This is a summary of the Alan Watts 75-year dream thought experiment. I’ve synthesized multiple sources where Watts talks about this idea into a single version here, so this summary is paraphrased rather than direct quotes.
This page is intended as a learning resource for educational purposes and only meant to offer an overview/introduction. Short quotes arenât a substitute for source material, so if this page sparks your interest, explore more deeply by checking out Alan Wattsâ books (Amazon).
The 75-Year Dream Thought Experiment (Alan Watts Summary)
“The Godhead (or the Self) pretends itâs all of us, and so gets lost, and has a ball, and dreams all this … Itâs therefore compared to a dream, to a passing illusion, and you should not therefore take it seriously. You may take it sincerely, perhaps, as an actor may be sincere in his acting. But, not serious because that means it throws you for a loop.” â Alan Watts
The thought experiment:
- What would you do if you were God? Letâs suppose that you were able, every night, to dream any dream you wanted to dream. And that you have the power within one night to dream 75 years of subjective time (or any length of time you wanted). What would you do?
Starting with wishes and pleasures:
- First of all, Iâm quite sure that most of us would dream all the marvelous things we wanted to happen. You would fulfill and satisfy all your wishes. You would have every kind of pleasure and delight you could conceive. You could design for yourself what would be the most ecstatic life: love affairs, banquets, dancing girls, wonderful journeys, gardens, music beyond belief. You might go on that way for months.
Getting more adventurous and dangerous:
- And then, after a couple of months of this sort of thing, at 75 years a night, that would get a little boring and you might begin to get a little tired of it and get a little taste for something different. You would say, ‘What about an adventure tonight in which something terribly exciting and rather dangerous is going to happen? But Iâll know Iâm dreaming, so it wonât be too bad. And Iâll wake up if it gets too serious.’ You would move over to an adventurous dimension, where there were sudden dangers involved, and the thrill of dealing with dangers. And you could rescue princesses from dragons, and go on dangerous journeys, make wonderful explosions and blow them up, and eventually get into contests with enemies.
Forgetting you are dreaming:
- And, after youâve done that for some time, youâd think up a new wrinkle: to forget that you were dreaming, so youâd think it was all for real, and to be anxious about it. Youâd get into really serious messesâbecause wouldnât it be a great surprise when you woke up! You would say ‘Now, letâs go out a bit further and have a surprise. Letâs have a dream which isnât under control, where something is going to happen to me that I donât know what itâs going to be. Letâs forget itâs a dream and have a real thrill!’ And you would dig that, and come out of that and say ‘Wow, that was a close shave, wasnât it?’
Getting further and further out:
- And then, after youâve done that for a while, you get more and more nerve until you sort of dare yourself as to how far out you can get. Youâd say, like children who dare each other on things: âHow far out could you get? What could you take? What dimension of being lost, of abandonment of your power, what dimension of that could you stand?â You would get more and more adventurous, and you would make further and further-out gambles as to what you would dream.
Dreaming here and now:
- Finally, you would dream where you are now. You would dream the dream of living the life that you are actually living nowâwith all your personal involvements, problems, etc, reading this thought experiment. That would be within the infinite multiplicity of choices you would have.
How do you know thatâs not what youâre doing?
Could be. Because, after all, what would you do if you were God? If you were God, and in the sense that you knew everything, and you were completely transparent to yourself through and through, you would be bored. So if you were God, you would say to yourself, ‘Man, get lost.’
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