Is all that we see or seem but a dream within a dream?

I recently finished reading a short book entitled “The Toltec Prophecies of Don Miguel Ruiz.” Here are the prophecies he describes:

PROPHECY ONE - The Sixth Sun Dawns
PROPHECY TWO - God Awakens
PROPHECY THREE - Intuition Arises
PROPHECY FOUR - Heaven is Known Here on Earth

According to Don Miguel we are already living in the age of the sixth Sun. It is the dawn of a new age and fulfillment of four ancient Toltec prophecies. The god that awakens is within us. All that we require to know heaven on Earth is to awaken to our own divinity. Don Miguel explains that our present existence is a sort of slumbering dream, a hell of our own creation, a hell born of our detachment from our true nature, our true potential. This same concept is very much a part of Buddhism. This notion that life is but a dream, and we each have within us the potential to awaken to an enlightened transcendent state. So, as I’ve been pondering these connections, I was led today to this poem by Edgar Allen Poe.

Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow--
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.

I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand--
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep--while I weep!
O God! can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?

A Dream Within a Dream – Edgar Allen Poe

I was immediately struck by the way his poem seemed to capture that cusp of awareness, that fleeting moment where all that we know to be tangible becomes suspiciously intangible, and in a moment of existential anguish we cry out this question. "Is all that we see or seem but a dream within a dream?" It’s a question many of us have asked, but are we courageous enough in our conviction to accept the intangible? Are we truly free enough of this material firmament to let go, if only in mind, and release our grasp upon these sands, these apparent solid illusions of the concreteness of our reality? To accept that all that we see or seem may yet be, but a dream within a dream? And if not... having glimpsed the waters edge, can we live forever in this existential torment so beautifully captured by Poe? Or... has the time now come to sacrifice the security of the shore, and swim in the vast ocean of our awakening, as a new dawn breaks and the sixth sun rises.