For some reason, I am thinking tonight of a dream I had several years ago.
This was a very vivid dream. I was with a group of people, and we were racing around this island, trying to get away from people who were chasing us. At the same time, we were hunting for signs or artifacts that would guide us on a quest. The people chasing us were trying to prevent us from finding whatever it was we were looking for. At one point, we had to slip through barbed wire, following a narrow path through the underbrush down a steep slope. We emerged from the dark undergrowth at the foot of a tall cliff by the sea. There was a large cavern under the cliff. Before us in the waves there stood a stone monument of some kind. As I gazed at the object that had just... appeared... somehow, I heard in my mind: "It and the image of itself are one."
In this dream, it was possible for a symbol of something and the thing-in-itself to be the same thing. It was this symbol, this marker we had been seeking, because everything started to change when we found it.
After this, I started to wake up, but just before I did, I recall being convinced that I had seen something that hinted at reality's purpose.
We understand that in literature and film, symbols may be used to represent other things. Upon awakening, it seemed possible to me that elements of reality itself could be attempts to convey meaning. Crazy as it sounds, I became half-convinced that parts of "objective reality" are really attempts of our own consciousness to understand something, to tell a story.
There could be certain place-markers in reality where the symbol refers to its own action. There could be elements of existence where the informational image is also an operational image. If this seems a bit murky, think of the DNA in the center of each of your cells. This DNA contains a complete informational image of you in entirety. Yet this DNA is also an operational image in that it also controls cellular function at a molecular level, prompting the production of proteins, the oxidation of sugar, etc.
It seems more likely that our consciousness has a selectivity principle at work whereby we happen to notice things in the external world that might function as symbol. For instance, on a day when I am goofing off, I might notice the bees working in the flowers, and be made aware of the difference between their diligent efforts and my own laziness.
Yet I still remember the powerful feeling I had at the end of that dream, when I realized that the symbol and the signified were one. I'm still searching for the symbol that represents itself. For some reason, it reminds me of what God said when somebody asked him for his name.
"I am that I am."
Many have translated this as "I am what I am." I think this is wrong. I think the first has a finer shade of meaning. There is an implication of necessity by using the word "that". In other words, God says something like this: "My being is so good that it recognizes how beneficial it is that it should exist for itself and for all, and thus it self-wills its goodness out of its own goodness."
Sounds like eternal, uncreated being to me.
Our being is in time, and thus subject to change and dissolution. That is the internal logic of this dream.
It is interesting to imagine characters in a dream asking questions of the dreamer.
Who are you? What are you? Why don't you answer me when I pray to you? Where are you? Do you even exist? Why do you let bad things happen? What happens when we die?
Aren't the creator and the created being necessarily linked? What happens when the character figures out that he's in a dream? What new possibilities arise?
Doesn't he have a new type of agency?
