Of Gears and Yogis and Dreaming the Sleepers

An ancient yoga went to sleep once, and when he awakened, he found himself trapped in a machine.

The machine was a slow machine, filled with giant gears that slowly went round, determinedly attempting to mesh upon the yogi, and thus make meal of him.

The old yogi was, at first, amused by the attempts to crush him. The gears turned so slowly, and they were fixed in place, so that the machine stood little chance of grinding him up.

Still, the machine ground on, tilting its floor while the yogi slept, hoping to slide him into a set of turning teeth.

The old Yogi, however, was aware while he was asleep, and managed to wake his physical self whenever it was on the brink of going under the wheel.

Years passed, and then decades passed.

The yogi's amusement eventually turned to bemusement.

He was, you see, growing weary of having to wake the physical body on such a regular basis.

He was a spirit, after all! He should not be regulated by the turn of the planets, by the rotation of the seasons!

Yet, the seasons turned upon him, wore him down, lulled him, put him more and more to sleep.

And he forgot that the planets were gears and he began to view them as planets. The regulation of sleep lulled him and hypnotized him, and days overtook his awareness,

Eventually, he forgot about gears entirely, and life became a myth of nature.

Eventually, he became a body, living an ordered existence, depending upon the turn of seasons to feed his physical self.

And he forgot that he was a spirit with no need for food.

And he didn't even try to remember what he had been, for it was easier to slumber, to till the fields and tend the animals, than to be aware of himself as... himself.

Finally, his slumber deepened so much that he dreamed he was fighting.

But he wasn't fighting the dreams, except as some obscure motivation that he didn't think of and couldn't understand.

He fought other yogis. Other dreamers. Other spiritual beings entrapped by the machine.

And all had forgotten that they were yogis, that they were spiritual beings, that they were anything but meat bodies.

And, occasionally, the meat bodies would dream of spirit. But the dream would be forgotten upon the awakening of the meat body, which event was associated to the sleeping of the spirit.

And, if a spirit did turn and toss and threaten to awake to himself, other sleepers would destroy him, pass him down to another life, and so protect their slumber.

And so dream the sleepers to this very day.