Our minds are nothing. Formless, timeless, existing within ourselves as a paradox, something more than the sum of its parts. They are “us”, but without the physical components of ourselves, they cannot function. All is silent, untouchable, odourless, tasteless… dark…

Igni

But within our minds exists something very special. We create the story of ourselves. In order to create that story, our minds create images of ourself. Inside of our consciousness, there is a mirror of ourselves, and a mirror of our situation. It is this mirror, our “World View”, that we act on. The reason we function is that our World View is remarkably like everyone elses’. The truth is that there is no one picture of the world - all that exists is the sum total of everyones’ views. There is no “real” world that we can point to and say “this is it”. All that exists is what we believe exists.

Natura

When we dream, we lose almost all conscious control of our world view. Our subconscious pumps images into it - they become our dreams, the temporary reality that can exist while we sleep. What would happen if we all slept? Well, the world exists as the sum of all our views. “Reality” would become the knitted-together patchwork of our dreams. The mirror images of ourselves, generated by our minds, would experience an entirely different reality to the one we generate whilst we are awake. Another world, a dream world. Reality is still a consensus vote of all our views, it’s just that our views are not as “normal” as they once were. What would we create in our minds?

Renovatur

Perhaps we would be mighty warriros or wizards, perhaps we would be astronauts or aliens. Perhaps our world would be beautiful, perhaps it would be dark and uninviting. Maybe we would be happy, maybe we would be tormented by the nightmare that we experience. Maybe our friends would always be there to help us, perhaps we would be in love. Perhaps we would be alone, tormented by dark memories of our subconscious. And then, there is God. Just as such an entity exists in our conscious world view, there is the same in our subconscious view. Because God is the ultimate, the thing that we cannot percieve, we have no choice but to experience God (or not to experience God) in the same way in whatever world view we adopt. God becomes the only thing common and unchanging in all realities.

Integra

As we sleep and do not wake, absorbed into the new perception or reality, our bodies degrade and eventually we die. Our bodies provide no sensory input to the brain, and so the mind experiences a rude awakening, if that is the right word. Suddenly there is nothing to satisfy the existence of the conscious, and in shock it takes control of the mind, in the same way as a loud noise will wake you from sleep. Suddenly, the subconsciously generated world view is gone, and the conscious view is reasserted. But the conscious view is nothingness. There is no input. All there is is nothingness, coldness, numbness, blackness. But still persisting here, is God. Because there is nothing else, God grows and fills our mind. There is “me”, and there is “God”. All of our attention is drawn to this concept of God, and it becomes powerful. The only escape, the only way to restore the world view we had before, is to remove this all-intrusive “God”. You must assert the force of Ego over the concept of Deus. You must restore your view, your world, your reality, by changing your world view so that the image of yourself becomes more than your image of God…

“The end of this world is coming
Dreams and hopes do not matter.
Inside your heart, you are sleeping
but you will not wake up
Feel the hand of a future that cannot be changed
Burning for your life
This life will burn out someday, even if you try to cling to it
(for the perfect dream)
Drowning in my dream
Even if it’s remembered, a dream is only a dream
You are star light.”
— Lyrics from eX Dream, opening theme of the anime “X”.