Dream Machine

Dreams, we all have them. They're the images that dance in our heads that remind our bodies that we're still alive while we slumber. Dreams range from the monotonous, to the insane and incomprehensible. To me, dreams unlock our deepest desires and fears. They access parts of the mind that we block out during our waking hours either due to social implications or because they're simply impossible in reality. Have you ever had a rather gratuitous dream about a friend, or some random stranger you happened to admire from afar a day or so ago, even though you're in a committed relationship? Waking up you actually feel guilty and sometimes you feel as if the event actually happened, even though you've physically done nothing. That is the power of dreams.

I've had a number of dreams that I never wanted to awake from. I've also had nightmares where I thought I was going to die. The amazing dreams though... they might be the closest to heaven that we ever get, or if our greatest dreams give an indication of what heaven is like, then we're in for great things. Imagine though, what if scientists could create a machine that allows you to dream forever? (I've actually never seen the movie Inception, so forgive me if this is the plot to that movie.)

Imagine that they place you in a machine filled with nourishing liquids, breathing apparatus, and other medical equipment to keep your body alive. Imagine a contraption strapped to your head that runs all the way down your spine and branches off to sensors covering your extremities, so that you could feel everything inside the dream. With the cranial contraption you could create your ideal dream and live in it for as long as you like, even forever if you wanted to. Would you? To some its an easy yes. It's not so simple though. You would effectively be giving up reality and essentially your life to live in a make believe land filled with illusions. Everything would feel real though to you and you wouldn't be the wiser that it is all a dream. With that in mind, does that mean we can make our own reality and that reality is relative? Some would say that reality is already relative. Your idea of reality is probably different than the person that has dementia. Lets face it though, reality is painful for most of us. I would probably elect to be hooked up to a Dream Machine, for the simple fact that reality is boring.

You could literally design your own heaven. You could populate it with whomever you wanted and make it appear anyway you wanted to. It would be yours to create and do with it as you please. You could do whatever you wanted to in the dream and it would have absolutely no impact on reality.

So, if a Dream Machine existed, would you decide to substitute your own reality?