Dream Within A Dream

Who hasn't considered the idea that life is merely a dream? Many great philosophers and musicians have mused about this odd question. Even the children's nursery song "Row, Row, Row Your Boat" asserts that all this "...Life is but a dream..." In the strangest tale (by Mark Twain) entitled the, Mysterious Stranger, an angellic being known simply as Lucifer remarks that what we know as life is truly a dream within a dream, he goes on to say that if one looks closely enough, all the signs were there. This haunting passage echos the mystical "un-real" nature of the world we live in. For all the solid, logical explanations we encounter, for all the functional elements, that which is predictable and sound, we are thrown into doubt by one single moment of magic. I frequently comment that this world contains an element of "un-reality" that the "non-real" is just as solid and functional as that which we KNOW to be real. I think that it is much more logical to make a concerted effort to rid ourselves of this notion that the world is anything (any one thing or another) it is enough that it is as it is. It is enough that it is functional, for the puroposes that it is put to use, to the extent that we will it to. Life can be called a dream within a dream because that is one aspect of the nature of it. If one spends all their life looking for the ethereal and effemoral they will find that aspect of the world all around them. If one searches for the solid and the sound, the scientific, then they too will find that aspect of the nature of the world to be all around them. The key is to look at the world in such a way that does not exclude either. If you seek the truth, you should first expect to find it within the infinite, not the world of shaddows and echos. If this world we experience is dreamlike it is because that is the state in which we are currently viewing it with. (See also the entry, "What Is And What Should Never Be" for more on the topic of the "un-real" nature of reality.)