Is life a dream? Who is the dreamer?

In the previous post we saw how a 5-MeO-DMT session pulls you out of the dream we call everyday life. You wake up with absolute certainty that everything you once believed was solid — your body, your personal story, other people, the whole world — is nothing but an appearance within one infinite mind. It is all one infinite awareness dreaming itself into billions of forms.

To know whether life is more like a dream than a solid world outside awareness, we first have to ask what a dream is.

Let’s take a random dream example. Imagine you are in a police car chasing a criminal. Next to you sits a family member you have not seen for years. The chase feels completely real: the speed, the sirens, the tension, the presence of that person. While it is happening there is no sense that it is “just a dream.” Only when you wake up do you see that the car, the streets, the criminal and even the family member were all made of the same substance: your own mind appearing as a world. In other words, there were no real people and no real world inside that dream. There was only your mind appearing as people and a world.

That is the defining feature of a dream. While it lasts, it feels like a real world with real people. When you wake up, you see there was never a world outside the dream. It was only mind appearing as a world.

This raises two central questions: If life is a dream, who is the dreamer of the dream? Am I the mind that is dreaming everything and everyone into existence, or am I merely a dreamed character in someone else’s mind?

Let’s investigate the first possibility: that I am the mind dreaming everything and everyone into existence. In that police-car dream it appears to be your dream and not your family member’s. You are seeing it through your perspective and not through the perspective of your family member. This could suggest that it is all your mind dreaming everything and everyone into existence.

But this immediately creates a problem. If I told you this — namely that it is all my dream and you are just a character in it — you would rightly reply: “No, that is not true — I also exist.” From your own direct experience you know you have your own thoughts, feelings, and inner life. You know that you are not merely a character in my dream!

Now let’s examine the second possibility: that I am merely a dreamed character in your mind. From my own direct experience this feels equally wrong. I know my thoughts are mine. I know my emotions and inner life are real to me. I know I exist! This version produces the exact same problem, only reversed.

None of this clearly answers the central question: Am I the mind that is dreaming everything and everyone into existence, or am I merely a dreamed character in someone else’s mind? Could we somehow prove whose dream it is?

This is the crucial point. No matter how we turn it, the answer is simple: we cannot prove either one. There is no test, no observation, and no argument that can settle if it is you appearing in my dream or i appearing in your dream. Why? Because the only tool we have is our own direct experience — and that experience tells every single person the exact same thing: “I exist”. Your inner world feels completely genuine to you, just as mine does to me. There is no way for me to get behind your eyes and see if your awareness is “empty,” and you cannot get behind mine. The two possibilities cancel each other out because they both ignore this basic fact. It is unprovable.

Both possibilities therefore lead to the same dead end. Each collapses under identical objections — contradiction with the “other’s” direct experience and total unprovability.

Now what? If life is like a dream, but we cannot prove that I am the dreamer or that you are the dreamer, then whose dream is it?

The most logical next step is to stop asking who the dreamer is and look directly at the dream itself.

To make this investigation clearer, let’s shift our attention from the police-car dream to our experience right now. Why? Because we want to see whether everyday life has the same structure as a dream.

When we look directly at our experience we call everyday life, we notice two things: we experience objects and a subject who is aware of the objects. For example: A chair in the room is the object, and the one who is aware of the chair is the subject. In other words, I am aware (the subject) of the chair (the object).

Let’s investigate the object first. When I look at the chair, I see that it has a clear shape. It sits in a specific place in the room — here and not somewhere else. It has clear edges: I can see exactly where the chair stops and the floor or wall begins. So it is clearly limited in space.

The same is true for time. The chair appeared at a specific moment in the past. Before that it did not exist. Right now it is here, but one day it will wear out, break, or be thrown away. It has a clear beginning, a time when it exists, and a clear end. So it is clearly limited in time, just as it is limited in space.

Does this same description — limited in space and limited in time — apply to every possible object?

Let’s check a sound. A sound appears at a certain moment, lasts for a while, and then stops. It is clearly limited in time. Does it have limits in space? At first it may seem not, because a sound can fill the whole room. But when we listen carefully, we can clearly tell this sound apart from that sound — a voice, traffic outside, one tone from another. Because we can experience one sound as different from another sound or from silence, it does have boundaries. So yes, even a sound has limits in space.

Next, a thought. A thought appears in the mind at a certain moment, stays for a while, and then disappears or is replaced by another thought. It is clearly limited in time. A thought is not the subject. It is an object. Does it have limits in space? A thought does not have a visible shape or a fixed place in the room. Yet we can clearly tell this thought apart from that thought — one about dinner tonight, another about a childhood memory. Because we can experience one thought as separate from another or from the silence between thoughts, it too has boundaries. So even thoughts have limits in space.

Finally, the body. The body appears through seeing, touching, and inner feelings. It has a clear shape and sits in a specific place in the room — here and not somewhere else. It has clear edges: the skin is where the body stops and the outside world begins. So it is clearly limited in space. In time, the body appeared at birth and one day it will grow old, die, and stop existing. So the body is also clearly limited in both space and time.

Everything we have looked at — chairs, sounds, thoughts, and the body — appears as a limited object with clear boundaries in space and time. They all come and go.

Now let’s turn our attention to the one who is aware — the subject. This is what we naturally call “I am.”

Again, every object we examined is finite: limited in space and time. But is the “I am” itself an object? Can it be seen? Can it be located in space? Does it have a beginning or an end in time?

Let’s investigate. Let’s remove every object (that which is limited in space and time) from our experience. Let all thoughts subside and not be replaced. Let all feelings, sensations, and perceptions fade away.

Is there something that remains?

Yes! Look for yourself in your own experience. What remains is pure experience itself — the “I am” before it is filled with this or that object.

So now we have removed all objects that are by definition finite (limited in space and time), and we have discovered that only the “I am” remains. What does this say about the “I am” itself?

If the “I Am” is not limited by space and time, then where or what is it? It must be infinite and ever-present, right? Otherwise we would be able to find its borders, its beginning, or its end — but we cannot.

These are important discoveries. We see that every object is finite (limited in space and time), while the subject — the “I am” — is infinite (not located in space and time). We also notice that the subject is the one who is aware. In other words, the “I am” is infinite, ever-present awareness that is aware of finite objects constantly coming and going.

This naturally begs the question: if the “I am” is infinite awareness that is always present, and objects are limited in space and time (in other words, they come and go and are therefore not always present), what are objects really made of? Are objects “really” objects that exist outside of awareness, or are they made of the stuff that is always present, namely infinite awareness?

Let’s investigate.

When I look at an object, is there anything other than the awareness of it? No. The only thing I notice is that I am aware of it. I never find an object standing apart from that awareness. I can only say with absolute certainty that awareness is present as this appearance.

To make this clearer, let’s take the chair as an example. I look at the chair. What do I actually find? I find the awareness of the chair — the seeing of its shape, its colour, its position in the room. That is all. I do not find a chair existing separately, outside this awareness. There is only awareness appearing as a chair. No matter how closely I look, I never find anything else. There is no chair “out there” that I then become aware of. There is only this awareness knowing the appearance that I call “chair.”So if we look honestly at our experience, the answer to the question is this: what we call an object is made of awareness. That is all that is actually found. An object existing outside of awareness is not something we experience; it is an extra idea added afterwards.

Could we somehow prove that there are objects outside of our awareness?

Let’s investigate.

If there were objects outside of awareness, wouldn’t we need awareness itself to verify their existence? In other words, wouldn’t any proof or observation we could ever make still have to appear within awareness? And can we ever step outside of awareness to check whether something exists independently of it? No, we can’t. We need awareness to verify whether there are objects outside of awareness.

Would it theoretically be possible that there are objects outside our awareness even if we cannot find them directly in our experience?

Yes, it is theoretically possible. Why? Just because we cannot verify it does not mean it is not the case. But one thing is certain: it remains an unnecessary assumption that there is something outside of our perception. Why assume something that we can never prove?

These are important discoveries. When we look directly at present experience, we see that we only ever experience awareness and never objects known to exist outside awareness.

Can we now answer the question whether life is more like a dream instead of a real, solid and independent reality existing outside our awareness? Yes! Why? Because in a dream we also never experience objects that exist outside the dream itself. The objects, people, and world within the dream are all made of the same substance as the dreamer namely awareness. So Life is truly more like a dream!

This also answers the other question we raised in this blog: Who is the dreamer of the dream? We can't answer that question! Why? The dreamer (subject) is infinite! Therefore you cannot point to it and say there is the dreamer of the dream. There is only infinity unfolding.

This is where the non-dual teachings come from. Not from a 5-MeO-DMT experience, but from the direct realization that everything is made of this one infinite awareness — and that there are no real objects out there, outside of perception.

So, it is clear right? From the point of view of direct experience, there is only infinite awareness. All objects are illusions and never truly exist as independent things. But does this make any sense from the point of view of logic that there are no objects outside of awareness?

Let's explore this whole new chapter in the next blog: Infinity from logic

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