The Dreaming and Western Sciences Test Each Other

In the scientific community of today, the time our western civilization has consecrated to nightly repose has brought unto us a commodity more precious than gold or jewels.  A world, or realm, known as the Dreaming…  That may sound esoteric, but scientists and philosophers of the Cognitive Sciences have really no other way of describing in broad and general terms the phenomena experience in laboratory studies of the XXth Century. 

The world of the Dreaming and the world of the Waking are etymologically descriptions of human awareness, not necessarily worlds in and of themselves; or rather science has yet to accept the existence of places other than the physical one. 

In fact any time in the last 260 years that a researcher has come up with an idea that dwindles around metaphysics (“beyond nature”, or rather beyond this physical place we call reality), they are immediately labeled as religious.

Well, anthropologists would be the first ones to defend the scientific nature of religions.  What is science anyway if not just another belief system?  That doesn’t mean that either is wrong, but rather the explanations are different.  Religions use pantheons and metaphors to explain nature.

Science uses trial and error to explain hypothesis and theories based on what they call “fact.”  Once explained, tested, retested and then finally “proven” a theory becomes a so called “fact.”  Oneirologists (dream researchers) have a few theories that contradict traditional Cartesian and Empirical scientific methodologies however and would beg to differ about what a fact should or should not be.

The most important western philosopher of the last 2,500 years was once quoted by a student of his with the phrase “All I know, is that nothing do I know.”  Socrates, the father of western thought said that, and was trying to say that the more he read, studied and learned, the more he realized how much more stuff was out there for him to learn.  Basically, Socrates hypothesized that nothing he thought at that moment in time “in the now” was the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth, but rather a stone on an infinite path towards ultimate truth.

Essentially, the Dreaming is not a common household idea yet because people bow down to the scientific religion of “fact”, and if dreaming continues to be a theory, then it continues to be discriminated and put to the test of physical trial and errors.

Science is not a god, but it sure behaves like a god.  And people, in general give science the priority.  Dreaming however is so difficult to call scientific, even after more than 200 years of scientific exploration, it puts the traditional western sciences’ methodology in question. 

The Dreaming is breaking paradigms as more and more young people come into the scientific community with refreshing new ideas about what is important for a healthy society. 

One anthropologist who did studies on the Malaysian Senoi people discovered a curiosity that really makes scientific method tremble.  The average tribal Senoi youth at age 15 is as emotionally developed and mature as the average western 50 year old?!?

Why?  Because the Senoi value their dreams as we value science.  Simple.  From the time they can speak, they are questioned about there dreams.  Not merely questioned, but the Senoi children are taught Dreaming etiquette in the same fashion that we teach our children table manners.  Senoi children behave because their Dreaming tells them they want to, not because their parents tell them they should.

Everything in Senoi culture is based on the Dreaming.  To them, in dreams, they are untouchable and have unlimited powers to do anything.  No moral, social or physical boundries of any kind, and they are taught most importantly, that the Dreaming is a real place with Gods who speak to us.  That is their pantheon and their interpretation of it all sure, but it works for them.

If it works, hey, why not try it?  The Senoi don’t need drugs, or alcohol.  The Senoi don’t have theft, rape nor murder.  Because they value the Waking physical reality just as deeply as they do their Dreaming reality.  This is, the Senoi “use” the Waking to improve their Dreaming.  They live and fulfill their dreams on a daily and nightly basis.  Is that not happiness?  Has that not been the scientific goal all along?

What good is science if it does not make our quality of life better in some way?  Dreaming improves the quality of human life.  Dreaming “is” quality of human life.  And living in the Waking world “for” our deepest most inner dreams is the fulfillment of every human desire.  All we need to do now is employ dreaming as a basic fundamental structure for being healthy as a scientific “fact.”