waking/dreaming/deep-sleep

[Guest guest]

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.