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Re: waking/dreaming/deep-sleep

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vchandra • April 12, 2000 


Dear Sri Kasthuri Varadarajan,
   This is with reference to your quoting from authoritative texts. Please note
that I am not questioning the source of those texts by any means. The whole intent
is purely self-educative. I beg yours, Sri Anbil's and other bhakthas' pardon if I 
even unintentionally encroached beyond the limits of discussion.
   The following are just attempts to put forth my points and by no means to be
understood as attempts to question the vedic authorities.

> Sri Kasthuri wrote:
> But even from a non-technical standpoint, we can easily accept that the 
> experience of a dream is very real. The question is only about the
> objects in the dream.

   Yes. the question is about the objects in the dream only. But we are discussing
this in our waking state as we are writing/reading this mail. In such a state I am
unclear as to how we can still hold on to the delusion that we were in, while 
asleep, and say that those objects were/are real ? If at all they were real, they 
were so only to the dreamer at that dreaming moment. But such a partial reality 
can very well be described as unreal. This is an example.
   A person is presently dreaming of his house being on fire. He is still
in the dream state. Rest of his family is awake, say. They all are living in that
same house while only that person is seeing burning house. At this moment when
two different persons are experiencing the same object (the house), which one will
we choose to describe as real? The burning house that the dreamer is imagining or the intact one the person awake is living in. It would be contradicting to say
both are real since the same object can't be in two different conditions at the 
same time.
   One might say burning house is real in the dream-plane and intact house is real
in the waking-plane of consciousness. But I tend to feel that when we describe
an object thus as real or unreal, we should do so only with respect to a common 
plane of objects. Otherwise, I think we don't need a word "unreal" in our 
language. Seriously after reading these posts, I have a question 
"what then is unreal in this world". Please clarify.

> Sri Kasthuri wrote:
> ** The passage quoted is from brihad. upanishad and is translated as
> `There are no chariots in that state, no horses, no roads. There are
> no blessings, no happiness, no joys; then he creates blessings,
> happiness, joys, and so on. For he is the creator.'

  This doesn't still explain why only grown people get dreams and also the objects
and incidents in the dreams are always the ones that we have experienced/seen earlier. In this quote the text has talked about a very disciplined dream. But
please tell how this explains the vague dreams in which the sequence of events are
haphazard and the persons appearing in the dream suddenly change as though by a 
process of "mental morphing" etc.,

   As I opined in my previous post, "real experience from an unreal object" is
not impossible. During a dream the dreamer's experience is entirely real. He/She
may even possess lingering feelings of fear, sorrow, joy after waking up from
dream. These lingering feelings are also real. But in "Absolute Truth" the objects 
were unreal even during the dream in a universal perspective.

   These kind of real experiences from unreal object happen to us even in waking
state.
   One interesting example for this is:
   We accidently set our foot on a carcass of a lizard, say. We take the foot 
immediately in involuntary disgust (this disgust is owing to lack of true 
realisation). We will notice in many of us that, even after taking the foot
off the carcass, we flinch as though the carcass is sticking to our foot. This
feeling is real, since we flinch and even horripulate. But it's very true that
the foot is not in contact with any disgusting object at that moment. This is
owing to false imagination of an unreal thing.


   I am eager to hear more educative responses from the bhagawathas.

   Thanks.

   adiyEn,
   chandrasekaran.



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