Body, Mind, Spirit & Time
Part Three: The Stuff of Dreams
“Trust in dreams, for in them is the hidden gate to eternity.” Khalil Gibran
“Are you sure/That we are awake? It seems to me/That yet we sleep, we dream.”
William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream
“We are such stuff/As dreams are made on; and our little life/Is rounded with a sleep.”
William Shakespeare, The Tempest
THERE is often the ‘new’ analogy of the brain being like a TV – picking up signals and turning them into sight and sound – or ‘reality’. The brain not creating consciousness but rather making consciousness manifest. So, the argument goes, when we die the TV might get turned off but the signal is still being beamed…with the idea of what we are and have been remaining intact. But initial thought: when you turn off the TV its ‘reality’ DOES disappear and this is the only reality by which we know and love ‘the box’. Those signals of Coronation Street or whatever is currently popular (I DON’T watch British TV!) – might still be floating through the ether – but…well…as far as we’re concerned they might as well be non-existent. Is ‘reality’ for us only viewed on a screen (our manifest consciousness)?
There are tiny tubes in the brain – microtubules of the brain cell – where quantum consciousness might exist (see the ORCH-OR model)…and might escape at death but are there other little brain tubes somewhere else they can migrate to? Does consciousness dissipate into the GREAT WIDE UNIVERSE – O it sounds so poetic but that’s surely not much solace to I, ME, YOU. We only seem to come alive when the TV is turned on. And interestingly – the TV takes time to ‘tune in’ too…in the old days it was called ‘warming up’…or in human terms, learning to understand, speak and develop language and thought.
What if we had a whole bank of TVs – like those in electrical appliance shops? Only not just say twenty or thirty screens all playing the same soap but an infinite number and each with a unique picture! The idea being that when we die (blank screen) we ‘migrate’ to another television. Not so much jumping ships as switching screens…but in this parallel universe there is also another ‘us’ too – isn’t there? Do we jump just as another TV is turned on…do we inhabit the same consciousness (in some form)…as a looker-in (Anthony Peake’s idea of The Daemon perhaps)? Do we jump in at a moment that the TV ‘loses its signal’ and we take the place of another ‘us’ – an ‘us’ that, presumably, will in an ‘infinity of opportunity’ also jump into another TV? Synchronised (and perhaps infinite) swapping of screens! And why aren’t we aware of our close, close other ‘us’s – or are we, indeed, subtly aware?
During a near-death experience we might argue that the quantum information held in the microtubules dissipates…when the person is revived they recall their ‘experience’. Now here’s an interesting dichotomy: if the dissipation is extreme then can the information subsequently coalesce? Even if it isn’t extreme what bonds it together. Can it dissipate as a ‘body’ of information – and therefore would that be dissipation at all? There are maybe two possible outcomes here: at death we dissipate into the UNIVERSAL CONSCIOUSNESS for want of a better name and effectively cease to exist – or we maintain a sense of ourselves – though God knows what that existence would be! Would space and time cease to exist for us, or would we enter an infinite dream-state? After all in dreams where there is no space or time except in the ‘reality’ of those dreams – we perceive that state to be, well, ‘real’. Consciousness has created a second reality. We are lying asleep hardly moving – and yet we are alive in our dreams…and only when waking do we acknowledge the previous ‘reality’ as dream state.
Is this dream state another beamed consciousness or is it a created ‘reality’ from the first beamed consciousness – rather like many imagine (along with current mainstream scientific thought) that our brain creates consciousness. If the first beamed consciousness can create a second consciousness then that would put it on a level with the initial creative force – whatever it is that does the ‘beaming’. If the second consciousness (dream state) is also beamed – then what is stopping the brain having multiple consciousnesses (as in multiple personalities), which can exist in some folk? And if our mind – which is a beamed consciousness – can create a second consciousness…then why can’t that reflected ‘reality’ create further ‘realities’ too – dreams within dreams within dreams?
And we carry dreams (this other ‘reality’) with us, within us, don’t we…I can recall last night’s dream and a dream from last week (which seemed to be predictive); so one reality has a memory of another reality. In dream-state do we also share this reflective quality? Are we the stuff of dreams – are we the expression of some greater power, intelligence? When we die will we fall awake and pass through the ‘hidden’ gate to eternity? We shall see. We can only dream.
- By Tim Bragg
Counter Culture 