Choden laughed and focused on meditating again. He told himself off for becoming so attached to the dream as to think that it was any more real than any other dream. He had meditated for his entire life, and yet this was a beginner’s error in meditating, something he thought he’d gotten over in his childhood. Yet for some reason he just could not shake off the feeling, and kept his eyes open to walk with the others. For all his serenity he did not trust this dream. It was nothing he had any precedent for.<br/>For some time, the dream seemed to be becoming an ordinary dream again, not much more vivid than any other dream. Choden followed the others in a trance, only vaguely aware of what was happening, even when two other people joined their group. When they made it out of the forest, however, something happened which caught his attention again.<br/>It was the American, asking “So it is a dream?” to a man who had joined their group.<br/>“Kind of yes, kind of no,” the newcomer replied. “It’s not the real world, but you’re not exactly dreaming either. Not anymore.”<br/>Matt's words struck Choden like a riddle… real, yet not real? Some Buddhist texts see Samsara as a dream and the Dharma as the only real state of wakefulness. If every incarnation is a dream, does that mean that whenever we die, we awaken from one dream into another? Perhaps this dream is no more or less real than his life before it. Perhaps the only thing that makes dreams seem less real is that they are so short, that we usually die very quickly by waking up.<br/>“There's been a lot people who believed that they’d just wake up if they died," he heard Celine say. "Some of them even resorted to suicide in order to get back to the real world faster. The problem is that no one knows if you actually make it back alive. It’s a gamble.”<br/>But if in this dream he was viable, then this incarnation was as real as any other. Killing himself would still be suicide, an act of self-destruction, and a misconduct in Buddhism. A Hindu pilgrim he'd met on his way to Baba Dhansar told him that every incarnation is an eddy of mindstuff: it's the mind turning in on itself, becoming self-conscious, and thereby becoming stabilized into a self. Was that what had happened to him? Had he become so conscious of being in a dream that his dream self became real? Perhaps if he could forget he was dreaming… but now that he knew the dream was as real as his life before this, there was no way he could still do this.<br/>"We're stuck here," Choden said absent-mindedly, hardly seeming aware that he had spoken. He was stunned at the thought. Choden stopped in his tracks. The others looked back at him and suddenly everyone stopped. It was silent for a second, and Choden took a deep breath that might have been a sigh as he realized that for the first time since he was in this dream there was silence. This was definitely not the making of his own mind.<br/><br/>Choden suddenly became aware of how these really were actual people, and how they were in this together. Or were they? Choden wondered how he could even know if the people in the "real" world were real. But did it really matter? In the Dharma all beings are one. Everything the Lamas tried to teach him came down to how every living being<span style="font-style: italic">was</span>just part of his own mind, and that to achieve Enlightenment he had to impartially see to the happiness of all his selves. He could empathize with these people. That alone made them real.<br/>Choden started walking again. He suddenly realized how weak he felt. If it was true that to wake up meant to die in this world, then during the time he almost woke up he must have come close to death. He recovered rapidly, however, and for the first time began to talk with the others, asking them what they had been doing before this. They introduced themselves. The man and woman who had joined their group had apparently saved them when he almost "woke up". It turned out they were all what they called "lucid dreamers," which, from what he understood, was very much like a dream yoga. In fact, he was the only one of them who had never had a lucid dream, although at times his own visualizations had been every bit as realistic as this.<br/>There had been one difference, which was that he had been able to control it. Yet to some extent he must still be able to control this dream. Part of this came from his own mind, after all: he did begin his dream coming down from the roof of the world. Only, now there were more people whom the dream came from. Choden wondered for a moment if reality is just a dream shared by so many beings that none of them has much of any control over it. Perhaps they could control the dream together, if they all tried to do the same thing. He decided to propose it to the group, but Matt was skeptical, saying there were hundreds, if not thousands of other Lucids in the Void.<br/>"Can't we find them all?" Choden asked.<br/>"Doubtful. Gathering so many Lucids together isn't really a simple task... the Void isn't the most hospitable place to go looking around for others," said Celine.<br/>It seemed to Choden as if this world was a jumbled version of the "real" world. Right now, they were walking through what looked like a savannah. Before his fugue, they were in something like a tropical forest, before that near a volcano, before that in a pine forest, and before that, he was in the mountains. Choden realized suddenly there had been one environment for each of them. The tropical forest came from the Australian's mind, the pine forest from the Russian's, the mountains from his own, and the savannah was the South African's.<br/>"But if we would find them, wouldn't it be worth it?" Choden said. "It doesn't seem like we have anything better to do."<br/>"It's a lot more complicated than that, trust me," said Matt. "Besides, we found you guys, right?"<br/>As they resumed walking, Choden wondered what could secure a stronghold against one's own mind. Then he realized that since they were thinking it was safe, that would make it as safe as it could be. Choden swallowed. Does that mean he would make it unsafe? "Don't think about it," he told himself. He might be the first person here to think of it that the mere thought that there will be danger might be enough to cause it. That thought in itself might be dangerous. He realized their safety might very well depend on his meditation skills now.