The Dream of Life - Alan Watts
"Let's suppose that you were able every night to dream any dream that you wanted to dream. And that you could, for example, have the power within one night to dream 75 years of time. Or any length of time you wanted to have. And you would, naturally as you began on this adventure of dreams, you would fulfill all your wishes. You would have every kind of pleasure you could conceive. And after several nights of 75 years of total pleasure each, you would say "Well, that was pretty great." But now let's have a surprise. Let's have a dream which isn't under control. Where something is gonna happen to me that I don't know what it's going to be. And you would dig that and come out of that and say "Wow, that was a close shave, wasn't it?" And then you would get more and more adventurous, and you would make further and further out gambles as to what you would dream. And finally, you would dream ... where you are now. You would dream the dream of living the life that you are actually living today."
I'm not sure if this is the right place to post this. But what are your thoughts on this speech from Alan Watts?
Call me delusional, but I always understood this as essentially a higher take on existence itself. He refers to this idea of having power over 'dreaming', but what if we took this concept and applied it to Godhood?
By that I mean what if we were Gods with the power to have any experience we wanted to have? It's the same principle. Knowing all things would get boring after a while. Having unlimited power and knowledge in every scenario would lose appeal after a time. There is no risk in knowing all things, there is no 'surprise' to be had.
With that thought, it makes sense that an all-powerful being would do something like Alan describes here. An all-knowing, all-powerful creator choosing to forget its own nature to experience the thrill of limitation, risk, and surprise. To put themselves into a situation they are not in control of simply for a new and unfamiliar experience. Hinduism touches upon this idea.
Can you imagine if that is what life is now? A world that we built and sent ourselves down to experience, not through the eyes of an all-knowing creator but through the eye of a normal human? erasing our memories and putting ourselves into this life to experience something that we cannot foresee or control?