“You have wakened not out of sleep, but into a prior dream, and that dream lies within another, and so on, to infinity, which is the number of grains of sand. The path that you are to take is endless, and you will die before you have truly awakened.” ~Jorge Luis Borges
VARIATION at midnight (MC1, 1/4/22)
The "patient" (aspirant seeking enlightenment/zen) wakes up from subsequent dreams 0, 1, 2, 3, ....
Ideally this series of awakenings is part of an infinite dream ω
0, 1, 2, 3, ... ω
But the patient's awakenings are somehow bound to repeat in a mirror image - that is a second infinite series of awakenings, continuing with
ω+1, ω+2, ω+3,.... 2ω
And again,
2ω+1, 2ω+2, 2ω+3,.... 3ω
This gets repetitive - first series, second series, third series, sending the dreaming patient into a realization of an infinite series of infinite series of awakenings
ω, 2ω, 3ω, 4ω, .... that's a weird dream, followed by the higher order awakening ω^2...
Followed by ω^3.... by ω^4... which leads the aspirant to a "really big" awakening ω^ω. But this fractal-like karma is never ending, and asks for even higher order awakenings ω^(2ω), ω^(3ω), ω^(4ω), ... ω^(ω^2)
It's not over, of course. The aspirant is still deep in the big(er) dreamworld, and superior awakenings are necessary, the awakening ω^(ω^2) being followed by subsequent ω^(ω^3), ω^(ω^4), ω^(ω^5), and so on...
Getting closer to truth spirals in a seemingly highly repetitive (self-similar) pattern, due to the unfathomed depth of this persistent karma dream where deaths/dreams/awakenings are ordinals. So it must continue in a novel series of highly exponential dreams and corresponding awakenings: ω^(ω^ω), and after a long "while", ω^(ω^(ω^ω)), ω^(ω^(ω^(ω^ω))), ω^(ω^(ω^(ω^(ω^ω)))), ... that's the Never Ending Story that is always... not, or "is" emptiness - unlimited, a "forever young" in nature and method, creative emptiness (getting dizzy, should go to sleep now, ha ha).
