Cogito, ergo sum, said Descartes. I think, therefore I am. I think of nothing, therefore I am nothing.
Told that the oracle had called him the wisest man in Athens, Socrates said he knew nothing.
The wisest men have always said that what we think we know is false. This world of things is an illusion that veils the real world.
The wisest Westerners have always said that we alone are real in this world of illusion: souls trapped in bodies, or minds trapped in matter. We mistake it for the real world as dreamers mistake their dreams for reality.
Do dreamers ever mistake their dreams for reality, and ask themselves, as Chuang Tzu said he did, whether they are men dreaming they’re butterflies or butterflies dreaming they’re men? I’ve always known when I was dreaming.
The wisest Easterners have always said that the self which dreams, whether it dreams it’s a man or a butterfly, is also an illusion, part of the dream. I’ve always watched myself, the self in my dreams, as I'd watch an actor in a play. My life never seemed real to me.
When I was a child, I’d sometimes wake to find myself lying on my bedroom floor, with my mother bending over me. The first time it happened, she said I’d been crying “Help them!” in my sleep.
I stopped sleepwalking, but for years I woke in the middle of the night, the sudden silence of my bedroom making me aware that, a second ago, my head had been filled with cries. Now I no longer dream.
The world sleeps, and from time to time it dreams. Life is a dream, and too much living becomes a nightmare.
From too much love of living,
From hope and fear set free,
We thank with brief thanksgiving
Whatever gods there be
That no life lives for ever;
That dead men rise up never;
That even the weariest river
Winds somewhere safe to sea.
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