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(5) I had a dream
of snow. That's all there was – just me, standing in the middle
of a field of snow, white flakes drifting, falling, flying all about
me – everywhere, everywhere. It was not day, it was not night;
there was no source of light but only that which came from the whiteness
of the snow. At first the flakes fell softly, gently; then they
came faster and faster, darting, whirling, filling my eyes with particles
of white; it was as if the whiteness all around me was disintegrating –
above me, below me, on every side. A wind began to shriek in my ears;
it grew louder and louder until at last it filled me completely, until
both it and the snow seemed to exist not only outside me but also
within. And then it was all inside me, the flying snow
and the howling wind; it was all within me. And at the very
instant that I became aware of this, and felt that I could stand that
blinding, shrieking rush of white no longer – I woke up. The dreams I
have while sleeping are, I know, a processing of waking reality, an
interpretive representation of the objective world as shaped by the
emotional and psychological responses I have to it. But what if
life itself is a sort of dream? Now it would be my waking reality
which would have to be viewed as the interpretive representation.
But – of what? Of some reality, apparently, in which there
existed a self potentially even more "awake" than the self I am
now. And what would be the purpose of this "dream"
that I live? Continuing to use the dreams I have in this
reality as a source for analogy, the purpose would apparently be a matter of
processing the psychological and emotional experiences of that more
"wakeful" self – if such experiences it could be said to have. The logic of
the dreams I have now is an emotive logic. Based upon my
psychological and emotional interpretations of waking reality, it
connects these interpretations to sensory data and creates from the
combination new, evocative landscapes for me to explore. Why does it do
this? Upon consideration, I'm not sure that the question
sustains lasting interest. Dreams may yield valuable information
on both positive and negative aspects of how we experience our
existence; they may make manifest important psychological blockages
and offer insights that help us break through them; but ultimately
what all such analysis leads us to is the discovery of the dream
self's own experiential reality. For when one or more of the elements
which make up a dream are, so to speak, "seen through"
(recognized as being a mere projection originating from within the
psyche), we find ourselves occupying the conditional state of
hyper-dreaming. Here, the dream-self recognizes that its
existence, and the existence of all the particulars of its surrounding
environment, are constituent factors of the dreaming process. Since
coming into a recognition of this knowledge is one of the major effects
of dream analysis, it would seem to reveal at the least one of the more
important functions of dreaming; it may even be that it defines its
crucial value. Still, if it
is true that life is but a dream, then the question remains as
to how would it be possible for me to ever "wake up" into
the knowledge of its dream quality. Would not the trigger point
of this "waking up" lie within the psychological field of
some personage greater than myself (having a relationship to me similar
to the one I have with the figures of my own dreams), which must
in some sense now be termed "asleep"? I can never, using
this terminology, "wake up"; only that aspect of myself currently
smothered in the fog of sleep would have the power to enact such a
possibility. But let us suppose that the primary goal of
dreaming does not lie with the dreamer, but with that which is being
dreamed. Let us acknowledge that the dream-self that I now am need
not necessarily adhere to the same laws as govern the figures I
myself dream – or at least that these laws are not necessarily
perceived in exactly the same way. And finally, let us do away with the
notion that whatever self might be conceived of as dreaming me might in
turn itself be dreamed, and that the figures which appear in my
dreams may also be having yet other dreams. Let us instead
narrow our sights to these proportions: to wit, that the reality
within which I currently exist may fairly enough, if still but tentatively,
be called a dream; and that the purpose of this dream is not to cause a waking up from
itself but to it. Now let us broaden our sights to
include just one metaphysical possibility: that there
may exist, either somewhere within this realm of dreaming, or within
myself as the focal point of this dream, some as yet untapped
potential for accelerating my present consciousness into a state of hyper-dreaming. Now the
question arises: How do I enter into this state of "hyper-dreaming"
while yet still awake? Using my own dreams as points of
reference, I see that there are two possible routes which might lead
me into this condition. The first of these involves, presumably,
solving those psychological riddles being presented to me by my
waking reality. But this it would seem I cannot really do; for
the proposition assumes that my waking reality is nothing but a
dream, manifested by some hypothetical "greater self" currently
"asleep." This being the case, the reasoning, or causality,
behind all that I see happening around me is, in its largest and most
profound sense, a "mystery" unfathomable to me. Our
culture has usually dealt with such a scenario in one of two ways.
The first is by means of faith and religion: the
"mystery" is said to be born of that greater being which we
have named "God" – and the ways of God, of course, are
generally recognized to be inscrutable. Alternatively, the
mystery is said to reveal the frontiers of modern-day science:
this realm we inhabit has been shown to be fringed at its
innermost and outermost edges by a bending, a warping, a
disintegration of the known into the unknown – and perhaps unknowable
– beyond. That place beyond is a blank, an apparent
nothingness, a void. It's not unlike the disintegrating fringe
we experience ourselves when falling into sleep, and when waking up
again. This gap between the known and the unknown, between the
knowable and the unknowable, whether viewed theologically, scientifically,
or as an experience of dreaming, can apparently never be closed; and
so, although I don't pretend to have exhausted the possibilities
offered by this first mode of entering into a state of
hyper-dreaming, I cannot see any real hope of gaining a workable
methodology using it. But there are
other reasons why hyper-dreaming (as experienced when sleeping) may become manifest,
as when something occurs within the dream that is at strong variance
with some internal knowledge of the dreamer. For instance, I
once dreamed of myself attending a birthday party at which I was told
that I had just turned twenty-two years old. However, I was not
twenty-two at the time of the dream, and being told that I was caused
a sense of discord of such sharpness to be felt within me that even
my dreaming self was forced to recognize it. The result was
that I "awoke" into the recognition that I was in the
dreaming state. In this state I knew that I was dreaming even
while the dream was taking place; at this point, there was nothing
left but the validity of experience. This opens up a second
possible route one might take – the route whereby a sense of
discord is set up between reality as we believe it to be and the truth
of reality as it really is. Zen monks do
this by means of the koan. The koan operates in such a way as
to "crack open" the mind: it breaks down the
mind's habitual mode of perception and so causes it to enter into a
state of heightened awareness. I myself have never attempted to
solve a koan; confronting myself with one now, I feel like that man
who used to occasionally come into the convenience store:
"Ladies and gentlemen!" I might say. "I have
just been asked the million-dollar question: What is
the sound of one hand clapping? And my answer to this
question is C: I haven't the foggiest idea!" But as
I meditate upon this koan, I come to realize several things. I
realize, firstly, that in both my thinking and in my behavior, I am,
most profoundly, a creature of habit. It's true that much of my
thinking and behavior is odd enough to have put me at variance
with the norms of society, and to that variance I credit any such
insights into the nature of being as I have had. Still, in a
very great many ways, some large and some small, I adhere to the
habits and conventions dictated by my social environment; or else I
create new forms of thinking and behavior which, although they may be
more singular in type, likewise soon become a matter of habit.
I have little ability for the kind of sustained concentration a koan
requires – the concentration necessary to see through and thus beyond
conventionalized modes of perception. But what I also notice is
that when I'm forced to sustain concentration, an underlying
pattern to my waking reality begins to reveal itself. Or
perhaps I should say that a relationship between elements of this
reality and my inner feeling about them begins to show itself
– as it did, for example, in the robbery attempt I experienced.
This was an event so startling and so unusual that it forced me into
a state of heightened concentration, both while it occurred and, in
memory, for a long time after. Though I did not mention it
before, I was just about to begin reading the help-wanted ads in the
newspaper when the robbery took place, for I was already
contemplating leaving my job. In fact, I had been contemplating
leaving that job (having become dissatisfied with its routine) for some
weeks, but was having trouble getting myself to take the possibility
of a new job seriously. At which point life seemed to come along and say:
"Thinking of making a change? Well, here's one damn good reason
why you should!" After some further consideration, involving both
the reliving of the robbery attempt in imagination and dealing with
its aftershocks in everyday reality, I decided that yes, it was
indeed time to quit working at the convenience store. It's as
if the sustained concentration that results from some startling
alteration of habitual expectations begins to allow elements of this
reality to reveal a deeper, more experientially valid meaning.
Perhaps, when this happens, certain riddling aspects of life may be
said to at least be partially solved, a greater degree of
transparency attained, and some measure of heightened awareness achieved. What working
methodology might I devise from these insights? How do I learn,
every day, to "wake up" from what I'm told I should
be experiencing so that I can apprehend my reality more clearly and
directly, thus deriving more meaning from it? As so often
happens in my thinking, this question seems to revolve around moral concerns:
what I "should" be experiencing involves, after all, obeying not only
the laws of nature, but the laws and mores of human society as
well. But it's not that I feel I have no ability to make choices
in my life. Rather, it's that I feel that the choices I might
make are opposed in equal measure to aspects of my life that are
beyond my control. It's not, in other words, that I have no
free will but that my free will is, as it were, fated. It's
fated because, of all the choices I might make, I end up
choosing only one; and I choose that one because all the elements of
my past, all the various aspects of my personality, all the
particulars of what I understand, have learned, and know in my own
individualistic, idiosyncratic way of knowing, allow me to make but
one choice. Yet always, each step of the way, I might
make another choice. It's as if all the thousand thousand
elements that make up my life, all the traits I was born with, all
the experiences I have ever had, all the events that have gone on
about me, all the influences that have exerted their pressures upon
me, have at last brought me inexorably to this singular point in
space and time; and yet, since each point of space and time is
simultaneously coming into being as well as passing away, all those
thousand thousand elements that have combined to create this life and
this reality are constantly being reformulated. Likewise I, who
am the sum result of all my past, am ever being born anew. What is the
sound of one hand clapping? Might not the answer be as simple
as this: "Silence." If a tree falls and
there is no one to hear it, does it make a sound? Could
not the answer be simply this: "No." The
difference between the two questions lies in the fact that I can
imagine the sound of a tree falling – I have heard such a sound in
the past and can easily recall it – thus my remembrance causes me to
become confused as to whether or not it would make a sound were there
no being with the necessary sensory apparatus present to hear
it. But of course, in such a case it would not make a sound –
how could it? However, one also needs to keep in mind that this approach
to the question presumes the necessity of a humanly derived form of
perception for its answering: were humans not to exist, were no
animal life of any kind to exist, it may well be that the earth itself
would "hear" the tree falling; the very air would "hear"
it. Of course, this supposition might also be said to derive from humanly
conceived forms of perceptivity – but that point is of no great import. It only
matters that humans do exist, and that because we exist we can be characterized as
participating in the creation of the world in equal measure to its creation of
us. Thus the proper answer to the question, "What is the sound of
one hand clapping?" might be: "I have a hole in my
shirt," or "This apple tastes sweet," for it is by this
manner of speaking that we demonstrate how the world – and we along with it –
pop into being as a pure manifestation of the Here and Now. Each
moment is, as it were, "eternal" – and, to our human
sensibility, eternally ridden with angst; because although it's
constantly being recreated according to past experiences and
perceptions, we know it to be at the same time something which exists
detached from memory, and thus from meaning. "Memory"
might be defined as a matter of imaginatively reconstructing a
knowable meaning. We constantly reconstruct our reality via memory
in order to maintain our bearings within it, and so gain the ability to
become active participants. To "wake up" to this
"dream" we live we need only recognize that, although we
are each moment the resultant creation of all that is past, we are
also endowed each moment with the power to enact our freedom from
it. Enacting our freedom is the means by which we may gain a
greater clarity in apprehending reality and the meaning it holds for
us. And the more we are able to draw the prejudicial veils from
our eyes with regard to who we are and who we might be, the more
energy we have available to create an ever more meaningful
reality. And I would suppose that sexual energy, being
the most powerful form of energy we hold within us, must be regarded
as our most important tool – not only for the more obvious purpose of
procreation, but for all other forms of creative endeavor as well. TO THAT LOVER WHOM I HAVE NEVER KNOWN AB O U Q U E TofR O S E S"Itis the T I E DwithaS T R I N G
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