this place is a dream

.

.

This place is a dream.

Only a sleeper considers it real.

Then death comes like dawn,

and you wake up laughing

at what you thought was your grief.

 

But there’s a difference with this dream.

Everything cruel and unconscious

done in the illusion of the present world,

all that does not fade away at the death-waking.

It stays,

and it must be interpreted.

And this groggy time we live,

this is what it’s like:

 

A man goes to sleep in the town where he has always lived

and he dreams he’s living in another town.

In the dream, he doesn't remember

the town he’s sleeping in his bed in. He believes

the reality of the dream town.

 

The world is that kind of sleep.

The dust of many crumbled cities

settles over us like a forgetful doze,

but we are older than those cities.

 

We began as a mineral.

We emerged into plant life

and into the animal state, and then into being human,

and always we have forgotten our former states,

except in early spring when we slightly recall

being green again.

 

That’s how a young person turns

toward a teacher. That’s how a baby leans

toward the breast, without knowing the secret

of its desire, yet turning instinctively.

 

Humankind is being led along an evolving course,

through this migration of intelligence's,

and though we seem to be sleeping,

there is an inner wakefulness

that directs the dream,

and that will eventually startle us back

to the truth of who we are.

~ Rumi

translation by Coleman Barks