are masters who have overcome their pain response and so that brings into question our ideas about reality or a state of consciousness that identifies with a particular field of awareness. Monks have meditated basically naked in snow overnight and raised their core temperature and melted snow. There are Shao Lin who can pound nails with their hands. There were three Vietnamese monks who lit themselves on fire in protest of the War. They were in perfect equanimity and had transcended any attachment to a physical being or sense of self and pain. On a simpler level, there are adepts who can split piles of bricks and the like which to the untrained would break bones. The lucid state that we attribute to the asleep may offer more elasticity and reason than reality not being subject to limitation.

A good friend of mine used to say that reality is a mutually-agreed-upon mass hallucination.