I have always been amazed at the way an ordinary observer lends

“I have always been amazed at the way an ordinary observer lends so much more credence and attaches so much more importance to waking events than to those occurring in dreams... Man... is above all the plaything of his memory.” — Thus wrote André Breton, the founder of Surrealism, that strange and luminous art born in the depths of the unconscious. In this profound reflection, Breton invites us to question the tyranny of waking reality, and the arrogance with which mankind dismisses the dream. He saw that the dream world — though fleeting and intangible — contains truths no less real than those of daylight, and that memory, fickle and selective, governs our sense of existence far more than reason admits.

To Breton, dreams were not mere illusions, but gateways to the soul’s hidden truth. In the roaring age of machines and modern logic, he saw that humanity had grown blind to its inner life. People worshipped the external — the measurable, the rational, the visible — while neglecting the vast kingdom of the unseen within. Yet each night, when the conscious mind surrenders, the dream opens its gates, and forgotten desires, fears, and insights rise like smoke from the deep. “Why,” Breton asks, “should we honor one world and reject the other?” For to do so is to live only half a life, to mistake waking for wisdom and dreaming for folly.

The second part of his declaration — that man is the plaything of his memory — reveals the deeper tragedy of human awareness. We believe we live freely, but in truth, we are bound by our past. Memory, that delicate and deceptive power, shapes our reality. It selects what we recall, distorts what we felt, and weaves the illusion we call “identity.” The dream, in contrast, is untouched by memory’s order; it speaks in symbols, pure and primal, untouched by the limits of time. Breton saw that the dream reveals what the waking mind conceals — the unspoken truth of who we are, unfiltered by habit or fear.

In the early 20th century, as artists and thinkers wrestled with the aftermath of war and disillusionment, Breton’s Surrealist Manifesto was born. Influenced by Freud’s studies of the unconscious, he sought to unite dream and reality, reason and imagination, into what he called “surreality.” Through this fusion, man might reclaim his wholeness — not as a creature ruled by logic or memory, but as one illuminated by the mystery of his inner world. Breton’s art, his poetry, and his movement all flowed from this belief: that the dream is not an escape from life, but a return to its source.

Consider the story of Salvador Dalí, Breton’s fellow traveler in the dream-world of Surrealism. Dalí painted visions that defied reason: melting clocks, impossible landscapes, faces dissolving into clouds. Critics called him mad; Breton called him true. For Dalí gave form to what the rational mind could not express — the chaos and beauty of the unconscious. His art, born of dreams, revealed that the strange and the irrational could express deeper truths than the ordinary eye could see. Thus, through dream and imagination, he transcended the limits of memory, creating a reality more vivid than waking life.

The ancient philosophers, too, knew this secret. Heraclitus taught that waking and dreaming are but two sides of the same cosmic play. Plato spoke of life itself as a dream within a dream, from which the soul must awaken to true knowledge. Breton’s insight, though modern in voice, echoes this timeless wisdom: that to be human is to live between two realities — the seen and the unseen, the remembered and the forgotten. To deny one is to live in exile from the fullness of being.

The lesson, then, is clear: do not trust only the surface of life. Attend to your dreams, for they are the whispers of your truest self. Do not be a prisoner of memory, bound to the past as though it were the measure of all things. Memory can deceive; imagination can reveal. The wise learn to listen to both — to hold reason in one hand and mystery in the other. For the greatest understanding comes not from dividing the world, but from uniting its opposites.

So remember the teaching of André Breton: the dream and the waking life are but two mirrors facing each other, endlessly reflecting the infinite. Do not let your intellect blind you to wonder. When you wake, carry your dreams with you; when you sleep, let the waking world follow you into the realm of vision. In this way, you will cease to be the plaything of memory and become, instead, the master of consciousness — one who walks freely between the worlds of thought and dream, reality and imagination, waking and eternal truth.