"Life itself is only a vision, a dream. Nothing exists save empty space and you."

[RMQualtrough]

"And you are but a thought."

Satan coming in with the wisdom.

[kinesin]

When life is nothing but a dream and everything is purely an illusion, what do you do when your dad breaks down sobbing at your mother's funeral?  What do you do when your pet looks up at you with an empty bowl in front of it?  What do you do when your child is in the hospital, and they're scared?

You treat the dream as if it were the most real thing that could ever exist, because that's exactly what it is.  An enlightened person doesn't say that life is only a dream and nothing more, an enlightened person behaves as if it were real because that's what reality requires of us.

Genuine spiritual wisdom, shared as information and recieved without embodiment, is a source of evil.

[RMQualtrough]

@kinesin You are also part of the dream, so what do you do when you are in pain? Why would it be any different for others? Someone can tell themselves pain is a brain illusion all they want, and factually know it, but they still don't want to experience it.

[Mafortu]

Mark Twain was deep, here is where that quote is taken from:

 

Quote

"Strange! that you should not have suspected years ago--centuries, ages, eons, ago! --for you have existed, companionless, through all the eternities. Strange, indeed, that you should not have suspected that your universe and its contents were only dreams, visions, fiction! Strange, because they are so frankly and hysterically insane--like all dreams: a God who could make good children as easily as bad, yet preferred to make bad ones; who could have made every one of them happy, yet never made a single happy one; who made them prize their bitter life, yet stingily cut it short; who gave his angels eternal happiness unearned, yet required his other children to earn it; who gave his angels painless lives, yet cursed his other children with biting miseries and maladies of mind and body; who mouths justice and invented hell--mouths mercy and invented hell--mouths Golden Rules, and forgiveness multiplied by seventy times seven, and invented hell; who mouths morals to other people and has none himself; who frowns upon crimes, yet commits them all; who created man without invitation, then tries to shuffle the responsibility for man's acts upon man, instead of honorably placing it where it belongs, upon himself; and finally, with altogether divine obtuseness, invites this poor, abused slave to worship him!...

"You perceive, now, that these things are all impossible except in a dream. You perceive that they are pure and puerile insanities, the silly creations of an imagination that is not conscious of its freaks--in a word, that they are a dream, and you the maker of it. The dream-marks are all present; you should have recognized them earlier.

"It is true, that which I have revealed to you; there is no God, no universe, no human race, no earthly life, no heaven, no hell. It is all a dream--a grotesque and foolish dream. Nothing exists but you. And you are but a thought--a vagrant thought, a useless thought, a homeless thought, wandering forlorn among the empty eternities!"

 

[jimwell]

I never thought there was more to Mark Twain than being an atheist. I'll read more of his books in the future.

[Dodo]

20 hours ago, RMQualtrough said:

"And you are but a thought."

Satan coming in with the wisdom.

Its as real as it can get. Those who want to push the dream paradigm want others to snooze. 

We see the world as we are. 

I am not saying it cannot be viewed as a dream, Im saying it is incomplete. 

Should thank God for this. Without God, randomness leads to death and real destruction. God is the only power that is important. Trust God, send love to God.

Edited June 1, 2021 by Dodo

[Breakingthewall]

amazing. I'm researching on him and he was kind of a genius. his memoirs have just been published. he dictated 10 volumes on the condition that they be published 100 years after his death

Edited June 1, 2021 by Breakingthewall