Dreams as evidence

Some people say that dreams are not a valid source of evidence for what is real and what is not. Maybe they believe this because they say that they only believe in tangible things (although it’s not really possible to only believe in tangible things, since even, for example, a tree is really an intangible thing).

It cannot be taken for granted that the evidential value of dreams is any poorer than that of things experienced during wakefulness. The two states are not basically different: in both cases, what we see most immediately is the impression of something else onto the imagination; almost everyone acknowledges that such impressions, if they are made while awake, most often stem from real things, so why deny that the same is true while dreaming?

And if they say that they deny dreams because they are incompatible with waking sensation, this is not true. Every time I look at a white-feathered bird, I do not switch back to disbelieving in black-feathered birds. There is no reason why we cannot accept that dreams and wakefulness give different impressions of the same things, or at worst, that they give impressions of different things altogether. These two psychic modes can coexist and do not negate each other.

But even if they maintain that these two states convey incongruent impressions, what reason is there to prioritize wakefulness over dreaming? Don’t they remember how, when dreaming, the dream world feels more real than what might be recalled of the waking world, even in lucid dreams where one knows that one is dreaming? When dreaming, dreams seem cohesive¹ and it is wakefulness that seems bizarre. So there is no reason to trust one’s senses out here any more than in there.

For example, in a dream, gods are able to speak to humans more directly than when we are awake. Should this be taken as evidence that such divine messages are mere hallucinations? Well, what about the other way around: when awake, if one looks in a mirror, one always sees one’s own reflection moving in exactly the same way as one self, but when sleeping, sometimes the reflection moves and acts and thinks seemingly independently; can this validly be taken as evidence that our reflections are merely mimicking our movements, and that, when they sleep, they lose some dexterity and therefore sometimes lag behind?

My opinion is that the positive evidence of gods in dreams must weigh heavier than the negative evidence during wakefulness. Thus, dreaming and wakefulness are two distinct psychic modes, and each makes certain phenomena more or less perceptible. The fact that the other mode does not as easily permit such phenomena to become visible does not mean that such phenomena do not exist.

“Dreaming”

Above, I have characterized “dreaming” as being in opposition to wakefulness. This is a simplification. Dreaming in a broad sense, that is, any psychic mode where it is possible, for instance, to see or hear otherwise invisible beings, can co-occur with wakefulness. When meditating, taking psychedelic drugs, daydreaming, praying, many experience an enhancement of one’s ability to sense dream-like phenomena. And in general, there is much overlap between dreaming and wakefulness, and everyone is always dreaming to some extent; perhaps in some, based on one’s personality and training, the default mode of thinking may share more or less in common with the quality of dreaming. And, of course, it is possible for dreaming even in a narrow sense to occur while awake, in the form of hypnagogia.

1. See also the article for Susanna Clarke, and there on Flynn O’Brien’s The Third Policeman. ↩