Controlling the Dreams

The most amazing thing about explaining these dreams was that I developed some control over them. After I was completely convinced that each explanation was correct, these dreams disappeared! I couldn't fool myself anymore! Thinking that falling knees is the same as falling off a roof or cliff is clearly fooling myself. But once the mechanism is understood, the brain doesn't get fooled. Thus although the brain is sufficiently shut off to be easily fooled during sleep, it still has sufficient capacity to recognize the truth once the mechanism is solved.

Still, fooling myself appeared to me somewhat farfetched. In order to convince myself that this type of fooling is possible, I had to find a real life example. Luckily, I found one. It is what magicians do. When you watch a magic trick, you know that it is not magic, but you fall for it every time, in the sense that it is totally mystifying and very exciting. Now the story changes completely if someone were to explain to you how the magic was done. Then, all of a sudden, the mystery and excitement disappears, and you end up concentrating on how the magician is executing the trick. You can't be fooled into thinking that it is magic. Thus, in a dream, our brain can be fooled as long as it doesn't know that it is being fooled. Since most people don't know the explanation for the dream, they obviously are unaware of the foolery going on, and the dreams keep going. Once you know the cause of the dream, you know that the brain was being fooled; therefore, it is now much easier for the brain to figure out the truth and the dream disappears. Before you figured out the truth, the brain did not even know that it was being fooled, so it had no reason to even attempt to look for the truth. Now it all seems to make sense.