Unsent Letter #7: The Red King's Dream

January, 2004

Dear Friend,

I haven't read this story for a long time, but it is a really good one, I think. My first teacher used to say that Lewis Carroll was a realized person, one of the exceptional ones in whom the Self realized itself without any particular path or guru. Here is the story again, so that I can refer to it easily:

[Alice is visiting Tweedledum and Tweedledee and hears a very loud sound which she fears is a wild beast.]

"Are there any lions or tigers about here?" she asked timidly.
"It's only the Red King snoring," said Tweedledee.
"Come and look at him!" the brothers cried, and they each took one
of Alice's hands, and led her up to where the King was sleeping....
"He's dreaming now," said Tweedledee: "and what do you think he's
dreaming about?"
Alice said "Nobody can guess that."
"Why, about you!" Tweedledee exclaimed, clapping his hands
triumphantly. "And if he left off dreaming about you, where do you
suppose you'd be?"
"Where I am now, of course,"said Alice.
"Not you!" Tweedledee retorted contemptuously. "You'd be
nowhere. Why, you're only a sort of thing in his dream!"
"If that there King was to wake," added Tweedledum, "you'd go out--
bang!--just like a candle!"
"I shouldn't!" Alice exclaimed indignantly. "Besides, if I'm only
a sort of thing in his dream, what are you, I should like to know?"
"Ditto," said Tweedledum.
"Ditto, ditto!" cried Tweedledee.
He shouted this so loud that Alice couldn't help saying "Hush!
You'll be waking him, I'm afraid, if you make so much noise."
"Well, it's no use your talking about waking him," said
Tweedledum, "when you're only one of the things in his dream. You
know very well you're not real."
"I am real!" said Alice, and began to cry.
"You won't make yourself a bit realler by crying," Tweeldedee
remarked: "there's nothing to cry about.""
"If I wasn't real," Alice said--half laughing through her tears,
it all seemed so ridiculous--"I shouldn't be able to cry."
"I hope you don't suppose those are real tears?" Tweedledum
interrupted in a tone of great contempt.

Much of the humor in the story comes from the circular nature of the conversation. If Alice is a "sort of thing" in the king's dream, then she is not the only one. Tweedledum and Tweedledee are as well. The one difference is that they know it. When Alice asks them "if I'm only a sort of thing in his dream, what are you, I should like to know?" they respond "Ditto, ditto!" Tweedledum and Tweedledee represent knowledge, which comes to the ignorant Alice. Knowledge is essential--she has to know she is being dreamed--but it does not change the situation. All three of the dream characters appear as separate objects to one another and, despite the difficulties in communication, they can still carry on a three-way conversation. None of them can affect what happens in the dream however much they might argue about it. The fact that Alice feels her tears and laughter to be real, does not make them so. However much noise she makes, she can't wake the sleeping king.

All the time that the conversation is going on, the king is asleep and dreaming the whole scene. The king is the only one who is dreaming. This is the same mythical image that we find in the Hindu scriptures with Vishnu sleeping on the cosmic ocean. When the king awakens, the imaginary character goes out "bang!--just like a candle!" The individual identity disappears, because, from the awakened king's point of view, it was never really there. The identity, the sense of "I" resolves itself to its rightful place, that is, to the Self, which the king symbolizes.

One of the paradoxes of awakening is that even though there is only one who is sleeping and only one who awakens, at the same time, the awakening is a personal, or individual, transformation. If this were not so, then when one aspirant awakened to his or her true identity, the dream would also end for all the other characters. They would be snuffed out as well. This does not happen, which raises the question of whether it really is the king who awakens.

At the end of the book, Alice poses the question in this way: "Let's consider who it was that dreamed it all?"... You see, Kitty, it must have been either me or the Red King. He was part of my dream, of course--but then I was part of his dream, too!" At this point, Alice is awake, and so she would know that it was all her dream, including her image of the king (Self, or God). On the other hand, what she has awakened to is the understanding that she is now that same king. So Alice is the king, and the king is Alice. She now knows that this was true even while the dream was taking place! Lewis Carroll ends his book with this paradox, leaving the riddle for the reader to solve.

A.