Arhus: A True Winter

Blogging commences. I suppose I'll explain the title, since all I've really been doing is sleeping and wandering, thinking and reflecting. Since this blog will mainly contain reflections on the wander-ponder, I thought I should start with sleeping... This excerpt is attributed to wikipedia.com...

A false awakening may occur either following an ordinary dream or following a lucid dream (one in which the dreamer has been aware that he or she is dreaming). Particularly if the false awakening follows a lucid dream, the false awakening may turn into a ‘pre-lucid dream' (Green, 1968), that is, one in which the dreamer may start to wonder if he or she is really awake and may or may not come to the correct conclusion. More commonly, dreamers will believe they are awake.

A false awakening has significance to the simulation hypothesis which states that what we perceive as "true" reality is in truth an illusion as evidenced by our minds' inability to distinguish between reality and dreams. Therefore, advocates of the simulation hypothesis argue that the probability of our "true" reality being a simulated reality is affected by the prevalence of false awakenings.

Certain aspects of life may be dramatized, or out of place in false awakenings. Things may seem wrong: details, like the painting on a wall, not being able to talk or difficulty reading (purportedly reading in dreams is difficult or impossible; see Green and McCreery, 1994, Ch. 10, for a discussion of this topic). In some experiences, the human senses are heightened, or changed. For instance, one may be able to see things in greater detail, or lesser detail, or one may feel an intense burst of fear and anxiety, or possibly pleasure

Because the dreamer is still dreaming after a false awakening, it is possible for there to be more than one false awakening in a single dream. Often, dreamers will seem to have awakened, begin eating breakfast, brushing teeth, and so on and then find themselves back in bed, begin daily morning rituals, believe that they have awakened, and so forth. The French psychologist Yves Delage (1919) reported an experience of his own of this kind, in which he experienced four successive false awakenings. The philosopher Bertrand Russell even claimed to have experienced ‘about a hundred’ false awakenings in succession while coming round from a general anaesthetic (Russell, 1948, p.186).

Dreams are extremely personal, intense and lucid for me. Dreams, whether daydreaming or sleeping, induced, have held so much vision, prophecy and inspiration for me. In a way strange experiences too that perhaps can be manifested or compared in reality but where concocted in our heads to such detail so that we used each of our senses to such degrees - it seemed.