“In the dream state, man is situated in a world imagined[1] entirely by himself, and whose very element is consequently drawn from his own individuality, more or less extended (in its extra-corporeal modalities) like so many “illusory forms” (mayavirupa). This is so, even if he possesses no clear and distinct consciousness of the fact. Whatever the interior or exterior point of departure that gives a dream a certain direction, the events which occur therein can only be the results of a combination of elements contained, at least potentially and, as it were, susceptible to a certain species of realization, within the integral grasp of the individual.
If these elements, which are modifications of the individual, are indefinite in number, so is the variety of possible combinations of the same. The dream should in fact be regarded as a mode of realization for possibilities, which, while belonging to the domain of human individuality, are for one reason or another not susceptible to realization in the corporeal mode. Such are, for example, the forms of beings belonging to the same world but other than mankind- forms which man possesses within himself in virtuality by reason of the central position which he occupies in this world.
These forms evidently cannot be realized by the human being except in the subtle state, and the dream is the most ordinary, one may say the most normal, of all the ways in which he is able to identify himself with other beings while not ceasing in any way to be himself.
In the course of his dream the individual takes an active part in the events which his imaginative faculty creates, that is to say, if he plays a determined role in the extra-corporeal modality of his being which currently corresponds to the state of his clearly manifested consciousness, or to what one may call the central zone of this consciousness, one must nonetheless admit that simultaneously all the other roles are equally “played” by him. They are played either in modalities, or at least, in different secondary modifications of the same modality also belonging to his individual consciousness. If not his current limited state of manifestation as far as its consciousness is concerned, then at least in some one of its possibilities of manifestation which, taken all together, comprise a field of indefinitely greater extent.
All these roles naturally appear secondary to the one that is principal to the individual, that is to say, to the one in which his current consciousness is directly interested, and, since all the elements of the dream exist only through him, one can say that they are real only insofar as they participate in his own existence. It is he himself who realizes them, as so many modifications of himself, and without thereby ceasing to be himself independently of these modifications which in no way affect that which constitutes the real essence of his individuality.
If, moreover, the individual is conscious that he is dreaming, that is, conscious of the fact that all the events taking place in this state have no more reality than that which he himself gives them, he will be entirely unaffected, even if in the dream he is actor at the same time as spectator, precisely because he will not cease to be a spectator in order to be an actor.
To the extent that he effects this attribution, he is subject to an illusion whose cause is within himself- an illusion which consists in separating the multiplicity of these events from that which is their immediate principle, that is to say, his own individual unity.
This is a very clear example of a multiplicity existing within a unity, yet not affecting it.
The unity concerned here is no more than the relative unity of the individual, but it nonetheless plays a part, in relation to the corresponding multiplicity, analogous to that of veritable and primordial unity in relation to the universal manifestation.”
pp. 62-65, chapter 6, Analogous Considerations Drawn from Study of the Dream State, The Multiplicity of Being, Rene Guenon
[1] The word “imagined” should be understood here in its most exact sense, since a dream is essentially formed from images.
