We all see dreams during sleep. We
would like to know their meaning and significance.
There are a large number of books on this subject but
we do not always get a satisfying answer. Here are
answers taken from the writings of Sri Aurobindo and
the Mother about what happens during sleep:
"According
to a recent medical theory one passes in sleep
through many phases until one arrives at a state
in which there is absolute rest and silence - it
lasts only for ten minutes, the rest of the time
is taken up by travelling to that and travelling
back again to the waking state. I suppose the ten
minutes sleep can be called susupti in the
Brahman of Brahmaloka, the rest is svapna or
passage through other worlds (planes or states of
conscious existence). It is these ten minutes
that restore the energies of the being, and
without it sleep is not refreshing.
According to
the Mother's experience and knowledge one passes
from waking through a succession of states of
sleep consciousness which are in fact an entry
and passage into so many worlds and arrives at a
pure Sachchidananda state of complete rest, light
and silence, - afterwards one retraces one's way
till one reaches the waking physical state. It is
this Sachchidananda period that gives sleep all
its restorative value. These two accounts, the
scientific and the occult-spiritual, are
practically identical with each other. But the
former is only a recent discovery of what the
occult-spiritual knowledge knew long ago.
People's ideas
of sound sleep are absolutely erroneous. What
they call sound sleep is merely a plunge of the
outer consciousness into a complete subconscience.
They call that a dreamless sleep; but it is only
a state in which the surface sleep consciousness
which is a subtle prolongation of the outer still
left active in sleep itself is unable to record
the dreams and transmit them to the physical mind.
As a matter of fact the whole sleep is full of
dreams. It is only during the brief time in which
one is in the Brahmaloka that the dreams cease."
- Sri
Aurobindo
What are
dreams? What is their importance?
"In
principle, to judge the activities of sleep one
needs the same capacity of discrimination as to
judge the waking activities.
But since we
usually give the name "dream" to a
considerable number of activities that differ
completely from one another, the first point is
to learn to distinguish between these various
activities - that is, to recognise what part of
the being it is that "dreams", what
domain it is that one "dreams" and what
the nature of that activity is."
*
"It is
sometimes said that in a man's sleep his true
nature is revealed.
Indeed, it
often happens that the sensory being, which
throughout the whole day has been subjected to
the control of the active will, reacts all the
more violently during the night when this
constraint is no longer effective.
All the desires
that have been repressed without being dissolved
- and this dissociation can only be obtained
after much sound and wide-ranging analysis - seek
satisfaction while the will is dormant.
And since
desires are true dynamic centres of formation,
they tend to organise, within and around us, the
combination of circumstances that is most
favourable to their satisfaction.
In this way the
fruit of many efforts made by our conscious
thought during the day can be destroyed in a few
hours at night.
This is one of
the main causes of the resistances which our will
for progress often encounters within us, of the
difficulties which sometimes appear
insurmountable to us and which we are unable to
explain, because our goodwill seems so integral
to us.
We must
therefore learn to know our dreams, and first of
all to distinguish between them, for they are
very varied in nature and quality. In the course
of one night we may often have several dreams
which belong to different categories, depending
on the depth of our sleep. "
-
The Mother
Different
types of Dreams
"The great
majority of dreams have no other value than that
of a purely mechanical and uncontrolled activity
of the physical brain, in which certain cells
continue to function during sleep as generators
of sensory images and impressions conforming to
the pictures received from outside.
These dreams
are nearly always caused by purely physical
circumstances - state of health, digestion,
position in bed, etc.
With a little
self-observation and a few precautions, it is
easy to avoid this type of dream, which is as
useless as it is tiring, by eliminating its
physical causes.
There are also
other dreams which are nothing but futile
manifestations of the erratic activities of
certain mental faculties, which associate ideas,
conversations and memories that come together at
random.
Such dreams are
already more significant, for these erratic
activities reveal to us the confusion that
prevails in our mental being as soon as it is no
longer subject to the control of our will, and
show us that this being is still not organised or
ordered within us, that it is not mature enough
to have an autonomous life.
Almost the same
in form to these, but more important in their
consequences, are the dreams which I mentioned
just now, those which arise from the inner being
seeking revenge when it is freed for a moment
from the constraint that we impose upon it. These
dreams often enable us to perceive tendencies,
inclinations, impulses, desires of which we were
not conscious so long as our will to realise our
ideal kept them concealed in some obscure recess
of our being."
*
"[You
forgot your dreams] because you do not dream
always at the same place. It is not always the
same part of your being that dreams and it is not
at the same place that you dream. If you were in
conscious, direct, continuous communication with
all the parts of your being, you would remember
all your dreams. But very few parts of the being
are in communication.
For example,
you have a dream in the subtle physical, that is
to say, quite close to the physical. Generally,
these dreams occur in the early hours of the
morning, that is between four and five o'clock,
at the end of the sleep. If you do not make a
sudden movement when you wake up, if you remain
very quiet, very still and a little attentive -
quietly attentive - and concentrated, you will
remember them, for the communication between the
subtle physical and the physical is established -
very rarely is there no communication.
Now, dreams are
mostly forgotten because you have a dream while
in a certain state and then pass into another.
For instance, when you sleep, your body is asleep,
your vital is asleep, but your mind is still
active. So your mind begins to have dreams, that
is, its activity is more or less coordinated, the
imagination is very active and you see all kinds
of things, take part in extraordinary happenings...
After some time, all that calms down and the mind
also begins to doze. The vital that was resting
wakes up; it comes out off the body, walks about,
goes here and there, does all kinds of things,
reacts, sometimes fights, and finally eats. It
does all kinds of things. The vital is very
adventurous. It watches. When it is heroic it
rushes to save people who are in prison or to
destroy enemies or it makes wonderful discoveries.
But this pushes back the whole mental dream very
far behind. It is rubbed off, forgotten:
naturally you cannot remember it because the
vital dream takes its place. But if you wake up
suddenly at that moment, you remember it. There
are people who have made the experiment, who have
got up at certain fixed hours of the night and
when they wake up suddenly, they do remember. You
must not move brusquely, but awake in the natural
course, then you remember.
After a time,
the vital having taken a good stroll, needs to
rest also, and so it goes into repose and
quietness, quite tired at the end of all kinds of
adventures. Then something else wakes up. Let us
suppose that it is the subtle physical that goes
for a walk. It starts moving and begins wandering,
seeing the rooms and... why, this thing that was
there, but it has come here and that other thing
which was in that room is now in this one, and so
on. If you wake up without stirring, you remember.
But this has pushed away far to the back of the
consciousness all the stories of the vital. They
are forgotten and so you cannot recollect your
dreams. But if at tthe time of waking up you are
not in a hurry, you are not obliged to leave your
bed, on the contrary you can remain there as long
as you wish, you need not even open your eyes;
you keep your head exactly where it was and you
make yourself like a tranquil mirror within and
concentrate there. You catch just a tiny end of
the tail of your dream. You catch it and start
pulling gently, without stirring in the least.
You begin pulling quite gently, and then first
one part comes, a little later another. You go
backward; the last comes up first. Everything
goes backward, slowly, and suddenly the whole
dream reappears: "Ah, there! it was like
that." Above all, do not jump up, do not
stir; you repeat the dream to yourself several
times - once, twice - until it becomes clear in
all its details. Once that dream is settled, you
continue not to stir, you try to go further in,
and suddenly you catch the tail of something else.
It is more distant, more vague, but you can still
seize it. And here also you hang on, get hold of
it and pull, and you see that everything changes
and you enter another world; all of a sudden you
have an extraordinary adventure - it is another
dream. You follow the same process. You repeat
the dream to yourself once, twice, until you are
sure of it. You remain very quiet all the time.
Then you begin to penetrate still more deeply
into yourself, as though you were going in very
far, very far; and again suddenly you see a vague
form, you have a feeling, a sensation... like a
current of air, a slight breeze, a little breath;
and you say, "Well, well..." it takes a
form, it becomes clear - and the third category
comes. You must have a lot of time, a lot of
patience, you must be very quiet in your mind and
body, very quiet, and you can tell the story of
your whole night from the end right up to the
beginning.
Even without
doing this exercise which is very long and
difficult, in order to recollect a dream, whether
it be the last one or the one in the middle that
has made a violent impression on your being, you
must do what I have said when you wake up: take
particular care not even to move your head on the
pillow, remain absolutely still and let the dream
return.
Some people do
not have a passage between one state and another,
there is a little gap and so they leap from one
to the other; there is no highway passing through
all the states of being with no break of the
consciousness. A small dark hole, and you do not
remember. It is like a precipice across which one
has to extend the consciousness. To build a
bridge takes a very long time; it takes much
longer than building a physical bridge... Very
few people want to and know how to do it. They
may have had magnificent activities, they do not
remember them or sometimes only the last, the
nearest, the most physical activity, with an
uncoordinated movement - dreams having no sense.
But there are
as many different kinds of nights and sleep as
there are different days and activities. There
are not many days that are alike, each day is
different. The days are not the same, the nights
are not the same. You and your friends are doing
apparently the same thing, but for each one it is
very different. And each one must have his own
procedure. "
- The
Mother
*
Can one
change the course of one's Dreams
"Ah, Yes,
I have already told you that once. If you are in
the middle of a dream and something happens which
you don't like (for instance, somebody shouts
that he wants to kill you), you say : "That
won't do at all, I don't want my dream to be like
that", and you can change the action or the
ending. You can organise your dream as you want.
One can arrange one's dreams. But for this you
must be conscious that you are dreaming, you must
know you are dreaming."
- The
Mother
Here we have not
taken up the question of interpretation of dreams as
it is a very vast and complex subject, where the
subjective element plays a very important role and
similar dreams may have very different
interpretations depending on the person who is
dreaming.
