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It is said that up to a third or more of our lives are spent asleep. We need sleep for the body to repair damage incurred during the day due to the normal wear and tear. Our minds too need a rest from the demands for decisions that challenge us in everyday waking life. In sleep our mental world attempts to make sense of the, at times, chaotic sensations and thoughts which beset us. All of us are faced with conflicting demands on our time and energy. To beahuman is to be caught up in a net of contradictory impulses. Our job is to navigate these opposing forces and discover a harmonious balance. Sleep helps us in this respect. Dreams are a means to unravel the intricacy of opposing forces which impinge and confuse us.Sri Ramana Maharshi said that the chief difference between the waking state and the dream state is that in the waking state there is the thread of ahamkara or sense of doership, that holds together a slew of memories and identifications we call ‘me’. Both states are in essence dreams which have no independent reality.
In the seminal booklet Who Am I? Sri Ramana said,
“Waking is long and dream short; other than this there is no difference. Just as waking happenings seem real while awake, so do those in a dream while dreaming. In dream the mind takes on another body. In both waking and dream states thoughts, names and forms occur simultaneously.”
And, in S.S. Cohen’s Guru Ramana, a record of conversations with Sri Ramana it is recoded:
“Mr. C. asks if the Jnani dreams.
Bh. Yes, he does dream, but he knows it to be a dream, in the same way as he knows the waking state to be a dream. You may call them dream No. 1 and dream No. 2. The Jnani being established in the 4th state – Turiya, the Supreme Reality – he detachedly witnesses the three other states waking, dreaming and dreamless sleep – as pictures superimposed on it.”
What are we to make of this? Rather than enter into the complexities of Advaita Vedanta, for our purposes, let us keep it simple so that we may successfully apply to our waking and dream states a basic understanding that we create the world in which we exist. The world as we see it is a result of our desires and fears. Until we accept responsibility for our destiny, we are blind and wherever possible shift blame for any negativity onto an external agent. 'It is never our fault' is a common, universal response to avoid seeing our participation in the dream, in whatever shape or form, which is not to our liking.
While in hospital I radically experienced the results of my own stored up resentments, ignorance and denial of responsibility. For the first three weeks I wavered between waking and dream states over which I had no influence. Apparently, I was awake at times and conversed with people; at other moments, I grunted and moaned irrationally. There is no memory of this period except the vividness of horrifying and relentless dreams or perhaps one should say, nightmares. From Mongolia as a prisoner on the wild steppes with no means of escape; to Tibet as a regent to a budding tulku about to be enthroned; to a junior co-conspirator to the younger brother of an amir in Saudi Arabia; to a patient at a nursing home at Kandy, a hill resort in Sri Lanka tied to a bed and filled with tubes; to a patient in a railway carriage in a New York subway, again tied down at the wrists while tubes were spaghettied about my body, I experienced paralysing helplessness and fear.
Three dreams made the most impact. The first was as a conspirator working to overthrow the amir. I was in an office in which every thought created an instant manifestation of desire. If I wanted a chair, it immediately appeared. A desk, files, officials… all appeared not so much on command as the fulfilment of a desire. I started to go crazy with panic because I realised that each thought was manifested immediately. I tried to stop it but this simply accentuated the condition. I thought: I don’t want a chair, and promptly the chair was gone. The faster I thought to control the circumstances, the faster the result. The scene exploded in riotous confusion. I sank into a state of terror over events in which I was responsible but paradoxically had no understanding of the power involved. Now, it reminds me of Paul Dukas’s The Sorcerer's Apprentice, in which the apprentice foolishly uses the powers invested in him by the master to instruct a genie to clean the house instead of doing it himself. The genie maniacally goes about it with gleeful determination and obeys instructions to the point of madness, until the master returns and intervenes to stop the folly.
The second dream was similar but more sedate. I was in a restaurant in the USA (why, I do not know). Again, whatever I thought happened. If I thought the food was second rate, whatever it may have been, suddenly did turn into unpalatable food. The décor was transformed into a shoddy design if I criticised it. The other participants in the restaurant would become hostile if I so much as disliked any facet of their appearance or character. Much to my dismay, I realised that what I thought became manifest and if that was so, what about my waking existence in which each negative thought had an effect? It may not happen instantly as in this dream state but an accumulation of negative thoughts would gradually transform appearances and fulfil the thought process in the waking world. It was a shocking revelation.
The third dream was the last in the series before I ‘woke’ up and resumed my familiar persona. In some ways, it was the worst. Again, I was tied to a bed surrounded by nurses both male and female, but this time I was determined to escape by struggling out of the cloth wrapped around my wrists. There was a feeding tube connected to my throat which was long and disappeared out of range. I had no clue as to its origin. Gradually I was successful in tearing some of the restraints off my wrists much to the dismay of the attendants. They tried to placate me but failed and then one of them attempted to contact senior physicians but could not as they were on leave. I began to chant ever louder “Mother of God please save me.” Over and over I vehemently recited these words in variation. Some of the attendants began to weep realising the injustice of my captivity. Finally, I got one hand free and began to pull at the tube in my throat. The attendants were appalled and desperately tried to stop me but too late, the tube was released and a flood of gluey substance poured out. One of them cried out, “Oh my god, now the entire food chain has been contaminated because the tube was connected with others all over the world. There is nothing we can do to reverse the calamitous situation.”
The next I remember was waking up at around 6 am in a bed by a window new to me. It was tranquil as early morning moments can be before the inevitable gearing up of activity for the coming day. When I awoke and saw a male nurse by my bed intently watching, there was a sense of having come through a life-threatening storm. I had come back to the land of the living and intuitively knew somehow, I would not return once more to that dream world with its weird manifestations. There was a sense of steady relief and calm. My spent body lay prone with weakness. I was barely alive but safe.
I think what I learned from all this is that the dream state is so influential in our everyday life, as it affects our waking consciousness both as a revelatory as well as a cleansing agent. Those deep layers of the subconscious hold unimaginable realms of our personal history. Our subconscious has more control over us than we recognise. We are intertwined with forces we can only barely dream and be conscious of.
How we all came to Sri Ramana Maharshi, who we as devotees recognise as a master, and how did we arrive at the feet of sacred Arunachala is shrouded in mystery. I truly believe that but for the active but subtle Grace of Sri Ramana protecting and holding me that I would not have survived the psychosis.
Just as chronicled in The Divine Comedy, where Virgil guided Dante through the underworld of purgatory and hell, we all need a mentor to hold our hand as we journey through the states of our soul on the way to heaven. We cannot do it alone. Life is simply too immense and unfathomable.
.Letter #24 -- Dreams