Dream Of A Butterfly

Image Credit: Eddi07

In the movie, Youth  without Youth, based on the novel by the philosopher, Mircea Eliade, we see the theme of “Life is but a dream.” The storyline is  consistent with  the teaching stories of the East, such as in the story of King Lavana in the Yoga Vasistha,  which I wrote about in an earlier post, Nothing Is Real. This movie makes me contemplate the nature of reality, the constrictions of time, my place in this world in relationship to the bigger picture of  cosmic existence.

The main character, Dominic Matei was struck by lightning. When he began to heal, his doctors were amazed to find that his body became younger with  each passing day, growing from a seventy year old to that of a man in his forties and that his brain was capable of super-human powers. Before the accident Dominic was suicidal, disappointed that his life’s work on the origins of language would not be completed before he dies. He was also despondent about the death of the love of his life who ended their relationship when they were young lovers. After the lightning accident, with his new found youth, Dominic encountered situations where he got a second chance to live out his dreams. He continued to study the origins of language when he met a young woman with whom he had a romantic relationship. She also had an incident with a lightning storm and regresses to speak in ancient languages.  Dominic saw the possibility of completing his life’s work, while dodging the Nazis who were after him to study and experiment on him.

At the end of the movie, Dominic returned to his native Romania, to the cafe which he frequented and though thirty years have passed, he meets the same old group of friends who welcome him back. He knows it is a dream though his friends don’t know it. He relates the story from Chuang Tzu, “I dreamed I was a butterfly.” To prove to them that it was a dream, he asked them about events that took place in their future of which they had no knowledge. We find out that he was dreaming up the meeting in the cafe.

Chuang-tzu dreamt that he was a butterfly, fluttering here and there, carefree, unaware of a Chuang-tzu. Then he woke up, and there he was again: Chuang-tzu beyond a doubt. But was he Chuang-tzu who had dreamt that he was a butterfly, or a butterfly now dreaming that he was Chuang-tzu ? There must be some difference between Chuang-tzu and a butterfly! This is called “the transformation of things.”

Chuang-tzu awoke from his dream, aware of himself, but he did not know for sure if he was really a butterfly dreaming of Chuang-tzu. His identity was uncertain, empty of self,  more related to a non-self that includes it all. The sages tell us that this life of ours that seems so solid with all of its drama unfolding, is merely a dream. That there are no separate beings with separate life experiences, but the one Consciousness that looks out upon a phantasmagorical field, a dance of  Consciousness.That awakening comes with recognition of the dreamlike impermanence of all existence. When we become attached to any part of the dream, we suffer. The sage Chuang-tzu said:

You may dream that you’re at a banquet
and wake up to find yourself miserable.
You may dream that you’re sobbing your heart out
and wake up to find yourself at ease.
How, in the middle of a dream,
can you know that you’re actually dreaming?
In the middle of a dream, you may even
try to interpret the dream:
only after you wake up
do you realize that you were dreaming.
Someday there will be
a great awakening, when we know
that all this was one big dream.

And when I say that we’re dreaming,
of course I am dreaming too.

— Excerpts from The Second Book Of The Tao by Stephen Mitchell.