Disclaimer: The following document fragment is presented from an in-character perspective, it should not be taken as the truth of the setting.
Context: The matters of the “soul” or the “being” of a human, their manifestation within the dreaming world, is of great importance to mages. Here the author considers the matter of death and dreams. Are humans nigh-immortal in their dreams because their mind cannot comprehend the true nature of death?
When a human soul is struck down within the Idee, the human awakens from their dream, as if it was but a nightmare, no matter what they face. How is it, that so few things can bring death upon the Einheit, yet the Leib is so delicate?
Awoke, within the Gestalt reality, we are subject to the laws inscribed onto the flesh of Elder Gods. Death is a mechanical process, unavoidable to the oblivious mind.
Dreaming, we immerse ourselves in the Idee, a realm of actualised thought. Here the mind manifests reality, and experiences are a synthesis of its understanding.
Yet, does the mind comprehend death, or only dying? For as many words as humanity had devised to describe the concepts of nothingness and oblivion, we do not understand the experience of it. The human mind, at all times, exists in a state of awareness. The senses, thoughts or even our self-constructed dreams ensure we never experience nothing.
Thus when confronted with death within the dream, we impose upon ourselves dying. It is a state shaped by thoughts and experiences we can compose out of our limited understanding of reality.
But death… Absolute oblivion must be imposed upon us by a mind capable of comprehending it. That perhaps is the most horrifying thought this line of inquiry has led me to. The idea that there exist things out there with such a perfect understanding of this final nothingness. Rendered in their mind with enough clarity to thrust it upon us.
Only when this experience gains clarity within our Einheit, does our will vanish and with it, our Leib, in the awoken world experiences death as well.
That too is why no nightmare spawned of the human psyche poses a mortal danger to our dreaming souls. Defined by our minds, they also are obvious to nothingness, incapable of inflicting it upon us.
But then, can they die?
Does a nightmare awaken when its form is sundered in the dream?
If so, where?
Esoteric Musings... 