“As there are hundreds of dreams uncontrolled till the end of life, so there are hundreds of waking states also in the gross ignorance of the unliberated.”

— Yoga Vasishta

Inception is a film that’s both fascinating and enlightening. In Inception there is this interesting concept of entering into someone else’s subconscious mind and planting an idea into their mind. But we are not concerned with this now. What we are more interested in is the concept of multiple levels of dreaming.

The movie Inception shows four levels of dreaming, a dream within a dream within a dream within a dream, and one level of waking. Now, consider this… instead of just four levels of dreaming, what if in reality there are infinite number of levels of dreaming upwards and downwards? Right now the state you experience as waking is also a dream from the perspective of higher states. Only your assumption that this state is real makes it real, otherwise it’s just a dream. A dream is as real to you as the waking state when you experience it. Can you deny this? So, if there are infinite number of levels of dreams upwards and downwards, then there is no absolute waking state. It’s all just dreams and nothing else.

Here’s a little extract from a non-dualistic text that gives a very similar idea and explains it better.

Disciple (D.): Now, master, the dream is but the reproduction of mental impressions formed in the waking state and lying dormant before. They reproduce past experiences. Therefore dream-visions are rightly said to be only mental creations. Should the same be true of the waking world, this must be the reproduction of some past impressions. What are those impressions which give rise to these waking experiences?

Master (M.): Just as the experiences of the waking state give rise to the dream world, so also the experiences of past lives give rise to this world of the waking state, nonetheless illusory.

D.: If the present experience is the result of the preceding one, what gave rise to its preceding one?

M.: That was from its preceding one and so on.

D.: This can extend back to the time of creation. In dissolution all these impressions must have been resolved. What was left there to start the new creation?

M.: Just as your impressions gathered one day lie dormant in deep sleep and become manifest the following day, so also the impressions of the preceding cycle (kalpa [aeon]) reappear in the succeeding one. Thus these impressions of Maya have no beginning, but appear over and over again.

D.: Master, what was experienced on previous days can now be remembered. Why do we not remember the experiences of past lives?

M.: This cannot be. See how the waking experiences repeat themselves in the dream but are not apprehended in the same way as in the waking state, but differently. Why? Because sleep makes all the difference, in as much as it hides the original bearings and distorts them, so that the same experience repeated in the dream is differently set, often aberrant and wobbling. Similarly the experiences of past lives have been affected by comas and deaths so that the present setting is different from the past ones and the same experience repeated in a different way cannot recall the past.

D.: Master, dream visions being only mental creations are transient and are soon dismissed as unreal. So they are properly said to be illusory. On the contrary the waking world is seen to be lasting and all evidence goes to show that it is real. How can it be classified with dreams as being illusory?

M.: In the dream itself, the visions are experienced as proven and real; they are not at that time felt to be unreal. Similarly at the time of experience, this waking world also seems to be proven and real. But when you wake up to your true nature, this will also pass off as unreal.

D.: What then is the difference between the dream and waking states?

M.: Both are only mental and illusory. There can be no doubt of this. Only the waking world is a long drawn out illusion and the dream a short one. This is the only difference and nothing more.

(Advaita Bodha Deepika, Chapter 1, page 13–14)

Now the most important question… if all is dream and nothing else, then who is the dreamer? You may say, “I am the dreamer.” But who is that I? Who are you? Right now you describe yourself with certain attributes like a name, some age, certain qualities, certain abilities, etc.. But when you fall asleep and start dreaming, you forget most of these attributes and identify yourself with a dream personality who is totally different and who does things you can only dream of! When you experience a dream your waking personality does not exist, and when you wake up the dream personality becomes unreal. So when you identify your personality with certain set of attributes, then that personality should be unreal because the attributes vanish when you wake up to a higher state or go deep into a dream.

But it’s obvious there is some part of you that is witnessing through all the dreams. It is that part of you that remains when you strip off all the attributes, it’s the core you that’s common to all the dreams and all the states. It’s the witness consciousness within you that is silently watching through all your dreams, all your life, all of your experiences. Isn’t that witness consciousness within you the real dreamer? In fact the witness consciousness is the only reality, the real you, the real I. Everything else is just part of a dream and hence unreal, is it not?

The key here is to stop identifying yourself with forms and attributes. You have to look within to find the real entity that’s you. As the popular quote from Carl Jung goes, “Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakens.”

Staying with the subject of dreams, you may be interested in reading these posts also: The dog chase, and the wise one and Taming Hitler, Gandhigiri style

Hitler finds this out and drags me back into the classroom. There he slaps me on my left cheek in front of everybody. Ooh, that was a heavy blow, and humiliating too. But for whatever reason, I take a step towards him and get closer to him. He slaps me again in the same cheek, I get one more step closer. He slaps me for the third time, and I get another step closer to him. Now I’m so close that our noses almost touch each other! So close it’s difficult for him to slap me. Moreover he has that puzzled look on his face. Now, I suddenly hug him! I hugged him so lovingly (!) that I could almost feel the chemical reactions taking place in his brain with the anger getting transformed into love, and his awareness shifting from the lower part of the brain to the higher. I hug him for what seemed like a minute and then let go. He looks totally overwhelmed. He politely asks me to sit in the bench and take up the test…. Oh, that was a crap of a question paper as usual, and I don’t want to add to that with my stupid answers, so I keep the answers blank and white. The test was over and before leaving the classroom, Hitler tells everyone that he is a changed man and he won’t act like the stupid he was acting before. There ends the dream.

Strange dream. But not a normal dream. I was so full of awareness when it happened that I still remember exactly what happened in my mind when that slap and hug happened. So, here is an action replay taking you through what happened in my mind when the event took place.

Firstly, it was not a preplanned act, and I had no intentions to change or transform Hitler. I was only aware of my own feelings in reaction to the slap. The first time he slapped, there was a sudden burst of anger in me and and a sense of getting humiliated, but as I was intensely aware, the feelings immediately died down. Wow! that was great, I wanted to experience this again, so I set him up into slapping me again. He slapped, and once again the anger burst out and died down at once. It was a great feeling that Hitler slapping me in front of all people didn’t have much effect on me. I wanted this one more time, got it, and it had absolutely no negative effects on me. Wonderful! I was so grateful to Hitler for helping me have this great experience and that’s what made me hug him. The chemical reactions of anger getting transformed into love was not actually happening in his brain, but my brain. Or to be more accurate, the transformation was occurring in the consciousness, for there is no such thing as my consciousness or his consciousness.

And the Hitler figure is actually an aspect of myself, my base instincts. This was a very figurative dream, a reflection of things that’s been happening in my psyche over the past few months. Previously, I had trained myself into believing that the lower instincts of my mind have to be resisted, controlled, to be fought with. I used to resist them or run away from them. But resistance only makes these instincts stronger, and when you run away, it chases you and pounces on you. Giving free expression to the lower instincts doesn’t help either. So, sometime back there was a shift, instead of trying to overcoming the instincts, I just go into a state of awareness and just watched these instincts for what they are without resisting them or giving expression to them, non-judgmentally. And what happens? The instincts just vanish into thin air. Muddy water is best cleared by leaving it alone. And the energy that goes into expressing or repressing these lower instincts gets sublimated into higher emotions. Anger, lust, shame getting transformed into love! A wonderful thing.

But one thing about taming Hitler. This was just a dream, honestly, I’m not sure if I have the guts to do such a Gandhigiri act in real life, that too with a person like Hitler. I’ll leave it to you to test the Gandhigiri concept in real life and do write to me about the results. Just give it a try na? Life is just a bigger dream after all

Also read about the dramatic dream I had one and a half years ago about a dog chasing me.

Just then I saw a serene person standing on the street, he looked like an old friend, he looked like a Buddha. I felt that he is the only person who can save me. I went to him, and tried to hide behind him. I prayed him to save me. This man seemed to have an effect on the dog the dog dare not approach me who was hiding behind him. I was still breathing fast, and the heart was beating fast, and I asked him why the dog is following me? “Why me? of all the people?” He smiled at me and told me something to this effect, “It’s all your own making. You don’t remember, you poured water on the dog and threw stones at the dog (!) and that’s why he’s determined to take a revenge on you. The law takes its course whether or not you remember your past actions. Nothing comes unwarranted. You reap what you sow.” Saying this, he disappeared leaving me all alone with the dog at a striking distance before me. The dog was looking at me furiously with clenched teeth. There is no use in running now. Yes, the Buddha was right, it’s all due to my own karma, I ridiculed the dog by pouring water and throwing stones at him, and he’s now chasing me to fulfil the law. I had no other option now. I gave up and let the law take its course. There is nothing more for me now. It’s all over, I renounce, I totally surrender. I gave up all hopes, and surprisingly the fears too left me. I was facing the moment, facing the furious dog, he was about to strike me, this is it, this is the moment…. just then, suddenly, everything vanished… the dream broke! Oh my God, was it a dream?… it was just a dream!!

But I was wondering what would have happened. Did the dog attack me? or did he let me go? While I was out of the dream, I was still lying on my bed with closed eyes, and now the same Buddha figure appeared in my mind and communicated to me, “Whether or not the dog attacked you doesn’t matter. What matters is that you woke up. The details of the dream doesn’t matter. The important thing is that you learnt your lesson.” Saying this he dissolved into nothingness and I got up from the bed for yet another day in the real world.

‘Real’ world? How do I know that this ‘real’ world is not just another dream? What is ‘real’? Can somebody explain this to me?

But I really don’t care. The dreams come and go, the objects of the ‘real’ world come and go, the experiences come and go, memories come and go. But the one thing that stays throughout the dreams, the one thing that survives the experiences of ‘real’ world, the one thing that is beyond all the fleeting existence is the feeling of ‘I Am’. The one pure existence, pure consciousness and bliss absolute, the one who witnesses the dreams and experiences of the real world, the one who sees through everything. He is the prime subject, He is the object too. He is the One, and I Am He. Satchidanandoham.

(Just for a record, this dream happened to me this morning (12 Dec 2008) just before I woke up from my sleep.)