Row, row, row your boat, 
Gently down the stream,
Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, 
Life is but a dream..

Innumerable American films have taught us to expect this ditty, coincident with that ubiquitous yellow bus full of school children - shortly to be commandeered in sacrifice to an oft inane plot.

Despite obscure origins, much has been made of this nursery rhyme - much, sadly, that the children [in whose lives it cements the fabric of the American dream] mature in total oblivion to.

Sadly indeed, as it embodies personal philosophy that would inure them to the patched quiltwork comprising their society’s faltering, fragmented faith.

In simple terms if they were taught to ponder the implications, not just sing it on a bus, the U.S. might be a greater and more benign civilization.

This anonymous nursery rhyme has infinitely more significance than just rediscovery as rally point for dreamy self improvement - under the umbrella (if I might, and do forgive me for yielding to the urge to, call it) ‘California dreaming.’

If life is a dream we undoubtedly fail to become lucid within it and drift, more than row, downstream. As few attain lucidity within nocturnal dreaming, even fewer grasp the notion that waking state might be a dream, and that self-awareness within that waking dream ("lucid living") might provide enigma’s key.

Consensus in this context presents duality: compliance with majority opinion is meaningless nightmare of unquestioning acceptance, yet such harmony may be the waking dream-of-life’s aim.

Is consensus harmony with thoughts of the master dreamer - or failure to harmonize, failure to be aware of its dream, and we are instead autonomous actors blindly miming till our character’s demise?

Is individual quest a selfish disruption - or attaining enlightenment?

Dreaming

Science and technology have provided most known miracles since the dawn of man, yet pursuing their minutiae toward ultimate knowledge is a futile path down eons - a breadcrumb trail of technical trinkets promising the theory of everything.

Stepping from the path of theory and proof leads quickly to the land of charlatan, fanatic and fool. A land, nevertheless, of golden frontiers where incorruptible and disciplined minds might find greater truth - preferably before the end of time.

Hindu Mayan, Buddhist Dzogchen and Christian Resurrection reveal the eternal nature of such ideas, and "lucid living" is no novel concept of the modern.

Fruitful it is, therefore, to ask one of time’s greatest questions: Are we dreaming?

It might be arrogant to assume we can out-think masters of the ages, but like any descendent we have the advantage of our ancients’ hard labors. Two thousand years of refined Buddhist thought become a ready pillar on which to base the next step - or reject an entire field of unlikely directions.

Let us focus in these pages on the depths of consensus and what it might mean.

What could consensus be if life is a dream, or our universe a computer simulation?

Is it Gods all the way up - or turtles all the way down?

Consensus, and its relation to the dreamlike nature of our lives, is but one step removed from the ultimate knowledge that life, the universe, and everything, cannot exist, does not exist, will never exist - and all is a bubble of non-reality turbulent within the void, negated by its negative shadow.

Consensus: Acting for the common good - or willingness to believe the mob’s nonsense?

Tags: dream, life