Chat discussion about dreams, and as frequently gets stated, THIS awareness level can be considered a dream. Perhaps. The following quip comes to mind:
Before his death he said to his disciples, "Grasping emptiness and pursuing echoes wearies your mind and spirit. When awakened from a dream, you realize it was false; after all, what matter is there?"
When he finished speaking, he died, sitting at rest.
Nothing like being dramatic.
"When awakened from a dream, you realize it was false..." - how? Why false? Some folk say they see no difference between their dream state and their waking state. How then, do they know one is a dream? Is it just the process of awakening? That is, changing from a physically sleeping state to a physically awake state? What if dying is the same process, changing from a physical state to a non-physical state? Maybe that's another form of awakening.
I find this an intriguing notion, and perhaps what has been meant by others when they have stated that waking consciousness is a dream. I suspect we find it hard to accept that waking consciousness isn't a dream because of physical reality...that is that we actually eat, drink, excrete, touch, smell, see and so on...the sensual aspects...pain, blood, hot, cold, wet, dry, et al, all things we don't have in any other level of awareness. Interesting in this respect is that Genaro's double (his dream body?) was unable to eat or excrete, and perhaps also unable to experience any of the other sensual aspects of waking reality.
So, what if waking reality IS a dream, as implied by the quip? Maybe then dying is awakening, and if so, THAT level of awareness is essentially as superior to waking consciousness, as waking consciousness is to dreaming consciousness. That is, as the quip said, if in waking consciousness we can call dreaming consciousness false, then in perhaps a higher awareness, we can say waking consciousness is false. One is tempted to ask then, how many levels are there?
Associated, we have the famous quip from "Caddy Shack"
And I say, "Hey, Lama, hey, how about a little something, you know, for the effort, you know." And he says, "Oh, uh, there won't be any money, but when you die, on your deathbed, you will receive total consciousness." So I got that goin' for me, which is nice.
Somehow it seems to me that astral travel as described by Robert Monroe, and lucid dreaming, as described by Stephen LeBarge (and via my own experiences) are that realm of total consciousness.
