|| Satsang-3 || (Dreams - The real purpose!)

4th June 2016 - शनी जयंती - वैशाख अमावस्या

Dreams, which we commonly experience in sleep almost every night throughout our lives, are truly mesmerizing phenomenon.  The fascinating yet highly baffling state surely seems to have appealed many throughout the history of humankind. Eventually many texts have been written on it, spiritual giants have tried to decode it so also the commoners and philosophers alike, few popular beliefs are prevailing in societies and it must have been a hot topic of interest for the modern day psychiatrists as well.

On few occasions, I sincerely ventured into decoding this dream thing with my own analytical faculty (Budhdhi) keeping aside any biases I may have had. The summary goes like this –

[There is this creation along with its infinite varieties, experienced by this particular body and mind in wakeful world. There is this constant “I” feeling within, which integrates this body & mind and works as a homogeneous whole (personality) of I-Body-Mind combination.  I is the one which ‘feels’ the world and takes the doer-ship. The whole personality is working (or seems to be working)‘inside’ & 'as a part' of the world experienced in wakeful state.

 This body goes to sleep at night. Slowly the fatigue of the body overpowers and the consciousness of the waking world and the body is lost. The dream world appears at once in place of wakeful world which is experienced by the same “I” feeling.  I and Mind (let’s call the combination as Ego Mind) now experiences the dream world as if it were a real creation albeit with the help of a new dream body.  The Ego mind feels that this dream world is real and itself being the part of this dream world. While in dream, at no point, it suspects that this world is completely unreal without semblance of an existence. It realizes the delusion only when the dream state is broken and the world is vanished in a moment, leaving the Ego mind back into the familiar body and wakeful world. The Ego mind realizes that the entire creation and experiences of it were completely false! That the world experienced in the dream actually never existed.

On analyzing these two experiences, few things become sufficiently clear. The dream world came out of the Ego Mind itself. The source of the non-existent dream world was none other than the Ego mind. Fleeting dream experience exposes a unique mysterious power of this Ego mind. It has not only the power to create an entire world from itself in a flash but it has also the power of deluding itself and play within the dream world as if it were the part of its own creation. It becomes totally forgetful of the fact that the entire creation has come from within itself. This is THE MASTER KEY to understand the mysterious, fascinating and unfathomable powers of mind amply revealed by commonly experienced Dreams but hardly paid attention to.]

The above analysis naturally gives birth to serious questions which directly confronts the intellect and are unavoidable. – “Given the gloriously deluding powers of – creation & self-delusion – of this Ego mind, how could I be so sure that this body and the world experienced in wakefulness are real? That they have real existence and are not a longer version of dream? Am I experiencing nested dreams?”
  

These questions throw these possibilities - “Could there be another state from where this so called wakeful world is proven non-existent & unreal? Is there any reality beyond this Ego mind? Power of Ego Mind is of its own or derived from some other source unknown even to the Ego Mind?” 
  

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 If the above analysis is convincing then the eloquent words of Vedanta become seriously interesting. Following quotes also become relevant and trustworthy. It gives reason enough to further explore the words of Vedanta and other spiritual dignitaries without compromising with one's critical thinking faculty.

Adi Shankarāchārya – “इति परिभावय सर्वमसारम् विश्वम् त्यक्तवा स्वप्न विचारम्”

(Thus ponder, and discard the world like an essence-less dream creation)

Following is a short yet relevant conversation between Shri Ramana Maharshi and a seeker.

 [The Seeker: is there no difference between a dream world and wakeful world?

Maharshi: There is NO difference between them. Both are unreal except that the later seems longer in duration.]

One more quite pertinent anecdote of an advance seeker and close disciple of Shri Ramana Maharshi.

To me, this is the real purpose of the mysterious phenomenon called dream which we usually brush-off as a routine daily occurrence without any further thinking. – “Possibly it gives away the master key to defeat and overcome this deluding super power called Mind...It indicates the possibilities of a reality beyond Mind”

॥ॐ नम: शिवाय॥