Deja View

Chapter 1

            I am awake.  What does it mean to be awake?  If I can see, hear, taste, smell, touch- is there a sixth? – then I am awake.  But if I can do these things with the same level of perception, or even a heightened level of perception in my dreams, then how can there be a distinction between the two?  There can be no totem with a signature that only I know to look for, a single object that decodes the dream world from the real world. 

            When I dream if I don’t know that I’m dreaming how can I distinguish between what is reality and what is just a reflection of reality?  Are the two one and the same?  If so, then – as demonstrated by popular culture – they can be manipulated by outside forces without anyone noticing.   

            We would continue on in our dream worlds passing blind eyes to what may or may not be altered in them.  Only accepting truth as what immediately lies before us.  Drifting in and out of consciousness day and night suspecting nothing.  Not knowing how changes made to our dream world may affect our waking state.  These dream changes affect the aroused state which affect the dream state which affect the aroused state and on and on. 

            The two conditions are inexorably linked.  They parallel each other in an eternal dance.  Coming close to being one but never quite touching.  Reflecting each other and yet contradicting each other at the same time.  An undying paradox.  What does it all mean?