The Dreamer and the Dream
El soñador y el sueño
Notice how sounds, sights, sensations, and even your sense of self resemble a dream, and rest gently in not knowing who is dreaming.
The Dreamer and the Dream
Let's explore noticing and observing,
finding, possibly discovering, deep structures of thoughts and assumptions.
And so what we're experiencing now,
what is in a sense known to be real,
is the experience of sounds, that which we call sounds,
which is a kind of perception with a specific kind of texture.
Another aspect of perception is what we call sight:
the colors and textures of sight,
which we distinguish from sounds,
but they're in a sense quite similar.
Then there's the experience of sensation.
Notice in the skin and the flesh and the breath,
sensations in the face and neck, any kind of discomfort.
It's really just another kind of texture.
The appearance of textures:
those textures that we call sounds,
textures we call sight,
textures we call sensation now.
What they truly are, where they come from, what they really are,
it's actually quite mysterious, and we don't really know,
since when we dream we also experience sounds and shapes and colors and forms,
what we could call sight.
Same with sensations: pain, discomfort.
The mental world
Then there's another aspect of experience,
which is the mental, emotional world, or not really a world, but that aspect.
Just imagined, imaginary sounds,
imaginary images and colors,
imaginary sensations.
When we feel pain in a dream or touch in a dream, that's an imaginary sensation.
In a sense it's not very different from the waking experience.
And the experience now of sound and sight and those textures are still representations of the mind.
And so I'm just describing the current experience,
what's happening now.
Thoughts as images and sounds
And then that space of what we call thoughts,
it's basically simply images and sounds.
The sounds can be imagined and shaped into words.
They can then have some conceptual meaning,
but it's still just within the experience of mind.
And in that imagination, we can access what we call memory,
so we can reimagine something that is, in a sense, to some degree recorded from another experience that happened.
And all of it is just imagined as a past that's purely made up.
Similarly, we can imagine the future.
We can imagine what may come.
It's all a space of imagination,
just the mind creating sounds and colors and shapes, concepts,
like the concept of a person, which has an image,
the concept of a circle that has an image,
the concept of a world that has an image and a form.
And so the mind can very quickly combine a lot of shapes and forms and concepts
to create a complex future, a complex imagination of time.
It's just like a big Lego made of thoughts,
made of colors and shapes and sounds, imaginary sounds.
The imagined I
And within all of that we can imagine the form and the shape and the concept of what I am,
what I call I, me.
It could be a complex Lego of memories, imaginations,
imagined futures, imagined types of behaviors.
And also in this moment right here, that I, that me,
could be chosen to be a group of sensations and images.
So if I'm sitting on a chair or a couch and there's a sensation,
I can decide and imagine that sensation is me.
It's I, and it's where I end,
and whatever is outside that sensation is some kind of other, like the chair, and that's not I.
It could be very quick imaginations of I as the face I know to be mine,
the sensations in the face or the neck or chest,
all very similar to how it is in a dream,
when we're purely imagination, asleep, without the information of the senses and perception,
but still a world can be imagined and felt, like I am that world.
Similarly, when awake in this moment, that dreaming world is still active.
It's just constantly mapped onto sensation and perception.
What is known to be real
So what we know to be real is just experience.
There is something happening.
It's complex and simple.
But as we know to wake up from a dream at night and find out that our world was imagination,
we can infer and imagine that what we know to be real in this waking state
could also in a sense be imagined.
And so all of what you know of yourself,
of your story, your history, your past, where you came from,
all of that only appears now in imagination.
What you know of the world so-called out there,
right now it's mostly imagination.
Or what you know of what will come, what you imagine will come,
what you might be convinced will come, it's just pure imagination.
What if sensation itself and perception itself,
just like in a dreaming state, is created by the mind?
Sensation and perception are in a similar sense imagined,
created by the mind,
and could potentially be seen to be very, very relative.
And so that which we call I, myself, the person, this body:
like in a dream at night, we could dream to be man or woman,
an animal, a tree,
and in this moment, what we're imagining to be is just pure imagination.
That shape, that form, that story, that history, that past and future,
all very relative, and relevant only in this imagination.
Who is the dreamer
But who would be the dreamer?
Who is it that imagines?
What is it? What am I?
What is this sense of knowing, of being,
that I could have all perception disappear,
all sense of body and world and sensation disappear,
and imagine a completely different world at night,
and then switch again?
What is it that is real?
Not knowing
You allow the softness, the spaciousness,
the emptiness of not knowing what this is.
You're fully, totally not knowing.
Gently allowing all experience to be just like a dream,
coming and going and moving.
The sense of a located experiencer, I am here,
also just appearing, appearing,
seeming to be a form, a shape, a place,
but that also is coming, going, and changing.
Experience without an observer
Can you allow the experience of sensation, perception, sound and sight to be more direct?
A bit more dreamlike, a bit more holographic,
a bit more wave-like, like a kaleidoscope,
some aspects shifting slowly, some more quickly.
Just a changing, moving appearance without an observer.
The appearance itself is the knowing, the observing.
The sense of a located observer, just an imagined shape, an imagined form.
Just emptiness, spaceless, timeless, appearing simultaneously
matter-like and dreamlike,
and at times mesmerizing,
at times scary,
beautiful.
Just like in a vivid lucid dream,
where one is dreaming and knowing one is dreaming:
fully in the dream, knowing it's a dream;
fully in this reality, knowing we can't know what it is.
The totality of mystery, unknowable.