Dream and Creation

Creation is not a single act; it is a continuous process. Everything has to be sustained, held in existence.

When we go to sleep and dream, everything can seem very real, especially if love, hatred, or fear comes into it. When we wake up we may feel foolish for having believed so deeply in the reality of what we just experienced. If you have ever dreamt, as I have, that you went to sleep inside the dream and dreamed a dream within the dream, then you may wonder if you comprehended the nature of waking up correctly. What if this is a dream? Is there an infinite series of wakings up? Will we go on waking up from different layers of dream for ever?

So what is so specially real about what we so smugly call 'the real world'? Well, you say, everything's much more consistent than in a dream. If you put something down on the table, it stays there if nobody moves it, until tomorrow. Then what about pain? If you have a really bad toothache, there is no way that you can see that as a dream. Sex, of course, seems pretty real (more on this later).

But what if dreams use different tricks on each level? What if pain, sex and consistency are unique to our level? There are hints of these even in sleep, but 'waking' life certainly has the edge.

And if we are dreaming now, whose dream is it? Yours or mine? Solipsism is a real danger here, but solipsism is not rational (as I have said before) because even my own liver is 'other' and the dreams I have when I go to bed are almost completely out of my control - I can hardly claim a right to talk about 'my' dream: I don't even know what is going to happen next. If you can do 'lucid dreaming' you might have a little more claim to being lord and master of it all, but even then, the fabric of the dream is provided for you.

There is even more 'otherness' in waking life. That is what makes creation on our level so beautiful: we can experience OTHERS, we have company and we are not alone. We know that the source is 'OTHER', and yet always present and close (holding us in existence). The things which we sometimes think should not exist, like enemies and pain, are the very things which compel us to accept and believe in the reality of otherness.