Be beguiled, read Jorge Luis Borges' The Circular Ruins.
The
narrator tells the tale of a magician come to a circular temple long
ago destroyed by fire. "He wanted to dream a man: he wanted to dream him
with minute integrity and insert him into reality."
We're face
to face with the centuries old conundrum: Is all of life but a dream?
Are we living our human life as a dream within a dream? Words of a sage:
"Mind is illusory – that which is not but appears to be, and appears so
much that you think that you are the mind. Mind is maya, mind is just a
dream, mind is just a projection…a soap bubble – nothing in it."
But
how about our bodies? How about Planet Earth rotating around the Sun?
How about the Cosmos? Is all this a dream, a soap bubble within a soap
bubble?
"Gradually, he accustomed the boy to reality...His life's purpose was complete; the man persisted in a kind of ecstasy."
What
would it take for you to feel your life's purpose is complete? For me,
this question ties into Carl Jung's view of 'Individuation' as a process
of psychological integration requiring growth at each stage in a human
life. And if you are in a state of ecstasy, does it really matter if it
is all a dream?
Dream or solid rock, one ancient myth I
continually think about: Minerva, the Roman Goddess of Wisdom, born
fully formed. Oh, to be like Minerva, to start off in life with wisdom!
I
know, I know...we human are not nearly so fortunately - we must earn
wisdom through years of absorbing life's hard knocks, years of living
through the consequences of lacking wisdom (the polite way of putting
it), that is, being dunces, boobs, dummies, not knowing ourselves or the
rhythms of nature, human nature included. Now, the question arises: How
does wisdom tie into the realization that all might be a dream?
At the conclusion of this Borges tale, do you think the magician can claim a measure of wisdom?
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