Psychology Today: Is Life a Dream?

Is Life a Dream?: This age-old philosophical puzzle is more than an idle question.

Sharon Hewitt Rawlette Ph.D.

Just as we often wake from sleep to realize that what we were experiencing in the sleep state was not nearly as coherent and “real” as what we experience when awake, could there possibly come a day when we will emerge from the dream of waking reality to experience a world that is even more coherent and vividly real, a state in which we experience levels of knowledge, memory, and other cognitive function that vastly surpass those we experience in our current lives?

In fact, a rather startling number of people report having already had experiences like this. That is, they report having had experiences that appear to them as even more real than those they have in their normal, waking state of mind. For example, “realer than real” is a description often used by those who have had near-death experiences (Moody 1975; Thonnard et al. 2013; Palmieri et al. 2014), those who have used psychedelic drugs such as DMT (Strassman 2001), and those who, by various other means, have experienced non-ordinary states of consciousness.

Many near-death experiencers also report enhanced cognitive function and a sudden increase in knowledge (Owens et al. 1990; Greyson 2003). This perception of enhanced cognitive function and increased knowledge is often dismissed as an illusion by those who are unfamiliar with the scientific literature on near-death experiences, but careful investigation has shown that concrete, verifiable information has been obtained in these states that was not available to the experiencer by way of their five senses (Rivas et al. 2016).
The experience of those who have tasted non-ordinary states of consciousness raises the possibility that the age-old question of whether “life is but a dream” is more than the idle worry of a few philosophers comfortably ensconced in their armchairs by the fire. The answer to this question could very well have major empirical consequences, including startling implications for the types of experiences that are available to the human mind. We have every reason to stay alert to this possibility as we continue to investigate the true nature of the world that we take ourselves to be living in.

If life is a dream, would psi be it’s equivalent of lucid dreaming?

If life is a dream, would psi be it’s equivalent of lucid dreaming?

Maybe. Though I'd have thought something which reflects the "conscious awareness" which characterises a lucid dream would perhaps have some sort of parallel, such as achieving some sort of enlightenment, or at any rate a different state of consciousness, that would be more like lucid dreaming.

Maybe taking part in this discussion thread?