Dreams within Dreams

A few months ago, I had a dream within a dream. The contents of the dream are irrelevant. Suffice it to say that in my sub-dream, I became aware that I was dreaming and managed (with some difficulty) to wake myself up from it; upon awakening, I found myself in another dream, although this time I was not aware that I had been dreaming until I woke up properly. After all, I ‘woke up’ lying on the couch.

I was quite excited when I (really) woke up. I had read Descartes and other philosophers of the mind, and I had seen films like the Matrix and Inception where such phenomena are centrepiece. But the experience induced a surge of questions. What if I am still dreaming? How many recursions are there? What if there are an infinite number of recursions? Indeed, in philosophy it is often said that we cannot ‘jump out of our own head’, meaning that we always view the world from our own mind, but at the same time we can self-reflect. 

Although you can never fully escape your own consciousness, you can engage in a potentially infinite number of recursive escapes, by ‘thinking that you are thinking that you are thinking…’ in a similar pattern to what occurs when you face two mirrors towards each other and glimpse an infinite tunnel of reflections – you cannot remove yourself from the picture, because once you do, you can no longer see the optical illusion, but you can still view yourself as if you were another person, e.g. from behind. After all, dreams are just thoughts.

Is it possible to share dreams with other people? I say, of course. We are sharing ‘reality’ with each other now, are we not? We both agree that we are occupying the same time-space continuum. We may not be able to read each other’s minds, but at the end of the day this reality may simply be one recursion of many – so perhaps we are indeed inside each other’s minds. Perhaps this explains why people tend to get the same thoughts at the same time, even when seemingly random. How many times has somebody declared ‘that’s so weird, I was just thinking about that!’?

Is it possible to get trapped in a dream? Several potentialities exist. First, it is plausible that one could be unaware that one was dreaming (as in the first recursion of my dream). In this scenario, we are essentially sleepwalkers, interacting with real life and yet not conscious. In fact, this is quite common, in the form of self-deception. Obsessions often hijack our rationality to the point where we convince ourselves that they do not exist, even to the point of distorting our visual perceptions (for example, of our own bodies). Likewise, people often deceive themselves into thinking that some tragedy has not really occurred; this is what is meant by the phrase ‘being in denial’. Another possibility is that you are unaware that you are dreaming that you are dreaming; but since recursions are infinite, this is an identical case.

A separate case inheres when you are aware that you are dreaming (even if we are unaware that we are dreaming that we are dreaming), as in the second recursion of my dream. This scenario may be relevant to somebody that is aware that they are experiencing irrational thoughts. We may not be able to wake ourselves up from the dream (to overcome the irrationalities) even though we know that we are not fully awake (rational). This is, essentially, Hell, in quite a literal sense. My dad has a gruelling story about a surgery that went wrong – the sedative did not function enough to dull his pain, but only to keep him unable from communicating. That is how I see Hell: when we choose life without God, we are choosing sin (or pain) without grace (or communication). Perhaps it is better represented by the Jewish ‘Sheol’ (see my other post on Sheol).

Interestingly, in the second recursion of my dream, I became aware that I was dreaming because I knew that my perception of familiar faces was distorted. So self-deception usually contains a grain of truth in order to make it believable. Most phobias are fears of things that could potentially be harmful; correspondingly, even irrational, unholy fears are a perversion of the rational, holy fear of God. Indeed, “the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom” (Proverbs 9:10, 111:10) – wisdom, perhaps, to know that you are dreaming. Conversely, the fear of anything else is the beginning of deception. Maybe this is why falsehood features so heavily on God’s ‘hate list’: lying, a deceitful tongue, a false witness, etc.

Indeed, not only our selves, but also Satan practices this form of deception. For example, he quoted scripture to Jesus in order to tempt Him (Matthew 4). In both cases, we have to say, “yes, but…” to restore rationality. Finally, the world – i.e. other people deceived by themselves or Satan – may deceive us. So ‘negative Inceptions’ can be implemented by ourselves, Satan, or the world, by distorting truth. Such deceptions, whether it is “being wise in your own eyes” (Proverbs 3:7; Isaiah 5:21), a temptation to ‘bite the apple’ (Genesis 3), or accusations from dreamers that you are in fact the one dreaming (Christians are often accused of being irrational), are not heavenly wisdom, as Paul often asserted.

Being aware that you are dreaming is not sufficient to wake yourself up: it is notoriously difficult to wake yourself up from a dream (perhaps impossible without Christ) even when you know that you are dreaming (even when you know that you are separated from God). But is it necessary? What about when something (or Somebody) else wakes you up by appealing to your real self as opposed to your dreaming self? For example, if your alarm goes off, or if your mom comes in to tell you it’s time for school, the stimulus is purely exogenous – nothing changes within your dream.

Or does it? Surely we have all had dreams where external stimuli are integrated by our minds into the dream itself, whether they are noises or other sensations. So maybe even when God appeals to our ‘real selves’, for instance by revealing Himself through a vision to somebody with no prior knowledge of Christ, there is an endogenous element of undeceived self-reflection.

God often reveals Himself through dreams. But He also does so through regular thoughts. Not only prophecies, but our daily communication with Him, often occurs through thought, and dreams, which are merely a specific type of thought. I don’t think that is a merely a way of transmitting information. As Descartes acknowledged, we do not have minds, we are minds (C. S. Lewis conveyed this idea using the word ‘soul’ rather than ‘mind’).

Regardless, awareness is undoubtedly a useful tool for waking up. It would be virtually impossible for somebody with a psychological disorder to recover without first admitting that they are unwell. So while somebody who is completely unaware may need to be woken up by an exogenous ‘bump’ (to use Inception’s term), awareness itself might constitute just such an exogenous intervention. This, perhaps, is what is meant by ‘conviction’. And this is why the Word of God, and the Holy Spirit, are so important: we require define revelation to wake us up. Indeed, “Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God” (Romans 10:17); similarly, “Surely He does nothing before revealing it to His servants the prophets” (Amos 3:7).

So from where does the endogenous bump come? Well, the awareness part derives from the Law, which shows us that we are dreaming (Romans 3:20). It is theoretically possible to wake yourself up through the Law, if you obey it fully. But this is virtually impossible – it requires you to ‘jump outside of yourself’, i.e. to be completely selfless, even though are you are a self.

However, Jesus Christ, by denying Himself, has provided us with a spiritual-physical ‘portal’. Love sums up the Law and the Prophets, and God is love. Perfect love, meanwhile, drives out fear (Galatians 5:14; Matthew 7:12, 22:40; Romans 13:10; 1 John 4:8)! So God's love is what allows us to restore rationality by escaping our dream worlds (John 3:16).

Indeed, the very Word of God went through a nightmare by entering our dream world, fulfilling the prophets and leaving us with the Holy Spirit, which, thank God, is infinitely above our own minds in terms of dream-recursions. The Spirit of God transcends our minds through the Word of God, which “separates joint and marrow, SOUL AND SPIRIT” (Hebrews 4:12; note that the mind is part of the soul). 

We can be “transformed by the renewing of our mind”, and consequently know God’s perfect will (Romans 12:12), only because we have the Holy Spirit. We can walk out of our own personal Sheols, through the hallway and past “many rooms” (John 14:2) to the Throne Room itself. Another way of seeing this is through the imagery of light and darkness: Jesus is the light of the world (John 8:12), but the world does not understand it (John 1:5). Because the Word of God is a lump unto our feet and a light unto our path, we can walk in ‘the Everlasting way’ (see my post in walking) even though we are in a world of darkness.

So maybe Heaven is the infinitely recursive state of awareness (light). Although Christ tore the veil, we still do not yet “see face to face” (1 Corinthians 13:12). When the New Jerusalem descends from Heaven, it will be perfectly clear (as the Jasper stone; Revelation 21). Indeed, when Jesus returns, He will do away with the dream once and for all, giving the ultimate bump to wake up even those who are dead (incidentally, the Bible refers to these as those who are “sleeping”, whilst Paul uses this same term to refer to unbelievers or those who have deviated from faith). Furthermore, Heaven is more real than our world, because it is eternal. Indeed, dreams elude time, because they can happen in an instance – is it not conceivable that when we wake up from our current dream, we will expand time to a further level?

Christ will, however, not return until all nations have heard the Word of God (Matthew 24:14). So, if we want to be a part of the Great Awakening (or Ultimate Enlightenment), we should be actively trying to wake up others, just like Neo et al do in the Matrix by re-entering the dream world as ‘agents’ of reality.

Why do, and will, some people remain deceived? All I can say is ‘see Romans 3’. The short answer is ‘the Glory of God’, but in all honestly I am not entirely certain. I can only posit that deception is a choice: although you require knowledge to make a decision, if the knowledge itself is a decision then we are left with another infinite recursion. An alternative interpretation may be that “artists use lies to tell the truth”, although I find that version rather distasteful.

In sum, to be an ex-ception to the de-ception, we require the in-ception of Christ. You know what’s weird? I got this “divine wisdom” about dreams, in a dream. I urge you to read Romans 3 with it in mind.