Dreams and Reality

 

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Dreams and Reality

We, in the eastern hemisphere and especially in India attach a lot of importance to dreams, we ‘believe’ that dreams come true – no doubt some of them do come true – though the reality is that our entire life is a dream and nothing is real! You may well ask how this is possible – in India the ancient sages used to call life ‘maya’ or an illusion, that we live in an illusory world far removed from reality. But for the sages it was true but not for the ordinary mortals – for them life was as real as it can be.

As an ancient culture we have always been seeking ‘the truth’, in fact it is believed that we all take birth to attain that ultimate state which is called liberation, merging with universal consciousness by attaining the state of unity, oneness with Paramatma.

So, what happens when we dream, we actually watch a kind of move when we are in deep sleep and in that state that dream is as real for us as can be. We are actually living that dream, if it is a good dream, we wake up feeling very nice and refreshed; if it is a bad dream we wake up with a start and find our heart is racing and that we are breaking into a sweat! It is only after waking up that we heave a sigh of relief and say, “Thank God, it was only a dream!”

In our sleep we completely forget the ‘real’ world and assume characters as if in a drama. The distinction between dream and reality is that reality remains as it is; dream is something that happens once and is gone, you cannot bring it back, you cannot manage to have the same dream again. Many times, when we wake up, we cannot even recall the dream – what remains is just a hazy memory of something that happened in deep sleep!

You cannot repeat dreams. They are not objective; you cannot share them; you cannot invite friends to come and have a dream party. Reality on the other hand is objective and so is inner reality!

When we start meditating, we start seeing images in our Agya chakra, these are nothing but images which come up from deep within our subconscious mind. This is a sign of progress as we go further and further. After a point the images stop – what remains is a benign darkness, like a deep tunnel. It is only after we reach a state of unity or completeness in meditation that we see the light – the light of a thousand suns.

The life we live is also just as illusory – it is made up of our wants and desires – making us live in duality – whereas the only reality is advaita – that which is non-dual. That state comes when we become a witness, when we become observers of life and start accepting life as it comes – good or bad does not matter – as there is nothing good or bad, it is just a happening, it is our life unfolding in front of our eyes. Once we learn to go with the flow, we find that our heart opens up and selfless love for all beings starts coming to the fore – we start living our lives in the ‘void’ as witnesses only! That is the reality, all else is a dream!