The Waking Dream

the ungraspable mystery here and now

This ungraspable mystery

There is an undeniable felt sense of presence here, a knowingness of being—and something is undeniably showing up. This that shows up appears and disappears and sometimes appears as so-called dreams during sleep.

Waking life is itself very much like a dream, a dream that includes falling asleep and having other dreams within the larger waking dream. Unlike these smaller nighttime dreams, the waking dream has an apparent continuity that makes it seem more real. But everything that appears is changing in every instant. Like the flipping pages in a flipbook or the frames in a movie playing, there is the illusion of continuous things. But the only actual continuity is the awaring presence beholding (being and holding) it all, the ever-present immediacy of here-now, this one bottomless moment.

That awaring presence gets conceptually contracted, seemingly encapsulated inside the apparently separate bodymind, and conflated with the central character in the story of our lives and the phantom operator who is supposedly authoring and thinking our thoughts, making our choices and having our experiences. That character seems to be on a journey through time and space, a journey that supposedly began at birth (or conception) and that will apparently end at death. But when we look for this character, this author-chooser, it cannot be found. When examined closely, even the body, which initially seems solid and independent, turns out to be ever-changing movement, continuous birthing and dying, inseparable from its environment and from everything it supposedly is not.

Within the dream, humans have endlessly investigated and explored and tried to pin down the nature of this appearance, which they call reality. Most dream characters believe there is an objective, observer-independent world “out there,” made of something called matter, something that is proving to be ever-more unpindownable and empty of substance. A few dream characters throughout the ages have suggested that, like a dream, everything that appears is the activity of a universal dreaming consciousness, refracted through an infinite number of different holographic viewpoints. I don’t claim to know.

In what is called the 21st century, the central character in the dream has probably heard many labels and explanations for what this reality is: atoms, quarks, dark matter, consciousness, awareness, Consciousness, Primordial Awareness, spirit, cells, neurons, brains, neurochemistry, waves, particles, intelligence-energy, being, presence, no-thing-ness, emptiness, interdependence, unicity, wholeness, here-now, and sometimes simply The Mystery or The Unnameable or The Ungraspable or “just this.”

Capital letters are often employed, and they make it seem more like something has been definitively pinned down, as in “This Is It.” THIS = IT. Which, upon reflection, seems like nonsense. THIS is simply THIS. Any “IT” is conceptual and imaginary. And THIS is unpindownable and inconceivable. So what are we even talking about?

Speaking as Joan, the central character in “my” waking dream, “I” have no idea what “this” is. Or rather, I’ve had and expressed many ideas, but THIS (the living-dreaming actuality itself) is not an idea. It’s a felt-experience, always right here, right now. Of course, it becomes an idea as soon as it is thought and spoken about, but then paradoxically, every idea turns out to be nothing other than THIS showing up as thoughts, words, concepts and ideas, and those only appear as experiences here and now.

And then, feeling-experiencing-sensing-awaring-being is quite a mystery the more closely one looks into all that, as is so-called “consciousness.” And of course, much like the eye that can’t see itself, unicity can never be seen as an object, because it is too close and nothing is outside of it to see it, and anything perceivable or conceivable, however subtle, is impermanent and partial (this but not that). But then, every wave contains the whole ocean. And so, at a certain point, saying anything at all feels like nonsense.

And yet, words keep pouring out. Uncontrollably, unbidden, from no one knows where. Supposedly, Joan is authoring this text, and indeed, an index finger belonging to this apparent character appears to be poking at the keys on a computer, an action which seems to be causing these words to appear on the screen, words that “you” (whatever that is) are now reading. How exactly are “you” translating these funny black squiggles on a screen into something apparently meaningful? Science might be able to offer some kind of reductionist explanation, but experientially, it’s simply happening all by itself. Mysteriously. No one is doing any of it, and none of it is any more personal than the weather.

My waking dream and your waking dream seem to have many things in common, and yet also some differences. So in the dream, characters can fall in love and form communities and work together, but they can also argue and disagree and misunderstand one another and feel misunderstood and alone, and sometimes all of that misunderstanding and disagreement results in groups of characters dropping bombs on other groups of characters, or trying to wipe other groups out, or sometimes trying to “open their hearts and minds” and understand characters who seem to have incomprehensible views of what is, in this dream, so obviously and undeniably taking place! Are all dreams equally true? Equally false? Equally “just dreams”? (Whatever answer one gives to these questions, a dreamed up Zen Master will whack you with a dream-stick and shout, “NO!”).

Everything written here so far could lead one to feel helpless, hopeless, lost in a meaningless existence or simply confused and bewildered. Or, it could bring forth anger and resistance: “My life is NOT just a dream!” or “I am definitely NOT just a dream character!” (Of course, that word “I” does refer most fundamentally to something that is not confined to the dream character).

What has been written here so far could also bring forth a great sense of release, relief, happiness, peace, acceptance, playfulness and freedom. Not the freedom to do whatever “I” (the character in the story) want to do, but the freedom to be just as I apparently am, which turns out to be ungraspable, ever-changing, and unpindownable. And it’s also the freedom for the apparent world to be just as it apparently is, which also turns out to be ungraspable, ever-changing, and unpindownable—a multiplex dream cinema with billions of different holographic, fractal dream movies playing simultaneously, all of them depicting what is supposedly “the same world.” Which brings to mind a question posed by the great (dream) Zen Master Dogen many centuries ago: “Is it that there are various ways of seeing one object, or is it that we have mistaken various images for one object?”

The thinking mind loves to play, endlessly dancing, sometimes taking itself very seriously, or sometimes, simply being playful, like a child enjoying a summer day, converting a large cardboard box into a train or an airplane or a space ship and riding it to an imaginary destination.

To go back to where we began, there is an undeniable knowingness of being present and of something happening (or appearing). There is an intermittent thought-sense of being a particular limited character in a particular location, and this “me” is a kind of mirage made up of ever-changing thoughts, images, sensations, memories and stories, all appearing here along with what we call traffic sounds, bird songs, aromas and smells, colors and shapes, ideas and imaginations and these funny ungraspable little bursts of energy called thoughts. No actual solid boundary between “inside” and “outside” (or between this and that) can be found.

Here it all is! The mystery. The miracle. The intelligence-energy dreaming and playing. No-thing-ness appearing as everything. Formlessness appearing as form. Ever-present, ever-changing unicity. Here-Now, this one infinite and eternal bottomless present moment from which we never depart. This undeniable aware presence. This ever-fresh aliveness. And magically, it all disappears again and again into deep sleep and then wakes up again. As someone said, we open our eyes and a world appears.

The train whistle. The egret flying over. The morning light rippling on the green leaves. The blue sky. Words pouring out and vanishing. Rivers emptying into the sea. Birth and death, kindness and cruelty, life feeding on life, shadows dancing on the wall, each moment dissolving like last night’s dream. One infinite undivided ungraspable whole, just as it is.

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A few Quotes

I am not quite sure whether I am dreaming or remembering, whether I have lived my life or dreamed it. Just as dreams do, memory makes me profoundly aware of the unreality, the evanescence of the world, a fleeting image in the moving water.

— Eugene Ionesco

Row, row, row your boat
gently down the stream
merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily,
life is but a dream.

— children's song

Be cheerful, sir.
Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.

― William Shakespeare, from The Tempest

When you wake from a dream which was seemingly vivid and real, where has it gone? How substantial and how real was the dream?

— Sailor Bob Adamson

Just as the dream state is untrue, the waking state is also an appearance. Both happen spontaneously. Our talk is also taking place in a dream.

— Nisargadatta Maharaj

Contrary to popular spiritual terminology, it is not about waking up but rather noticing that this reality dreams eternally... Our experiences and perceptions result from consciousness projecting meaning onto neutral patterns of energy, creating an illusion of personal significance and narrative. In reality, everything is a dynamic, unresolvable play of consciousness that doesn’t need to be solved—only recognized for what it truly is.

— Peter Brown

People desperately want to describe existence and, historically, they speak of matter, energy, consciousness, spirit, oneness, and mystery. But descriptions are merely limited interpretations. All of them. They can never tell us what life actually is…

Even the sense of existing disappears every night, only to reappear. It’s like a light blinking off and on.

When it’s on, our so-called life appears in its flow. Bodies, needs, interests, concerns, urges, and actions—family situations, national events, international events—all of these arise and fade as passing appearances in a formless event…

These forms don’t actually exist; they’re like ripples in flowing water…

Our appearance, direction, and actions simply happen. This realization is freedom…

At some point, the heart may open to the totally indefinable, unpredictable, and often unwanted movement that life is. Love is that openness of heart.

— Darryl Bailey

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A dialog with Nisargadatta Maharaj:

Maharaj: Each moment contains the whole of the past and creates the whole of the future.

Questioner: But past and future exist?

M: In the mind only. Time is in the mind, space is in the mind. The law of cause and effect is also a way of thinking. In reality all is here and now and all is one. Multiplicity and diversity are in the mind only….

Q: Your reduction of everything to dream disregards the difference between the dream of an insect and the dream of a poet. All is dream, granted. But not all are equal.

M: The dreams are not equal, but the dreamer is one. I am the insect. I am the poet — in dream. But in reality I am neither. I am beyond all dreams. I am the light in which all dreams appear and disappear. I am both inside and outside the dream… I am what I am before, during and after the dream. But what I see in dream, l am not.

Q: If both dream and escape from dream are imaginings, what is the way out?

M: There is no need of a way out! Don’t you see that a way out is also a part of the dream? All you have to do is to see the dream as dream.

Q: If I start the practice of dismissing everything as a dream where will it lead me?

M: Wherever it leads you, it will be a dream. The very idea of going beyond the dream is illusory. Why go anywhere? Just realise that you are dreaming a dream you call the world, and stop looking for ways out. The dream is not your problem. Your problem is that you like one part of your dream and not another. Love all, or none of it, and stop complaining. When you have seen the dream as a dream, you have done all that needs be done.

— from I Am That: Talks with Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, translated by Maurice Frydman, Acorn Press, pp 115-117 (chapter titled “Living Is Life’s Only Purpose”)

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John Astin’s New book Available now

John Astin has a new book out, Everything Is the Doorway, available from Amazon in both paperback and Kindle formats (and I think audible is forthcoming). I haven’t read it yet, but knowing John, I’m sure it’s great. So I very highly recommend it.

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Love to all…

from the ungraspable mystery having fun pretending to be a clueless one-handed androgynous 78-year-old primate writing Substack articles on nonduality! What fun!