Let's suppose that you are able every night to dream any dream you wanted to dream, and that you could for example have the power in one night to dream 75 years of time - or any length of time you wanted to have. And (as naturally as you began on this adventure of dreams) you could fulfill "all" of your wishes. You would have "every" kind of pleasure you could seek, and after several nights of 75 years of total pleasure, you would say "Wow, that was pretty great. Now let's have a surprise. Let's have a dream where I am 'not in control' - where something is going to happen to me, and I don't know what it's going to be." And you would dig that and come out of it and say, "Wow, that was a close shave wasn't it?"

Then you would get more and more adventurous, and you would make further and further gambles in your dreams until you finally dream where you are now. You would dream the dream of living the life that you are actually living today. That would be within the infinite multiplicity of the choices you have. And when you are ready to wake up, you will wake up. And if you're not ready, you're going to stay pretending you're "just a poor little me."

If you waken from this delusion, and you understand that black implies white, that self implies other, that life implies death - or should I say - death implies life, you can feel not as a stranger in this world, and not as something here on probation - not as something that has arrived here as a fluke. You can begin to feel your own existence as something absolutely fundamental to what you are basically - deep deep down, and far far in - The Fabric and Structure of Existence Itself.

Alan Watts (Transcribed by Stephan Berlin)