O soul: Indeed, the world of generation and corruption is [itself] the world of dreams. You ought to represent to yourself that the sleeping dreamer within it is but sleeping a second sleep and dreaming a second dream. When he "awakens" [in this world], he is merely a sleeper who has alerted himself from his accidental sleep and returned to his natural sleep. This is like a man whose skin is naturally white, but who blushes red out of shame, then quickly returns to his natural color. Both colors are destined to vanish, yet the redness of shame is a fleeting accident called a "state" (Hal), while the natural color is a fixed accident that vanishes only with the vanishing of nature itself.
By this analogy: the sleeper dreaming in the world of nature is but a sleeper who sleeps and dreams. I mean that in this world, he is asleep by a "fixed accident," and then sleep [of the eyes] occurs to him as a "non-fixed accident." It is as if he has merely acquired sleep upon sleep; so when he wakes up, he has only awakened from one sleep into another 1 .
O soul: Be certain of this saying of mine and know that in this world, you are but slumbering. All that you witness within it is nothing but dreams.