POSTCARD#72: Delhi: In the dream I’m dreaming I’ve woken up… views of a room I know, bright daylight comes in through windows, the familiarity of furniture. A puzzled alertness, open my eyes and I’m looking at the ceiling fan… it wobbles slightly as it spins. Looking at the plain white painted ceiling, the dustiness of places that are never touched. Where am I? Stranded on the sofa… recovery from the afternoon nap. Don’t remember falling asleep. The quality of light coming in tells me we’re past the maximum temperature of the day +40oC (+104oF) and easing away from the oppressive heat. Children call from the street, it must be late afternoon maybe 3.30pm or thereabouts. All around me is the clutter of an activity that took place just before I fell asleep: a pen, scattered notes and books on the floor next to me, the remains of a cup of oolong tea. Everything held, objects quietly wait in their silence – if a tree falls in the forest…
How can I know if reality is really ‘real’? I’m in my room creating my world; everyone else is in their room creating their world and we’re all co-creating the idea of being in a room together in one shared reality. Language names things, creates attributes; diverse patterns are matched together in one huge continuity that includes all the characteristics of what we created in our individual rooms and the consensus view is that this is it… reality. Then something happens, maybe we just wake up to it, maybe a major event occurs and suddenly we see that our reality is a construct.
Reminds me of the flight over here, 4½ hours from Bangkok, and nothing to do but watch the movie. Each seat has its own individual screen and after a while I want to get up to walk around. Take off the headset and stand up from my seat, surprised how dark it is with all the window shades drawn. Also, strangely, it’s completely quiet, except of course for the hiss of air pressure and hmmm of the engines. All the passengers locked into watching their own small personal movies, reflected glow of videos create pools of flickering colour on their faces as I pass. Their headsets plugged into their audio channel and meanwhile, in the cabin all around them there’s no sound at all. It’s dark, colourless, inhospitable.
Mindfulness, I’m between two realities; the ignored environment of the aircraft and the accumulated video distraction. As I’m going along the aisle, a passenger opens his mouth and out comes this large uninhibited yawn, howling like a dog – deafened by the headset, immersed in the samsara of his movie, can’t hear himself and nobody else can hear him either. Approximately 300 people on this aircraft, inert and hypnotized, layered in illusion. Let’s pretend we’re not here. But why bother? We’re not here anyway. Are we anywhere that could be called ‘here’? A long tube with wings and pointy end, somewhere high above the highest mountain in airless space and hurtling along at 500 mph?
Conscious experience, subject/object, not-twoism. A connectedness on every level – origin unknown. Any belief in an external creator is not relevant, a figure of speech, the metaphor, speculative conjecture. Anything beyond the present state of consciousness must be so different from what’s happening here and now, none of the rules apply. I’m in awe – I simply don’t know.
I get up from the sofa and walk along the passageway to take a shower. Hot air, and the experience of containment in a body with four limbs, a head at the top, feet down there, appearing one at a time: flip-flop-flip in soft slippers. It looks like a long way down. Ooo! Vertigo…
‘We are not human beings having a spiritual experience; we are spiritual beings having a human experience.’ [Pierre Teilhard de Chardin]
————————-
dhamma footsteps 
Lovely post! Thank you for the mention! Namaste _/l\_
You’re welcome and thanks for dropping in…
Another great post. I love how you bring the reader right there with you to see and hear and feel all the things you are writing about. Haven’t fully grasped how you do it except that I know it is good writing! So the heat still. And very astute perceptions of the plane trip there. I do love that quote from Teilhard de Chardin. Couldn’t get the link to Victoria’s blog– will try again. Good weekend! Ellen
Thanks Ellen this is it, can’t seem to think of anything other than the heat – but there was a little bit of rain this afternoon so it’s cooled down a lot… relief! Nice to know the reader is brought in, as you say, to see and hear and feel everything. Maybe it’s because of the minimalist approach, cutting out unnecessary words and the subject is always on conscious experience. The Teilhard de Chardin quote is wonderful isn’t it, says everything. Apologies for the broken link, I fixed it now.
By reality do you mean something beyond (behind?) your personal subjective experience(s)?
The personal subjective experience is the reality construct…
Of late I’ve been feeling like I’m living in an unrealistic world as if on the outside and not apart. These words of yours give me pause and an enlightenment that may give understanding.
Thanks Kimberly, I’ve been feeling a bit like this too. There’s something about the ‘in’ side and the ‘out’ side – subject and object… all the Eastern teachings talk about it, combining the two into ‘oneness’. In the West there’s a waking-up to this, looking for indications…
Perhaps the only reality is awareness of the moment. Being physical is to be practical, to dream or be immersed in a movie is to become wave. Depends upon you the viewer.
As you say, the only reality is awareness of the moment. I’ve heard it expressed as the human mind/body organism namarupa is Awareness embodied. I like to think of it as conscious awareness through the sensory mechanisms: eye, ear, nose, tongue, touch and mind…
Pixels dreamt me into your dream.
With gratitude and respect, Hariod Brawn.
Thanks Hariod… karma of incidental encounters.
Thinking of going to Thailand to investigate Wat Pah Nanachat. But they don’t seem to use email, and of course I want to discuss before going all that way from Sri Lanka. Can you put me in touch with a monk from there, or who knows about it? Please connect directly with my email. Thanks.
Thanks for letting me know. I’ll be in touch by email shortly
Such a good post. “…objects quietly wait in their silence…” I just love that phrase – thank you.
A sort of presence, isn’t it? Thanks for dropping in…
Precisely it – a quiet presence.
Thanks Don, you’ve given me an idea for a future post about the quiet presence of objects…
Look forward to that. 🙂
Your description of everyone day dreaming their television dreams on the airplane reminded me of the sci fi movie Inception, and how they’re all riding around in this van completely asleep, while collaborating in a shared reality construct slash dream.
I love how you wrote that anything beyond the present state of consciousness must be so different from the present moment that none of the rules apply, and then follow by saying you are in awe of it. It’s like you’re a pebble of awareness at the bottom of the ocean, just being present to the cold darkness, dimly recollecting that the cold darkness may not be the only experience in all the land but let’s be honest, it’s what is happening… Meanwhile, far overhead, the sun is shining brightly. You’re aware maybe it’s out there, but it just can’t compute because of your vantage point in a bed of pebbles in the cold, liquid darkness. The impossibility of computing it while knowing something is really there to the extent you can be in awe of it is an incredible irony. Makes me laugh to think about! Like it’s an inside joke with Everrything.
Michael
Thanks for the reference to the Inception movie, which I saw three times, and the parallel with those people on the Bangkok/Delhi aircraft, unable to escape outside of the frame of their video screens. And thanks too for your image of the pebble of awareness at the bottom of the ocean contemplating the sun shining far above. In fact I’m thinking of developing the idea for a future post. The idea is that things are pretty gloomy for pebbles at the bottom of the sea but there is this glimmer of light and the smallest essence of a tiny particle of this same light enters the pebble’s consciousness (?) resulting in a great inundation, an overwhelming illumination. The pebble is thus transfixed with the clear understanding that being present in the cold darkness is one thing, but this can’t be the only experience in all the land because the sun is shining inside its heart…
After all “what exactly is a dream?”
Reality, a kind of all-inclusive thing…
a beautiful post — all of them …
Thanks Bert. Glad you found it interesting and I hope all is well with you…