"I am not unlike a prisoner who might enjoy an imaginary freedom in his sleep. When he later begins to suspect that he is sleeping, he fears being awakened and conspires slowly with these pleasant illusions. In just this way, I spontaneously fall back into my old beliefs, and dread being awakened, lest the toilsome wakefulness which follows upon a peaceful rest, have to be spent thenceforward not in the light but among the inextricable shadows of the difficulties now brought forward.".
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- Rene Descartes, Meditations, First Meditation, 23.
What is this "sleep"?.
What do I mean by being "sleep"? Being asleep means that one's heart, soul, and mind-intellect has been negatively layered and covered by familial, cultural, customary, superstitious, national, political, mythological, religious, societal, civilizational, and other perspectives, that act as oppressive veils that stand in the way of one's ability to perceive Reality and reality in its truest form. Of course, my definition of being "asleep" presupposes that the faculties of perception include the mind-intellect, the spiritual-intellectual heart, and one's soul. By Reality, I mean the Reality of God and by reality, I mean that of non-God including the physical and spiritual universe.
How do we fall asleep?.
I suspect that most people live, work, read, play, and die in such a state of sleep. Why then do so many of us waste our lives in a state of sleep? When a new born baby arrives into this world, it is still in a state of relative purity, unfettered by the numerous veils that will be forced upon it and that cause it to spend most of its life in a state of sleep. .
Next come those stages of life, where the baby is left to the mercy of its parents, family, society, and civilization. This is a stage when veil upon begins to be loaded upon the unsuspecting baby. First the baby inherits the insecurities and inadequacies which have plagued its parents for their whole lives.
