New Matrixism Following the 'Path of the One' to enlightenment

 I fear setting a dangerous precedent by posting a second entry in as many days, but here goes.  At the end of this posting will be an update on the status of the site redesign.

Slashdot has an interesting story today "Video Gamers Have Power Over Their Dreams".  It says that Canadian researchers have found that people who play video games before going to sleep have greater control over their dreams than those who don't play video games before going to sleep.  This study was performed by Grant MacEwan University psychologist, Jayne Gackenbach.  In her various studies she found that gamers were more likely to have lucid dreams, dreams in which they were observing themselves from outside their bodies, and to be able to control their dreams.  This control over their dreams in further studies were shown that the game was able to control their dream selfs, but no one else in the dream.  You can read more in this article.

This brings up a whole host of interesting thoughts and ideas.  Dreaming has been an oft speculated but seldom understood activity.  Dreams have been used in making prophecies; dreams have been thought to be a simple processing of the days events by the brain; dreams have been suggested to be communications from gods or the dead.  Generally, it's been assumed that dreams occur and a person has little control in what is dreamt.  However, this latest news suggests this may not be the case.

I know I have had very vivid dreams, dreams that felt real at the time.  Upon waking up and thinking back about the dream it sometimes felt like a movie that was playing, but where I was a participant.  I didn't necessarily feel like I had freewill to do as I wanted in those dreams.  Perhaps it is because subconsciously I knew it was a dream and knew I had little control over what would happen.  Similar to how some people live their waking lives, believing they are stuck in their current activities and unable to control if they can improve their lot in life?

But what if we did have greater control over our dreams?  Would there become a difference between a life in a dream and a life in being awake?  For fear of making the "joke of a religion based on a Sci-Fi movie" worse, this could be compared to the movie Avatar.  There humans would be awake and live their lives just as we (think we) do.  For those who controlled the Na'vi-human hybrids, they did so when they were asleep.  In this case there were two physically different bodies, but the same consciousness driving both depending on the state of wakefulness or dreaming.  

Why couldn't this idea be real?  If it did, the really interesting question would be: Which is the real life and how can you tell the difference?

Website update: I'm in the process of making sure I'm redirecting the old pages to the new ones.  If you find any broken links let me know so I can fix them.  I've added a new feature today to allow for messaging people on the site.  Once logged in, there is a "Messages" option on the left.  There you can send messages straight to me or to other users on the site.  

I've also created several special user levels.  Those users who have (or will) establish themselves as regular users will obtain the "Matrixist" user level.  This level will allow you to not have to enter in the CAPTCHA that exists on many forms to combat spamming.  It also allows you to post comments without my having to approve them.  At some point, for those who are interested, there will be a "Contributor" level to allow those people to post their own blog entries similar to this one and may have some other benefits later on.  

While I would like to re-establish forums at some point, I am hesitant to do that now.  I would hate to activate them and not have much activity on them.  Once I see some users register and it looks like there might be some activity I will definitely consider adding that feature in.