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7/31/2019 Inception: Dreams, Waking, and Epistemology
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I n c e p t io n : D r e a m s , W a k in g, a n d E p i s t em o lo g y
by S ET H MI LL ER on JULY 18, 2010
The movie Inception is the best “question reality” movie since the Matrix (ultimately the Matrix is better, in my opinion),
and it raises many fascinating questions having to do with the differences between the two primary states of consciousness
available to humans today: waking and dreaming.
This issue has been around for about as long
as recorded history, and has formed a central
piece of some very detailed philosophical
considerations. It shows up in the 4th
Century B.C.E. in the famous Taoist
Zuangzi’s “butterfly dream”:
“Once Zhuangzi dreamt he was a butterfly, a
butterfly flitting and fluttering around, happy
with himself and doing as he pleased. He
didn’t know he was Zhuangzi. Suddenly he
woke up and there he was, solid and
unmistakable Zhuangzi. But he didn’t know if
he was Zhuangzi who had dreamt he was a
butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming he was
Zhuangzi. Between Zhuangzi and a butterfly there must be some distinction! This is called
the Transformation of Things.”
It also forms a central part of Indian philosophy, especially advaita vedanta, which explores cosmological questions through
the exploration of the nature of the different states of consciousness that the human being is capable of. As the movie
Inception points out, it is far more difficult to determine whether we are waking or dreaming than it may at first appear.
7/31/2019 Inception: Dreams, Waking, and Epistemology
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Of course Inception is a movie, and as such remains beholden more to plot development than fidelity to current dream
studies. I comment Christopher Nolan (the director) for taking up this topic and developing it in ways that are terrifically
engaging and not too ‘dumbed-down’. As the lengthy history of the topic implicitly indicates, understanding dreams and
their relation to waking life is no easy task, so any popular treatment that gets people interested and questioning gets kudos
from me. Personally, I get the biggest kick from movies which take up topics related to consciousness in ways that maintain a
high degree of fidelity to esoteric principles, and which don’t abandon them for the sake of simplicity or storytelling for itsown sake, or which at least achieve a healthy balance. Inception gets close to walking this line, but falls short in some key
areas.
In regards to dreaming and waking, the most fascinating issue within the movie is epistemological: the question of how we
know whether we are awake or dreaming. In the movie, a “totem” is utilized, which is a physical device that exhibits some
particular behavior in accordance with the accepted (waking) laws of physics. Supposedly in a dream, the object will behave
differently, thus signaling to the dreamer that he or she is dreaming. (For all of you who are familiar with lucid dreaming, I’ll
get there later on, and am speaking now only about “regular” dreams.)
There are a few things to point out here. The first is that there is something very correct about the assumption underlyingthis technique, which we can sum up as: there is a certain quality to the way perceived objects behave in waking reality. This
quality could quite appropriately be called “inertia”, which is to say that there is a certain quality of stubbornness in our
perceiving. This inertia shows up most clearly in regards, specifically, to perceptions which rely on very simple and limited
physical constraints. All the “totems” in Inception rely upon this: the way, for example, gravity interacts with a particular
object, like a spinning top, a loaded dice, or a chess piece weighted off-center. The common utilization of the physical force
of gravity provides a perfect metaphorical quality of this kind of consciousness: it is a consciousness that tends to “fall” into
“facts” when perception happens.
In other words, day-waking consciousness is very Earthy ; we meet with perceptions which have their own stubborn nature,
despite our moods, our desires, or our intentions. The loaded dice will always statistically perform in the same manner over
time; the spinning top will always eventually fall after about a certain length of time for a given initial spin rate.
Think back to your own dreams, for example. How often do
you have dreams in which there are as many clearly readable
(visible) words as there are on even a single page of a
paperback book? In fact, you may not be able to remember a
dream that included visual words at all, or more likely if
visual words are in your dream, there are one or two, or perhaps a phrase at most. Additionally, if in a dream you “know”
there are words on a page, for example, you may not be able to read those words, even if you are staring right at them. So,
one quick test to see if you are awake is to find some text; if you can easily read it multiple times and it doesn’t change, you
are almost certainly awake.
This points to a quality of waking consciousness that is quite different from dreaming: it is chock-full of these sorts of
“inertial facts of perception”. Indeed, the brain, in order to allow us to perceive, is built in such a way as to both rely upon
these types of inertial facts, precisely so that it can keep them from becoming conscious. This allows the brain to free itself
from the need to process everything as if for the first time; it makes BIG assumptions about what we perceive in order to get
on with other processes. The key for waking consciousness is that if we decide to pay attention to a given fact, it exhibits a
certain quality of stubbornness.
7/31/2019 Inception: Dreams, Waking, and Epistemology
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Inception did not (in my estimation) properly make this distinction: it showed the dream world as equally detailed as the
waking world. But dreams simply don’t have the level of detail that is “stubbornly” available to waking consciousness. As
anyone who can remember a dream can probably see for themselves, however, in a dream there is only as much detail as is…
needed. In a dream there is generally only detail where our dream-attention is; the absence of detail elsewhere is ignored,
and we don’t question whether or not such detail could be there if we directed our attention to check. We may have a feeling that such detail is present, but it is very important to be able to distinguish between the feeling of the
presence of detail and the ability to actually check the individual details in a repeated manner.
Of course this raises the question:
“Couldn’t you just dream that you
checked the details repeatedly and
always found them consistent?” Apart
from the unavoidable and
fascinating deep philosophical nature of
this maneuver, the practical answer is:
not really. Why? Because the quality of
the consciousness of the two types of
checking (waking and dreaming) is
different, and it is a quality that is
experienced from within during the
checking, not inferred after the fact on
the basis of its “results”. In other words
the results of the experience of checking
is less important than the quality of
consciousness in which the checking is
carried out in the first place.
This is a very important point to get across: there is a difference between the content of dream consciousness and the quality
of dream consciousness. This is equally true of waking consciousness: the content and quality can be distinguished. The
question raised in the movie that was supposed to help a dreamer realize they were dreaming appropriately (but only
implicitly) utilized this difference. The question was “How did I get here?” (wherever “here” is in the dream).
Now first of all this is not a question that is usually asked from within the dream, but only upon waking, by consulting our
memory of the dream. As Inception rightly points out, we generally never can trace a dream to a “beginning”: they always
seem to start “in the middle”. I put those phrases in quotes because the determination of what makes a beginning or a
middle is not so much a specific content of consciousness, but rather the quality of our consciousness. We have to “feel it
out”; it isn’t presented as a stark, undeniable “fact”.
In waking reality we can trace our day backward, and if we get good at it, we can do so without encountering any “gaps” that
defy explanation. Indeed, this practice may be one of the most fundamental for developing one’s spiritual capacities; in the
discipline of anthroposophy this exercise is known as the ‘daily review’, and is best practiced at the end of the day right
before sleep. Ideally one traces one’s day all the way back into the previous mornings dreams, and through the dreams to the
silent and mysteriously full space of one’s consciousness as it was just before it started dreaming.
7/31/2019 Inception: Dreams, Waking, and Epistemology
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Now interestingly enough, practicing the daily review can quite definitely lead to the experience of being conscious that one
is dreaming. When we awaken within a dream we notice a fundamental qualitative shift to a mode that is almost
indistinguishable from the qualities of waking consciousness. I was happy to note that Inception included a common feature
of this transition to the lucid dream: dream characters may all suddenly turn and look at the dreamer. As projections of the
dreamer’s own subconscious, this is a literal expression of the quality of becoming awake to oneself in the dream. In this
moment a loop is closed, forming a recursive cycle: the dreamer is aware that the dream characters are dream characters, i.e.parts of the dreamer; thus the dream characters place their attention on the dreamer because the dreamer is placing her
attention on herself; the subconscious projections of the dreamer follow and embody the qualitative shift in consciousness.
The possibilities of lucid dreaming were not well explored in Inception. The main character, wonderfully played by
Leonardo DiCaprio, was put in a strange situation where he knew he was dreaming, and knew that his subconscious was
generating dream elements against his will, but was unable to respond in the way open to most lucid dreamers: conscious
control. In the movie Leonardo had to psychologically deal with the subconscious projections in a sort of “working through”
that can be circumvented by lucid dreamers, because the prime quality of lucid dreaming (apart from the simple fact of being
awake in the dream) is that the dreamer can consciously manipulate the dream world. This brings me to a discussion of the
types of dreams and their nature.
Inception did a good job of pointing out that the
content of most dreams arises through a process
of unconscious projection, whereby everything
in the dream is generated by a part of the
dreamer that is not usually open to the day-
waking consciousness. We say it is
“subconscious”, and it has been thoroughly
noted (most helpfully by Jung) that
subconscious projections often have a symbolic
character, sometimes even an archetypal
character. Yet the source of such symbols often
remains elusive, and not all dreams have overtly
symbolic content.
For example, the “lowest” level of dreaming is often completely symbol-less. This type of dream is often known as a “night
terror”, and occurs most often in children. Significantly, it is very common for there to be no recollection of any dream
content whatsoever; the dreamer simply awakens in a state of panic, often with disorientation. Sometimes feelings of falling
or emptiness or almost existential dread are reported, but not “normal” types of dream sequences that might account for the
terror, such as being chased by an unknown figure. These dreams are essentially time-less and space-less, and generally
aren’t experienced from within as having either of these qualities.
A step up from this lowest level of dreaming is the “normal” dream that we are all familiar with. These dreams are full of
content, often have “plots” which can be written down with some coherence upon waking, and which contain one or many
symbols of various types. In normal dreams we are not aware that we are dreaming, and we usually experience the dream
from within qualitatively “in the present”, without consciousness of either past or future. However, these dreams unfold in
both time and space.
7/31/2019 Inception: Dreams, Waking, and Epistemology
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Next is the lucid dream, which, as discussed, involves awakeness of the dreamer to the fact of dreaming while in the dream.
Such dreams are often far more vivid than a normal dream. Indeed, the qualitative difference between a normal dream and
a lucid dream is essentially the same as between a normal dream and being awake normally, and if we look at the brain
activity of a lucid dreamer it is almost impossible to distinguish from waking. In a lucid dream, it is often possible for the
dreamer to control the dream to a greater or lesser extent.
Are there any dream states “above” that of the lucid dream? Yes. We can call these “significant dreams”. Significant dreams
are as qualitatively different from lucid dreams as lucid dreams are from normal dreams. Unfortunately, while it is possible
to train to become a lucid dreamer, it is not possible to control the appearance of a significant dream. Why? The short
answer is that this is not possible because significant dreams are literally beyond the individual dreamer, and arise as a
consequence of a connection from the spiritual world to the dreamer, essentially as a “gift”. Significant dreams are very
uncommon; we may have one or two or none in our whole life. But if we do have a significant dream, they may change our
lives, often in subtle or long-term ways. The key characteristic of a significant dream is that it actually feels like it is a gift
from our higher selves.
Although we can’t force a significant dream, we can preparethe way for their arrival. The key is to cultivate a state in the
dream where consciousness is present to itself (as in a lucid
dream), but the dreamer relinquishes control of the dream.
We could say that we invite significant dreams when we
maintain consciousness without content within the dream.
This is essentially a practice of listening participation in the
spiritual environment of the dream, which operates somewhat
like a question to the spiritual world: “What needs to come to
me in order that I may fulfill my karma?” The extent to which
we ourselves fill our dream consciousness with content is the
extent to which we block the possibility for the kind of
connection to the spiritual world which can occur in a
significant dream.
I would have liked to see a movie about dreaming which
realistically explored these different levels of dreaming.
Inception confuses the differences between the normal and
lucid dream, and confuses also the difference between waking
and dreaming in general. But I do have to say that these
confusions are probably lost on the vast majority of those who
will see the movie, and won’t affect the viewing experience atall. Nolan created a very elaborately conceived and internally consistent set of dreaming principles that were used to great
effect, regardless of their fidelity with “real” dream experiences.
There is quite a bit more that can be said about the levels of dreaming and their nature. Stay tuned for an elaboration of the
esoteric origins of each level of dreaming and their specific connections to the different aspects of the human being in
relation to transformative work… as the saying goes, “truth is stranger than fiction”, and is also much more fascinating!