Dream Of Mirrors

The song is about how a man has a reoccurring nightmare symbolizing depression from the monotony of his life. The dream depicts a paradox created by two mirrors reflecting off each other, one mirror representing the past and the other the future, symbolizing that his past and future are the same, unchanging and meaningless. His dreams being in black and white symbolize the figurative lack of color in his life, there is nothing interesting in his life. The phrase "I only dream because I'm alive" takes a double meaning of the word dream; dreams can mean our hopes and desires, and they are also a natural part of our sleep cycle. This line shows that he has no more desires, no more hope, no more meaning to his life. The end of the song shows that he has fallen into depression, the song is just a metaphor for depression.

to me it sounds like one of Descartes, Dancy and Putnam (they build on the previous ideas) philosophical ideas. put simply, the same idea as in The matrix, which is a story based on the idea that were are in a "fake" "dream" world.

" since all we ever experience is our own inner mental states, we might , for all we could tell, be living in an illusion created by a malicious demon"

• Ren Descartes

"You do not know that you are not a brain, suspended in a vat full of liquid in a laboratory, and wired to a computer which is feeding you your current experiences under the control of some ingenious technician scientist (benevolent or malevolent according to taste). For if you were such a brain, then, provided that the scientist is successful, nothing in your experience could possibly reveal that you were; for your experience is ex hypothesi identical with that of something which is not a brain in a vat. Since you have only your own experience to appeal to, and that experience is the same in either situation, nothing can reveal to you which situation is the actual one."

• Introduction to Contemporary Epistemology, 10

He's having a repeating nightmare. A "dream of mirrors" or a paradox are both infinite loops without end, and the dream wont go away. He's having a reoccuring preminition (the dream is true) and he's afraid to go to sleep again for fear of seeing whatever it was he saw. He isn't sure if it is a vision of the real or the unreal and can't understand. But it keeps occuring.

I believe that he is talking about lucid dreams, which are the ones that have more to do with astral travel than with resting or dealing with your own thoughts and subconsciousness.

Some psychologists say that we all dream in “black and white” even if we don’t realize it and it is just our memories or expectations that lend us to believe that we have dreamt in color. Sometimes however we have full color dreams, also known as lucid dreams, and this kind of dreams are so real that when you experience them, you can hardly tell dream from reality because the dream feels just too real.

I think that the protagonist of this song is experiencing recurring lucid dreams that are in fact transporting him to other realities or putting him in contact with other beings in other planes. Of course, these aren’t nice dreams and the more they occur, the more he is getting confused and starting to believe that he is losing his mind (which might me true due to the things he is experiencing).

That’s why whenever he goes to sleep, he does his best to try to dream in “black and white” just like everyone else, hoping that he doesn’t falls again in those dreadful, vivid dreams. He dreams only because he “is alive”, because he is a living being that needs to sleep and dream, but if he had the option he would rather not sleep or dream at all, for fear of these dreams he can’t understand.

The song has to do with deep depression..A man who has fought a lot of battles in his entire life, he has shed so many tears and he's just been living without any emotion left in his heart or brain...He just doesn't care about the now and the next but his before still captivates him...

How come no one else has added a message? This is my second favourite Maiden song, and it is awesome live. It has the guitaring of Aces High, the lyrics of Fear of the Dark and the crowd reaction of... Fear of the Dark... again. But anyway, it's an awesome song.

Really good song, the meaning is confusing. It seems that you can take a lot from it...

I think it has a lot to do with deja vu. "Think I've heard your voice before, etc). Also, I think dreaming in black and white is something about only seeing things one way or the other.

Amazing song and skalra63 has the best points I've seen.

This song was amazing at Rock in Rio. I just love how the crowd loves Bruce and Maiden...about halfway through the song Bruce is sining and he finishes a "The dream is true" and then he just says "tell me about it Rio", and everyone just screams out a "the dream is true". It's amazing.

I agree with skalra63. I think a great, great portion of Iron Maiden is strongly tied to Descartes.