Dreaming and determinism

Many people find predestination paradoxical, especially if you think about it too much. If, before you do something, you pause to consider the fact that what you’re about to do was predestined, it feels odd–like watching hidden camera footage of yourself, when you didn’t know you were being filmed.

This sensation has analogies. Because we are self-aware, there’s a sense in which we can watch ourselves do something, as if there were two of us: the observer and the agent. We have a capacity for mental detachment that enables us to seem to step outside ourselves and study ourselves from a third-person perspective, even though that’s something of an illusion. Of course, much of the time we don’t bother to engage in self-reflection. What just do whatever we need to do or want to do.

Or consider dreams. Three kinds of dreams.

In ordinary dreams the dreamer is self-aware. The dreamer is aware of the dreamscape. The dreamer is aware of characters in the dream.

The dreamer does things in the dream. Goes places. Talks to people. Makes choices.

Yet what the dreamer thinks and sees, hears, says, and does is caused by his subconscious. In that respect, dreaming is like predestination. In dreaming, there’s that invisible underlying cause (the subconscious) which directing everything you do and everything that happens to you in the dream.

The dreamer’s involvement is effortless. He is carried along by the inner momentum of the dream. No struggle. No sense of entrapment.

In lucid dreams, the dreamer becomes aware of the fact that he is dreaming. He’s cognizant of a hidden reality behind the dream. Behind-the-scenes.

At that point, a lucid dreamer has a choice. He can remain a passive spectator in the sense that he can simply let events continue to unfold without intervening. Discover what his subliminal imagination has in store.

Even a lucid dream still has a default setting. A default dreamscape. Default characters. A default plot. So even though the lucid dreamer is a self-conscious dreamer, there is still a part of him that’s subliminally scripting the dream. A compartmentalized mind.

This is somewhat like a Christian who believes in predestination. He becomes a conscious participant in his predestined reality, in his predestined actions.

Or the lucid dreamer can take control of the dream, override the default setting, and influence the course of events. That might seem more like libertarian freewill.

Yet predestination doesn’t prevent us from interacting with our environment or changing our surroundings. What we can’t change is predestination itself. But when we consciously manipulate our surroundings, when we effect the course of events, that’s part of the original plan.

Then you have inspired dreams. In Scripture, you have seers and dreamers who take part in narrative dreams and visions inspired by God. God creates the dreamscape. God creates the characters. God creates the plot. The seer or dreamer is like a tourist.

This raises the question of whether inspired dreamers and seers know at the time that they are dreaming or seeing visions. Or is this something they become aware of after the fact? After they awaken or come out of the trance?

Suppose they are conscious of the fact that they are experiencing a divine vision or dream at the time it happens. That’s like become aware of predestination. God controls every detail of the vision.