Dreaming to Become Awake

Even sleep is no barrier to the brain’s story-making processes. Dreams feel real because they’re made of the same hallucinated neural models we live inside when awake.

there is a class of conscious experiences that come with a degree of lucidity uncommon in normal life. By and large, their mere existence was denied by science until the last century, and their study was consigned to the intellectual hinterlands of psychology, at the intersection of spiritualism, the paranormal, and the esoteric. But they are nothi

Dreams feel as real as life—the primary distinction between dreaming and waking consciousness is an absence of a sense of self, insight, self-reflection. You aren't surprised that you can fly, walk through walls, or meet long-dead animal companions, lovers, parents, or siblings. You are along for the ride, watching a movie that someone else is dire