Of course, the term "experience" is highly subjective, if not the most subjective thing in consciousness, and it all really comes down to the way you choose to look at what is presented to you.
But there I go again on another tangent, heh.
Like all my usual blog posts, I am going to propose a theory. Just a disclaimer, I am in no way attempting to state my explanations as if they are facts, but rather as proposals (that's usually, if not always, my intention when I write these sorts of things). Like all my other proposals, I try to make use of scientific empirical evidence as often as possible (not always successfully, though), and build on already existing ideas, while adding my own input and insight.
Anyway, here's the real brain buster: Are our dreams, and our experiences within them, actual occurences, not necessarily of this particular universe?
The primary universe we live in is the one we call consciousness, where we are cognitively aware of our actions, thought processes, and our effect on the universe around us. However, when we experience dreams in our sleep, many report a sense of discontinuity and disconnection between events and experiences in dreams. Additionally, in the event which we are lucky and we begin to realize the tricks that our dreams are playing on us, we start to realize that there are certain things that just don't make sense or add up properly. You dream you're going to class, and right when you think you're about to burst through the lecture hall door, you suddenly find yourself in a completely unrelated spot. If you go along with it, then the dream has control over you. But if you are able to take a step back and realize for yourself that things aren't making complete sense, then you are a conscious dreamer (and as I wrote in a past post, that's when you really get to make things happen in your favor, if you know what I mean).
There I go again, going off in another direction. Back to the topic at hand: when we dream, and we see ourselves in situations where we act in a certain way that seems uncharacteristic of ourselves, that is our (I swear, I cannot think of another word to describe this) soul, or spirit, dare I say, going on a little vacation to another version of ourselves that exists in a parallel universe. If you want to think of it in a quantum physics/mechanics sort of way, lets say one's life structure is like a tree. We start out in one linear path up the main trunk, but after a few years, we begin to branch out in many different directions. The directions in which these branches go are like the different paths we can choose to walk based on the choices we make at any given time. Let's figuratively say that I am 19 years up the tree, going up a branch that is on the northern face of the tree. This particular branch on the northern face of the tree is the world around me that I have grown to accept as reality. However, when I dream, my spirit decides to go on a vacation on a different part of the tree, say 19 years up the tree, but on the southern face of the tree. On this branch on the southern face of the tree, my life went in a completely different direction. Maybe I'm still with someone that I broke up with a long time ago in reality, in this parallel existence. Maybe I have a different car, different friends, live in a different apartment complex, well, you get the picture. When we take a visit in this alternate reality, of course nothing makes sense to us; we're so accustomed to our sense of "reality" that when we visit this alternate reality where everything is completely different, our basic sense of the world is shown to be partially, or completely wrong. Of course, in such a situation, it's easy to get confused, but even though its a completely unfamiliar environment, things still seem to abide to certain basic laws of existence, so we decide to just go along with, not necessarily trying to make sense of anything, but just going on for the sake of living and experiencing something, even if it doesn't make any sense to us.
We all know of one time in our dreams when we jumped off of a cliff and landed unscathed. Perhaps a different path in human evolution led our bodies to have greater structural integrity to withstand that kind of impact? Bah, I can already feel my attempts at reasoning starting to fall apart, heh. That's one of the most interesting things about science: the scientific method basically implies that there will never be "absolute certainty", because all empirical evidence and conclusions have to be refutable. While a system like this promotes the development and advancement of new ideas, at the same time, it seems to ensure that we will never find truth. Or maybe not so much that we will never find truth, but that truth is such a subjective thing that it is whatever we as individuals choose to make it. Even fields like quantum mechanics carry the belief that 99.9% of the universe can be fully understood and predicted, but they still take into account that there is a 0.1% that takes an "unknown factor" into account. Why am I talking about quantum mechanics all of a sudden? I do not know, lol.
Alright quick summary: basically, I'm proposing that when we dream, we are experiencing an alternate true physical existence that is not of this particular universe, the one we refer to as our sense of cognitively conscious existence and experience. In our dreams, our spirits, or souls, make a jump into a life which consists of what we in our realities refer to as the unknown, the "what-could-have-been", a true, nonsensical experience of reality in a world where we decided to walk down the other road in that wood (to make a reference to the poetry of Robert Frost, sort of).
...And I feel that I have just now lost all my power to explain something as complicated and open as this. Feel free to analyze this however you want, for it is your right as one of my readers. After all, that's what life is all about: taking what the universe gives you, and making it your own. Sort of.
One love, me breda, seen?
-nesqu!k
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