Thread: Famous Dream-Related Quote...

What if you slept,
And what if in your sleep, you dreamed.
What if in your dream, you went to heaven.
And there you plucked a strange and beautiful flower,
What if you picked that flower and you woke up?
And what if when you awoke you had the flower in your hand?
Ah, what then?

- Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Little Book Of Dreams

So, what WOULD you do, in this hypothetical situation? And I'm mainly asking the atheists here.

I most definitely wouldn't start believing in god. But, beyond that, I really don't know...

Honestly, keep my mouth shut except to maybe a very close few. I'm happy being a wackjob, I'd just rather that stay unofficial.

I'd also then proceed to dream up massive amounts of cash. Followed by the most unreal objects with the most unreal abilities you could possibly imagine, unlimited by my imagination.

I would then use these objects to conquer the world.

Then I'd tell everyone how I did it, because it wouldn't matter if they thought I was crazy.

And always, always that flower would stay at my bedside when I slept, and on my shirt as I walked through life.

That is "what then?"

I'd probably keep my mouth shut as well!

Weeeeeeell I was kind of assuming that the flower would be the only time you brought something back from the dream world.

And if that were the case, some years down the line maybe I'd question whether or not there was something wrong with my memory. Maybe I'd start thinking that I had gotten the flower from somewhere else (somewhere normal) but just forgot?

In that case I'd simply keep it as a memento.

How I'd feel, how my reality would change? I know I sure as hell wouldn't understand it. I'd be startled and confused, but highly interested. I'd look for any explanation possible to what caused it. Scientific presumably, though I might become a more spiritual person. If no explanation could be found, I'd probably live in blissful ignorance. Always wondering how or why, but being content with the fact that it just is.

I can gaurantee it would change my world view. How I cannot say.

I'd ask myself why I believed I was in "heaven". What is heaven to you may not be heaven to me. Sure, heaven has a literal interpretation in theology, but heaven might not even be a place to some, but a state of being. Like a dream.

Very interesting

Because I believe heaven is an invisible spiritual realm where no flowers literally grow, I would first assume I had been sleep walking. Then, if my kids were home, I would wonder if they were playing a practical joke on me. If none of those things were the answer, I would think even more deeply on dreams being doorways to parallel (sp) universes

Originally Posted by Tornado Joe

I'd ask myself why I believed I was in "heaven". What is heaven to you may not be heaven to me. Sure, heaven has a literal interpretation in theology, but heaven might not even be a place to some, but a state of being. Like a dream.

Now that is one of the smartest things I've ever heard on R/S.

Originally Posted by ExoByte

In that case I'd simply keep it as a memento.

How I'd feel, how my reality would change? I know I sure as hell wouldn't understand it. I'd be startled and confused, but highly interested. I'd look for any explanation possible to what caused it. Scientific presumably, though I might become a more spiritual person. If no explanation could be found, I'd probably live in blissful ignorance. Always wondering how or why, but being content with the fact that it just is.

I can gaurantee it would change my world view. How I cannot say.

Imagine being fully conscious on a shroom trip and having the death of a friend unfold before your minds eye to have it happen two days later.

I'd wonder wtf did I drink/smoke/ingest last night.

Originally Posted by Mes Tarrant

And there you plucked a strange and beautiful flower

I think that's supposed to imply that there is no sleepwalking.
"Strange" meaning foreign to Earth.

Originally Posted by Invader

I think that's supposed to imply that there is no sleepwalking.
"Strange" meaning foreign to Earth.

With all the different kind of species of flower, how in the world could you tell whether it was foriegn to Earth?

But yeah, I would just think I had been doing some sleep walking. Which I do when massively drunk.

Originally Posted by Tornado Joe

I'd ask myself why I believed I was in "heaven". What is heaven to you may not be heaven to me. Sure, heaven has a literal interpretation in theology, but heaven might not even be a place to some, but a state of being. Like a dream.

Heaven isn't the main point of the quote, it's the fact that the flower was "transported" from the dream world to the waking world.

YEAH... sleepwalking! I hadn't even thought of that, haha. Certainly that would make more sense than some alternatives...

Originally Posted by Mes

Heaven isn't the main point of the quote, it's the fact that the flower was "transported" from the dream world to the waking world.

Oh I see, you kind of threw me off with the "And I'm mainly asking the atheists here."

In that case I'd naturally look into any possible "real" explanation (sleepwalking would be up there on the list). However, if that particular flower was nowhere to be found in my immediate surroundings...

I love this passage. It's sort of a long-form koan, a western Zen riddle behind which stands a great teaching. It seems Coleridge is asking you to consider a fundamental question about the nature of reality.

Zhuangzi asked it this way: "Now I wonder: Am I a man who dreamt of being a butterfly, or am I a butterfly dreaming that I am a man?"

C.G. Jung relates a similar story in volume 8 of the Collected Works, Synchronicity, regarding the appearance of a beetle at the window as he analyzed a patient's dream about a scarab. Jung notes a rather remarkable healing and integration as a result; dream and life are, for a moment, one.

The same teaching is expressed quite beautifully in a children's song we all know. In my view, there has hardly ever been a more apt prescription for right living than these lyrics:

Row, row, row your boat
Gently down the stream
Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily
Life is but a dream.

There are those who experience what most call "real life" as a waking dream. The potential for this realization may be the true value of the exploration of dreams. At some point, one begins to suspect the same intelligence behind both dreaming and waking consciousness, and must ask, as Zhuangzi did, who or what is dreaming this?

The exploration of the question has stages. First, dreams are nonsense, meaningless, something you ate. Next, dreams are interesting and might be worth exploring, ego-enhancing, party games. Further, dreams reveal psychological truths through analysis (Freud). On, dreams reveal universal and fundamental truths about the historical and collective human psyche, the discovery and integration of which can lead to self-realization (Jung). And finally, the poets and Taoist masters suggest that dreams are a portal to the Divine, through which one may realize more profound understanding of life, self and being.

I have dreamt of waking with the flower of Heaven in my hand. Ah, what then? Row your boat, silly.

How often we take the contents of the waking world into the dream world

Yet a second thought is rarely, if ever given

Originally Posted by NonDualistic

How often we take the contents of the waking world into the dream world

Yet a second thought is rarely, if ever given

What do you mean? In any case these contents aren't taken anywhere in a literal sense. For example, that chair of mine that I dreamed about last night didn't physically go anywhere.