Waking Times: Many of you have heard the statement that life is a dream or like a dream. It’s an often repeated concept in spiritual circles and, even to some extent, in popular culture. While it’s a fascinating concept, few people really see things that way. We are all familiar with the usual night dreams, and for the most part we don’t consider those experiences to be reality, at least not to the extent that waking life is considered real. The question of the reality of our dreams really comes down to perspective. Night dreams don’t appear real from the point of view of the waking state, however, when you are immersed in a dream and don’t know you are dreaming, they seem completely real. Even though the mind is mostly detached from the body, we experience the same range of sensory experiences we do in waking life, actually they are much more expanded. We also experience the full range of thoughts and emotions, again in an even more expanded manner. Night dreams are a more fluid reality than the waking state as they do not take place on the physical plane. However greater fluidity and less solidity does not mean less reality. When we are in the midst of the dream world, just as in the waking state, we have a sense of presence or personal existence, as well as identification with a dream body. That dream body may be much different than our physical body and perhaps much more subtle, but the identification with the dream body is what allows us to experience the dream world. The belief that we ARE that dream body and the lack of knowledge of any other level of our existence are what makes dreams seem real while we are in them.
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