I mentioned the Ursula LeGuinn novel elsewhere in my posts, but I think it and the Chinese writer Chuang-Tzu deserve a discussion of their own.

For those who haven't read LeGuinn's novel, the plot involves a man who moves through time and changes external reality by dreaming.

"Did you ever happen to think, Dr. Haber," he said quietly enough but stuttering a little, "that there might be other people who dream the way I do? That reality is being changed out from under us, replaced, renewed, all the time - only we don't know it? Only the dreamer knows it, and those who know his dream."
-- George Orr, the main character

The book was written as fiction, but do you think this could be possible?

Has anyone ever read the butterfly parable by the ancient Taoist philosopher Chuang-Tzu? It goes something like this: A man falls asleep and dreams he is a buttefly flitting around a garden. When he awakes, he can't tell if he is a man who dreamed of being a butterfly or a butterfly dreaming he is a man.

This Zenlike parable is mind-boggling to me. Are we really awake when we think we are? Or is what we call reality actually a dream and our dreams the true reality? One poet described death as "waking up from the feverish dream called life."

Thoughts on these two works of literature?