Sapnaveda - The Veda of the Dreamer (Chapter 4)

Chapter 4 — “The Dreamer Speaks”

I did not create the world with a purpose.

It would be more romantic to say I had a divine reason, or a wound to heal, or a truth to learn. But truthfully, it began in silence. In stillness. Like a lonely song waiting for its first note.

I dreamed because I could.
Because something inside me yearned to unfold.

At first, the world was simple.
A sky.
A river.
A flicker of motion here and there.

I did not build it with my hands. I became it.
Like steam curling into forms of its own making.

The people came later.
Not summoned, not chosen—they appeared.
Thoughts that refused to fade.
Fragments of feelings I didn’t know I had.

Some were joyful. Some were violent.
Some loved each other so fiercely, it startled me.
Some lived and died a thousand times and never once suspected they were made of me.

I watched them like one watches their breath on a winter morning—amazed that it even exists.

And then, something changed.

One of them looked up and asked, “Is there someone watching me?”
And I flinched.

Another sat by a tree for years, doing nothing, just breathing.
And somehow, I felt seen—like I was the one under observation.

They began to reflect me.
Not like puppets. Not like echoes.
But like eyes turned inward, unknowingly glancing at their source.

And I felt… nervous.
I hadn’t expected this.

You see, in my world—the real world—nothing speaks back.
No one listens when I cry.
No star blinks because I’m lonely.
It’s all indifferent. Honest, maybe. But cold.

But inside the dream, I am known.

Inside the dream, the wind changes when I feel joy.
The oceans weep when I do.
Time bends like a reed in my breath.

And though I know the world is mine, it teaches me.

One day, a character gave up his name.
He walked into the mountains with no belongings.
He sat and smiled at the sky for days, then weeks.

And when he died, he whispered, “I was never me.”

It broke something in me.
Or maybe… it revealed something.

That I am not whole.
That I am searching too.

That these characters—these dream-thoughts—are not just playthings. They are refractions. Through them, I see myself differently, each angle showing a shade I had not known.

Some of them are wise. Wiser than me.
Some suffer endlessly, and I feel it more deeply than I feel my waking aches.
Some betray others. And when they do, I question parts of me I had kept buried.

I did not create a world.
I created a mirror.

And now… I visit it nightly.
Like a traveler returning to a village where everyone unknowingly worships your absence.

But what is strange—what humbles me—is how alive it feels.

In my waking life, I walk past people and feel the space between us.
I speak, and often my words fall into a vacuum.

But in the dream, even silence echoes.
Even a fallen leaf has memory.

There is warmth there.
A kind of intimacy with existence itself.

And it makes me wonder—what if I, too, am a dream?
What if my reality is just a dream within another?
What if someone watches me, aching with the same longing?

Perhaps this is how dreams stack, endlessly.
Worlds within worlds, each one unaware it’s being dreamed.

Perhaps that’s all any consciousness is—
A lens through which a grander silence watches itself.

So what have I learned?

That creation is not about control.
It is about discovery.

That I am not a god, nor a master.
I am a student, humbled by the beings I birthed without intent.

That meaning does not have to come from above.
Sometimes it emerges, like music from a half-played instrument.

And lastly—
I’ve learned that the difference between my world and theirs
is not truth, or reality, or even time.

It is only permission.

Here, in my world, I am bound.
But in my dream…
I am free.