ANALOGOUS CONSIDERATIONS DRAWN FROM STUDY OF THE DREAM STATE
We now leave the purely metaphysical point of view of the preceding chapter in order to consider the relationships of unity and multiplicity, for we can perhaps better understand the nature of these relationships with the help of some analogical considerations offered by way of example, or rather of 'illustration' so to speak, [1] which will show in what sense and in what measure one can say that the existence of multiplicity is illusory with respect to unity, while of course still possessing such reality as its nature allows. We will draw these more particular considerations from the study of the dream state, which is one of the modalities of the manifestation of the human being corresponding to the subtle (that is, non-corporeal) part of its individuality. In this state the being produces a world that proceeds entirely from itself, and the objects therein consist exclusively of mental images (as opposed to the sensory perceptions of
the waking state), that is to say of combinations of ideas clothed in subtle forms that depend substantially on the subtle form of the individual himself, moreover, of which the imaginal objects of a dream are nothing but accidental and secondary modifications. [2]
In the dream state, man is therefore situated in a world imagined entirely by himself, [3] every element of which is consequently drawn from himself, from his own more or less extended individuality (in its extra-corporeal modalities), like so many 'illusory forms' (māyā-rūpa), [4] this being so even if he possesses no clear and distinct consciousness of it. Whatever may be the interior or exterior start-ing-point (which may vary widely according to the case) that gives a dream a certain direction, the events that unfold therein can only result from a combination of elements contained at least potentially and as if capable of a certain kind of realization, within the integral comprehension of the individual; and if these elements, which are modifications of the individual, are indefinite in number, the variety of such possible combinations is equally so. A dream should in fact be regarded as a mode of realization for possibilities that, while belonging to the domain of human individuality, are for one reason or another not susceptible of realization in a corporeal mode; such are, for example, the forms of beings belonging to the same world but other than man, forms that the latter possesses virtually in himself by reason of the central position he occupies in that world. [5] These forms obviously cannot be realized by the human being except in the subtle state, and the dream is the most ordinary-one could also say the most normal-of all the means by which he is able to identify himself with other such beings, without in any way ceasing to be himself, as indicated in this Taoist text: 'One night,' said Chuang Tzu,
I was a butterfly, flitting about and contented with my lot; then I awoke, to find myself Chuang Chou. Which am I really? A butterfly that dreams it is Chuang Chou, or Chuang Chou who imagines that he is a butterfly? Are there two real individuals in my case? Was there a real transformation from one individual to another? Neither the one nor the other: there were two unreal modifications of the unique Being, of the universal norm, in which all beings in all their states are one. [6]
If in the course of his dream the individual takes an active part in the unfolding events that his imaginative faculty creates, that is, if in the dream he plays in it a determined role in the extra-corporeal modality of his being that at the time corresponds to the state of his clearly manifested consciousness, or to what one could call the central zone of that consciousness, one must nonetheless admit that simultaneously he likewise 'plays' all the other roles as well, whether in other modalities, or at the very least in different secondary modifications of the same modality that also belong to his individual consciousness-and if not in the current limited state of manifestation of this consciousness, then at least in some one of its possibilities of manifestation, which, in their totality, include a field of indefinitely greater extent. Naturally all these other roles appear secondary to the one that is principal to the individual, that is, the one in which his current consciousness is directly involved, and since all the elements of the dream exist only through this individual, one can say that they are real only insofar as they participate in his own existence; it is the dreamer himself who realizes them as so many modifications of himself, without ceasing thereby to be himself independently of these modifications, which in no way affect what constitutes the very essence of his individuality. Moreover, if the individual is conscious that he is dreaming, conscious, that is, of the fact that all the events unfolding in this state have only the reality that he himself gives them, he will be entirely unaffected even if in the dream he is simultaneously actor and spectator, and this is so
precisely because he will not cease to be a spectator in order to become an actor, the conception and the realization no longer being separated for his individual consciousness when it has reached a stage of development sufficient to embrace synthetically all the present modifications of the individuality. If the situation is otherwise, the same modifications can still be realized, but if the consciousness does not link this realization directly to the conception of which it is an effect, the individual is led to attribute to the dream events a reality exterior to himself, and, in the measure in which he does so, he is subject to an illusion of which the cause lies within himself, an illusion consisting in separating the multiplicity of those events from their immediate principle, that is to say from his own individual unity. [7]
This is a very clear example of a multiplicity existing within a unity, without the latter being affected by it; and even though the unity in question here may only be relative-that of an individualin relation to that multiplicity, it nonetheless plays a part analogous to that of veritable and primordial unity in relation to universal manifestation. Moreover, we could have taken another example and considered the perceptions of the waking state in this way, [8] but the case we chose has the advantage over it because the conditions peculiar to the dream world in which one is isolated from all the exterior, or supposedly exterior, [9] things that constitute the sensible
world, permit no argument. What produces the reality of this dream world is the individual consciousness alone, envisaged in its complete unfolding, in all the possibilities of manifestation that it comprises; moreover, envisaged thus in its entirety, this consciousness contains the dream world in the same way that it contains all the other elements of individual manifestation belonging to any of the modalities contained in the integral extension of individual possibility.
Now it is important to note that when universal manifestation is considered analogically, all that can be said is that, just as the individual consciousness produces the reality of that special world which is composed of all its possible modalities, there is also something that produces the reality of the manifested Universe, but without its being in any way legitimate to equate that 'something' with an individual faculty or a specialized condition of existence, which would be an eminently anthropomorphic and anti-metaphysical conception. Consequently it is neither consciousness nor thought, but rather that something of which consciousness and thought are only particular modes of manifestation; and if there is an indefinitude of such possible modes which can be regarded as so many attributes of universal Being, direct or indirect, analogous in a certain measure to what, for the individual, are the roles played in the dream state by his multiple modalities and modifications, and by which his inmost nature is no longer affected, there is no reason to try to reduce all these attributes to one or to several of them; or at least there can only be one reason, which is none other than that systematic tendency we have already denounced as incompatible with the universality of metaphysics. Whatever the attributes, they are only different aspects of that unique principle which gives reality to all manifestation because it is Being itself; and their diversity exists only from the point of view of differentiated manifestation, not from that of its principle, or of Being in itself, which is the veritable and primordial unity. This is true even of the most universal distinction one can make in Being, that of 'essence' and 'substance', which are like the two poles of all manifestation; and consequently it is so a fortiori for all the more particular aspects, which therefore
are more contingent and of secondary importance: [10] whatever value they may take on in the eyes of the individual when he envisages them from his particular point of view, properly speaking they are only simple 'accidents' in the Universe.