The Blonde Bee, the Firefly, Praying Mantis--
...lunatic macaroni munchkin with my googat--
...venerable tradition of sorcerers, shamans and other visionaries...
who have developed and perfected the art of dream travel,
the so-called lucid dream state...
where, by consciously controlling your dreams,
you're able to discover things...
beyond your capacity to apprehend in your awake state.
- Winning back-to-back-- - Tell us what Felix is doing--
A single ego is an absurdly narrow vantage from which to view this-- this experience.
And where most consider their individual relationship to the universe,
I contemplate relationships...
of my various selves to one another.
While most people with mobility problems...
are having trouble just getting around,
at age 92,joy Cullison's out seeing the world.
~~Now I'm free to see the world~~
Hey, how's it going?
They say that dreams are real only as long as they last.
Can't you say the same thing about life?
A lot of us out there are mapping that mind/body relationship of dreams.
We're called the oneironauts. We're explorers of the dream world.
Really, it's just about the two opposing states of consciousness...
which don't really oppose at all.
See, in the waking world,
the neuro-system inhibits the activation of the vividness of memories.
This makes evolutionary sense.
It'd be maladapted for the perceptual image of a predator...
to be mistaken for the memory of one and vice-versa.
If the memory of a predator conjured up a perceptual image,
we'd be running off to the bathroom every time we had a scary thought.
So you have these serotonic neurons...
that inhibit hallucinations...
that they themselves are inhibited during REM sleep.
This allows dreams to appear real...
while preventing competition from other perceptual processes.
This is why dreams are mistaken for reality.
To the functional system of neural activity that creates our world,
there is no difference between dreaming a perception and an action...
and actually the waking perception and action.
I had a friend once who told me...
that the worst mistake that you could make...
is to think that you are alive...
when really you’re asleep in life's waiting room.
The trick is to combine...
your waking rational abilities...
with the infinite possibilities of your dreams.
'Cause if you can do that, you can do anything.
Did you ever have a job that you hated and worked real hard at?
A long, hard day of work. Finally you get to go home, get in bed, close your eyes.
And immediately you wake up and realize...
that the whole day at work had been a dream.
It's bad enough that you sell your waking life for-- for minimum wage,
but now they get your dreams for free.
Hey, man, what are you doing here?
I fancy myself the social lubricator of the dream world,
helping people become lucid a little easier.
Cut out all that fear and anxiety stuff and just rock and roll.
By becoming lucid, you mean just knowing that you’re dreaming, right?
Yeah. And then you can control it.
They're more realistic and less bizarre than non-lucid dreams.
You know, I just woke from a dream.
It wasn't like a typical dream. It seemed more like I'd walked into an alternate universe.
Yeah, it's real.
I mean, technically, it's a phenomenon of sleep,
but you can have so much damn fun in your dreams.
And, of course, everyone knows fun rules.
- Yeah. -So what was going on in your dream?
Oh. A lot of people. A lot of talking.
Some of it was kind of absurdist, like from a strange movie or something.
Mostly, it was just people going off about whatever, really intensely.
I woke up wondering, where did all this stuff come from?
- You can control that. - Do you have these dreams all the time?
Hell, yeah. I'm always gonna make the best of it.
But the trick is, you got to realize that you're dreaming in the first place.
You got to be able to recognize it.
You got to be able to ask yourself, " Hey, man, is this a dream?"
Most people never ask themselves that...
when they're awake or especially when they're asleep.
Seems like everyone's sleepwalking through their waking state...
or wake walking through their dreams.
Either way they're not gonna get much out of it.
The thing that snapped me into realizing I was dreaming was, uh-- was my digital clock.
I couldn't really read it. It was like the circuitry was all screwed up or something.
Yeah, that's real common. And small printed material is pretty tough too.
Very unstable.
Another good tip-off is trying to adjust light levels.
You can't really do that.
If you see a light switch nearby, turn it on and off and see if it works.
That's one of the few things you can't do in a lucid dream.
What the hell. I can fly around,
have an interesting conversation with Albert Schweitzer.
I can explore all these new dimensions of reality,
not to mention I can have any kind of sex I want, which is way cool.
So I can't adjust light levels. So what?
But that's one of the things you do to test if you’re dreaming or not, right?
Yeah, like I said, you can totally train yourself to recognize it.
I mean, just hit a light switch every now and then.
If the lights are on and you can't turn them off, then most likely you’re dreaming.
And then you can get down to business.
And believe me, it's unlimited.
- Hey, you know what I've been working on lately? - What's that?
Oh, man, it's way ambitious, but I'm getting better at it.
You're gonna dig this. Three-sixty vision, man.
I can see in all directions. Pretty cool, huh?
Yeah. Wow.
Well, I got to go, man.
Okay, later, man. Super perfundo on the early eve of your day.
- What's that mean? - Well, you know, I never figured it out.
Maybe you can. This guy always whispers into my ear.
Louis. He's a recurring dream character.
Cinema, in its essence,
is about reproduction of reality,
which is that, like, reality is actually reproduced.
And for him, it might sound like a storytelling medium, really.
And he feels like, um-- like film--
Like-- like literature is better for telling a story.
And if you tell a story or even like a joke--
"This guy walks into a bar and sees a dwarf."
That works really well because you’re imagining this guy and this dwarfing this bar.
And it's an imaginative aspect to it.
In film, you don't have that because you actually are filming a specific guy...
in a specific bar with a specific dwarf...
- of a specific height who looks a certain way, right? - Mm-hmm.
So like, um, for Bazin, what the ontology of film has to deal--
it has to deal with, you know, with--
- Photography also has an ontology, - Right.
except that it adds this dimension of time to it...
and this greater realism.
And so, it's about that guy...
at that moment in that space.
And, you know, Bazin is, like, a Christian,
so he, like, believes that, you know--
in God, obviously, and everything.
For him, reality and God are the same. You know, like--
And so what film is actually capturing is, like, God incarnate, creating.
You know, like this very moment, God is manifesting as this.
And what the film would capture if it was filming us right now...
would be, like, God as this table,
and God is you and God is me and God looking the way we look right now...
and saying and thinking what we’re thinking right now...
- because we’re all God manifest in that sense. - Mm-hmm.
So film is like a record of God or the face of God...
or of the ever-changing face of God.
You have a mosquito. You want me to get it for you?
- You got it. Yeah. - I got it?
And the whole Hollywood thing has taken film...
and tried to make it this storytelling medium...
where you take these books or stories...
and then you, like, you know--
you get the script and then try to find somebody who fits the thing.
But it's ridiculous.
It shouldn't be based on the script.
It should be based on the person, the thing.
And, um-- And in that sense,
they're almost right to have this whole star system...
- because then it's about that person instead of the story. - Right.
Truffaut always said the best films aren't made--
The best scripts don't make the best films...
because they have that kind of literary, narrative thing that you’re sort of a slave to.
The best films are the ones that aren't tied to that slavishly.
So, um-- So-- I don't know--
The whole narrative thing seems to me like--
Obviously, there's narrativity to cinema 'cause it's in time,
just the way there's narrativity to music.
You don't first think of the story of the song, then make the song.
It has to come out of the moment.
That's what film has. It's just that moment, which is holy.
You know, like this moment, it's holy.
But we walk around like it's not holy.
We walk around like there's some holy moments and there are all the other moments...
- that are not holy, but this moment is holy. - Right. Right.
And film can let us see that.
We can frame it so that we see, like, "Ah, this moment. Holy."
Like "holy, holy, holy" moment by moment.
But who can live that way? Who can go, "Wow, holy"?
Because if I were to look at you and let you be holy--
I don't know. I would, like, stop talking.
Well, you'd be in the moment. The moment is holy, right?
Yeah, but I'd be open.
I'd look in your eyes and I'd cry...
and I'd feel all this stuff and that's not polite.
It would make you uncomfortable.
You could laugh too. Why would you cry?
Well, 'cause-- I don't know.
For me, I just tend to cry.
Uh-huh. Well--
Well, let's do it right now. Let's have a holy moment.
- Everything is layers, isn't it? - Yeah.
There's the holy moment and then there's the awareness...
of trying to have the holy moment...
in the same way that the film is the actual moment really happening,
but then the character pretending to be in a different reality.
It's all these layers.
And, uh, I was in and out of the holy moment, looking at you.
Can be in a holy-- You're unique that way, Caveh.
That's one of the reasons I enjoy you.
You can... bring me into that.
If the world that we are forced to accept is false and nothing is true,
then everything is possible.
On the way to discovering what we love, we will find everything we hate,
everything that blocks our path to what we desire.
The comfort will never be comfortable for those who seek what is not on the market.
A systematic questioning of the idea of happiness.
We'll cut the vocal chords of every empowered speaker.
We'll yank the social symbols through the looking glass. We'll devalue society's currency.
To confront the familiar.
Society is a fraud so complete and venal...
that it demands to be destroyed beyond the power of memory to recall its existence.
Where there's fire, we will carry gasoline.
Interrupt the continuum of everyday experience...
and all the normal expectations that go with it.
To live as if something actually depended on one's actions.
To rupture the spell of the ideology of the commodified consumer society...
so that our oppressed desires of a more authentic nature can come forward.
To demonstrate the contrast between what life presently is and what it could be.
To immerse ourselves in the oblivion of actions and know we're making it happen.
There will be an intensity never before known in everyday life...
to exchange love and hate, life and death,
terror and redemption, repulsions and attractions.
An affirmation of freedom so reckless and unqualified,
that it amounts to a total denial of every kind of restraint and limitation.
- Hey, old man, what you doing up there? - I'm not sure.
You need any help getting down, sir?
No, I don't think so.
Stupid bastard.
No worse than us. He's all action and no theory.
We're all theory and no actions.
Why so glum, Mr. Deborg?
What was missing was felt irretrievable.
The extreme uncertainties...
of subsisting without working...
made excesses necessary...
and breaks definitive.
To quote Stevenson:
"Suicide carried off many.
" Drink and the devil...
took care of the rest."
- Hey. - Hey.
You a dreamer?
Yeah.
I haven't seen too many of you around lately.
Things have been tough lately for dreamers.
They say dreaming's dead, that no one does it anymore.
It's not dead. It's just that it's been forgotten.
Removed from our language.
Nobody teaches it, so no one knows it exists.
The dreamer is banished to obscurity.
I'm trying to change all that, and I hope you are too.
By dreaming every day.
Dreaming with our hands and dreaming with our minds.
Our planet is facing the greatest problems it's ever faced. Ever.
So whatever you do, don't be bored.
This is absolutely the most exciting time we could have possibly hoped to be alive.
And things are just starting.
A thousand years is but an instant.
There's nothing new, nothing different. The same pattern over and over.
The same clouds, the same music,
the same insight felt an hour or an eternity ago.
There's nothing here for me now, nothing at all.
Now I remember. This happened to me before. This is why I left.
You have begun to find your answers.
Although it will seem difficult, the rewards will be great.
Exercise your human mind as thoroughly as possible,
knowing it is only an exercise.
Build beautiful artifacts, solve problems,
explore the secrets of the physical universe.
Savor the input from all the senses.
Feel the joy and sorrow, the laughter, the empathy, compassion...
and tote the emotional memory in your travel bag.
I remember where I came from and how I became a human.
Why I hung around. And now my final departure is scheduled.
This way out. Escaping velocity.
Not just eternity, but infinity.
- Excuse me. - Excuse me.
Hey. Could we do that again?
I know we haven't met, but I don't want to be an ant. You know?
I mean, it's like we go through life...
with our antennas bouncing off one other,
continuously on ant autopilot,
with nothing really human required of us.
Stop. Go. Walk here. Drive there.
All action basically for survival.
All communication simply to keep this ant colony buzzing along...
in an efficient, polite manner.
" Here's your change." " Paper or plastic?" "Credit or debit?"
"You want ketchup with that?"
I don't want a straw. I want real human moments.
I want to see you. I want you to see me.
I don't want to give that up. I don't want to be an ant, you know?
Yeah. Yeah, I know.
I don't want to be an ant, either.
Yeah, thanks for kind of, like, jostling me there.
I've been kind of on zombie autopilot lately.
I don't feel like an ant in my head, but I guess I probably look like one.
It's kind of like D.H. Lawrence had this idea of two people meeting on a road...
And instead of just passing and glancing away,
they decided to accept what he calls "the confrontation between their souls."
It's like, um-- like freeing the brave reckless gods within us all.
Then it's like we have met.
I'm doing this project. I'm hoping you'll be interested in doing it.
It's a soap opera,
and, so, the characters are the fantasy lives.
They're the alter egos of the performers who are in it.
So you pretty much just figure out something that you’ve always wanted to do...
or the life you’ve wanted to lead or occupation or something like that.
And we write that in, and then we also have your life intersect...
with other people's in the soap opera in some typical soap opera fashion.
Then I also want to show it in a live venue...
and have the actors present so that once the episode is screened,
then the audience can direct...
the actors for subsequent episodes with menus or something.
So it has a lot to do with choices and honoring people's ability...
to say what it is that they want to see...
and also consumerism and art and commodity.
And if you don't like what you got, then you can send it back...
or you get what you pay for,
or just participating, just really making choices.
- So, you wanna do it? - Uh, yeah. Yeah, that sounds really cool.
I'd love to be in it, but, um--
Uh, I kinda gotta ask you a question first though.
I don't really know how to say it, but, um--
uh, what's it like to be a character in a dream?
'Cause, uh, I'm not awake right now.
And I haven't even worn a watch since, like, fourth grade.
I think this is the same watch too.
Um-- Uh, yeah.
I don't even know if you’re able to answer that question.
But I'm just trying to get like a sense of where I am and what's going on.
So, what about you? What's your name? What's your address?
What are you doing?
I-- I-- You know, I can't really remember right now.
I can't really-- I can't really recall that.
But that's beside the point...
whether or not I can dredge up this information...
about, you know, my address or, you know,
my mom's maiden name or whatnot.
I've got the benefit in this reality, if you wanna call that,
of a consistent perspective.
What is your consistent perspective?
It's mostly just me dealing with a lot of people...
who are...
exposing me to information and ideas...
that... seem vaguely familiar,
but, at the same time,
it's all very alien to me.
I'm not in an objective, rational world.
Like, I've been, like, flying around.
Uh--
I don't know. It's weird, too, because it's not like a fixed state.
It's more like this whole spectrum of awareness.
Like the lucidity wavers.
Like, right now I know that I'm dreaming, right?
We're, like, even talking about it.
This is the most in myself and in my thoughts that I've been so far.
I'm talking about being in a dream.
But I'm beginning to think...
that it's something that I don't really have any precedent for.
It's-- It's totally unique.
The-- The quality of-- of the environment...
and the information that I'm receiving.
Like your soap opera, for example.
That's a really cool idea.
I didn't come up with that. It's like something outside of myself.
It's like something transmitted to me externally.
I don't know what this is.
We seem to think we're so limited by the world...
and-- and the confines, but we're really just creating them.
And you keep trying to figure it out,
but it seems like now that you know that what you’re doing is dreaming,
you can do whatever you want to.
You're, uh, dreaming, but you’re awake.
You have, um, so many options,
and that's what life is about.
I understand what you’re saying.
It's up to me. I'm the dreamer.
It's weird. Like, so much of the information...
that-- that these people have been imparting to me--
I don't know. It's got this, like, really heavy connotation to it.
- Well, how do you feel? - Well,
Well, sometimes I feel kind of isolated,
but most of the time, I feel really connected,
really, like, engaged in this active process.
Which is kind of weird because most of the time,
I've just been really passive and not really responding,
except for now, I guess.
I'm just kind of letting the information wash over me.
It's not necessarily passive to not respond verbally.
We're communicating on so many levels simultaneously.
Perhaps you're-- you're perceiving directly.
Most of the people that I've been encountering...
and most of the things that I would wanna say,
it's like they kind of say it for me and almost at my cue.
It's, like, complete unto itself.
It's not like I'm having a bad dream. It's a great dream.
But...
it's so unlike any other dream I've ever had before.
It's like the dream.
It's like I'm being prepared for something.
"On this bridge," Lorca warns,
"life is not a dream.
" Beware and beware and...
beware."
And so many think because "then" happens,
" now" isn't.
But didn't I mention the ongoing "wow" is happening right now?
We are all coauthors of this dancing exuberance...
where even our inabilities are having a roast.
We are the authors of ourselves,
coauthoring a gigantic Dostoyevsky novel starring clowns.
This entire thing we're involved with called the world...
is an opportunity to exhibit how exciting alienation can be.
Life is a matter of a miracle that is collected over time...
by moments flabbergasted to be in each other's presence.
The world is an exam to see if we can rise into the direct experiences.
Our eyesight is here as a test to see if we can see beyond it.
Matter is here as a test for our curiosity.
Doubt is here as an exam for our vitality.
Thomas Mann wrote that he would rather participate in life...
than write a hundred stories.
Giacometti was once run down by a car,
and he recalled falling into a lucid faint,
a sudden exhilaration,
as he realized at last something was happening to him.
An assumption develops that you cannot understand life and live life simultaneously.
I do not agree entirely. Which is to say I do not exactly disagree.
I would say that life understood is life lived.
But the paradoxes bug me,
and I can learn to love and make love...
to the paradoxes that bug me.
And on really romantic evenings of self,
I go salsa dancing with my confusion.
Before you drift off, don't forget.
Which is to say, remember.
Because remembering is so much more a psychotic activity than forgetting.
Lorca in that same poem said...
that the iguana will bite those who do not dream.
And as one realizes...
that one is a dream figure...
in another person's dream,
that is self-awareness.
You haven't met yourself yet.
But the advantage to meeting others in the meantime...
is that one of them may present you to yourself.
Examine the nature...
of everything you observe.
For instance,
you might find yourself walking through...
a dream parking lot.
And, yes, those are dream feet inside of your dream shoes.
Part of your dream self. And so,
the person you appear to be in the dream...
cannot be who you really are.
This is an image,
a mental model.
Do you remember me?
No. No, I don't think so.
At the station?
You were on the pay phone and you looked at me...
a few times.
I remember that, but I don't remember that being you.
Are you sure?
Well, maybe not.
I was sitting down...
and you were looking at me.
My little friend, dream no more. It's really here.
It's called Efferdent Plus.
In hell, you sink to the level of your lack of love.
In heaven, you rise to the level of your fullness of love.
Hurry up! Come on! Get in the car! Let's go.
Allegedly, the story goes like this.
Billy Wilder runs into Louis Malle.
This was in the late '50s, early '60s.
And Louis Malle had just made his most expensive film, which had cost 2 1/2 million dollars.
And Billy Wilder asks him what the film is about.
And Louis Malle says, "It's sort of a dream within a dream."
And Billy Wilder says, "You just lost 2 1 /2 million dollars."
I feel a little more apprehensive about this one than I did--
Down through the centuries, the notion that life is wrapped in a dream...
has been a pervasive theme of philosophers and poets.
So doesn't it make sense that death, too, would be wrapped in dream?
That, after death, your conscious life would continue...
in what might be called, "a dream body"?
It would be the same dream body you experience in your everyday dream life.
Except that in the post-mortal state,
you could never again wake up,
never again return to your physical body.
As the pattern gets more intricate and subtle,
being swept along is no longer enough.
What's the word, turd?
Hey, do you also drive a boat car?
- A what? - You gave me a ride in a car that was also a boat.
No, man, I don't have a boat car. I don't know what you’re talking about.
Man, this must be, like, parallel universe night.
You know that cat that was just in here,
who just ran out the door?
Well, he comes up to the counter, and I say, "What's the word, turd? "
And he lays down this burrito and he kind of looks at me, kind of stares at me and says,
" I have but recently returned from the valley of the shadow of death.
" I'm rapturously breathing in all the odors and essences of life.
"I've been to the brink of total oblivion.
I remember and ferment the desire to remember everything."
So, what did you say to that?
Well, I mean, what could I say?
I said, "If you’re gonna microwave that burrito,
"I want you to poke holes in the plastic wrapping because they explode.
And I'm tired of cleaning up your little burrito doings. You dig me?"
'Cause the jalapenos dry up.
They're like little wheels.
When it was over, all I could think about...
was how this entire notion of oneself,
what we are, is just...
this logical structure,
a place to momentarily house all the abstractions.
It was a time to become conscious,
to give form and coherence to the mystery.
And I had been a part of that. It was a gift.
Life was raging all around me,
and every moment was magical.
I loved all the people,
dealing with all the contradictory impulses.
That's what I loved the most-- connecting with the people.
Looking back, that's all that really mattered.
Kierkegaard's last words were, "Sweep me up."
- Hey, man. - Hey.
Weren’t you in the boat car?
You know, the guy-- the guy with the hat.
He gave me a ride in his car or boat thing,
and you were in the back seat with me.
I'm not saying you don't know what you're talking about,
but I don't know what you're talking about.
No, see, you guys let me off at this really specific spot...
that you gave him directions to let me off at.
I get out and ended up getting hit by a car.
But then I just woke up because I was dreaming,
and later, I found out that I was still dreaming,
dreaming that I'd woken up.
Those are called "false awakenings." I used to have those all the time.
But I'm still in it now.
I can't get out of it. It's been going on forever.
I keep waking up, but I'm just waking up into another dream.
I'm starting to get creeped out too, like I'm talking to dead people.
This woman on TV's telling me about how death is this dream time...
that exists outside of life.
I mean, I'm starting to think that I'm dead.
I'm gonna tell you about a dream I once had.
I know that when someone says that,
usually you’re in for a very boring next few minutes, and you might be.
But it sounds like-- What else are you gonna do, right?
Anyway, I read this essay by Philip K.. Dick.
What, you read it in your dream?
No, no. I read it before the dream.
It was the preamble to the dream.
It was about that book, Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said.
- You know that one? - Yeah, yeah. He won an award for that one.
Right. That's the one he wrote really fast.
It just, like, flowed right out of him.
He felt he was sort of channeling it or something.
But anyway, about four years after it was published,
he was at this party and he met this woman...
who had the same name as the woman character in the book.
And she had a boyfriend with the same name as the boyfriend character in the book.
and she was having an affair with this guy, the chief of police.
And he had the same name as the chief of police in his book.
So she's telling him all this stuff from her life,
and everything she's saying is right out of his book.
So that's really freaking him out, but what can he do?
And shortly after that, he was going to mail a letter,
and he saw this kind of, um, dangerous, shady-looking guy standing by his car.
But instead of avoiding him, which he said he usually would have done,
he walked right up to him and said, "Can I help you?"
And the guy said, "Yeah. I ran out of gas."
He pulls out his wallet and he hands him some money, which he says he never would have done.
And then he gets home and he thinks, "Wait a second.
This guy can't get to a gas station. He's out of gas."
So he gets back in his car. He finds the guy, takes him to the gas station.
And as he's pulling up to the gas station,
he realizes, " Hey, this is in my book too.
This exact station. This exact guy. Everything. "
So this whole episode is kind of creepy, right?
And he's telling his priest about it,
describing how he wrote this book,
and four years later, all these things happened to him.
And as he's telling it to him, the priest says, "That's the Book of Acts.
You're describing the Book of Acts."
He's like, "I've never read the Book of Acts."
So he goes home and reads the Book of Acts,
and it's, like, you know, uncanny.
Even the characters' names are the same as in the Bible.
And the Book of Acts takes place in 50 A.D., when it was written, supposedly.
So Philip K. Dick had this theory...
that time was an illusion and that we were all actually in 50 A.D.
And the reason that he had written this book...
was that he had somehow momentarily punctured through this illusion,
this veil of time.
And what he had seen was what was going on in the Book of Acts.
And he was really into Gnosticism.
and this idea that this demiurge, or demon,
had created this illusion of time to make us forget...
that Christ was about to return...
and the kingdom of God was about to arrive...
and that we're all in 50 A.D. and there's someone trying to make us forget,
you know, that--you know, that God is imminent.
And that's what time is. That's what all of history is,
this kind of continuous, you know, daydream or distraction.
And so I read that, and I was like, "Well, that's weird. "
And then that night, I had a dream,
and there was this guy in the dream who was supposed to be a psychic.
But I was skeptical. I was like, " He's not really a psychic."
I was just thinking to myself.
And then suddenly, I start floating,
Like levitating up to the ceiling.
And as I almost go through the roof, I'm like,
" Mr. Psychic, I believe you. You're a psychic. Put me down, please."
And I float down, and as my feet touch the ground,
the psychic turns into this woman in a green dress.
And this woman is Lady Gregory.
Now, Lady Gregory was Yeats' patron, this, you know, Irish person.
And though I'd never seen her image,
I was just sure that this was the face of Lady Gregory.
So we're walking along, and Lady Gregory turns to me and says,
" Let me explain to you the nature of the universe.
" Now, Philip K. Dick is right about time, but he's wrong that it's 50 A.D.
"Actually, there's only one instant, and it's right now.
"And it's eternity.
"And it's an instant in which God is posing a question.
"And that question is, basically, 'Do you want to, you know,
"'be one with eternity?
" Do you want to be in heaven?'
"And we're all saying, 'No, thank you. Not just yet.'"
And so time is actually just this constant saying no...
to God's invitation.
That's what time is. It's no more 50 A.D. than it's 2001, you know?
There's just this one instant, and that's what we're always in.
And then she tells me that actually this is the narrative of everyone's life.
That behind the phenomenal difference, there is but one story,
and that's the story of moving from the "no" to the "yes."
All of life is, " No, thank you. No, thank you."
Then ultimately it's, "Yes, I give in.
Yes, I accept. Yes, I embrace."
I mean, that's the journey.
- Everyone gets to the "yes" in the end, right? - Right.
So we continue walking, and my dog runs over to me.
So I'm petting him. I'm really happy to see him. He's been dead forbears.
So I'm petting him and then I realize...
there's this kind of gross oozing stuff coming out of his stomach.
And I look over at Lady Gregory, and she sort of coughs.
She's like-- "Oh, excuse me."
And there's vomit dribbling down her chin, and it smells really bad.
And I think, "Wait a second.
"That's not just the smell of vomit, which doesn't smell very good.
"That's the smell of dead person vomit.
You know, it's, like, doubly foul."
And then I realize I'm actually in, you know, the land of the dead.
And everyone around me was dead.
My dog had been dead over ten years. Lady Gregory had been longer than that.
When I finally woke up, I was like, "Whoa. That wasn't a dream."
That was a visitation to this real place, the land of the dead."
- So what happened? How did you finally get out of it? - Oh, man.
It was just like one of those, like, life-altering experiences.
I could never really look at the world the same way again after that.
Yeah, but how did you finally get out of the dream?
See, that's my problem. I'm trapped.
I keep-- I keep thinking that I'm waking up, but I'm still in a dream.
It seems like it's going on forever. I can't get out of it.
I wanna wake up for real. How do you really wake up?
I don't know. I'm not very good at that anymore.
But, um, if that’s what you’re thinking,
I mean, you probably should.
If you can wake up, you should...
because someday you won't be able to.
So just, um-- But it's easy.
Just--Just... wake up.