One morning, I awoke from a dream…

In my waking world I had worked for a company whose managing director had treated me badly. I disliked them a great deal. Despite not having worked for that company for many years, that manager was the subject of my dream. More unusually, in the dream, that manager was a friend - and I liked them. I distinctly recall being pleased to see them (in the dream). When I awoke I was surprised that my true feelings for that person did not exist in the dream at all and it wasn’t until I woke up that the dislike of them returned. This dream made me realize - for the first time - that the ‘me’ in my dreams is not the same as the ‘me’ in my waking life. At least that’s how it appeared to be. So, I decided to research consciousness and find out why my brain might have more than one version of me - and that slippery slope has taken me through the weirdest revelations about being human that a person could discover.

There are a lot of books on consciousness. No matter where you read about it you will find one very profound and unanswered question – where does my sense of self reside? Spoiler alert: If I knew the answer to that I would be polishing a Nobel Prize. My research is slowly becoming my first factual book, with the title Thoughts and Observations on Consciousness. The book will be aimed at those who have an interest in the subject and will not be intended to be a comprehensive tome on the subject. I am a philosopher with an interest in science and my aim is to give a broad covering of the subject and confine the details to areas that I see as worthy of delving into further. I will also give my own thoughts and opinions and make it clear when doing so to avoid passing off as fact my own ramblings.

Some people breeze through life never considering the fascinating processes that keep them alive and allow them to do the things they enjoy doing - and that’s fine. Everyone has their own set of motivations in life and understanding the deeper questions of the universe may not be high on many people’s lists. It is partly for that reason that I am writing the book, since there will always be those whose curiosity crosses over to subjects that they have casually considered but seldom sought out.

See below for a sample...

Unedited Sample

This is a working draft of the chapter and may change considerably by the time of publication. It is here to give you an idea of how I am interpreting the research.

Chapter 19

Why dreams in movies are always wrong.

When you dream, your brain brings memories, emotions and imagination together to create a scenario for you to experience. If you have something on your mind your brain might include it in your dream. If you saw a classic car and took a photo of it, you might find yourself dreaming about a new car you are given, bought or won. The brain will pull out anything that has been prominent and create the dream. If nothing prominent has happened it might pull experiences from the past few months, or things someone else has told you that they did. It can even create the dreams around a film you watched.

The format of most dreams is like this:

· You never remember it starting. You’re a straight in the dream.

· You focus only on the things that appear in front of you. Everything else is blurred. This allows the images to change as you move around because you do not notice the peripheral.

· The people in your dreams have a personality created by your brain, which may, or may not, be like they are in real life.

· People can change appearance throughout the dream.

· Your feelings towards the people in your dreams can change without you noticing.

· Places that seem familiar can change without reason and their location can change. Since you are focused only on what is before you, you will not question what has changed or why.

· The theme of a dream can change. You might dream about being at work and then the theme will change to a car accident or meteor impact leading you away from the original theme.

· A building from your life might appear in a dream with its use changed. A school might become a set of offices.

· Nothing in a dream is a prediction of the future for the real world. Coincidences do happen but they’re not predetermined.

· People from real life can appear in a dream and their personality can be altered completely, as can your feelings towards them. Your feelings can continue into the waking world, briefly, once you wake up.

· Language in a dream can be gibberish but you will understand it. If you are able to remember a word from a dream you will not be able to write it down once you are awake.

· Written words in dreams mean anything that the theme of the dream dictates.

Here is how a dream might be perceived:

You are in the dream.

You’re in London but it looks nothing like the real London. The Houses of Parliament are where the four teams of the Super Bowl live. They each have a quarter of the building and their entrances are at river level, at the end of tunnels that start at the base of four sets of steps, leading up to two bridges across the Thames, which flows away from the Houses of Parliament rather than past it.

The four teams of the Super Bowl are comprised of men and women. There is no indication of what the game of Super Bowl entails and it has nothing to do with the real-life game. The four teams never interact. They are celebrities and people gather on the bridges to see them.

In a nearby park which has a fair number of trees, children play with cannon balls, rolling them around and trying to prevent them from falling down drains.

I am delivering drinks to one of the teams, who are in the park. They have lost a member and are discussing where to find them.

A real life friend of mine appears in the dream and their hair is a dirty mess. They tell me they have a problem with a gang of yobs and need my help. I am not very sympathetic because they are part of a gang who fights with the yobs. At the end of the park we find the yobs and they run back into a multi storey car park that is now where the Houses of Parliament used to be. I don’t notice a difference.

In the car park, the yobs are being interviewed by a camera crew because the car park is beside the TV studios. My friend no longer has dirty hair and they are not part of the gang. They lead me to a doorway at the end of the car park, which leads to an aircraft hangar. I remember that I am teaching them how to fly the space shuttle, which is sitting on the runway with a fuel tanker filling it up.

We take off and fly over London, which now looks like the real London. We don’t go to space but instead we land in a field near Stonehenge. Luckily, the space shuttle has wide wheels to stop it sinking into the mud. Stonehenge doesn’t look like the real Stonehenge and there is a housing estate next to it. My friend takes me to their home at the top of the block of flats and the view from the window looks out over Manhattan.

I then wake up.

The catalysts for each element of this dream could be as follows:

· I heard someone talk about the Super Bowl but it is not a sport I follow, so I don’t know what it entails.

· I watched a documentary about the space shuttle.

· My friend always has clean air and mentioned that they were verbally abused by a group of teens.

· A politician in London wanted to make a big change to something and I wasn’t sure I agreed.

· I have been working a lot and could do with a holiday.

· I’ve never been to New York but would like to go.

· I live near Stonehenge and feel that the tourists are ruining it - along with the company English Heritage who manages the site.

Why the TV interview of the ex-yobs? That could be from any number of things experienced over the last few weeks or even months. Something prompted it to be used.

At no point during the dream will you feel that anything has changed - unless, like me, you are a lucid dreamer.

This map is a work in progress and should not be considered a finished explanation on the process of consciousness.