Life: Is It Just A Cosmic Dream – And You Are The Great Dreamer?

There is nothing like you and I. What are you seeing? You are seeing a part of the mind only. You are not seeing a person. Just as you see a wall in dream, you see another wall here. It stands in the same relation to the cosmic mind as the dream wall in relation to the waking mind.

This world is a cosmic dream. When you wake up you will not see the world. Just as you do not see the dream-world now.

(Swami Krishnananda)

What then is the dreamer? Is s/he also just part of the dream?

The dreamer and the dream are one.
Yet the dreamer is not the dream.
The dream changes – the dreamer does not.

Leo Hartong in his book Awakening to the dream about the illusory nature of reality:

In our dreams we may encounter age-old mountains, oceans, stars, and planets. There may be people and animals, cities and forests. We may experience days or even years passing by. To the dreamer, it is all very real. The dreamer may run from an erupting volcano, and the accompanying fear can be so intense that it jolts him awake, at which point he is no longer concerned with what happened to the volcano or the other objects and characters that just moments ago populated his universe.

From the perspective of the waking state, the dream may have lasted only a few seconds. Where was the time, the space, and the objects that filled it? We can say it was inside the dreamer, but it’s equally true to say that the dreamer was inside the dream.

This common experience clearly shows how apparently solid realities such as the world of objects, space, and time could well be illusory in nature.

And here, Leo Hartong states that we can actually wake up:

As you can wake up in your dream, and suddenly realise that you have just been dreaming, you can wake up in your life, and suddenly see that it is all just one great, sometimes fascinating, sometimes shocking dream!

Chuang Tzu’s Butterfly metaphor:

Once upon a time, I, Chuang Tzu, dreamt I was a butterfly, flitting around and enjoying myself.
I had no idea I was Chuang Tzu. Then suddenly I woke up and was Chuang Tzu again.
But I could not tell, had I been Chuang Tzu dreaming I was a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming I was now Chuang Tzu?

Osho on being a dreamer or a becoming a witness:

Either you can fall asleep and become a doer; then you are a worldly man, a dreamer, a victim of illusions – or you can become a witness and yet go on living in the world.

What does the ancient Indian scripture ‘Ashtavakra Gita’ say about life as a dream?

I sit in my own radiance,
And I have no fear.

Walking,
Dreaming,
Sleeping,
What are they to me?

What is far or near,
Outside or inside,
Gross or subtle?

I sit in my own splendor.

Michael over at the Awakeningtothedream.com forum brings us this parable:

In a dream, a man switches on a light that appears to illuminate a room. He looks around the room, then switches off the light…and all is dark again.

He wakes up.

What happened?

Maybe the answer lies herein: (or it will actually increase your confusion…)

If you say “life is a dream”, then you assert.
If you say “life is not a dream”, then you deny.
If you say “life is real”, then you assert.
If you say “life is not real”, then you deny.

…Beyond assertion and denial – what is life?

Maybe life is just both – Anna over at Awakeningtothedream.com forum elegantly merges reality with dream:

Perhaps life IS
BOTH
Dream and Real,
Not separated from each other,
Arising spontaneously, naturally
Penetrating within each other,
Bordered by a subtle border,
Or perhaps already merging, blending
Within one another as One…