He jumped up, as he thought, and began to dress, but, to his dismay, found that he was still lying in bed. "Now then I will!" he said. "Here goes! I am up now!" But yet again he found himself snug in bed. Twenty times he tried, and twenty times he failed; for in fact he was not awake, only dreaming that he was.
- George MacDonald
Stacy had a dream that spawned much interpretation. She believed that she had finally woken up, but soon found out that she was still asleep, still dreaming. When she told me about it, it reminded me of this quote. So I posted it to share.
The first time I read this quote, it meant something different to me that I can't fully call back from memory now. It said something to me about our perception of reality. The ability to confuse a dream with reality seems like it shouldn't be able to happen. I think about how clear and 'real' the consciousness I'm in right now seems. Waking life, being in it at this moment, seems so much more solid than the environments and textures I know from my dreams. For some reason though, when I'm dreaming, I can be easily fooled into thinking that I'm awake. That makes me wonder how 'real' this reality really is. If, while in a dream state, I am usually able to accept it as reality while in it, is there another consciousness, another 'reality' beyond what I know now as my waking life? Since there is something that seems more real than my dreams, is there something more real than this reality? If so, does this level of consciousness pale in comparison to it? I think that if we can use what we know about our current reality, and take the liberty to speculate a little, we might be able to imagine it. Even if only very dimly, I like to try and imagine another existence that is the next step up from what we now call 'being awake'.
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