There is Scriptural authority for metaphorically depicting the illusions of mortal existence through the dream. It would seem to have come to the Apostle Paul in this way when he said in a letter to the Ephesians, "Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light." The word "dream," so frequently made use of in the writings of Mrs. Eddy, is especially illuminating. In "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 14) she makes a statement which readily attracts attention. "Entirely separate," she says, "from the belief and dream of material living, is the Life divine, revealing spiritual understanding and the consciousness of man's dominion over the whole earth." When mortals begin to separate the unreal nature of human belief from the reality of spiritual existence, they have started on the journey out of materiality.
While we are physically asleep, the progress of our material work awaits our taking it up where we left off. In like manner our spiritual progress is delayed while our thoughts and acts are governed by human belief. The most important point to be considered in connection with a dream is the awakening, because everything in the dream seems real to one so long as he is asleep. To illustrate, let us presume that one falls asleep and dreams that he is suffering; furthermore, that the persons associated with him in his dream-experience are sick, or sorrowful, or sinful. Now no one would question how the dreamer was to free his sense of the suffering of himself and others in his dream, as it would be clear that freedom would come when the dreamer woke up.
While all agree that the awakening will free from the supposed conditions presented in a night-dream, one may still be confronted with the question, How is one to free himself and others from the seeming discords of mortal existence? The answer to this question is the same as the answer regarding the sleeping dream; namely. Wake up! But this time it is from the belief that life is in matter that we are to awake, in order to find all true existence in the divine Mind. Just as a night-dream seems to counterfeit our waking hours, so all material illusion counterfeits spiritual reality. But the awakening to the whole of spiritual existence is not done in a day; hence the necessity of taking up the problems that arise in daily life one by one and applying our understanding of Truth to their solution. It is to-day we need sustaining, even though now we may know but little of spiritual life and law. And in the degree that we wake up in any instance from the belief that material existence is real, because we have gained a glimpse of Life as Spirit, we free ourselves and others from the beliefs of mortality. There is one distinctive feature of a dream, —the fact that everything which seems to take place in it vanishes with the dream. Similarly, we can know that we are wide-awake only when the error that we have sought to overcome through spiritual understanding becomes unreal to us.
