Are You the master of Reality?

"Could you say with confidence that this is true reality and not the dream world"

Well lets not get into a debate about what true reality really is, but rather lets take it for granted that our living waking state is concrete and unchangable and what we call "Real". So usually there are 2 states in existence, one is the reality of the waking state and the other the unreality that is the dream state.

So getting back to the question, How do you know that right now you arent dreaming, that your not just asleep in your bed, dreaming about reading a post on this website?
If I asked you this question you would confidently tell me that there no way that you could be dreaming right now, and that you just know that this is reality and it cant be disputed.

Good Point.

But what if someone asked you this same question inside your dream?

Even then you would give him that exact same answer!

Ok, so now I hope I've got you doubting your state of reality, but however much I try and convince you Im pretty sure that your not gonna believe that this is a dream.We Humans have some sort of gut feel encoded into our minds that convince us that this is true reality, and this, I believe keeps us alive, prevents us from going insane and creates order in the world.

So what happens if this switch that keeps you believing in reality is switched off, what then?

Do you go insane?

Do you gain Englightenment?

Have insane people actually gained enlightenment?

Let me tell you about an experience I had which seemed to override the reality switch and leave me in doubt.

I got up one morning and meditated to try for a lucid dream.I went off to sleep and woke up with the vibes.I went through them and then my dream body dropped through my bunk bed onto the floor and I was fully consious and inside the dream state. This wasnt an out of body experience because there were some inconsistancies with the arrangement of my room.

Now before I went to sleep, I told myslef that today If I had a lucid dream, I wanted to jump out of my six floor apartment to see how it felt. So once I got lucid I immediately went to my balcony to take my death defying jump.

This dream was one of the clearest dreams I've had and I was completely lucid and enjoying the experience of being inside my head. I stood on the balcony and took in the sights that my brain was simulating.Closing my dream eyes I breathed in the cool morning air, feeling the thinness and temperature of it, listening to the sound of birds chirping, feeling the coldness of the tiled floor under the soles of my feet.

I took my hands and placed them on the iron grill of my balcony, everything was right about it! Right from the temperature of the steel, the texture of metal, the frictional force while sliding my hands on it. I was simply blow away by my minds ability to simulate even the smallest details to perfection. Every bit of reality was exactly rendered to provide me with this 3 dimensional experience.

WOW! I LOVE MY BRAIN!

Now when I thought this I opened my dream eyes and looked around, Hmm... Everything was pretty real, the plants looked real, the world looked real, the rest of the world in front of me seemed concrete and stable.Why wasnt this reality then? Was I really in my dream, like I thought I was? Or did I just wake up and climb out of my bed in a groggy state and land up in the balcony?

This might seem like a trivial thought, but considereing that I was planning to jump off the balcony in the next couple of minutes, this debate was a matter of life and death for me. I paced around the balcony nervously debating my state of reality.

If I decided to jump, I would probaly be the dumbest human alive and someone who killed himself thinking that it was a dream. But then jumping seemed to be the only way to test whether it was a dream or not, but I couldnt take the risk. So I decided to spend some more time thinking about it.

"I had never in my experience of true reality ever doubted whether it was real", I thought to myself. But now since I have a seed of doubt about reality, maybe it was a dream and that the dream brain was not as confident about the state of reality as my real world brain was. So if im ever in a situation where I doubt reality, then it has to be the dream world, was the conclusion that I came too.

This thought calmed me down a bit, but I was still a little doubtful.So I took this doubt as further proof that I was thinking with my dream brain.I shakily grabbed the railing of the balcony and climbed over, leaning forward and looking down at the ground far below.

"6 floors down .6 feet under..
Nope Im not gonna die..
this has to be a dream! "

And I jumped.

I was falling fast, feeling the air rushing by and it felt great!, but It was the landing that I was worried about. When I slammed into the ground, suprisingly i felt pain. But it was more of a dull sort of pain, like a slap in the face or a punch in the arm. The ground then went inwards like a canvas sheet and I sunk into it like an acrobat at a cirus. It then stretched back to normal and I got up feeling exhilirated ,like an astronaut who just went throught the a dangerous descent and landed sucessfully on Mars.

Thank God for the Reality Switch!

I ran around doing fun stuff for a bit and then later the world faded to black and I woke up in my bed.

I made it Back to reality and I was pretty relieved and happy that I had made the right decision to trust my judgement.

But let me give you a little disclaimer in case you want to take these rules and make it your own. The statement that "You can never doubt reality in real life,and if you do doubt then its probably is a dream" is applicable to you only if your in a completely drug / alcohol / Intoxicant free state.

Dont go and smoke a couple of joints and then decide that the world is pretty freaky or might be a dream and end up jumping in front of a herd of elephants! (Drug use is in a wildlife sanctuary is probably a really bad idea for just this reason!)
So dont do something that might reset your reality swithch and make you do something crazy that your going to regret later, if you live through it that is, instead try wild stuff out from the saftey of your home, the comfort of your bed, and the security of the inside of your head.

Btw my next crazy lucid dream wish is to be eaten by a T-Rex!
So wish me LUCK on this next adventure!