In the name of Allah Thinks dear sir I am so glad that your with us ************************************************************************************************************************************ If life is a dream, then we must be living a dream here and now. But is my life really a dream right at this very moment? I am conscious now and I remember when I went to bed last night to sleep and I know I woke up this morning with a very faint memory of some episodes of seemingly unconnected dreams I had while asleep. It’s not so complicated at all to say that I am able to distinguish between dreaming and being awake and with this, I know that I am not dreaming now. It sounds so simplistic and doesn’t have to be argued about. There is nothing philosophical in this consideration except if seen in the light of naïve realism which looks at life—or experience in life—as it happens, no frills and fancies. Besides, we could think that there must be something psychologically wrong with an individual who cannot establish the demarcation line between the so-called paramount reality and dream. The question, “Is life a dream?”, seems to be a no-sweat matter automatically resolved with the response, “No, life is definitely not a dream.” However, the question could be elevated to the philosophical level and bestow on it an air of “metaphysical” seriousness. Then the whole issue of life being a dream becomes a “mystical” concern given more importance in oriental thought-systems where the philosophical merges with the religious so that religion is philosophy itself and vice versa. To the western mind, a dream is not real; an illusion experienced while asleep. But to a Hindu, it is this very world that is an illusion—maya, in Sanskrit—where humans experience samsara or the cycle of birth and rebirth. It is from this maya that we human beings should achieve liberation or moksha which is likened to an experience of awakening from a dream-like illusion. In a way, this view of reality and illusion is not strictly oriental as I am reminded of the magical-realistic foundation of at least two of the Cambridge-based Nigerian author Ben Okri’s novels, The Famished Road and its sequel Songs of Enchantment where the life in this world of the novels’ leading protagonist, Azaro, is just a “dream” of the supernatural denizens in the spirit world from where Azaro originally came. In both instances—whether orientalist or magical-realist—life in this world is just a dream and sooner or later, we will all wake up from this dream and be in the “real world” which from our present viewpoint is in another unique dimension of existence, call it supernatural or spiritual, it doesn’t matter as yet for access into it is yet impossible. But isn’t this worldview a clear-cut formulation of an illusion to create in our minds the idea that a better—in fact, a perfect—world (which to its believers is the “real world”) is waiting for us who have long been struggling in the pains, troubles and tragedies of living in this illusory world of imperfections, hardships, sicknesses and sufferings? Isn’t this in reality, the “dream-like illusory world ” with which its formulators and their “fellow believers” want to psych themselves up to make life in the here and now more bearable through the promise of a “heavenly eternity” when they “wake up” from this dream-life? In other words, isn’t it an outright craziness—if not an absolute stupidity—to even think that the life we have in this world is nothing but a dream, with all the self-consciousness we have at this very point in time that we are here and now and we can
Posted on: Mon, 07 Oct 2013 05:19:43 +0000
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