This Dream is Human Life
That great general universal dream which not only the sleeping but also the waking dream. This dream in veriest truth is human life. In the visions of sleep, seeing we see not, hearing we hear not, tasting and touching we neither taste nor touch, speaking we speak not, but they are empty creations of the mind, which produces pictures and images of things without any basis of reality. So the visions and imaginations of our waking hours resemble dreams. They appear, and they fly off, before we can securely grasp them. And those who differ nothing from the sleeping in the uncertainty of apprehension, deceive themselves in thinking that they discern the nature of things by incontrovertible process of reason.
The heaven moves with the grandest of symphonies, in harmonious order and radiant light, because it is regulated by the standards of truth itself. If one looks into the inner realities, he will find that heaven is an eternal day, wherein there is no night or shadow, because unquenchable and undefiled beams of light shine around it without ceasing.The same difference, which exists here in people between asleep and awake, exists between the heavenly and the earthly. For the former is kept in wakefulness by active forces which do not err or stumble, but the latter is sunk in sleep. Even if it wakes up for a little, it is dragged down again and falls asleep. Because it can see nothing steadily with its soul, but wanders and stumbles about, darkened by false opinions which compel it to dream.
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References:
- Philo. Philo: Volume VI. Trans. F. H. Colson. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press, 1950.
- “Philo of Alexandria”. Early Jewish Writings. Accessed March 13, 2018. http://www.earlyjewishwritings.com/philo.html