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There is only one rule: anyone can post a discussion summary at any time.
 
Summaries keep the debate on track; they provide a jumping in point; they allow the discussion to have an end; and they provide a way to clear up after "hit-and-run" post-ers.
 
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Martin Cross  
Let's take a brief look at non-linear thought.
 
I'm not talking about seeing the future or telepathy or hypnosis; let's take a much more prosaic example we are all familiar with: dreams.
 
Now, in a dream we have certain experiences which are very common: falling, size (things being very large or small), amounts (there being a great deal or an impossible lack of something), experiences of horror and wonder, and of course sexual experiences. All except the last are well encompassed by a work like 'Alice Through The Looking Glass'.
 
Yet, one of the most interesting things about a dream is the loss of the sense of time passing. It is explained in one way simply by saying that you are aware rather than conscious, but this is overly prosaic. What does it really mean?
 
Maybe we can widen our understanding by comparing our human experience with earlier human and non-human experience of dreaming.
 
For instance, lower forms of non-human life - which we all arguably once were - are restricted in the senses that they have compared to we human beings. Perhaps it could therefore be the case that dreaming, and also the experience of being dead which we hypothesise, can be explained by an increase in sensory experience - an increase in the number of senses.
 
When we look outside we see (simplistically) three dimensions: similarly, when we look inside, into the mind, as explained earlier elsewhere, we see three dimensions. This gives us a total of six dimensions  - and this only occurred to me recently - these can inductively be taken to map onto our six human senses: sight, sound, taste, smell, touch and balance. So, you can mix and match the six senses with the six dimensions, inner and outer. At any point in time you can 'explore' inner or outer with any or all of your senses. Please stay with me for this, if you can. I won't explain further for the sake of keeping it manageably brief!
 
One of our key senses is vision. Our vision is the basis of much of our art and we are able to envisage in three dimensions (ie with perspective), and in colour. It is these which are very recent evolutionary developments. Many animals don't see in colour. Colour in human art is thought to be a recent development. Balance as a higher sense really developed when we left the trees; and perspective in art was a development of the last millennium.
 
If our senses have been developing thus far, could they not be continuing to develop?
 
Newton shows that light is actually made up of seven dimensions.
 
Could it therefore be that when we are thinking non-linearly, ie in dreaming or in death, we are perceiving primarily the seven dimensions of light - and it is the overloading of our perceptions with seven dimensions instead of six that creates in us a non-linear experience.
 
My father's house has many rooms, as it is written. I'm not suggesting the number is limited to seven; I'm only suggesting that an increase to seven would be enough, and light is a new experience when we have no eyes, but operate on a non-physical energy plane...
 
Just a fun idea, maybe.
 
Tue Sep 04 19:23:19 2007
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Dr Mary Jones   Interesting speculations. Is dreaming a case of 'sensory overload' which may be regarded as such when we are awake because we cannot understand it- i.e.reflecting on it when we are awake, it seems like a computer programme that has gone haywire ? It may well be that when dreaming and its dimensions are further understood, we shall not only understand them but be able to manipulate/programme them and use them to our advantage.  
Fri Nov 09 10:41:49 2007
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kanada cross   So how do you explain deja-vu? its one of those things that i have had different explanations for, but never seem realistic?  
Tue Nov 20 10:00:45 2007
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Martin Cross  
It is a good question. Deja vu is an uncanny experience. You get that weird feeling, just for a short while, and then it stops. It is different from recognising a place that you have never been to. It is more like 'groundhog day'. As if you have lived that bit of time in your life before.
 
I agree with you that other explanations don't seem to get to the heart of it? One recent one I read was a physical explanation, of some time-delay between the different senses. But that doesnt explain why you would think I *remember* this, does it?
 
It may be helpful to bear in mind how the brain works, though. Dr Edward DeBono wrote a book called 'The Mechanism of Mind', in the sixties, which I think is well worth reading. He thought of the brain as a surface, one of its jobs being to record patterns, and these are what the surface does, to make memory.
 
Now, what if you have a dream, and in the dream you think backwards?  That is, with non-linear thought, you can still think linearly - such as with a dream fragment that makes sense later - but you can also think linearly, *in reverse*. Even if only by pure chance.
 
I had a brief interval of deja vu not too long ago at work. Work is one of those places where you spend a lot of time and a lot of very similar things keep happening, but you probably dont spend too much time thinking about them. I can well imagine these could have cropped up in a dream and before the dream faded, what was happening at work was similar enough to trigger off my memory.
 
If things start happening to you that are like you remember from a recent dream, in the normal order, then you will simply think "This makes me remember dreaming about...", but it is only work. You wont be interested. But if your dream happened in reverse, you are going to think, that's weird...
 
It's like this, suppose you take a book you read, and still remember, and start reading it, but from the back. At some point, you are going to recognise what you are reading, probably with a bit of a shock.
 
 
Tue Nov 20 19:29:59 2007
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Raith  

You need to find out about Lucid Dreaming.  You sound like you need to.

 
Fri May 09 02:04:29 2008
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Martin Cross  

Lucid Dreaming is a nice catchphrase. What makes me say that? Well, take an alternative to it: the idea that some dreams are so believable that when you wake up, you have to remind yourself they are not true.

I had one like that only this week. (An otherwise nonsense dream about receiving lots of little packages that were wrongly delivered). It took me a good few moments of being awake to remember that the generally anxious feeling I had got might be real, but the dream wasn't.

Rather more distressing is when you dream a loved one is still alive, and then wake to find out they aren't. I can still remember one dream I had like that, even after all these years, the feeling was so strong.

"Lucid dreaming" seems plausible, but may not even be true. To be half-awake and trying to wake up fully is one thing, but to actually be fully asleep and know that you are dreaming... well, like I say, it may be true.

 
Fri May 09 2008
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