In what seems to have become a semi-yearly event for me, I just got through watching Waking Life again. It is still among the most spiritually intense films I've ever seen, even after so many repetitions. (For added interest, I turned on the text commentary through part of it, mostly to help me remember a few names to look for whenever I find myself in a library/bookstore.)

Though I only faintly remember it now, last night I had a dream that featured, amidst other forgotten elements, giant monster worms that grow in coffee brewing machines.

But the most bizarre part was that I had a series of false awakenings, after which I still believed that such worms (1 foot in length and 2 inches in diameter when fully grown) existed as real organisms that could lie dormant in stored coffee beans, and grow to full size when the coffee is brewed. When I really woke up, I had to think for a little while before I realized that no, I don't believe and haven't been taught all my life that such worms commonly exist.

It's as if the dream subroutine decided to temporarily revise an entire section of my memory to include these creatures. Even though the memory of my parents in the dream was mostly the same, my past had changed to have them warning me about the coffee monsters when I was little, and I even had memories of seeing one and being scared when I was a child.

The Holy Moment.

Back to thoughts about the movie. That scene -- The Holy Moment -- seems, for me, to be a pivotal point at which the film itself transitions beyond being a merely intellectually interesting series of philosophical musings, and ventures into the realm of the truly transcendent. Everything that came before The Holy Moment was a mental spectacle to prepare the mind of the viewer -- to get us into an inquiring mode of thought. Everything after it challenges us to examine the nature of the ongoing present on a fundamental and personal level; it's a very "in your face" climactic barrage, culminating in the final pinball scene where Linklater himself cites Philip K Dick in explaining the nature of life as God's question to all of us: Will you be with me?

Okay, that was a mouthful. But anyway, yeah. The Holy Moment. That's where it's at. Not then, but now. This. Ever-changing, ever-evolving. Me, in front of the computer. But not me as an ego. Everything. The wholeness of experience.

No need to frame it, except as a sort of training wheels. That's what cinema is for. That's what virtual reality is for. It's a way to learn how to be when one is not quite yet ready for the full challenge of Class Real.

Or as a way for the divine to fragment itself -- playing the game of forgetting its true nature. (See also: Alan Watts, Buddhism: The Religion of No Religion.) The Holy Moment, set apart from all others through an artifical lens, allows us to remember a little easier.

...

This time around, I was also pondering the telltale signs of a lucid dream. Light switches that don't work, words or letters that can't be read (or don't stay consistent), clocks whose digits are out of focus or impossible to decipher. What is it about these things that are so different which causes the dreaming brain to fail to parse them?

My thoughts took me back to that interview I read a couple months ago between these two great thinkers...

I'm talking about time not existing. Time, as an abstract continuing "thread" that unravels in an endless progression that links all events together while remaining independent of them. That doesn't exist. Sequence exists. Rhythm exists. But not time. Part of this has to do with the notion of mass production and division of labor. Tick, tick, tick, as you said. Identical seconds. Identical people. Identical chores repeated endlessly. Well, no two occurrences are identical, and if you are living in a stream of inner and outer experience that constantly brings clusters of new events, each moment is quantitatively and qualitatively different than the moment before. The notion of time simply disappears.

The notion of time (arbitrated by clocks, which couldn't be recognized in Wiggins's dream) is a fairly recent invention in human history. Then it hit me. So are written words. And light switches are even more recent, barely over 100 years old. Before that, there was no way a human could instantly adjust the surrounding light level, except perhaps to light a torch, which wouldn't have nearly as wide of an effect.

The dream mind is a product of primordial evolution, coming from a time when none of these things existed. Assuming the Hopi had decided they were interested in lucid dreaming, what signals could they have used to detect a dream state? They didn't have light switches or clocks. I'm not certain about written language. In any case, it would have been a lot trickier.

So anyway, all these techniques for lucid dreaming basicly amount to hacks resulting from the fact that our brains aren't, at their core, adapted to many of the conditions under which we live. What does this mean? That lucid dreaming is itself "unnatural?" Maybe, although I wouldn't automatically assume this means it's "bad". The practice, however, does seem to depend, in large part, on existing in an environment that is out of sync with what we are evolved for.

(This could also lead back to speculating on the very purpose and evolutionary function of dreaming itself.)

...

For me, this bit of inquiry, if persisted through long enough, inevitably leads to examination of my own so-called "manic episodes". I'm not entirely comfortable with using that term, not because I deny that I fit the classification that the medical profession has designated as "manic depressive" or "bipolar", but because of its limiting connotations. The entire lexicon of terms like mental "illness" to describe a phenomenon which affects a certain class of us contains a heavy yet unacknowledged bias. It's as if such terms were created to affirm that there is something wrong with me and others like me; even if this "disease" can't be "cured", it can be "treated". I won't even deny that certain aspects of the "treatment" have been beneficial. I just get tired of the layers of assumptions that get piled on top of the words.

Ranting aside, I have come to believe that during such "episodes", the brain begins to operate as if it was dreaming even while fully awake in the real world. Actions that would normally be reserved for the mental purging that happens at night are executed in the wide open daylight. (Or acted out at night, but not in the realm of sleep.)

Thus at such times, reality itself becomes a sort of lucid dream. (Or, in less optimal moments, a non-lucid one, where greater awareness of context momentarily disappears.) I may still have full access to my name and all my memories (or better access than normal), but my mind occupies a different plane of consciousness. It's a difficult thing to explain to anyone who hasn't been there.

Another characteristic, that we might also infer is common to the dream state, is a reversion to a form of mind that has no idea how to handle many aspects of modern society. During an "episode", my mind becomes overwhelmed and exhausted by things such as television, amplified music, and flashing lights. Yet it is transfixed by them.

I have no doubt that my recent tendencies toward commonality with various primitivist philosophies came about largely as a result of intuitions which sprouted during such moments. Indeed, I started to develop such notions before I even had any idea that there might be others in the world who shared them.

What can be concluded from all this? That I am indeed a nut at heart? Or have I been privileged enough to get a glimpse of something that, as of yet, only a few other people have also seen?

Since I'm getting sleepy to the point of dreaming, I'll leave it there for now.