The Dreamlike Nature of Reality and Consciousness

Reality is a dream, indistinguishable from nighttime dreams, challenging conventional materialist beliefs.

### The Dream of Reality: Understanding Existence as a Consciousness Phenomenon
* 💭 The ontological status of reality is akin to that of a dream, suggesting that both are composed of the same **"dream stuff."**
* 🧠 People often dismiss dreams as mere brain activity due to a materialist paradigm, failing to recognize that their waking life is also a **dream**.
* 🌌 Reality should not be viewed as a mechanical system but rather as a "**dream machine**" where consciousness manifests all experiences, making it appropriate to refer to life as a **dream**.
* 🌀 The distinction between sleeping dreams and waking life is a misconception; both exist within the **same continuum of consciousness**, and the brain itself is part of this **dream**.
* 📚 René Descartes raised skepticism about distinguishing **dreams from reality**, but his foundationalist approach ultimately **undermined the serious implications of his doubts**.
* 🔍 Dreams should be taken seriously as they reveal **existential truths about waking life**, and recognizing this can lead to questioning the **materialist paradigm** that dismisses their significance.
* 🌈 The internal logic and emotional weight of dreams mirror those of waking life, illustrating that **all experiences are interconnected** within the dream narrative.
* ✨ Awakening from this dream requires a **shift in consciousness**, achievable through practices like **meditation and self-inquiry**, ultimately revealing that the essence of reality is a **continuous dream**.

[Music] The ontological status of reality is identical to that of a dream. So think about the dream that you had last night and ask yourself what was the substance of that dream? Where did that dream go? What was it made out of? Whatever that

dream was made out of is exactly what this thing that you call reality right now, this very moment, is made out of. It's made out of the exact same stuff, dreams stuff. But people can't appreciate this because they've got the materialist paradigm running in the back of their

mind, this conceptual matrix which tells them that, oh well, those are just dreams, last night's dreams when I was sleeping, those are just mere dreams, activity in the brain, neurons firing away, weird stuff going on while my body is resting. That's not how it works at all. That's

completely backwards. There is no such thing as the brain. The brain is a dream right now. It's happening here. Where have you ever seen a brain here in this dream world? What is the world? Where have you ever encountered a world but in this dream? What is the world other than the

dream of you right now? That's what you call the world. The dreams that happen to you when you are sleeping at night, those are not couched within a physical brain or a physical world the way that you think. They're not occurring in a physical body. This is a deep confusion

that people have because they're operating under the materialist paradigm which completely dismisses dreams and it draws some kind of firm distinction between the sleeping dream world and the waking dream world. There is no such distinction. It's all one dream. That's what reality is about. That's what

Your life is a dream. Your whole life, from the moment you were born to right now, to when you're going to die, it's just one dream. But of course, you don't think of it that way, precisely because you've defined it

against, you've defined reality against the dreams that you have when you're sleeping. But this is a mistake. Stop thinking of reality as a mechanical, physical system. That's not how it is. What reality is, is a dream machine. It's just dreams, it's just consciousness. That's why it's

appropriate to call it a dream. And to call reality a dream is the most accurate metaphor that I have encountered so far. It's actually one of the simplest, also. If you want to talk to people about spirituality or non-duality or about enlightenment, you can give them

all sorts of fancy theories and all this, but the simplest way is just to say it's a dream. Your whole life is a dream, and you can awaken from this dream in exactly the same way as you can awaken from last night's dream. There's nothing

physical about this thing. All this stuff, this is not physical. This is a dream. It's happening in a dream machine. This dream machine, which can otherwise be called God, can dream up whatever it wants. It's an infinite dream. Right now, right this very moment, as God is

dreaming your life, it's also dreaming that it's being Napoleon. It's dreaming that it's being Julius Caesar right now. It's dreaming that it's a monkey in some rainforest right now. It's dreaming that it's all the ants on this planet, trillions of them, each

One individual is a dream unto itself. It's dreaming that it's a tree. Every single tree on this planet and every single tree that exists across the entire universe, it's dreaming that it's an alien on some other planet far, far away. Not only that, but it's dreaming that it's being some

other kind of being that you can't even imagine or conceive of in some alternative universe, some alternative dimension which bears no resemblance to our own. Doesn't have three dimensions, doesn't have time, doesn't have space, doesn't have energy or matter or anything like that. And whatever it's got

there, it's got there. Whoever lives there lives there, and whoever's conscious there is this very same thing. It's dreams. That's what reality is. It's not a net of molecules, it's consciousness. Not only is it dreams, it's every possible dream that could be

dreamed, happening all simultaneously. That's what infinity means. Right now, what's happening right this moment is a dream. Can you see it? I'm talking to you from within your dream. Hello in there. Hello. Wake up. Become conscious right now that you're in the dream. This is it. This is the

dream. Yes, it feels very real. That's because you're so absorbed with living that you've forgotten that you're inside of a dream, just in the exact same way as happens at night. You're so engrossed in whatever is happening in your nighttime

dreams that you forget until what? Until you wake up. Until the dream comes to an end. And what happens is that you break out of one dream to enter the next level or the next order of dream. Likewise, it's very difficult for you to see that

You're in a dream right now, the waking dream, because you've never broken out of this dream yet to realize, "Oh, this was just all a dream. It was just a figment of consciousness." Because you feel that your fears are very real, you feel like within

this waking dream, there's actually something real to be lost and something real to be gained. So you're very busy running around doing stuff, living, but not seeing that all that activity is couched inside of the dream. And the only reason it has any kind of meaning is

because it's relative to and within the domain of the dream. Outside of the dream, it has no meaning. It has no existence. It has no reality. It has no purpose, and it has no importance whatsoever. Your life has no importance, no more importance than last night's dream

really had. It's an interesting experience for its own sake, but beyond that, what is there? What was the substance of last night's dream? It's it's gone. It's nothing. It was just a figment of the mind. Now you might wonder, but where does this mind take place?

Doesn't it need to take place in a brain? No, it doesn't. See, the problem is is that your conventional understanding of dream only makes sense in the materialist paradigm because you have defined dreaming as something that occurs within brains. That's the key mistake. Well, you

need to do is separate that out such that you acknowledge that yes, you dream at night, but then you dream during the day too. And that in fact the brain is part of this dream right here during the day. The nighttime dreams don't occur within the daytime dreams. These are two

separate dreams, one is running, the other one is off now. This one's running, that one is off, and then at some point even this one will come off, all of them will come off. All sorts of dreams are possible. Materialism itself is occurring within the waking dream. I've

talked about René Descartes before and how he was a pivotal figure for Western philosophy, and a lot of modern philosophy is based upon Descartes' work, and specifically Descartes' skepticism. And his skepticism was quite powerful, although not powerful enough, as I've

mentioned before, and one of his doubts was the evil demon doubt. I've talked about that before, but here I want to talk about a second doubt that he had, because he was interested in establishing a firm foundation for all of Western intellectual tradition, including mathematics, science, and also

his Christian morality and his Christian worldview. So he needed to base that on certain facts and certain knowledge about the world, but the way he decided to do that first, just wipe the slate clean with a bunch of skepticism, just radical skepticism. And one of the

things he was skeptical about is, how do we distinguish dreaming from reality? How do we know that we're not dreaming right now? And although he put that skeptical idea out there in his work, *The Meditations*, it was never really taken seriously, even by himself in the end, because Descartes was

a foundationalist, and he really wanted to ground human knowledge into some absolute standard that was enumerable. He had to do away with the very skeptical considerations that he brought forth in the very beginning, and the most unsatisfying part of Descartes' work is

that he just hand-waved away a lot of these very otherwise serious and important doubts. So in the end, in his work, basically what he said is he said, well, we can just basically intuit or feel the difference between being in a dream and being in reality. Dreams are

kind of murky and they're kind of hazy and dark, whereas reality is bright and crisp and very solid. So you clearly know that when you're in reality, here in this waking dream, that you're not actually in the sleeping dream. But here was the

it's a great mistake because in fact you actually cannot intuit such a thing. How could you? Your intuition is based upon your experience within a certain framework, within a certain environment. Without having had experience in that environment, you have no possible intuitions. And when we're talking about

intuitions that are related to only one environment, like in one dream, you have no contrasting environment, no other serious alternative which you can use as a foil to feel this difference. Which is precisely why it's so remarkable that when you're asleep at night and you're having some crazy-ass dream and

all sorts of outlandish things are happening in this dream, and then you wake up and then you're like, whoa, how could I have not known that was a dream? I mean, I was like flying around and there were like space kangaroos and

they're like all sorts of weird stuff was happening and like I was in this room one moment, then the next moment I'm some other place. Like all this crazy outlandish stuff. I should have been able to know that was a dream, and yet I was

completely bought into it Why is that? Precisely because the only way the human mind can distinguish these things is if it experiences first one and then the other If it's only stuck in one, that one literally defines what reality is Do you see? You see what the

problem of reality is? It's not that there is some one thing which is the reality It's basically just whatever you take it to be, that's what it becomes due to lack of alternatives Dreams are actually very valuable I'm talking about nighttime dreams and I

think that actually you should start taking your nighttime dreams much more seriously rather than just dismissing them as ah, mere dreams, mere silly nonsense, crazy stuff going on, mere fantasies Start to take them more seriously because they will reveal important existential truths about this

waking dream that you're in You're gonna see glitches in the matrix once you start to pay attention to your nighttime dreams because then you're also gonna carry them forward here and you're gonna start to question this waking reality more than you used to You're not gonna

take it for granted the way that the materialist paradigm does See the materialist paradigm has a vested interest in dismissing the importance of dreams because the materialist paradigm wants to define materialism as this stuff here, the physical world here, and it needs to have no alternatives to that

So what it says, it says, well this here is reality, this is where physics applies, this is where we do science, this is where all the serious important work gets done, and then in dreams, those are fantasies and silly things, and, and those are actually happening within the real

reality you see the trick that's being played here one dream is being couched within the other for good reason because that's how grounding is done grounding is always done through a sort of sleight of hand because in fact there is no ground where are these dreams occurring

you might ask nowhere they're not happening within any mechanical system as you might assume now you might say well that's impossible that seems crazy but then again why would you assume reality is mechanical how is mechanical possible how is physical possible it's

just as absurd the only reason that you think that dreams have to be inside of some mechanical system like inside of a computer simulation or something or inside of a matrix or inside of a brain-in-a-vat or the human brain for that matter is because you're just a

custom to thinking of reality as being mechanical that's just something you assumed from the very beginning you never really questioned it because it sort of seemed obvious to you because your culture just told you so and because you just believed it because in this dream that we're in right now this

waking dream we have mechanical objects and it seems that we can learn about mechanics and we can use them mechanically but then again the same thing happens within your nighttime dreams your nighttime dreams are very mechanical on the inside there's a lot

of rules and and limitations within those dreams you can't literally do everything you want so it's really just a matter of convention it's a matter of what are you comfortable with see a lot of people are comfortable with thinking of reality as a physical system but

they're very uncomfortable with thinking of reality as a dream machine without the machine part because they want the machine like where's the machine everything's a machine we're used to thinking of reality and all our little gadgets and stuff is machines the clockwork universe has talked about by

Newton this is just a story there's no such thing as a clockwork universe there's a dream universe and the clockwork universe is just one of the types of dreams that there could be here are some things to notice about your dreams firstly notice that they feel very very

real when they are happening just like real life it feels very real but only when it's happening now the trick here is of course that you have an exited real life yet and you don't believe that even such a thing is possible for many people

that's completely outside their paradigm but it is possible to exit what you call real life and to discover that actually it's also just a dream so this feeling of it feels real doesn't cut it you can't use that to distinguish between dreams because all dreams feel

real when you're inside of them the only time you could say something is unreal is after you've exited it so be very careful about relying on your intuitions here to make this distinction the way that Descartes did because if you do you're going to delude yourself

secondly notice about your dreams that they have their own internal self-consistent logic and this is a thing that a lot of scientifically minded rashly minded materialist type people get confused about very easily because the key argument they make against what I'm saying is a Leo there's no way that

This right here could be a dream, look how real it is, look how consistent and logical it is. Look, I can do some math equations and I can figure out that if I throw up this rock, it's gonna take 2.5 seconds to fall back down in my hand.

And look, we can, we can build this rocket ship and launch it to the moon and that proves it's not a dream, but of course, this is the most absurd circular logic that you've ever heard because if you just apply that same standard to

your dreams when you're sleeping, you'll see that they meet all of that criteria as well. They're completely self-consistent, but using a different rule set. So for example, you might be dreaming while you're sleeping and there may be a bear attacking you and you're a hunter.

So you pick up a rifle and you shoot the bear between the eyes to defend yourself and your heart is pounding because the bear's just about to pounce on you, like ah, it's pouncing on you, it's gonna tear you to pieces, but you shoot it right

between the eyes and you defend your family. Okay, then you feel a sense of victory. So what happened in this dream? How is it that you were afraid of this bear? It's a dream after all, why be afraid of a bear if it's just a dream?

bear, and yet you're afraid and how is it possible that a dream gun, you can pick up a dream gun, shoot a dream bullet into between the eyes of a bear who's also a dream bear and kill the dream bear? Why not? Why isn't it not the case that the

bullet just like because it's a dream bullet why doesn't a bullet just like fly through the bear and not kill it because your dream has its own internal self-consistent logic to it and now you might say, "Oh Leo, but I've had dreams that were kind of crazy and wacky where

weird stuff was happening and it was it didn't obey the laws of physics the way you're suggesting with this bear and that's correct because see dreams can have different rule sets they can have different self-consistent logics that's the whole point of a dream is that what

defines the dream is the rule set and there are different possible rule sets don't assume that for something to be a dream it has to have some crazy rule sets like where bears have wings and they fly around and there are unicorns and they're elves and there are weird

stuff like that going on I mean of course you could have dreams like that but even in those dreams notice it's not completely random there's still a logic to it even in those dreams where you're like you're able to fly or maybe you're dreaming that the bear grows wings and

it flies after you and chases your family that could happen and maybe you get your family into an airplane you're now you're flying away from this bear and the bear is chasing you and it's flying after you and it's it's it's

biting at your airplane's tail yeah that could happen I might seem like, "Well, Leo, that's not reality that's just made-up fantasy." Yes, but there's still rules you see because when the bear is biting at the tail of your airplane, well the rule

are the rules of that scenario are that still it can bite through your airplane it can knock down your airplane if it knocks down your airplane if it ruins your propeller or something then the airplane is gonna crash to the ground so in your dream there you've got gravity

or you're assuming that kind of sense of gravity now maybe the gravity is different than it is on earth but still you've got something like that going on or maybe you're dreaming that you're in a in a in a earth environment that has no gravity well then those are the rules

of the dream you see and still you still assume that you can kill the bear with the bear's gonna kill you there's a reason you're running away from the bear in the first place there is a reason why you're protecting your family after all why protect a

dream family from a dream bear in a dream airplane on a dream earth because it's all defined in terms of itself you see it's like a story a self-consistent story in the same way when you're watching a movie you might wonder well

but why are the characters taking this scenario so seriously because like don't they know that they're inside of a movie so why should they fight so hard with the bad guy when he knows that it is just a movie but I mean that's to confuse two totally

different levels of reality see of course the characters in the movie are pretending like it's real because that's that's the level of reality that they're at here's another example if you ever had a dream where you lose your pants maybe you're standing up in front of

class and you're giving a speech or something like that and then you your pants fall down and then well you're rather embarrassed why are you embarrassed after all just a dream so what harm could come from your pants falling down you could just walk around

with your pants down ah see but you can't because in a dream you care you care about your self-image you care about your reputation in the dream just like you do in this waking dream you might wonder why do you care about walking around with your *underwear* hanging

out in the middle of the sidewalk or the crosswalk why is that a problem why would that embarrass you in real life now you might say well Leo that's because man you know real life is the cops will come they'll arrest me they'll

give me a ticket for public exposure and indecency they'll throw me in jail and that will ruin my reputation and some will take a video of and post it on YouTube that'll embarrass me and that'll ruin my chances to to get a job and then

I won't make good money I won't be able to provide for my family in yada yada yada you got this whole story built up why it embarrasses you right yeah exactly the same as in one of your dreams when you're asleep

it's a self-consistent story defined to guess itself all the punishments and threats are always within the dream and ultimately you've the biggest threat to you in this waking dream is of it ending which is what you call death which you work very hard to avoid you see how this

works you see how tricky this is don't underestimate these mechanisms This here is how reality gets created We're not talking about fantasy here we're talking about how reality gets created Here's another example of self-consistent logic inside of a dream Maybe you're in a

haunted house and you're being chased by a ghost or something and you're you're running away you're running away and you're trying to get out the front door but the front door is locked and it's jammed and you're you're turning the handle and

you're you're finagling it and it's just locked and you can't get out So what is that I mean you would think that well if it's a dream couldn't you just like fly through the door because the door is not solid I mean what is a door really made

out of inside of a dream It's just an idea so it's not solid See you would think you could just like vaporize the door with your mind and walk through but of course that's not how dreams work They have limitations There's a rule set

at work and so in that particular dream the rule set might be that you got to find a key to unlock the door or maybe the rule set is is that you've got super powerful fists so you can actually punch through the door but then you still got

to remember to use your fists and that still takes time so maybe the ghost will catch up to you while you're punching through that door with your Hulk-like fists or whatever other superpower you have Just because you can imagine having a superpower in a dream doesn't mean

really anything that doesn't mean it's unreal that's just that rule set how about inside of a dream if you take a knife and you cut open your stomach what will you see in there is it gonna be just empty maybe depending on the rules of that dream or

more likely is that you'll actually imagine that you cut open your stomach and your guts spill out and it's painful and you're suffering and blood is squirting everywhere just like in real life and in a dream you might take a saw and cut open your skull and you might

feel around you might take a mirror and look inside and you could you could see the brain in the dream but does that mean if you see that brain in your skull inside your dream does that mean that that brain is creating the dream no of course not you see this is to confuse

the contents of the dream for the dream itself and this is precisely the same thing that materialists do with this waking dream so when I say something radical like the brain doesn't exist many people say oh my god Leo that's crazy that's ridiculous what have you

been smoking no just think through the logic of it it's very very simple this here is your dream you cut open your skull yes of course there's some pink squishy substance inside you can feel it you can screw around with it but does

that mean that it is causing this whole thing no of course not now here's where materialists get really tricky and say oh but if I take if I take some instrument I poke around in there or some neuroscientist pokes around in there then all sorts of

hallucinate weird stuff my perceptual systems will all change and stuff will get very weird my memories will fade or new memories will come into being and that proves that this brain is causing it all no it doesn't doesn't prove that at all think about it this way if you were

sleeping and you were dreaming in fact you could try to do this too tonight make this a little experiment for you see if you can do it when you're dreaming cut open your own skull and poke around inside take an ice pick and poke around

inside your brain and then notice how that will actually change what you're experiencing but of course does that mean that that that brain that you're imagining and dreaming in your dream that it is what's causing the whole dream of course not

see this is where you have to be able to really think outside the box think outside of your own paradigm otherwise you get stuck in it and you keep insisting - no no no Leo it's got to be inside there has to be a brain because a

dream is only a thing that can occur in a brain no that's something you've just assumed up to now I'm asking you now to really think it through think through the circularity of that put it to empirical investigation also notice about your dreams that physics logic

causality and time and space all of these are distorted depending on what kind of dream you're dreaming so a lot of times scientifically minded people rationally minded people we like to say all Leo but the most certain things we know about reality are physics and logic

and causality and time and space, all the hard scientific stuff. Oh yeah, but does that stuff apply to your dreams? No, Leo, it doesn't apply to my dreams. But that's just because it's her fantasies. I'm talking about reality. You know what you're talking about is the ruleset of this particular

dream. So of course in this particular dream that we call the physical universe, there is a certain kind of physics, a certain kind of gravity, a certain kind of logic, and this kind of stuff. And it's pretty consistent, pretty stable. That's what defines our dream is how consistent

and stable it is. You can't just imagine gravity to reverse itself and then it cups start flying up and your cat flies up and your dog flies up. Doesn't work like that in your dreaming, sleeping dream. You might be able to do that, but see science is very tricky

because science loves to claim that it makes universal discoveries, universal laws that apply everywhere in the universe. Now they don't. They only apply within the dream, which is easily proven to yourself by going to sleep at night and noticing that the physics, the logic, the causality, the time and the science

Life Is A Dream

Actualized.org

Reality as a Dream: The Ontological Status of Reality

Reality's ontological status is compared to that of a dream.

The materialist paradigm hinders the understanding of this concept.

The brain and the world are considered constructs within this dream.

The distinction between sleeping and waking dream worlds is challenged.

Life is presented as a singular, continuous dream.

Reality as a Dream Machine and the Nature of Consciousness

Reality is described as a dream machine, driven by consciousness.

The simplicity of the 'dream' metaphor for spirituality and enlightenment is highlighted.

God is conceptualized as the dream machine capable of infinite dreams.

Reality is defined as every possible dream occurring simultaneously.

Awakening from the Dream: Overcoming Materialist Beliefs

The feeling of reality is attributed to absorption in the dream.

The fear of loss and the pursuit of gain within the dream are discussed.

The misconception of dreams occurring solely within the brain is addressed.

Daytime and nighttime dreams are presented as separate but interconnected.

The materialist paradigm's vested interest in dismissing dreams is analyzed.

Characteristics of Dreams and the Limitations of Materialism

Dreams feel real while happening, but this feeling is not a reliable differentiator.

The self-consistent logic within dreams is highlighted, challenging the materialist argument.

Dreams can have different rule sets and internal logics.

The speaker challenges the belief that the brain causes the dream.

The limitations of science in understanding reality as a dream are explained.

The Significance of Awakening and Transcending the Dream

The similarities between sleeping and waking dreams are emphasized.

Dreams are presented as the only reality.

The limitations of science in understanding the nature of reality are discussed.

The convincing nature of the waking dream is highlighted.

The possibility of awakening from the waking dream is emphasized.