Creativity will become all important for human endeavor as we go into the future with widespread Artificial intelligence. We must develop this capability in ourselves. In the hypnagogic phase of relaxation, it is possible to have experiences free from all the constraints of physical reality. This opens the possibility of producing ideas that would not be possible under any other circumstances. We may also encounter this in daydreams. Reveries power to produce creativity is its ability to free ourselves from our lizard brains (e.g. thinking about food, sex, survival), and ironically from our inhibitory neocortex to take us into a transcendental world. We are released from the cares of everyday life. Surrealistic imagining is helpful in this process. I have a reoccurring surrealist dream in which I am in a large bathtub that transforms into a part of a coral reef teaming with colorful fish, squid, and sea anemones.
Here is an example of one of my daydreams. I am sitting in a great overstuffed, dusty chair watching a late-night murder mystery “The 7 little Indians.” I am perhaps 9 years old. I am alone, but my mother is in the next room somewhere (she has long since been dead). But in this “true reverie” my beloved mother is there, somewhere. As I sink into that dusty old leather chair, I descend into the most bliss-full reverie as sleep begins to envelope me. All is peace and comfort. Contrast this state to stories of WWII D-day soldiers blasted to pieces whose last pleading was for their mothers. This always struck me as such a poignant existential moment. It seems to call out to me everything that is ugly in life. I do not have to call for my mother, because she is in the next room. I sink deeper and deeper into sweet reverie. Perhaps I will never again know a sleep such as that. How could I call out to my mother now? It would be pointless, and so I experience something like that of those soldiers. I am forever removed from my mother just as the soldiers were by death. What does this have to do with reverie, everything! We can tap into blissful moments to counter stress. It is in such moments that we are able to tap into the deep recesses of our souls. For a moment we are not just meat. We have a full and complete sense of peace and well-being. We are in a state of euphoria. It is good to keep such memories in our back pocket to practice peaceful mindfulness.
Lucid dreaming is also important to this subject. First, by providing the ideal opportunity to harness reverie in creative production. When one comes to the epiphany that the experience one sees is in fact a dream, it is just as if one had such a revelation in waking life. Then there are the potentialities. Flying is one. It is truly amazing when one starts flying at will in a dream. I can imagine all the multifaceted ways that one could engage in creative activities given the context. You are in a virtual world under your absolute control. What would you do if you had total power over all matter? What about the dreams that are so vivid that one awakens with tears in one’s eyes from the loss of a person from a dream world. An experience so life-like that I am at a loss as to how to explain how a sleeping brain would conjure up such vivid images. In the future, we will have the ability to induce such states at will, and visit custom designed dream worlds. What if we could use lucid dreams for creative work? Epiphanies cannot be forced. That is why a state of reverie allows them to naturally emerge in the uninhibited mind. We should view our lives as a kind of dream. As Marcus Aurelius said:
“Stir up thy mind, and recall thy wits again from thy natural dreams, and visions, and when thou art perfectly awoken, and canst perceive that they were but dreams that troubled thee, as one newly awakened out of another kind of sleep look upon these worldly things with the same mind as thou didst upon those, that thou sawest in thy sleep.”
We can exploit the creativity of dreams and use the understanding that all experience is derived from the views we create from stimuli. Another example is the lightheadedness from pulling all-nighters (not recommended for health), when in a sleep deprived reverie words seem to pour forth from me, that make sense in the morning when I look over them with a clearer mind. Since waking life itself is all subjective, who is to demonstrate that we do not in fact enter an alternate world during our reveries? In as much as we often believe during our dreams that they are “real” we are experiencing a different world. Science has not established the absolute constraints of existence. We essentially inhabit a self-generated experience in our heads, and Neurostoicism provides tools to make this a life rich and full of happiness.
