Vedanta Rocks -20 > Wake up to the secret of harnessing dreams

Part 20 of 46

Svapna sthano antah pragnyah…
Mandukya Upanishad 1-4
“In the dreaming state, the pure intelligence lights up the world within…”
Svapnena sariram

abhiprahatya suptah suptan abhicakasiti
Sukramadaya punaraiti sthanam, hiranmaya purusha, eka hamsa
Brihadaranyaka Upanishad 4-3-11

“The enlightened one leaves behind the dreaming body… rises and glides away into the golden light like a lonely swan glides in the moonlight, alone, majestic and serene.”

The dreaming state is present all the time, even in the waking state, but isn’t visible to the waking mind. It is just like stars are present in the sky during the day but the intense light of the sun blanks them out. At night, when the sun sets, as when we sleep, the stars pop out on the surface of the sky the way dreams pop out on the surface of the mind. The stars were always there… and so are dreams.

If you develop a cool observant nature, if you slow down your mental processes and learn to watch your mind, you can easily observe how dreams flow right below your consciousness all the time. Remember the déjà vu?

Where suddenly you feel ‘this has happened before’? Well, that’s a rare moment when the dreaming state collides with the waking state, resulting in a reality-meets-fantasy situation. To most people, dreams just churn up the debris and frustration of the day. During sleep these debris come floating up and dance on the surface of our minds in the form of weird dreams. We seem to have absolutely no control over them. We cannot stop them from coming, cannot shape their outcome, cannot stop ourselves from believing them to be true as long as it lasts. Our powerlessness and helplessness is painfully visible in the dreaming state. We may be the president of a nation, but in dreams we cannot stop ourselves from becoming a beggar on a street, rolling and crying in agony.

How do you stop this from happening? The Sanskrit term samskara clarifies this subtle process. A samskara is a tiny impression, a little nick, a drop of emotional blood. You gather it by the hundreds each day. Each time your ego collides with reality, it causes a tiny fear, or a hope, or an agony, or a tinge of jealousy, or a pang of guilt, or any of a dozen negative emotions, and a little drop of emotional blood congeals below the surface of your mind.

These nicks, distorted and amplified, are absorbed by the dreaming state which is active all the time. If you have collected many of them during the day, a manic crazy person takes over as you collapse in sleep. This manic person has gorged on these drops of emotional blood, and now rises with wild visions while you cringe and watch like a helpless frightened child.

Is this it? Is this all? Not if you flow with Vedanta. Vedanta expects you to not only control the content of your dreams but master them as well. In fact it expects you to use the power of the dreaming state to touch the source, to become enlightened, to feel the grace of the pure intelligence, and even go beyond, to plunge into deep silence.

How? Well to start with you need to purify the content of your dreams. You need to stop gathering those nicks, those drops of emotional blood. The only way to do this is to keep a watch over your mind all the time. The samskara can happen anytime, anywhere. Remember the old ad for a washing powder where one lady looks at the other and asks herself how the other lady’s dress is whiter? Well for the mind, that is also a samskara.

Someone upstaged you, and you have felt hurt, felt put down for an instant. If at that moment you are alert, you can detect the formation of the samskara and dissolve it before it forms. This is the only way. In fact great masters have repeatedly said that merely observing the samskara is enough to dissolve it.

If you practice this mindfulness, this state of alert observation, you can prevent these nicks and cuts on the mind. You can flow through the day without emotionally bleeding. Then your dreams no longer torment you, no longer throw up weird visions. You sleep peacefully, dreamlessly. Or, better, you take control of your dreaming state, command it to take you into realms beyond the ken of your imagination.

Yajnavalkya teaches the secret of harnessing dreams to Prince Janaka in the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad. It’s a great secret, and an extremely powerful one. It has the power to alter your world. This is something we shall explore next week.

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( Source: Mani Shankar/ Deccan Chronicle, Hyderabad 24th May 2009 )

Vedanta Rocks -19 > Enjoy your world regardless of how good or bad the day is

Part 19 of 46

Jagrita sthano bahis pragna… Sthula bhug vaishvanara prathama padah
‘Gain a mastery over your waking state. Enjoy your world. This is the first step.’
Mandukya Upanishad 1-3

Lots of people take to spirituality as an escape from the rigors of life. But in truth there isn’t any escape possible. After a few soothing moments of temporary (and doubtful) tranquillity, they are back to where they started. The harsh world they tried to run away from comes staring back at them.

Take a long cool look at this business of spirituality. You will realise that whatever you do, wherever you go, you will always remain within your waking state. You will never go beyond to understanding the dreaming state, and are always very far from touching the pure intelligence that runs you. The final state of deep silence, of Infinity remains firmly out of bounds, a virtual impossibility. Vedanta does not allow the luxury of illusion. It doesn’t always tell you what you want to hear. It advocates a path of practical common sense, and tells us never to run away from reality. It urges us to live, enjoy, and eventually master our reality until a time comes when that mastery automatically opens doors to self discovery. What does mastering reality mean? Is it an attempt to gain absolute power and control over our world, where we become the lord and master of all we survey? Not at all.

That never happens in anyone’s life, even the richest and most powerful. The world is always in a fluid state.

Power, wealth and fame comes and goes with a will of its own.

Those who spend a lifetime gaining control become deluded obsessed people. Mastering reality does not mean that at all. Rather it means exactly the reverse. That we do not allow the world to have a control over us.

Whatever be our situation, we retain a sense of independence and freedom that enables us to cherish the depths of our being.

The Sanskrit phrase sthula bhug vaishvanara explains this beautifully. It means ‘enjoy this world and all the happiness it can give you’. When can you enjoy the world? When all other negative emotions are absent. Joy comes only when hate, guilt, anger, jealousy, possessiveness and ego are wiped out. When you develop the right balance of attachment and detachment, of alertness and relaxation, of give and take. When you give up the impulse to dominate and manipulate. When you can learn to let go in the worst of moments and best of moments. When you always have time for laughter and merriment.

When you don’t take life too seriously, or too non seriously. When a state of dynamic equilibrium is reached, where regardless of what happens or does not happen, you can admire a sunrise or a flower or the smile of a child. Yes. If you can truly enjoy your world, regardless of how well or badly the day went, then one fine morning, every fibre of your waking self will spontaneously say yes to the inner self. On that day a door will open, magically. That day the AUM chant will sweetly take you into realms you never knew existed.

Vedanta Rocks- The background story>>

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( Source: Mani Shankar/ Deccan Chronicle, Hyderabad 17th May 2009 )

Vedanta Rocks -18 > Master the waking state to begin the 1,000-mile journey

Part 18 of 46

‘Your waking state — master it first’
Mandukya Upanishad-1-1-9

The simplest, smallest mantra — the AUM, is also the toughest to hold on to. It’s most inaccessible to turbulent minds and near impossible to master. People will experience an irritation when they try the AUM as a silent chant.

It seems as if the surface mind does not need or want this imposition upon itself, and views the chant as a challenge to its freedom. Very soon the mind pulls a trick on the AUM and slips away into other thoughts, leaving the mantra in some irrelevant corner. After a while the individual will either stop chanting, or simply forget it altogether.

This is how the surface mind is. Stubborn, undisciplined and very resistant to any attempts to gain control over itself. In fact the more you try, the more stubborn it gets and the more devious its tricks become. People spend decades sitting in silence yet nothing happens. They just become more miserable, more frustrated than before.

How can we break the firewalls inside the mind and penetrate to the pure Intelligence within? This is the essential challenge before all of us. The ancient Vedantic practice of mastering the waking state — the jagritha sthan provides the key. This is the mindfulness approach. It’s straightforward and effective. If you are not able to meditate on the AUM, observe what else the mind is doing. Just follow the mind like a dog follows its master. Go where it goes. Never leave it out of sight. The mindfulness technique can be very valuable. As you keep following the mind, you also gain a sense of camaraderie with it — a sort of empathy as to why it is unable to stay in one place. This empathy can bring you to contact with your mind. This might sound weird but it is a fact that the mind always controls us. We never question this so we never actually come to contact with our own minds. With the mindfulness technique we detach ourselves from our minds and slowly, eventually achieve a mastery over it.

Behold the awesome power of your waking state — the surface mind. Most people, in a hurry to delve within, ignore this most potent part of their being and suffer as a result. The waking state is where your life happens. This mind is always under great strain. It has to keep worrying about a zillion things all the time.

It has to help you win the battle called your life. If you don’t respect its efforts and just keep saying AUM, it will horsewhip you out of irritation. This is why most so called meditators have strained and pulled down faces. They are trying to meditate blindly and are being punished by their minds as a result. Unless your surface mind wants it you will never be able to open the door to deeper domains. Lao Tze said a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step — well this is that single step. Master your waking state first. Figure out a way to open that door.

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( Source: Mani Shankar/ Deccan Chronicle, Hyderabad 10th May 2009 )