Life is a dream (4 min)

Image source - Instagram - dreams

A few days ago, I had this dream about which I only remembered a few segments after waking up. I remember that in this dream, I had my wife and my dad with me. The three of us had something very important we had to do for which we had rented a cab. And I also distinctly remember that there was a lot of anxiety overall about whether we'll be able to finish this task in time or not. There were a few other characters in the dream too - the cab driver, the police guy who stopped us at a check-post and the beggar at a traffic signal are three that come to mind now.

I'm not sure how the dream concluded, at any rate I don't remember it, but after having woken up, a few realisations came sparking up, which is what I want this write-up to be about. Sorry to disappoint if you were looking for some sort of a plot straight out of an Agatha Christie masterpiece! :)

So after having woken up from this particular dream, I suddenly became very conscious that all the while I was sleeping, it all appeared quite real - not just the 'something important' I had to do, but the different people in the dream, the whole environment and the entire setup felt real. But you see, it wasn't real in the deepest sense of the term. One way of describing it, is that it was all going in my head. And all the different characters in the dream - me, my wife, my dad, the police guy, the beggar, the cab driver - I was playing all those roles. What's even more exciting is that I was playing them so well that I had convinced 'myself' to believe that they are separate individuals who have somehow joined me in this reality. But in every sense, it's true that I was all those people, there never was anyone else apart from me.

And this is where it gets trippy. There is a very old school of thought which says that all life is the God's dream. 

After having dreamt this dream and woken up from it, it dawned on me that this school of thought - the one I've mentioned above - is a perfectly valid metaphor. Think about it. When you're dreaming, whatever game you're playing inside the dimensions and boundaries of the dream, it seems to be the most real thing ever. Whatever task you're set out to do looks like the most important task ever. Sometimes, you get to experience a whole whirlwind of emotions and sometimes, you get to experience a single emotion to it's ultimate extreme. But when you wake up from it, you always find yourself saying, "Phew! What a ride! ..." And life, in this sense, is a dream too. Till you wake up, you think whatever you're doing is the real thing and you have to do it no matter what. Maybe the more involved you're in what you're doing, the higher the intensity of this feeling of lightness when you wake up. But you're bound to wake up, and when you do, you realise you were the one dreaming every thing and every one in your dream.

So, keep dreaming. And in that sense, keep living. You're gonna be fine eventually. You're already fine, you just might not know it yet.

Trip on this for a while...

< Recommended follow up reading: Who am I really? >

Also, while we're on the subject of dreams, there's this really fantastic movie I'd like to recommend about it: Waking life - Youtube trailer

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