The dream world is mysterious. Yet what if the awake world were more mysterious?
I was at a psychedelic talk a year or two ago, and the former CEO of Whole Foods, John Mackey, was the guest. I remember one of the last things he said was something to the effect of, “I believe life is a dream. The experience we have when we are awake is like that of sleeping dreams. Once it’s over we’ll realize it was a dream all along.”
I’d heard people say similar things before, but it always seemed silly. But when Mackey said it seemed more tangible, maybe because he’s actually built real stuff in the world and isn’t some spiritual wanderer, avoiding challenges in life. He’s a respectable person (who happened to do his fair share of LSD in the 70’s).
So that moment in his talk planted a seed for me, and as I’ve continued to expand into my conception of reality and consciousness, it’s fascinated me. I’m not saying I agree with Mackey at this point, but I’m more and more open to it.
Neville Goddard asserts that consciousness creates reality, rather than reality is perceived by consciousness. His teaching are all about the Law of Assumption — that you are the creator of your own reality and get to watch your desires unfold before you (in the physical plane) if you choose to assume they are already true (in the spiritual plane). So in this sense what is our definition of “reality”? Because if we assume that reality is objective in the pure Ayn Rand sense, then we assume the spiritual plane doesn’t even exist. But if are open to the possibility that consciousness is the fundament of a grander reality (both spiritual and physical), then it seems possible that Neville and Rand don’t contradict each other. Neville still grants physical reality exists, just that it’s a projection of consciousness. His premise seems to be that one perceives the physical plane through consciousness as well.
(I actually asked GPT to create a mock conversation on this topic between the two thinkers, which helped me flesh these very thought strains out. In real life, obviously Rand was so stubborn she wouldn’t have even entertained the conversation, which is sad. Even though they both lived in NYC in the same decade, it’s unlikely they met).
The point is these two elements — which we can boil down to objective and subjective — don’t seem to actually contradict from what I can see. That’s why I love the meta-perspective of Sivers’ Useful Not True, which is founded on the premise that very few statements are absolutely true (A = A is true, but almost all other statements are not that simple). Contradictions don’t exist, but seeming contradictions absolutely can exist.
So if we integrate that, we see that when Neville saying “consciousness creates reality,” he doesn’t seem to be asserting that as an absolute (whether he knows it or not), because he’s still granting that physical manifestations appear before your eyes at some point, which by definition assumes physical reality can be objectively perceived. He simply asserts that consciousness, assumption, and your subjective lens are the initiators of that reality.
(This is advanced stuff and I can hear the objections from readers, which I’ll resist the temptation to address comprehensively).
Going back to dreams, all of this has me fascinated by the notion of a spiritual plane from which we enter into our physical life, and then return afterwards, akin to a dream. As I move through normal life, I find myself more present to the possibility that I’m dreaming, almost like I’m in a lucid dream state but in “waking” reality. And then I get curious about how much agency and volition I have to shift the dream. When it comes to maximizing my creative power, that seems to matter most.
What is real, anyway? In the final Harry Potter book, after Harry conversed with his deceased mentor Dumbledore, he asked, “Is this real? Or has this been happening inside my head?”
“Of course it’s happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean it is not real?”
