Lewis' Till We Have Faces and Williams' Descent into Hell have revealed a common limitation in my mind: I constrict reality. As Orual ponders her questionable state of consciousness, she suggests that "the only difference" between a dream and "what men call real . . . is that what many see we call a real thing, and what only one sees we call a dream. But things that many see may have no taste or moment in them at all, and things that are shown only to one may be spears and water-spouts of truth" (277). This assertion regarding reality compelled me to examine my convictions about what I consider to be "real."
My previous conception of reality was limited to historically verifiable happenings - the sort Orual mentions as "what men call real" (277) conventionally. If I were to define reality, I would say that all "real" happenings are anything that a human experiences. After thinking this over, I began to realize that my mental definition of reality and my conception of that reality seemed to differ. A dream is most assuredly a human experience; either my definition or my ideal was wrong. I concluded - hopefully rightly - that any extrasensory experience should be included in a functional definition of reality, as Orual proposes. Simply because a reality cannot be defended by history does not mean that the comminication of truth through experience is absent.
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Life is so much more--so much bigger--than we realize.
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