dreaming from Einstein's perspective.

After reading Einstein's Dreams, I've been wondering a lot about time and what reality actually is. What does reality even mean?? I would assume it's different for every person. How can I even really know if I'm awake right now? These kinds of thoughts get me to basically no where real quick, but are fun none the less. After having a two hour nap and one epic dream, I had some corn flakes. Haha, anticlimactic no?....And, I had an idea about what I would include in one of my own versions of time...(i.e. if the book were called Juliette's Dreams, here's what one of the sections would be about):

In this world, dreams take place in alternate realities. All of the characters are real and all the events that are contained within a dream are actually happening. Each dream world is its own universe.
What happens when I fall asleep is that I get transported to another world and either act as an observer or a lucky sub-in for the life of my other self. Essentially, I exist in multiple distinct universes. Some of them make sense and appear strikingly similar to the one I am writing this blog in. But others are entirely disjointed and nonsensical. Yet I separately, consciously exist in an infinite number of bodies in each one of these worlds. Each of my dreams is just a tiny glimpse into what life is like in that land.
How do I know that the one I am in, is the one I awoke in this morning?...
I have fallen asleep since then.

Sorry if this doesn't make any sense. Think me a loon if you will. It matters not. Here (although there are many), are some excerpts from Einstein's Dreams that I like:

There is a place where time stands still. Raindrops hang motionless in air. Pendulums of clocks float mid-swing. Dogs raise their muzzles in silent howls. Pedestrians are frozen on the dusty streets, their legs cocked as if held by strings. The aromas of dates, mangoes, coriander, cumin are suspended in space. As a traveler approaches this place from any direction, he moves more and more slowly. His heartbeats grow farther apart, his breathing slackens, his temperature drops, his thoughts diminish, until he reaches dead center and stops. For this is the center of time. From this place, time travels outward in concentric circles-at rest at the center, slowly picking up speed at greater diameters. Who would make pilgrimage to the center of time? Parents with children, and lovers.

I also like this one:

Imagine a world in which people live just one day. Either the rate of heartbeats and breathing is speeded up so that an entire lifetime is compressed to the space of one turn of the earth on its axis--or the rotation of the earth is slowed to such a low gear that one complete revolution occupies a whole human lifetime. Either interpretation is valid. In either case, a man or woman sees one sunrise, one sunset.

After much debate with myself, I think this one is my favorite:

In this world, there are two times. There is mechanical time and there is body time. The first is as rigid and metallic as a massive pendulum of iron that swings back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. The second squirms and wriggles like a bluefish in a bay. The first is unyielding, predetermined. The second makes up its mind as it goes along.
Many are convinced that mechanical time does not exist...they listen to their heartbeats. They feel the rhythms of their moods and desires. Such people eat when they are hungry, go to their jobs at the millinery or the chemist's whenever they wake from their sleep, make love all hours of the day. Such people laugh at the thought of mechanical time.
Then there are those who think their bodies don't exist. They live by mechanical time...They know that the body is not a thing of wild magic, but a collection of chemicals, tissues, and nerve impulses. Thoughts are no more than electrical surges in the brain...In short, the body is a machine, subject to the same laws of electricity and mechanics as an electron or clock. As such, the body must be addressed in the language of physics.


Major props to you Alan Lightman, I love this book!