On Dreams

On awakening this morning, I'd immediately been confronted by the sense of loss, of absence, that always follows, as if by an interminable law, the experience of dreaming. Confronting this experience and interpreting it, must always proceeds in relation to this absence, from which the category of "dreams" is itself invoked. Expressing this peculiarity as a formula, it might be stated that the experience of dreams and the immediate confrontation of the self within a state of dreaming is defined precisely by the non-cognition (the absence of the categorisation) of the dream qua dreaming. Considered in this manner, the experience of the dream simultaneously always appears precisely to the extent that it does not appear as a dream, it emerges in a state and sense of non-differentiation, one through which no barrier nor distinction between reality and non-reality may be presented as fact. Sojourning through the experience of the oneiric odyssey, then, one always traverses a blissful ocean wave, in which the seafaring navigation is always accompanied by the prerequisite evanescence of the ground upon which one usually walks in one's daily life. The unique qualification of the disappearance of this ground, however, is precisely its accompanied absence from its capacity of being thought; it is only by extension of this absence of capacity pertaining to its being thought from which the inner-unity of experience of the subject of the dreamer and the object of the dream, that is, the elision of these two events towards a point of non-distinction, emerges, the unique state of being from which the experience of the dream is defined.

Taking this working definition of the experience of the dream, defined by the elision of the subject of the dreamer and the object of the dream towards a state of non distinction, we can draw a further insight, at least negatively, into the nature of the kind of thought by which the ground of distinction is reintroduced, and from which "waking" life finds its ultimate definition. Conceived by negativity, the precise quality of the experience of the dream that defies the simultaneous conception of itself as dream in the instance of its dreaming, is the unity between the subject of the dreamer and occurrence of the dream - that is, the immediate presence of the dreamer within the dream such that dreamer and dream find, between each other, no boundary of distinction. Upon awaking, however, we find two immediate realities presented to us, first, the conditional elimination of the experience of dreaming, which follows from the principle that one cannot be both dreaming and awake, and hence that, if one is awake, one cannot be dreaming, and secondly the associated reality of the experience of a distinction between the subject of wakefulness and the object of the phenomenal world before them. Precisely, it is these two realities that constitute the direct grounds of distinction that define the difference between the experience of being awake and the experience of dreaming, and it is from the experience of the feeling of being awake then that the cognition of the dream can only be maintained in a state of wakefulness. Again, this proceeds logically from our prior principles, for the experience of dreaming is defined precisely by the non-distinction, or absence of separation, between the dreamer and dreamed, whilst cognition of an object, wherever it occurs, depends on the principle of the separation of the object from the subject of its cogniser - hence it follows that wherever a thing exists as an object of cognition, it cannot be the case concurrently that it exists in a dream state.

Outlined in this manner, a fundamental difference consists in the relationship between dream and wakefulness, to the degree that the experiences of each in the experience of any particular subject are satisfied by the definitions offered above. Operating further on the assumption of this general satisfaction, we can further outline a resultant principle that emerges out of the points previously established in the consideration of the difference between the experience of dreams and the cognition of the dream, namely, the principle of the total inadequacy of the cognition of dreams (that is, their interpretation) in capturing the essence of the dream state. Naturally, this follows from the previous assessment of the characteristic qualities that define the experience of the dream, namely, the immediate unity between the subject of the dreamer and the objective world of the dream state. Conceived in this manner, the dream as experience is coloured by a state of inner religiosity, in which the pure unfolding of activity simultaneously constructs for itself the domain (mis en scene) of its dwelling, in a process of non-differentiation in which neither subject nor object can be discerned and from which the notion of the spectator as a geometrically definable "point" in a spatio-temporal relationship with the world of its spectacle is alien and absent. Immediately, the dreamer is the dream, and the extent and non-extent of the body occurs in direct mimesis with the scene in which the dreamer dwells as the extended body of the dreaming itself. In the pure encounter of the dream, it is the dream that is itself subject, capable of establishing no image of an exterior object to which it may be relationally evaluated or compared. Due to this non-differentiation, and due to the innate incapacity of establishing a juxtaposing object by which the dream may be reflexively related, the dream can in no way be subject to consciousness as an object of consciousness, for the object of consciousness implies a differentiation between the cogniser as subject, and the object to which the activity of consciousness is directed.

Of course, this directly contradicts the defined experience of the dream, yet, it is simultaneously the case that the matter of definition (the inner unity of the subject and object in the dream state) can itself only be conceived of as an object of consciousness, a directedness of consciousness towards the inconceivable point of its absence, that inconceivability itself acting as a substitute for any presence of space. Properly construed in wake of this observation, the concept of the dream always consists in the operation of a process of differentiation in which the experience of the dream is at once rendered impossible, in an open contradiction with reality, and, paradoxically, necessary, a direct object of consciousness that at once in its appearance as object signifies the absence of its current possibility. In the stages of its movement, this general process of conceptualisation as it refers to the dream may be defined by the higher concept of "produced absences". Outlined succinctly, it would be stated that this "produced absence" consists precisely in the relation between the conception of the object which, in the possibility of its being conceived, necessitates the absence of the pure experience from which the object is withdrawn, and which defies in its occurrence any sense of objectivity. Pure experience, perceived in this light, always defies any appropriation by consciousness, for the very presence of consciousness is produced by reference to a sense of directionality, a consciousness of something. Consciousness of nothing, then, emerges as an oxymoron, a contradiction in terms, symbolised within language by the primordial contradiction between the notion of nothingness and the symbolic presence of the term "nothing", which produces, in its presence within any text, the absence of a substance which, by definition, cannot belong to it. Following from this, to the degree that consciousness persists, the notion of nothingness is always a contradiction in terms, for the very presence of its concept denotes immediately the total absence by which consciousness could neither exist, nor maintain any object of reflection for itself. Dreaming, in its pure experience, which itself can only be articulated by the medium of the concept, which precisely denotes its absence, reflects the description of nothingness in its contradictions properly construed. The possibility of conscious experience, arising out of reflection of the experience of the dream, can thereby itself be expressed by the contradictory expression of the produced absence of nothingness - consciousness, in the unfolding of the world as image and experience, continuously consists in the produced absences of nothingness, a nothingness which in its indefiniteness continuously throws forth from its bowels the relentless becoming of the world in the proliferating manners in which it can be seen. These possibilities of seeing, born from the inner aethers of absence, may aim to capture in their being, by birthright, the inheritance of this absence, but yet can never lay claim of that from which they descend. Psychoanalyses, to the degree that it lays claim to the power to interpret dreams, finding in the dream a cartographic tableaux in which the truth of the soul may be laid bare, commits the great error that, in its very perception of the dream, it has lost extinguished the substance of that inner state innate within the dream that defies any appropriation by consciousness. Where the ancient seer, or prophecies of Tiresias, find in their interpretation of the dream an inner mysticism that they cannot access, expressed through the metaphor of fate, the modern spirit of scientificism confronts this mysticism by the metaphor of a monster that must be slain. In its overcoming of the riddle of the Sphinx, conceived as occurring through the disenchantment of the inner mysticism of the dream, the modern Oedipus of the scientific spirit advances further, unknowing, towards the blindness of its fate. The great question concerning our fate today, is whether or not the scientific spirit, like Oedipus, will bear itself by its own hand the sword which blinds it, and in so doing recognise for itself the truth of its fate - or, instead, if it will continue unabashed and ignorant to try to see through the secrets of the sun, and confronted by its blinding rays, like Icarus, to pummel towards the ground, speaking to life in an increasingly lifeless whisper the mark of its tragedy in the final moments, as it curses around it the world and laughing gods, begging like a parched man before the delusion of an Oasis that never existed: "how close was I, in the end, to that Truth to which I sought?".