It would appear that after the attainment of a certain age, one has certain occasions in which he is not quite sure as to whether a particular recollection is one of an actual occurrence, or merely the memory of an old dream. There are some who would declare, as in the love song, that, “Life is just a dream.”
The “reality” of dreams, as contrasted with “empirical reality,” has universally been a subject of interest and scientific investigation, as well as a subject of atavistic, superstitious belief. In the apocryphal Bible story, Joseph wins great favor with the Royal House of the Pharaoh, by means of his believed ability to interpret dreams; the biblical tale revealing the ancient Egyptian belief that dreams were predictive of the future. The contemporary understanding of dreams is that they are either, meaningless, spliced film clips of personally perceived reality, or alternatively, that they are revelatory of our fears and inner conflicts. We would take the liberty of expressing our personal thoughts, concerning our take on the believed relationship between dreams and factual reality.
As we understand it, dreams are stories our brain tells us when we are in a deep (REM) state of sleep. It is a collection of clips of our past perception of factual matter, images and associated feelings, that involuntarily occur while deep in the sleep state. It has been suggested, by experts, that the reason that we have great difficulty in recollecting dreams is that, [ N.B.] otherwise, it would be difficult to distinguish them from actual reality. The “lucid dream” is a type of dreaming in which the sleeper is aware that he is dreaming and can often rearrange the facts of the dream. This phenomenon is thought to be a state existing somewhere in the zone between being asleep and dreaming, and wakefulness.
Reality, by contrast, is the view of the world as it actually (objectively) exists. Despite the natural and expected differences as between individuals, as to (subjective) perception, it is a vital and existential requirement that we play a functional role in our personal reaction to reality in sync with the everyday working consensus of our society. Were there, ideally, the possibility of attaining a uniform perception of reality. the constructive result would be less contention and greater concentration and emphasis on societal advancement.
The noun, “dream” is, on occasion, employed in an aspirational context, as in the now famous, “I have a dream” oration, of the late Rev. Martin Luther King. All right- thinking people also have a dream of a peaceful and just world; one day, we hope to awaken to this yet unattained, reality.
-p.
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