Metaworld and Dreamworld

Metaworld and Dreamworld

Samuel Bird

Is she real? I wondered this to myself late into the night. I was caught up deep into my internal conceptual world. I had just gained consciousness after a short nap and was deliberately keeping myself in this tender stage where I was fully conscious, but I was still somewhat turned to the side in my mind and to the world of abstractions. Ideas would come into being as full entities unto themselves but didn’t maintain a temporal identity as they would shift from one to another across time. A scene would fade into another scene or a character into someone markedly different from who they were. I would just take all the absurd shifts in non-object permanency as a given and revel in each moment. I would take that moment for what it was and take it as a moment to respond to rather than a moment to make sense of. I thought to the dream I had just ended, but in this strange nexus before full awakeness, I could live in shadow. A blue-eyed woman I had loved before was carrying my child. I was thrust into being in that moment after she had been carrying my child for many months, and I had not supported her or made efforts to wed myself to her. Like I feel when I go to apologize, I was taking responsibility for something so alien, it didn’t feel like it was me to make the choice, but the other party deserved my penance still. I apologized and told her that I cared for her. While this was true, the larger concern was being able to participate in the life of the child. 

She faded in that moment from that blue eyed girl, to the other half of myself. Now, in this carefully orchestrated half-awoken state, I was considering this. I was not trying to find what the dream meant, as if only this world had merit and that world was here to serve it. Rather, I reveled in that world. In part, the dream was sweet. My great dream is to be a father. What a wondrous dream I welcomed in every iteration that afforded me the cradling of my offspring. However, I do this strange thing, which is more than that. I can’t explain it, but I exist in that world in such a way that I could describe it as... engaging with my existence. My strangeness is extended to many categories in such a way my sleep is not left alone. I can lie down for a fifteen-minute nap and find myself in a deep dream state. My dreams are vibrant and weighty, with all the characteristics of realness in my waking hours, except for that permanence. However, even the reproducibility of that Dreamworld is surprising. I recall that grocery store with the high ceiling where there was that firm bread with herbs I had eaten since I was a child. A desert in the night where lightning bolts struck from cloudless stars. A city on a hill where every road led to a world welcoming to me. 

As someone who revels in realness, I may be accused of this meta-sin, however, I do not err. The value of the consciousness is to engage with its periphery. In meditation late into this night, I realize the degree to which the mind is such. Depending on the metric for realness we pick, of many, my Dreamworld can be just as real in its surrealness. This world in my mind is an expansive place full of abstractions, feelings, and symbols that signify qualia that a language made to explain the outside world can’t touch. Even when fully awake and resting my eyes, I watch the geometric patterns and shifting colors that come into my mind’s eye. This world isn’t one you will give me permission or affirmation to take these excursions to, but I don’t need such. I have learned and previously stated that the modern world knows better than ever, what it is to be human. They know the material facts that can comprise us and their operation. What they are worse at than any other culture I can think to compare, is knowing what it is like to be human. We wanted powerful technology and effective systems to exist in the world and were willing to sell out this world we see from first. We have sold out this land of dreams to bring our dreams into the world, only for our edifices to not resonate with that which is dead within us. I was caught back to that question. Is she real? In the definition that I have stated, I guess not. She is in the mind, though in part and imperfectly as she holds her mysteries. However, she fails to be real in the sense that she is in the world. 

I saw two scientists argue recently, a theist and an atheist, if God existed. The theist scientist did very poorly because he was unable to manage his assumptions. His idea of existence was that which is in the world in such a way to be material and at least possibly empirically accessible. He was left with only his cognitive dissonance to save his poor faith. Being aware of my assumptions, I would have faired better, though I hate debates. If we define only the material as existing, than God as the uncaused conscious cause would not be real. However, that is only because of the playing of definitions. I then thought to what plane she would exist in, assuming she does. She would live in what I coined as the “metaworld.” I have previously defined the world as all else other than me, but I am making this addition for a reason we will shortly see. In the case of God, He is maximally conscious and the first cause. All other qualities are specific to religions to make sense of worship worthiness according to His omniscience, omnipotence, omnipresence, and omnibenevolence. Many have to negate one of these to solve the problem of evil. This God is the great perceiver and that same entity, perhaps, whose perception safe keeps all being. There are two ways we are equal to God in power. The first is the degree to which we can imagine, the second is the fact we are conscious. No definition I can think of sees consciousness as a gradient, but rather a clear dichotomy. 

As God is conscious, within Him occur the great values. Truth as He sees what is, goodness as He sees energy, beauty as He sees essence, and meaning as He sees the cumulative emergent properties of the previous. God would exist in this metaworld, I reasoned with little additional thought, that is neither mind nor world. I keep going back to Plato as of late and wondered how that world of forms where the concept was the initial reality for which this world is a casted shadow. Could the great first triangle, the rivers of numbers, and the trees of reason reside in that land without ground? If this metaworld was on the other side of the world that I was, it was further than accessible and near meaningless to wonder about. Unless... Dear God, have I found you? Could this metaworld be this dream world? Perhaps it is only our fortune to be broadcasted from this place that isn’t according to any scientist but is to any soul. In my mind was that triangle that was the form that was manifest in countless existential instantiations. However, in my mind was this existential generalization of the preeminent triangle without breadth to its lines. There were no rocks that equaled five, only the pure and true five. Had a done it? 

Had I become an essentialist? No. In these dreams, I was thrust into being and only perceived this dynamic world to engage with it afterward. Or perhaps, yes. This world I explore is given no tools by my waking hours. I still go back to those instances in the world that have their generalization in the mind. Each of these are existential generalizations. They are specific sorts of general things. However, what of that universal generalizations. It is the entirety of sorts, to which things could be part of. God, have I found something of you here in my mind? I was now fully awake as my feverish and rambling thinking led me to feed the chickens outside. I thought this world more and yet less real than the world that my body was residing in and becoming cold. I think not in words, but in visuals I then labor to put into words, but love a good spot of dirt to scratch into. While my eye saw the black night and the scoop of grain in my hand, a visual flashed in my eye’s view. My physical eyes were left empty, and yet my consciousness through meditation was able to sing thoughts as they came to me. Here I am, as that great singularity, sitting in the center of my mind. In my waking hours, I am able to look forward to where the senses are before me. Though they are broadcast here, that is not where I am. I am in the middle of my mind. Thoughts as facts and values roll past me and can easily pull me from observing my senses if I wish. Here at the point where mind meets world, the thoughts are clear and deductive, following a pattern of reason I can trace and validate. 

In my waking, I can turn slightly to my side. The world of concepts as numbers and ideas grows to become the world of symbols and qualia without a specific cause. The further I wander into my imagination or my bouts with insanity, the further I can turn from that panel of perception to see that world of concepts. In my sleep, however, I am finally able to turn until there is not even a possible periphery to the waking world and I am left with only that land of dreams. In this world, everything has a “ness” to it that lets me perceive it so deeply. In my deep perception of it, more perfectly as it is as if to step outside of my mind to touch it with my soul, I get to value it differently. Do I love this world of abstractions because of what it affords me? Where can one run from a nightmare? This world isn’t mine to gain utility, but love as it is. The dreams become more and more abstract until words fail me. Finally, any sense to say there is a me to be failed by words, would fail to describe what I have become in this deep state. Prepare these words for your fate. Dreams and the soul will destroy the modern age. 

We can explain everything, but the explainer. Finally, we haven’t the slightest guess as to why that same explainer slips into the inexplicable. There is much I need to say about engaging with the world here, and it is best to live where the world and mind meet. However, as there is power to be lost in the view of a beautiful mountain range, the terrain of the mind deserves its own exploration. Lay aside your pick and cane. That world can only be known in reference to itself and your engagement with it. In the end, I don’t know if this dream world overlaps with this metaworld, but it is effectively so. I can tell you my dreams, but I realize they only matter so much to me. While I am extremely limited to speaking on this world, I am honored to be a witness to that it is. This is the world where you are confronted with yourself. Your lies have no audience. You must realize what you put off. Things of the past are processed. The now is deeply present. The future is brought into view enough to be ontologically suspicious. Learn the world without you via experience, but don’t forget the one within. The soul is found in that there is something subjective about our experience, and there is that world recessed we can be thrown into for the night. No matter how they relate to each other and the world, I have reason to believe in that Metaworld and that Dreamworld. The former I find Him, and the latter I find sweet her.