The Sword of DamSomnos
I have never felt sympathy for the Decartesiean existential problem. How do we know our perceptions aren't twisted at the behest of a demon, computer, or our own subconscious? Frankly, our actions would largely be the same in the matrix or without. Is virtue impossible in a dream? No, and so it will never concern me that there is an ocean of sound outside the auditory range or that I can't describe color to the blind. (That query strikes me as foolish because you have to use the terms of other senses.) My only existential dilemmas are about future survival and thus practical in nature.
Mind, schizophrenia is a class apart from the holistic illusion of samsara. In that case, the problem isn't all perception being faulty but receiving different streams of information along the same channel. Consider a theoritical MMORPG with subjectively balanced opponents. In the early levels, I see a pretty land and fight against boars or similarly trivial foes. But, my longer playing peer sees a war torn valley with mud trenches he himself carved by crossing its fields in the preceeding months. That boar I smack with a chair leg? It bellows with two snouts and its abyssal aura slowly erodes the magic seals in his armor. That world would work so long as nobody's personal vision leaks into the other's. If I have to infer whether I am facing a misrendered boar or a real, eighty levels beyond my capabilities, hellion it would be frustrating as a player. To do the same in life is beyond my interest in imagining.
But, I saw a glimpse of it this morning. It is a shame that I write this twelve hours later as only the emotional significance remains rather than the details that created it. Suffice to say that I dreamed a sequence that came to me in a bed and an antagonist beside it. Some threat was made and punctuated with an order that I open my eyes. My real eyes opened a slit and I near cried. There, above me, was a woman in a triangular print dress, following me out of my dream. I turned aside and groaned in denial.
Time passed. I shook real sleep off and washed my eyes. Because my matress isn't meant to be flipped, I alternate direction monthly to keep the divots forming evenly. This month, I face the wall behind my bed. Amoung other things, I've hung the Union Jack and that was the garish dress I thought I saw.