According to ancient mythology of the Australian Aborigine, there existed two different worlds – the dream world and the waking world. Even more, the waking world was originally devised by living beings within the dream world. They called this “Dreamtime,” or simply “The Dreaming.” One of their most important deities was Altjira – the god of Dreamtime. Allegedly this God then retired soon thereafter into the sky, becoming a sky God, per se.

Either way, this Altjira existed within the realm of Dreamtime and created Earth, alongside everything that resided within it. Only to then retire into the sky. Sounds somewhat familiar, doesn’t it? Christian mythology claiming God created the Earth in 6 days and then retires into the Heavens? Understand that Aboriginal Australian mythology predates Christianity by several centuries.

You may be asking: What's the point? Well, the point is to note where the following line-of-thought was inspired from. More specifically, where I came to start thinking about "Dream State Sentience" (DSS).

Consider this scenario: We’re a few decades into the future and new fields of scientific research have become far more efficient – mind uploading and dream engineering. With mind uploading, scientists have developed a way to not only access your entire brain’s synaptic “software” but also upload downloaded copies into an artificial brain or implant. Dream engineering wouldn’t be that much different – dreams would be included in what’s downloaded from the brain – but it would also include the ability to engineer new dreams and upload them back into the brain or, again, an implant.

For mind uploading to be effective researchers would have to first reverse-engineer the brain, thus successfully develop an artificial brain. This artificial brain would acquire everything a biological brain acquires, which would also include consciousness. Without consciousness – self-awareness – to be uploaded into an artificial brain or implant would be pointless, seeing as how you’d no longer be aware of yourself being alive; you would no longer be a sentient life form. (To understand how mind uploading could hypothetically work, click here.)

Then comes along dream engineering. Again, it would be part of the process of mind uploading. However, dream engineering would become a popular market in and of itself, seeing as how I’m fairly sure a lot of people would want to be in control of their own dreams, or at the very least choose which dreams they’d prefer having.

Understand, by now, the concepts of dreams, consciousness, and all other brain matter would no longer be considered mere chemical reactions in the brain; they’d become programs, that can be encoded however each individual sees fit. Realizing this, who’s then to say that it would be impossible to code a separate sentient being within an engineered dream? It would essentially be no different from coding other functions within your dream, which includes certain people you may wish to dream about – family, friends, a lover, a historical figure, etc.