It is what it is. What even is, is?

In a dream, we can experience an entirely new world, sometimes more than once in a single night. We know the body is responsible because we wake into a stable and continuous world where that same body can be observed while it is dreaming. In the dream, there are visual scenes, sounds, emotions, and physical sensations that feel present while they occur. Most dreams still follow the same rules as waking life, where gravity holds, objects persist, and movement behaves as expected, unless the dream intentionally shifts away from that.

This is the fascinating part, how is our body able to recreate it? Think of a gaming console, it’s entire purpose is hardware + software built specifically to create a visual and audio experience, where the user gets to play a game. However, both the gaming console and the game itself required specifically written code to allow that, and, physics had to be written into that code in order for the game to have gravity that persists, for frictions to occur, for explosions to happen, etc.

So, when we dream, our body is doing all of that, or so we think. When you’re in a dream, usually you’re in a body, and usually it’s your own. It’s standing up right, and usually on some kind of floor-like surface, or maybe even in water. Or, maybe ocean waves, or a tidal wave etc. For any of these things to be possible, gravity has to exist. So, your body is recreating gravity in each dream. These things all require intense processing to make possible in a video game. Our brain is physical and complex and seems to be what produces most of our dreams content, but so is a gaming console's hardware, except the gaming hardware heats up a lot while trying to do this as it requires immense amounts of energy in the form of electricity to create and actualise the coding requirements of it. Yet, we can do it on a whim.

So, what is “real”? What makes something “real”?

Are dreams real? Well, I’ve had many dreams, of all different kinds, some seem completely irrelevant, others have permanently altered my waking life. I’ve had basic dreams, all the way to very vivid lucid nightmares. So, to dream is real, your body is asleep, and it’s creating a subjective experience. That’s real. But, is the contents of a dream, is the subjective experience “real”?

Could one not say that if our body is able to produce entirely new worlds and experiences while in this dream state, where physical laws persist, emotions are experienced, etc. that, our waking life is no different? That, maybe our body in waking life is responsible for dream content. Then consider the concept of a dream within a dream. So you’re already in a dream, and yet, you fell asleep within the dream, while the dream body wasn’t “real” in the waking life sense, it’s essentially what “produced” the second layer of dreaming because when you wake up, you wake back up into your “dream self” only to realise you’re still dreaming. So, do bodies produce dreams? Or, is there something outside this waking life reality, producing even this stable/continuous “waking life dream”? And may actually be responsible for every layer of dreaming we experience also?

Usually, while in dreaming, we’re in a scenario where emotions are activated or are at least being experienced, we tend to take the dream seriously while in it. There’s some kind of objective we’re trying to accomplish. Sometimes, it can even just be trying to take a single step. But, the internal drive/need to take that step is real. We take it seriously. And, if we can’t take that step, we can get frustrated or confused.

This seems to occur in the waking life level also. We all take it seriously. Because, if we don’t, we cease to exist. But, in a dream, we just wake up into the previous layer, realising that all that effort and taking it seriously, was just a temporary experience. Wisdom can be acquired from dreams that can be actualised in the previous waking state.

Maybe that is all this waking life really is, an experience, that maybe we’ll remember, and maybe we may take away some kind of wisdom from it. However, this assumes something like a body is hosting this waking life experience on yet another layer that we currently don’t have access to, but, maybe we’re influencing it.

Premise 1: A body appears required to generate dream experience.

Premise 2: That body exists in a different state from the one currently experienced.

Premise 3: During a dream, awareness that it is a dream is usually absent.

Premise 4: Lucidity can occur, where awareness of the dream state becomes present.

Premise 5: The source hosting the current experience is not directly accessible from within the dream, yet can be influenced by it.

Premise 6: If the body ceases function in waking life, it no longer generates experience or dreams.

Inference: We are likely unaware that waking life is another dream. Questioning reality while awake parallels questioning a dream from within it. This may indicate recognition of another level, similar to lucidity in a dream. Reality may be treated as a meme.

Doubt about reality suggests that the standpoint from which it is judged is not final.