Roland Michel Tremblay

What are dreams? For that matter, what is sleeping? We spend at least a third of our time sleeping and perhaps also dreaming, in fact, sleeping and dreaming can almost define us more than anything else we will ever do or achieve in our lifetime, and yet so rarely we stop to wonder about their real significance, and how it could actually change the world.

Why do we need to sleep? Every single mechanical machine we have created requires fuel or energy to function, like oil, gas, hydro-electricity, nuclear energy, solar energy, etc. And yet, they could function all the time until they finally break down, and still they can be repaired on the spot and made to work for many more years. They don’t need to sleep, they certainly don’t need to dream.

Our fuel as humans is food and water (liquids). Why the need to sleep on top of it? Many of our appliances simply work on electricity, especially electronic appliances like computers and televisions. Just like us they need electricity, as we are very much electric human beings ourselves, although what we need is more chemically based electricity that we produce with whatever we eat and drink.

Our appliances, or go even further, our computers and thinking robots don’t need to sleep. Moreover, they certainly don’t dream? We may wonder if anything we invented which includes silicon based artificial intelligence or computer chips, might actually dream like we do. How would we ever know?

I sometimes think my computer is alive, or am I just going mad? After all, silicon based intelligence (computers), or carbon based intelligence (us), are so similar when we look at a Table of the Elements, we are next to each other, how could we possibly be that different then? As a humanity we are all but thinking machines.

It is not because we have not thought of inventing such machines that require sleeping and dreaming that we could not invent them. Which means that eventually, if we can see the point of creating such machines, we can create them, and we will. It would simply only require a bit of programming. But before we go on to invent computers who require sleep and will go on dreaming, we would need to assess why this would be a necessity. I cannot see why we should program our thinking machines to sleep and dream, do you? So why do we sleep and dream?

Sleeping has one more important characteristic that we cannot forget so easily, it is rejuvenating. After exerting ourselves too much through a stressful existence, it brings us back to life, because it is also that sleep cures us of many health problems. It is through a moment of absolute inactivity that our body fixes itself, regenerates itself to peak activity. We can only assume that if we were into building biological machines instead of mechanical or electronic machines, sleep would be a great idea. But what about dreams?

I have read many books about dreams, all those experts, it left me totally empty, I still have no clue about why we should be dreaming, what purpose it serves. I can see that once again I will have to find my own answers. Not only our body needs a rest in order to rejuvenate itself, or regenerate itself, our mind as well is as important. Dreaming, though certainly it is not a peaceful activity, since sometimes it can be as stressful as our daily life, seems to be highly important for balancing our mind, our thoughts.

Prevented from reaching REM sleep, when most dreams occur, it is said that we quickly go crazy and start imagining things right here in this reality. We suddenly hear voices, we see things that no one else can see. It would be hard to deny that this is not the fruit of our imagination, it most likely is imagination gone wild. And what is imagination for that matter?

Why can’t we just be practical human beings, only thinking in practical terms? Dreaming is therefore essential, we can only exist as wild thinking beings. Without dreams and imagination and wild thinking, if this was a world solely based on realities as it is described to be, we would simply go mad. Read that all over again, you will get it eventually.

Our computers, or any of our created artificial intelligence machines, don’t dream, we never thought it was necessary. They have no imagination either, they only compute and follow carefully written programs. Maybe they do dream, we just don’t know, do we? Could computers dream even though we would have failed to program them to do so? Perhaps.

This is a frightening thought, since maybe we were not meant to dream in the first place. Is dreaming an accident, as it come to be in time for some reason or another, through simple evolution? Or is it by design that we dream, through some creator of some sort, some programming? I don’t know.

It is however an important question. Perhaps less how it came to be, but for what purpose we either developed this ability to dream or that it was felt necessary that we should dream. What is the purpose of dreams? Relaxing the mind, rejuvenating our thoughts, the cogs in our mind? Somehow I think this is more than that. Dreams could in fact be more significant than we ever thought possible.

First of all, dreams can be compared to films and PC adventure games, video games. There is a significant difference between dream and our reality when awake. In dreams we don’t spend an eternity eating, going to the toilets, washing or brushing our teeth. We don’t usually get into interminable routines of doing the same thing everyday, getting up, eating breakfast, going to work, spending a lifetime making money for our survival whilst making a fortune for someone else, or simply helping our fellow citizens through services.

In dreams we quickly move from scene to scene of a film, to the important moments of some imagined existence which still has a past that we know of within the dream, and thoughts whilst it is happening, even though we are perplexed to explain such a thing once we wake up. A dream has an entirely internal logical existence all on its own, ready to evaporate once we wake up, unless we make an effort to remember the dream once we wake up. Are dreams really supposed to bring us some stability, some sanity over this pitiful and boring reality we all suffer from every day? Maybe.

Dreams are imagination, pure creativity out of our control. You take anything of any existence, anything you hear and see anywhere at anytime, and suddenly with it all, you create a whole world of fantasy, and even sometimes a whole world of science fiction, all in your own mind whilst asleep.

If we had first created highly powerful computers, but could only get them to compute little equations and no more, over and over again, they might eventually wish to explode if somehow they could not use all their computing powers to think of other things, compute a whole universe instead of a few lost and useless equations. Is our human and animal existence too simple and boring to sustain the massive underused powers of our brain?

It is well known that animals dream as well. Well, why not look at animals. Do you have pets? Have you looked at them whilst they were dreaming? I cannot remember seeing my parrot dream, but yes it is quite evident in my cats and my dog. The happy dog will bark in his sleep, God only knows what he or she may be dreaming about, chasing squirrels perhaps, or defending the household against some sort of threat, the postman perhaps. Cats? I have a cat who has constantly been bullied by our other cats. I can see that in her dreams she is escaping them, all those threats from all the bullies of the world. The nightmare of her awaken life pursues her within her dreams. She is running away from everything in real life, just like she seems to be doing in her dreams.

Maybe it is all part of the instincts of animals. They are not only born with these instincts telling them to eat, fight and mate for survival, they also constantly dream about all that, learning how to better survive any threat. Dreams may be connected to our genes, passed along all future generations or what these cells, these molecules, might have somehow learned throughout the history of all previous generations. The biological memory of the particles composing us, perhaps encoded in our DNA. I would have thought of programming that in the software of life, wouldn’t you?

I have no idea how much prevalent sexual dreams occur in animals, but I have a certain experience myself about early sexual dreams I had whilst being a kid, whilst knowing nothing about sex. I can remember astonishing sexual dreams that showed me what to do, and even more amazing, that showed me things I had never seen before, that I only came to see later on in real life. How would you explain that? This is not even paranormal, it is a fact of life, it is the biological call from nature for us to mate and reproduce ad nauseam.

At the very least certain dreams appear to be pre-programmed within our DNA or within our cells transmitted from previous generations. Or else, how could we see things we still know nothing about, especially about such an important goal as is the one of reproduction of the species, something we all naturally feel is a natural desire we have no control over. For humans it seems to take longer than for animals, to get to feel these animal instincts or urges, but it is still there, it is instinctive, especially in societies that will purposely teach ignorance over such important instincts answering only to nature.

The more complicated our existence, the more complex our readings (philosophy, hard core science fiction, esoteric religions), the more complex our dreams become. It is extraordinary sometimes what our mind will think of, what our dreams will bring. And most often it is only when suddenly awaken by an alarm of some sort, that we will get to remember one dream out of many. And so quickly it is forgotten.

And yet it can on a subconscious level drive your mood for the day, tell you all about the nightmare awaiting you for that day, as if somehow you already dreamt the nightmare ahead, you get a premonition that something bad is going to happen. This intuition you feel is rarely wrong, as if you knew your future somehow through dreams.

Are dreams precognitive? Are they constantly telling us what the future has on hold for us? Driving our intuition, our feelings of what lays ahead? I believe so. Even, I believe dreams are even helping shape our days, our existence, as perhaps they help in the creation of the reality we go through every day.

I have written a book about it, even though perhaps I have not stressed in there how crucial dreams can be to imagining and creating our own existence, and how important it is to ensure our dreams are as peaceful and happy as they can be, if one wishes for a peaceful existence. Here is the link to that self-help book, freely available:

Changing Your Future

http://www.themarginal.com/changingyourfuture.pdf

In this book I came to believe that we can influence our future through thoughts alone, shear will of changing our reality. I also found out that it is through this period between awareness or consciousness, and being awakened and falling asleep into dreams, that is the most powerful time you will ever have to influence your reality. You can then make anything you wish for happen, anything you can imagine. You can create the reality you live in.

We are not very good at this, controlling our dreams, or this nexus between the real and the dream world, and yet, I feel there lays a way to change any reality, to create any world beyond any imagination. We are only limited by what we have seen so far, what we can extrapolate from what we have seen and experienced, but I feel there is no limit, as dreams show us. As dreams show us things, it seems, we could never have possibly imagined on our own. How do you explain that?

Sometimes I so wish I could only live and exist within my mind, without the physical world. I don’t need sex, I won’t miss eating and going to the toilets, or any physical work necessary to pay for any bill. But then, wouldn’t I miss something I could never experience again?

This existence is so concrete it seems, so tactile, where you can touch things, create concrete objects, speak out loud, hear unending arguments, and prepare and taste food. Would I miss any of that, in any sort of life after death in the ethereal worlds of this universe? If such worlds exist, of course.

So what is the difference between the dream world and the real world? Is there a difference? Both worlds have their own internal logic, their past that we are aware of, their future we can actually see in our mind at that time. And yet, dreams just evaporate into the ether when we wake up, but this reality would remain as constant as clockwork? As it was the day before? That same killing routine?

I cannot think such a world should exist, and so, such a world cannot exist, as surely I create it as I go along. Don’t you think so? We have been designed, by nature or by some creator, as creating minds, constantly creating new universes both in dreams and in the real world.

How much control do you feel you have over the world you exist in? How far gone are you? Oh, I am far gone. This whole world only exists within my mind, it cannot be otherwise, just like the whole universe could only possibly exist from within your own mind. I do not believe I am ready for the asylum yet, I do think you are ready for it though, and I would even say you are willing to admit it.

This reality has just become a nightmare that no one in their right mind could possibly be willing to accept. Just go on thinking and creating a new world then! No one is stopping you! And I know you can do it, just change your whole perspective, just think positive, the whole world will change accordingly, since you do create the world you live in.

I’m not so sure anymore how real this reality is, if like dreams it is not changing on a daily basis. I am no longer certain how real this reality truly is. I have seen it changed overnight, I have had certainties that today was not like yesterday, that just like in a dream, everything had changed overnight. Maybe I am a mental case, who knows. Well then, who better than me to try and explain dreams and reality? There is no need to call Freud just yet, I still have my bearings despite it all. Unfortunately, I so wish I was already far gone by now, halfway across the galaxy that is.

I cannot help thinking dreams are key, they are significant in explaining everything about this world. As if you can think, within a dream with its own logic of a world, that this is true and acceptable, then it is no different when you come to think about this reality. It can be, it is perhaps as flimsy as any dream you will ever have. And then, we’re in trouble. Because then nothing is real in this world, it is all just like a dream. It only appears to be real, concrete, physical, when perhaps it is all still imagined and virtual, a virtual world just like whatever computer can create out of an electronic world, the very world we evolve in, as everything is all just made of electrons, and so easily manipulated, rearranged to suit any kind of overnight reality we may feel we have lived within for a millennium, whilst perhaps we’ve only been here since this morning.

How real do you really feel this reality truly is? None of this is real, I wish you could just wake up and realize this. My God, such a waste of time it is to go through this so-called life. What is the true purpose of this existence?

Don’t forget, within dreams you have memories of past events you have not witnessed or lived within that dream, it all makes sense, it is all logical. Reality is the same, yesterday you might have been very far away from here, as I believe you can change your reality just like that, and even work at it and radically change your destiny. This is what dreams teach us.

Some have extraordinary abilities in foreseeing the future, have you wondered if they are not creating the very future they wish to see? They control not only their dreams, but the reality they evolve in, to such an extent that whatever they think might happen in this world actually happens. Just like any of us can achieve, with practice.

This world is all a dream. Whatever you wish for, wish for it very hard, and believe you can influence your future, the future of humanity, it will come true. None of us are very good at it, others can achieve wonders, they control everything. Sometimes it is on a subconscious level, other times they are very aware, and yet, they don’t realize the reality they create.

At least, unlike for us, their dreams are not creating worlds randomly, they control their reality, even our reality if we are not careful. If we do not help create our own world, the very world we wish to live in, others will do it for us. So think and create the world you want for you and your loved ones, don’t let others do it for you, those people care little for you or your loved ones.

Take an active role in creating the world you wish to live in. In thoughts and in action. Make a difference! Your dreams are meant to come true, if only you can finally understand how powerful they really are in creating the world you wish to live in. This world is all but a state of mind, your state of mind, since this world only exist from your perspective. You are the only creating god of your own destiny, of all our destinies, and never should you forget it.

There is a lot that dreams can teach us, a lot about the world we live in. As any world within any dream, is no different than any reality you will wake up in tomorrow morning. It is up to you to dream the world you wish to wake up in tomorrow. It is up to you, within your mind, to decide the course of history, the destiny of humanity. Since it is obvious that this world, this reality, is all within your own mind, just like in dreams, and it has for limits only your imagination. So think it, dream it, and make it happen!

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“Without irony, this life would hardly be worth living.”

Roland Michel Tremblay

http://www.themarginal.com/destructivism.pdf