Mouse in Dreamland

[The following is from the preface of one of my several unpublished (and unpublishable) books. I was reminded of it by a dissertation on the wonders of modern pharmacology in another blog (click on my Fairhope Lady link). I make no claim that life is not in fact as we dream it rather than as we live it, but I do claim that at this moment I do not believe I am dreaming.]

“If there were a bird who first wanted to exam­ine the size of the sky, or a fish who first wanted to exam­ine the extent of the water—and then try to fly or to swim, they will never find their own ways in the sky or the water.”[1]

Before taking his rib for use in the manufacture of the first woman, God caused a “great sleep” to fall over Adam. The Bible contains no report of Adam’s waking up.[2] Work­ing the same side of the same street, Mark Twain wrote a long, bad story from the viewpoint of a man dream­ing. He claimed he was making the point that what we call life may be a dream and our dreams the true reality. The notion catches the fancy.

By inclination unwilling and by nature unable to deal with the prob­ably impossible, I turn my back on these vaporous diversions. Adam waked up and even though some living things sometimes dream when they sleep, life and the world are pretty much as they appear to be. How do I know that’s so? I don’t, but I’m aim­ing the words in this book at awake (or dreaming) people just like me. If they read it while awake (or sleeping) and understand what I’ve writ­ten, then awake or asleep, I’ve succeeded. To wonder wheth­er we are asleep and dreaming when we think we are awake and think­ing would be to commit the error of Dogen’s bird and fish. Such ques­tions may titillate us or distract us or cast us into pleasant thralls of doubt, but they won’t help us to find our way.

But it has been argued that “from this sleep called life we awaken in death,” that “living is not our ultimate purpose,” that “life is the lar­val stage of existence.” No analysis of assertions like these can shed light on their truth value, for they have none. They may be true, but if so, we must await the end of life in order to know it. The same goes for their falsehood; it cannot be known this side of the grave (and certainly not thereafter). Any system of belief that makes of life some­thing whol­ly other to what it seems, is of a kind with systems that claim we are asleep when awake. They suggest differ­ences the living will never see.

[1] From the Zen Master Dogen (13th Century), his Shobogenzo, quoted in Alan W. Watts, The Way of Zen.

[2] This is not an original thought. I think I read it in something by the clever writer, Robert Anton Wilson. But maybe it wasn't Wilson. Could have been Robert Persig or Goethe . . . or Tom Clancy.