Dreaming, philosophy and neurobiology

The idea that there is an independent, insentient world out there, governed by scientific laws and impersonal processes is ultimately a human construct. A powerful and effective construct, but a human one nonetheless.  Traditional Buddhist epistemology simply does not accept the Cartesian notion of an insurmountable gap between mind and matter. Most Buddhist philosophies hold that mind and object arise interdependently so there’s no easy way to seperate one’s understanding of the world from the world itself.

Another way of looking at this is from the point of neurobiology. In that field, its understood that any change in a

dreamland

During a typical lifetime a human spends a total of about six years dreaming. REM sleep studies have indicated that the first dream of the night is expected to deal with material from the preceeding 24 hour period, while the next dream of the night would deal with events in the preceeding month.  The third REM period would involve childhood scenes or the dreamer being much younger in age.