Test the World’s Dream Nature

Scientific theories are given greater weight than matters of faith or mere belief because theories are testable.  We know that gravity is an attractive force because objects dropped from leaning towers fall down, not up; we know that light travels at 186,000 miles per second because scientists measured this speed; we know that the core elements of the physical world possess features of  both matter and waves because the famous double-slit experiment shows elementary particles to have this double-identity.  If a theory or belief is testable it means that it is open to questioning, and therefore able to possess a deeper validity.

Some observers (e.g., the late Karl Popper) believe that the notion that the world is a dream is not testable and therefore not a scientific theory.  But dream-theory is easily testable.

Many of  us have had the experience of “seeing stars” after a powerful sneeze, a fall off a bike, or a blow to the head.  We see these stars momentarily out in the space in front of us, phantom twinkles.

Now where did these stars come from? Did they come from the Big Bang? The hand of a heavenly father?  Of course not.  The stars arose internally from us, due to a momentary jolt to our internal states; our mind.

From this simple notion of  “seeing stars” we can move to episodes where we have flashing daydreams, then tiny hallucinations, night-dreams, lucid dreams and then powerful hallunications, where our internal states conjure up a real-seeming world from nothing.

The stars we see and the dreams we imagine are real at the time we experience them. 

Now suppose that instead of these visions being quirks in the evolving brain, they are actually signs of a powerful dreaming mind.  Now suppose we combine this small individual sign of a dreaming power with other people and other minds.  Suppose we originate from one mind that is dreaming the entire world.  The power that generated the “stars” is a drop of water in the great ocean of the dreaming power.

Here we have moved from a simple experience — seeing stars — to more vivid experiences and then theorized that these experiences suggest the entire world is mind-created. 

But it turns out that to truly test this theory the mind of humankind must act as one.   Or, morality is the scientific process to test the truth of dream theory.