Reality Testers and Naysayers

by Bill Ingle • http://realitytest.com

Once upon a time I read in a book on lucid dreaming that one way to become lucid was to look for something in the dream that clearly couldn’t exist in physical reality.

Soon I found myself dreaming and thought to myself: “Great! I can look around and see whether anything is out of whack, which will tell me that I’m dreaming.” Of course the dream was set in my past, in the house I grew up in; I didn’t even notice.

I looked around and found that my childhood bedroom door had a square brown piece of wood or some other material nailed to it. “Bingo! I’m dreaming, and this proves it!” I thought.

My older brother was in the dream. Seeing me gesticulating at this thing on the door, he proceeded to ridicule me, then provided a “rational explanation” for why it was on the door.

“Darn!” I thought.

This process continued until I woke up. Every time I found something that told me I was indeed in a dream, the dream version of my brother would explain it away.

So this particular Dreaming Reality Test leaves something to be desired, at least for me. In some ways, the “strange” or “impossible” things that intrigue people (myself included) such as Bigfoot, UFOs, crop circles, certain “paranormal” items, and so on, are a bit like the “wrong” things in dreams the book suggested looking for.

Further, there are many people walking around who are much like the dream version of my older brother.

You might come across something very much out of the ordinary. Should you describe it to one of these folks, they are bound to find some way to explain it away, to provide a “rational” explanation.