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real. Now he's taking the bandage off.

The white shade hands me a pistol and tells me to try and kill myself. In the back of my mind I have
a severe desire to die, but as I press the pistol against my brain, I can't force myself to pull the
trigger. "Remember, this is just a dream." That's what he says to me, but he's not the one with the
gun pressed against his head.

"Kill yourself, and you will see that I am telling you the truth." I still can't pull the trigger. After the
white shade realizes that I need a bigger push if I'm going to pull this trigger, he starts to talk about
the beginning of the universe.

The white shade asks me if I believe it's possible to create something from nothing. I tell him that I
do not believe that it's possible. Then he says, "So in order for something to exist, there must have
been something before it." Then he goes on to say that I must be one of the people who believes
that a higher being or beings created all that we see and know.

The white shade says if you cannot create something from nothing, and we consider this fact, then
many will argue the impossible origin of the higher being or beings in the first place. When you
think about it, these ideas in conjunction are in error.

"So now we consider that the existence of a higher being or beings is impossible. How can we be
here? Did everything and anything we know and see come into place on its own? Maybe nothing is
real. Or, maybe everything and anything that we know and see are as real or as fake to us as we
think. Maybe if a person simply believes there is a God, then God will simply exist, and if a person
doesn't believe there is a God, then God will simply not exist. Maybe it's that simple."

I think about what he says, then I ask the white shade,"Doesn't this mean that there is no fact or
fiction? If I believe there is no gravity, will there or will there not be gravity?"

"In this place, there is gravity and there is no gravity. Depending on what you believe, you will
witness one or the other."

At this point, in my mind I'm debating and comparing the real world to the dream world and trying
to understand what this person is saying. The white shade tells me that I'm on the right track but
going in the wrong direction, that I should be thinking about how similar these two worlds truly
are.

"Now you need to pick up the gun, and then ask yourself where you will go when you are done
with this life, and then you will or will not be able to pull the trigger."

I think about the question before I pick up the gun. I always believed that our bodies and our minds
were separate, and that when our bodies died, our minds would live on. That we created our own
afterlives. That what we truly believed in the unconscious brain is what would happen after we
have passed. Those who believed in Heaven and Hell would go to Heaven or Hell. Those who
believed in reincarnation would be reincarnated. Those who believed in a place where there is
unlimited candy would go to a place where there was unlimited candy.