Page 730 - Atlas of Creation Volume 3

A person sleeping in a comfortable bed in his home may
dream that he is in the middle of a war. And he might also
feel the fear, tension and the panic of the war as if it were
taking place in the real world. Yet at that time he is sleep-
ing in a comfortable bed by himself. The realistic noises
and visions he sees in his dream occur in his mind.

makes you think in this way? Let's take a trip up the Bosphorus; we can have a chat about it and you'll ex-
plain to me why you believe this." The dream that he sees in his deep sleep is so clear that he turns on the
engine with pleasure and accelerates slowly, almost jumping the car by pressing the pedal suddenly.

While going on the road, trees and road lines seem solid because of the speed. In addition, he breathes
clean Bosphorus air. But suppose he is woken up by his ringing alarm clock just when he's getting ready
to tell his friend that what he's living at that moment isn't a dream. Wouldn't he object in the same man-
ner regardless of whether he was asleep or awake?

When people wake up they understand that what they've seen until that moment is a dream. But for
some reason they are not suspicious that the life that starts with a "waking" image (what they call "real
life") can also be a dream. However, the way we perceive images in "real life" is exactly the same as the
way we perceive our dreams. We see both of them in the mind. We cannot understand they are images

until we are woken up. Only then do we say "what I have just seen was a dream". So, how can we prove
that what we see at any given moment is not a dream? We could be assuming that the moment in which
we are living is real just because we haven't yet woken up. It is possible that we will discover this fact
when we are woken up from this "waking dream" which takes longer than dreams we see everyday. We

do not have any evidence that proves otherwise.
Many Islamic scholars have also proclaimed that the life around us is only a dream, and that only
when we are awakened from that dream with "a big awakening", will people be able to understand that
they live in a dreamlike world. A great Islamic scholar, Muhyiddin Ibn al-'Arabi, referred to as Sheikh

728 Atlas of Creation Vol. 3