(5)

"In this world of illusion, why cling to anything?  Desire only leads to suffering."  The ancient masters of wisdom spoke such words often.  And I have learned to understand at least to some degree what they meant, not only in philosophical terms, but experientially as well.  This world is an illusion set afloat in the midst of a void; this reality is but a dream.  As a human being, I have the capacity to understand this.  I assume that nonhuman animals perceive reality as unyieldingly real, solid, and irrefutable; they have – so I presume – no adjunct understanding of its illusory quality.  It's also true, however, that I do not know for certain what the experiential understanding of nonhuman animals consists of, what layers or facets of perception they may have that I do not share.  Moreover, the reality/illusion/dream perception that I do have is, so to speak, "merely" human:  it's only one of many perceptions possible, each variant of perception, or variant mode of perception being, in an absolute sense, equally valid.  The only thing that's certain is that for me, it's my human perceptions and realizations which form the basis from which I must approach living in this world and within this reality.

Yet the relationship I have with reality rests upon a paradox.  While my human mode of perception has a causal effect in its ability to influence reality, my perception itself is but a mere effect that the rest of reality has upon me:  I am not only the dreamer, but also that which is dreamed.  My perceptions are the effect of my mind, my mind the effect of my brain, my brain the effect of my body, and the effect of my body, down to its every last itch, belch, and yawn, is a mere facade given to the Void.  At the center of "I" exists the "not-I"; this is what my human capacity reveals to me.  The more truly I know this, the more profoundly I realize it, the more there is enacted a reciprocal effect, constituted by the power of my realization to exert an influence upon the rest of reality.  However, since the rest of the world – the other components which make up this reality – has its own self-generating causality, a causality which exists separately from me, it is not, and could never be, subject to my will.  Thus the only way to formulate my relationship to this world is to call myself a dreamer within a dream that dreams me:  and I must perforce allow it to dream me.  The more I "allow" the dream to dream me – that is to say, the more I come into accord with the perception available to me as a human being – the more I facilitate communication between myself and the rest of reality.

Increasing such communication causes me to "influence" reality – but such influence is not necessarily to my, or anyone else's, immediate benefit.  Indeed, the dream seems to become more persistently uneasy as I go along, not only because of my increased knowledge with regard to its political and sociological actualities, but because of my own evolving awareness as to how I experience – and experientially influence – those actualities.  The only "benefit" I can claim to derive from my understanding comes solely through increasing the possibility of some form of "waking up" from the dream – though this "waking up" may in fact simply be a matter of my perfecting my ability to exist as a dreamer within a dream.