“Consciousness (unconditional knowing or awareness) gives rise to the activity of consciousness (the mind with its thoughts, feelings, and perceptions), which gives rise to the experience and, within the experience, the objects of experience themselves (form). Consciousness needs to assume a mind in order to perceive a world, but doesn’t need a mind to perceive itself. Awareness is the screen, while the mind is the projection onto the screen of the content (i.e. the experience and objects of that experience). We are the agent for consciousness to know the world.” – Rupert Spira
My dreams have always been powerful – lucid, more real than real life, if that is possible. They’re always of import as well, although not always accurate as predictors and likely just reflecting my inner mental state. Before waking one morning I somehow transfigured into the anatta non-self bliss state and suddenly found myself outdoors in the garden of my youth on a warm sunny day. As always, it was in a timeless state of beauty, oneness, and peace. It occurs to me that the garden, my garden, never actually goes away, but rather awaits my arrival like the screen awaits the experience to be projected upon it. So what is the experience – the dream simulation of the garden on a warm summer day or my awareness as the dreamer dreaming the garden on a warm summer day? I experience the garden in the simulation and the garden experiences me in return. If the garden is always there then it creates me as I create it. This elusive state of total oneness may be a reactivation of the bufo-inspired state of buddha consciousness. It has the feeling of going home, like the prodigal son returning, and although it lasted only briefly, I loved it and remembered once again how much I truly love being alive.
Not long afterwards I had a lucid dream in which first, I was watching a movie of my childhood cat being taken home after being groomed. After transfiguring into the dream itself, I found myself watching the cat jumping around my bedroom, after which he sat on the dresser amongst my two old (and only) stuffed dogs. The amazing thing was that they looked so bright and new, as if they had never aged at all nor decayed into the well-loved toys they ended up being. Truthfully, so many years had passed that I didn’t remember them when there were so new and perfect. Long lost, yet not gone, from my deepest welling of memory. Fleeting, yet so beautiful, was the experience that real tears of joy (plus a few of sadness) streamed down my face onto the pillow. How I longed to hold these stuffed animals, the cat – how I long for that lost childhood, like a hunger gone years unsated. How I long to immerse myself in that childlike state of pure innocence and wonder. How I long to throw open the gate of the prison of the conditioned mind, that prevents samadhi and oneness with the moment. The mysterious river of life ever flows and we are carried downstream effortlessly, but never ceaselessly, and never able to grab hold of a branch or reed to stop the movement of time.
Only in our dreams are we lucky enough to relive or experience that what has past. Only in the dream simulation can we recognize the true power of awareness, as the screen upon which all is projected – past and present, waking dream and sleeping dream.