Awakening dreams

(Originally written on 01 Feb 2009)

Yes, there are some times when I wonder in the dream if its real or a dream, almost as much as I wonder if this waking world is a dream or a reality. And I may have said it earlier with an example which I'd be repeating here because these dreams are my happy moments. I've to wake up from these dreams only to crosscheck the theory I experienced in the dream; the dream mostly acting as a lab for the theory that got built in the waking hours of life.

During the dream, if I'm wondering if I'm awake or am I in a dream is very much spiritual for me however grossly worldly the dream be. There was one which I remember blogging about wherein I wake up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom and wonder if I should have a bath too since I'm already awake. Then I go on to think that its not early morning but late into the night and I should sleep more. But then I take a shower anyways thinking that its a dream and my body is still asleep and it won't get drenched by this bathing; and so it was a dream indeed!

A few months later from that first intense dream on the topic, I travelled to Rishikesh. I remember debating with myself whether or not to carry my laptop along since I'm hardly going to use it. During my Rajdhani travel from Mumbai to Delhi, I was up in the middle of the night again and somehow not feeling so sleepy, decide to boot up my laptop. Since I was travelling alone, I also started wondering if it was really safe to flash my laptop around an unknown train crowd, most of which is sleeping, by the way! Then I continue anyways because I recall that earlier justification of not carrying the laptop in the first place, meaning that I was in a dream, yet again! I think the laptop as well as my sitting up on the upper side berth with a laptop scene vanished that moment. It was more like a puzzle you solve, that is no longer a puzzle after you've solved it. You start to laugh at the fact that you've been dumb enough not to see the puzzle through earlier on.

After both the above dreams, I did realize that this thinking, and more than that the experience of such dreams, needs to be taken forward into the sAdhana. I mentioned that to Swami Poornabodhanandaji at Rishikesh and said that unfortunately I've not been able to carry it out into practical sAdhana. He was quite supportive and saw it the other way around; he said that "these dreams have occured because of your sAdhana"! That was really very supportive of him; I felt immensely pleased.

There are slightly different type of dreams that play a spiritual role. These dreams come in the form of a samAdhi feel. Its like the state after an intense meditation, where you feel at the top of the bliss that you've ever experienced, all at once throughout the body, mind... the entire existence. This feel of lightly floating, kind of a bright glow around you with the eyes closed, without a difference of the outsides and insides of your body, makes you want to stay in it for as long as possible, if not for ever. Such a feel occurs in the dream too at times. It may not be necessarily a dream where I'm meditating, because I hardly ever do that during waking either. However, it usually occurs with a complete ignorance of it being a dream or complete knowledge of it being a dream. Today was different. Thats right, today, not tonight. These days, I waste my nights in front of the computer, watching movies, or rolling around on the bed since I can't sleep much at night and instead catch up on deep sleeps during the late morning hours and after noon.

Today afternoon's sleep came bundled with such a dream; where I knew not if I was sleeping or waking! Such dreams present a scenario where you're sleeping in the very place that you'd actually slept. So you're sleeping in the dream the very place that you're sleeping. It may also be that you're actually half-awake and think that that those half-sleepy moments are a dream. I just can't tell which is which until I wake up fully and crosscheck with someone who had been around during my sleep of what actually happened. Only then would I know if it was a dream or not. Interestingly today, I can't tell how much of it was a dream and how much wasn't! I know some of the things that really didn't happen, such as my blabbering something consciously in the dream knowing that my aunt is witnessing and her commenting on it. I seemed to know that I was blabbering but I'd no control over it since I was appreciating the state I was in. It was a praise of that superconscious light samAdhi like feeling of bliss. I crosschecked with my aunt if I did blabber, she said no. Now I know during that dream, I was feeling immense super-meditative bliss and I knew that I was lying down in that bed on an afternoon. I also feared that if I moved my body from that uncomfortable angle of sleep posture, I might lose the blissful state. I struggled to remain in that state for a long time, just like I'd have done in waking hours if I were meditating and feeling such bliss. Then I did fall asleep again. I know not if that was a dream, or a reality. I can't differentiate if that blissful feel came as a part of the dream in which I was sleeping, or whether I was half-awake, or fully awake, because I do know now that I mumbled at that very moment of bliss as part of the dream, where I witnessed my aunt's commenting on that mumbling and she refuses to have done so, which confirms it to be a dream! But its all so vivid still, the bliss... ah, the bliss.

In today's satsanga, I did mention this dream and that that does give me some support about there still being hope for me, be it however small. Ghabriji very beautifully quotes Bhagavan Ramana on that: who are you to judge whether or not you're progressing in the spirtual path?