Human Perception, Reality, and Universal Love Theme Analysis

In The Four Agreements, Miguel Ruiz looks to the Toltec community of Southern Mexico for wisdom. The Toltec believe that the world humans perceive is an illusion—humans’ perception acts like “smoke” that fogs over our vision and prevents us from realizing that everything in the universe (including humans, plants, animals, and even God) is one being made of light, which is the same thing as love. Humans do not comprehend the truth easily because we need to “dream,” or perceive, a reality before we can make sense of it, and we are indoctrinated with a certain picture of reality—which Ruiz calls “the dream of the planet”—when we are young. Toltec wisdom, according to Ruiz, is the path to perceiving reality accurately. In learning how to adopt a different “dream” or perception of life, one can replace the socially-constructed “dream of the planet” with a more accurate dream which acknowledges that all beings are one, divinity is in everyone and everything, and the universe is full of love.

Ruiz believes that all people are born with the capacity to “dream,” which means “to perceive,” but that the first dream we learn as children is a lie: it teaches us to perceive an illusion. Humans “dream” when awake and asleep. The difference is that when people are awake, their dreams are more linear, meaning that the reality they perceive is more ordered. As children, humans are taught how to dream “the way society dreams.” They are taught “the dream of the planet,” which contains a way of perceiving the world based on what society deems appropriate, including beliefs about what exists in the world and what humans are, and rules about how we should act. Ruiz explains, “the dream of the planet includes all of society’s rules, its beliefs, its laws, its religions, its different cultures and ways to be, its governments, schools, social events, and holidays.” However, according to Ruiz, “ninety five percent” of society’s way of perceiving the world is a lie, and humans suffer because we believe these “lies.” The “dream of the planet,” therefore, is like a “fog” or “smoke” that obscures the real truth from people and filters their perceptions.

Ruiz argues that Toltec wisdom teaches people how to transform their dreams, which will enable people to rid themselves of the “dream of the planet” and form a new dream that lets people see the truth. The truth, according to the Toltec, is that everything in the universe is a single, all-encompassing being made of light. Light is love, life, and God—they are all the same, and this is also what humans are. The “dream of the planet” is like a “parasite” or a “monster of a thousand heads” that makes people “sick” and must be destroyed. The Toltec believe there are three ways to destroy the “parasite,” but they are all difficult to achieve.

The first approach—named “the art of transformation: the dream of the second attention”—entails tackling each of the parasite’s thousand heads one by one, or dismantling each fear-based belief and replacing these beliefs with different ones. Destroying all of the fear-based beliefs that make up the “dream of the planet” requires “awareness” of the beliefs and a commitment to replace them with the titular “four agreements,” which are four rules for behavior that direct a person’s actions away from fear and toward love. Ruiz also describes this approach as something like “going into the desert” to face your “demons” one by one, which eradicates fear and thereby frees people from “the dream of the planet” that limits them.

The second approach—named “the discipline of the warrior: controlling your own behavior”—entails forgiving others for their wrongdoing, letting go of resentment, and forgiving oneself. Forgiveness, for Ruiz, replaces self-rejection with self-acceptance and self-love, which essentially means realizing that the self and love are the same thing (which is also light, life, and God). In order to forgive, a person must learn to control their emotions so that they do not get upset at others who wrong them or at themselves for doing wrong. Instead of becoming troubled, a person should practice staying calm and replacing negative feelings with forgiveness. This allows people to act genuinely, out of love, rather than reacting based on indoctrinated ideas of what’s right and wrong.

The third approach—named “the initiation of the dead: embracing the angel of death”—entails acknowledging that anyone can die at any moment. Realizing this enables people to treat life as precious and act as if they are truly alive by doing what makes them happy (or feel love) instead of what society wants. In doing so, they effectively reject “the dream of the planet” and can instead acknowledge their true selves and live based on their authentic desires.

Ruiz’s three methods for how people can remove the “dream of the planet” (society’s rules for what to believe and how to live) from their minds focus on acting out of love and thus connecting with their true selves and seeing the world for what it really is. When acting out of love, people connect with truth as defined by Toltec wisdom, which holds that all beings are one thing: love itself.