A Pivotal Reality

For I now notice that there is a considerable difference between these two; dreams are never joined by the memory with all the actions of life, as in the case with those actions that occur when one is awake. For surely, if, while I’m awake, someone were suddenly to appear to me and then immediately disappear, as occurs in dreams, so that I see neither where he came from nor where he went, it is not without reason that I would judge him to be a ghost or a phantom conjured up in my brain, rather than a true man.

But, when things happen, and I notice distinctly where they come from, where they are now, and when they come to me, and when I connect my perception of them without interruption with the whole rest of my life, I am clearly certain that these perceptions have happened to me not while I was dreaming but while I was awake.

Rene Descartes in his sixth meditation from his 1641 work, Discourse on Methods and Meditations on First Philosophy does show us how beliefs create the reality in a given point in time and space. The fact that we look into the mirror of the psyche in the dream state and see the reflection of our thoughts, fears, desires, and beliefs is not part of 17th century awareness. Dreaming is a practical activity and a natural cooperation exists between the dream state and the waking state.

We tend to forget that dreaming is part of life. Our dream experiences represent a pivotal reality like the center of a wheel. Our physical wold is just one spoke in that wheel; we are united with all of our simultaneous existences (all spokes) in the dream reality.

A growing number of people realize that the self is a multitudinous, not singular. Dreaming verifies that fact. Beliefs put that realization in terms we can understand in a time-space sequence; the belief about reincarnation sees the self traveling through the centuries and moving through the doors of life and death in other times and places.

The basic nature of reality shows itself clearly in the dream state since we experience ourselves on many nights undertaking different roles simultaneously; we even change sex, social position, nationality, age, and religious alliances. We still know our self as our self even though counterparts of the self manifest as we dream. We speak of races and cultures and within those cultures exists our counterpart selves that are spokes on that wheel.

Each self has a free will and chooses an environment as a physical experience in time and space. Those involved in a particular point in time are working on specific problems and challenges. Races don’t just happen and cultures don’t just appear. The self actually divides itself and materializes in the flesh of several individuals with entirely different backgrounds. People living within any given century are related in terms of consciousness and identity although we don’t understand these biological and spiritual connections.

In dreams we experience aspect of these selves so they are not ghost or hallucinations. They are other aspects of the self that choose their own framework according to the intent of consciousness. In this fashion we work out problems and overcome challenges in the dream state since our independent consciousness is free to travel without the restrictions of our limited time-space reality.



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