Life is But a Dream
What if nothing you've ever loved was real?
“Life is but a dream.”
To most, this line is merely a poetic sentiment, suggesting that Life is surreal, amorphous, sensual, mysterious, and… well, dreamy.
But what is this line is not merely poetry?
What if it’s literally true?
Rather than writing an organized “argument” meant to persuade you that we live inside a dream, I will simply present you with a collection of ideas, phenomena, and questions... and let you draw your own conclusions.
Lucid Dreaming
Lucid dreaming is the practice of becoming aware that one is dreaming while still in the dream, usually with the goal of taking control of the dream in order to experience whatever one desires, be it hot sex, healing, or even flight.
In order to develop the ability to “go lucid” at will, lucid dreamers may rely on reality checks, or means of testing the coherence of the dream. These checks are designed to fail if one is, indeed, dreaming.
Common reality checks include counting one’s fingers, attempting to read a book, or looking in a mirror. If you have an unusual amount of fingers, can’t read straight, or have a different face, you’re probably dreaming.
From this we can observe that humans are instinctually inclined to test reality, to determine whether our sense perception is correct…
…and this alone suggests that we are always aware, even if just subconsciously, of the ever-present possibility that we are being deceived by our senses.
Why does that reality-testing mechanism exist at all, in the human brain —
if not because reality could, in fact, be unreal?
To paraphrase C.S. Lewis, we experience hunger because food exists, and thirst because water exists.
Could it then also be true, that we experience suspicion about the trustworthiness of our senses, because false realities do exist?
How Did I Get Here?
There’s a reality check called “How did I get here?” where one goes backward in their memory, recalling the order of events that led to the present moment, until finding that no clear “beginning point” exists — whereupon they realize that they’re dreaming, and thereby become lucid in the dream.
With Life, if you trace back all the events you can recall, you may eventually hit a point where you can no longer remember “how you got here.” You may not remember your first years of life, and very few people remember being born, let alone whatever came before that.
The conscious experience simply dropped you off in the middle of an existing plot-line, and you went with it — like a dream character who doesn’t think to question the dream.
We don’t remember how we first arrived on Earth. Much like a dream, we simply found ourselves “in the middle of the action” one day and assumed there was a logical beginning to any of it.
“Sure, like most, you believe that you yourself were born and will die.
The trouble is, like most, you don’t realize that this is merely a belief
for which you have no evidence.” — Garret Kramer
The Rules Fall Apart, and Then You “Wake Up”
In dreams, “waking up” is often catalyzed by a breakdown in coherence.
For example, when your alarm goes off while you’re still dreaming, the sound of the alarm may work its way into your dream. At first, it might seem like a normal thing to hear, like a song playing in the background of a cafe.
But as your consciousness flickers between sleep and wakefulness, the alarm sound morphs, from ordinary background noise into something irritating or disturbing — and this becomes an opportunity to shift states of consciousness.
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Often, it’s the moment of realizing Wait, this doesn’t make sense that catalyzes one’s awakening from a dream.
Now ask any “conspiracy theorist” and they’ll tell you the same thing: “Waking up” to the many deceptions and psyops of our culture, feels a lot like “waking up” from a dream.
There are plenty of seemingly “normal” things in our culture that, when pondered just a little more deeply, stop making sense: Public schools. The medical industrial complex. The legal system. The shape of the Earth. And so on.
One only needs to unravel one nonsensical premise for the entire “consensus culture” to fall apart — whereupon the reality that was previously taken for granted as “normal” suddenly loses all coherence… and this becomes our chance to shift from one state of consciousness (sleepwalking through life) to another (living lucidly).
Never Tell a Dream Character You’re Dreaming
Again, ask any conspiracy theorist, and they’ll confirm: Trying to convince people that mainstream culture makes no sense, can be dangerous.
People are very in love with their lives — very attached to their worldly identities. Just as we saw during the COVID psyop, trying to convince people to “wake up” to the scam and exercise their free will, can elicit everything from blind rage to death threats.
Oddly, it’s also a well-known fact among oneironauts (dream explorers) that if you tell other characters in a dream that they’re dreaming, they become very, very angry. The vibe of the dream immediately shifts into something ominous. Sometimes, they even try to kill you!
Pisces Gnosis / Immortalism
Sleeping is cozy. Being woken up before we’re ready is aggravating. Who among us, hasn’t hit “snooze” to steal just a few more minutes from the Dreaming, because the promise of the Dream seems more fulfilling, if only for a moment, than Life itself?
In astrology, Pisces is the final sign in the progression of the zodiac wheel. It is associated with both Dreams and Death.
Why would Dreams and Death be related, according to this ancient wheel of archetypal energies?
Could it be, that Death is merely the realization that one has been Dreaming all along? That nothing one has ever loved or aspired towards, was ever real?
Or could it be, that to be Dreaming is to be Dead?
“Our aim is wakefulness, our enemy is dreamless sleep.” — Genesis P-Orridge
Immortalism
I’ve been in talks with sincere Immortalists (people pursuing Immortality) for some time now, and one of the most interesting things I’ve learned about them so far, is that they don’t sleep.
Read that again: Immortals don’t sleep.
People who have fully cleaned their body — their Temple of the Holy Spirit — of all rot and parasites, not only lose the urge to eat and drink anything (achieving a fully pranic, breatharian state), but they also lose the urge to sleep.
Having purified their bodies, there is nothing left for the body to repair overnight — no need for the body to pull them into unconsciousness on a regular basis.
So they stay awake, day and night, with pure bioelectricity flowing through them at all times. No “off” switch. No more temptation to remain unconscious.
One Immortalist tells us that it’s like he’s been given an extra life, with 8 more hours everyday to do whatever he wants. So he’s started reading more, working out more, and learning musical instruments… while everyone around him snores, dragged into a nightly pseudo-death by the false promises of their dreams.
He is, quite literally, more alive than the sleepers around him — by virtue of living in Wakefulness, rather than accepting the premise that dreams or death are a “part of” life.
Now truthfully, I feel a tad triggered by this, because I’ve found dreamwork and lucid dreaming very valuable. But at the same time, intuitively, I understand that their are tiers to this:
The darkest kind of unconsciousness is dreamless sleep, where one does not even remember what they did in the dream realm overnight (did they do anything? do they even know they have free will?)
I see lucid dreaming as a graduation in consciousness — a paradoxical state of “wakefulness while dreaming.”
And then the graduation from that, I suppose, would be not needing or wanting to sleep at all, because one’s Unconscious has been unified with one’s Consciousness.
No more divide of “night” and “day.”
No more daily cycle of death and rebirth.
Only aliveness, from moment to moment,
forever.
To conclude, I leave you with two interesting works of art, for your Contemplating Pleasure:
Waking Life, a movie that immerses the viewer in a meta, immersive dream-like state that confronts the horrific reality of what Dreaming is…
…and this story from Reddit, presented without comment. Make of it what you will.
A Parallel Life / Awoken By A Lamp
My last semester at a certain college I was assulted by a football player for walking where he was trying to drive (note he was 325lbs I was 120lbs), while unconscious on the ground I lived a different life.
I met a wonderful young lady, she made my heart skip and my face red, I pursued her for months and dispatched a few jerk boyfriends before I finally won her over, after two years we got married and almost immediately she bore me a daughter.
I had a great job and my wife didn't have to work outside of the house, when my daughter was two she [my wife] bore me a son. My son was the joy of my life, I would walk into his room every morning before I left for work and doted on him and my daughter.
One day while sitting on the couch I noticed that the perspective of the lamp was odd, like inverted. It was still in 3D but... just.. wrong. (It was a square lamp base, red with gold trim on 4 legs and a white square shade). I was transfixed, I couldn't look away from it. I stayed up all night staring at it, the next morning I didn't go to work, something was just not right about that lamp.
I stopped eating, I left the couch only to use the bathroom at first, soon I stopped that too as I wasn't eating or drinking. I stared at the fucking lamp for 3 days before my wife got really worried, she had someone come and try to talk to me, by this time my cognizance was breaking up and my wife was freaking out. She took the kids to her mother's house just before I had my epiphany.... the lamp is not real.... the house is not real, my wife, my kids... none of that is real... the last 10 years of my life are not fucking real!
The lamp started to grow wider and deeper, it was still inverted dimensions, it took up my entire perspective and all I could see was red, I heard voices, screams, all kinds of weird noises and I became aware of pain.... a fucking shit ton of pain... the first words I said were "I'm missing teeth" and opened my eyes. I was laying on my back on the sidewalk surrounded by people that I didn't know, lots were freaking out, I was completely confused.
At some point a cop scooped me up, dragged/walked me across the sidewalk and grass and threw me face down in the back of a cop car, I was still confused.
I was taken to the hospital by the cop (seems he didn't want to wait for the ambulance to arrive) and give CT scans and shit..
I went through about 3 years of horrid depression, I was grieving the loss of my wife and children and dealing with the knowledge that they never existed, I was scared that I was going insane as I would cry myself to sleep hoping I would see her in my dreams. I never have, but sometimes I see my son, usually just a glimpse out of my peripheral vision, he is perpetually 5 years old and I can never hear what he says.
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"Could it then also be true, that we experience suspicion about the trustworthiness of our senses, because false realities do exist?" 🤯