Spiritual Import of Our Dreams

                                                                                                *Saumitra Mohan

            Dreams are an important component of our life. Most of us dream of bigger and better things all the time, but these are daydreams, visualized in mentally alert and wakeful state. We need to work hard with all our dedication and planning to realize these dreams. But here we are talking about the dreams we see during slumber. Oneirologically, dreams are essentially stories and images our mind creates while we sleep.

            Our dreams can occur anytime during our sleep. The most vivid dreams are said to occur during deep, REM (Rapid Eye Movement) sleep, when the brain is most active. We are supposed to dream, at least, four to six times per night. Our dreams are said to be affected by our sleeping positions. A study found that sleeping on the left gives us more disturbing dreams than on the right. Sleeping at an incline, on the left or with face down seems to make dreams more vivid.

            According to Sigmund Freud’s ‘Psychoanalytic Theory of Personality’, people are driven by aggressive sexual instincts that are repressed from unconscious awareness. Freud emphasised the importance of the unconscious mind and a primary assumption of the Freudian theory is that the unconscious mind governs our behaviour to a great degree than people suspect. Studies have found that our dreams are actually a reflection of our personality. The more spiritually or cerebrally evolved we are, the more uplifting are our dreams.

            Our dreams generally have a pattern and hint at certain things in our life including our suppressed desires and thoughts as Freud suggested. It is very common for an individual to actualise one’s desire in dreams. This often encourages us to try harder by pointing to our inherent potential. Freud believed that every dream is an imaginary fulfilment of our wish or impulse and represent our unconscious desires, thoughts and motivations. Like his mentor Freud, Carl Gustav Jung also believes in the existence of the ‘unconscious’. According to Jung, dreams are a way of communicating and acquainting ourself with the ‘unconscious’.

            The recurring and repetitive dreams, according to some, point to some major incident of the past or previous lives which has been deeply imprinted on our subconsciousness. Recurring dreams not only point to our unconscious desires, but they also allude to the subconscious memories of our previous lives. Dreams are reflective of our intuitive power as often they aid and assist us in solving many of life’s problems. They often point at the need to resolve certain issues sooner than later. Many scientists and scholars have been inspired by their dreams or said to have got a brainwave through one such dream. Dreams are, thus, a means to unlock our hidden potential by giving us ideas.

            Many individuals are said to be endowed with supernatural powers to foresee a future event. Isn’t it very common for students to see question papers before an exam many whereof match with the real exam papers to a great extent. Often our existential fears and conflicts are played in our dreams with all its ramifications thereby enabling us to take a firm and final decision about something important in our lives. Dreams are, therefore, psychologically beneficial in helping us resolve our pain and problems as done through ‘Past Life Regression therapy’ which is increasingly becoming very popular these days.

            There is no common dictionary with same explanations for same dreams. Different cultures have different meanings associated with dreams. Dreams are not only explained spatio-temporally, but also through their individual associations. While dreams associated with flying signify our continuing spiritual growth, the dream of being chased point to the need for facing a problem instead of running away. It has been suggested that Gods, ancestors and guardian angels send us messages through our dreams. Don’t we often receive divine courage or sudden brainwaves through dreams to move on with our life notwithstanding tough situations? Dreams, thus, have cathartic value by sublimating our pain creatively and smoothly.

            But we also have nightmares, often seen during ‘sleep paralyses’. Sleep paralysis is a condition in which someone realises that s/he is unable to move, speak or scream. This may last a few seconds or longer. It is explained as a dysfunction or malfunction of the normal REM state of sleep, brought on by sleep deprivation, life-stress or sleeping on the back. Our anxieties and depressions cause these nightmares which usually hit the mentally or spiritually weaker souls. The nightmares could be controlled by enhancing mental strength through meditation, stress management and correct sleeping postures. Sleeping with hands crossed on chest must be shunned to evade nightmares.

            However, the Hindu scriptures believe that we are spiritually more connected during the state of ‘Dreamless Sleep’. As a falcon roaming in the sky becomes tired, folds its wings and heads for its nest, so does our ‘Soul’. Falling asleep, it cherishes no more desires and dreams no more dreams. In the stillness of night, when our corporal senses are fast locked in the fetters of sleep, and our elementary body rests, the ‘astral form’ becomes liberated. It then comes out of its earthly prison and travels around the visible and invisible worlds.

            In the Upanishads, ‘Dreamless Sleep’ is presented as the objectless sleep without any egotistic sense of body, mind or the world. In profound, dreamless sleep we simply abandon our body, mind, ego, material world and cognate concerns. We effectively die to the ‘Self’ and the world and float free in the vastness, stillness and deeply serene contentedness of ego-free awareness of the Divine Spirit.  

            The condition corresponds to the state of ‘Turiya’. This literally translates as ‘the fourth’ and refers to the fourth state of consciousness beyond ordinary waking, sleeping, dreaming and dreamless sleep. Abiding at the sleep-threshold, the condition equals to the temporarily dying of the physical body and becoming one with the Divine. Here one realises that the sleep threshold is not about sleep anymore, but about waking to a new dimension of universal love.

            Turiya corresponds to a state of Samadhi, but it is not static; it is an entirely new way of living on the other side of the ‘now’. Not all those who achieve ‘Turiya’ actualize this possibility, because many fail to see that ‘Turiya’ is not really a state at all, but a mysterious gateway to another world. In dreamless sleep, the ‘Soul’ ceases to be a knower as it ceases to have any idea of objects. The polarity of subject and object, the opposition between the knower and the known vanishes altogether. He no longer feels that he is confined to and limited by the body. But yet consciousness does not cease in the ‘Dreamless Sleep’.

            Many Hindu sages believe that the more attached and obsessed we are with our desires, the more pain and privation we experience through our dreams. Hence, it is advisable to start restraining our desires by restraining our attachment to the outcomes relating thereto. How much have we got over our desires and attachments are indicated by how much ‘dreamless sleep’ we experience. The same is also suggestive of our rising spiritual level. Less or zero desires calm our minds and souls when we see no dream and connect with the Supreme Being. Through regular meditation and ‘regulation, restraint and purification of our thoughts and desires’, we can change the negative or mundane patterns of our dreams.

Importance of Being Unimportant

                                                                                              *Saumitra Mohan

            As a human being, all of us hanker to be appreciated and recognised though not all of us are lucky enough. Biologically, all of us have the requisite faculties to make it big if we have the desired motivation and perspicacity to recognise the umpteen opportunities, often disguised as hard work. Destiny and your past Karma are definitely factors, but not beyond a point after which you can easily mould and make your own destiny. It is all up to us as to how determined and dedicated we are to leave our footprints on the sands of time.

            As a human being, we have all been favoured with the Almighty’s grace to be born as the most intelligent of all the living beings. Still, we are all unique, endowed with distinctive capacities. Each one of us is said to be an axis of this world and we often feel perplexed noticing the entire world moving around us. Notwithstanding being unique, all of us are part of a larger matrix. Coming to the world to play our role as part of the larger cosmic plan, we need to do the same with due care and dedication. If we succeed doing the same, we not only contribute to our own spiritual evolution, but also to the enrichment of the cosmic intelligence. However, not all of us are capable enough to recognise our assigned task to make our mark.

            Whatever be our vocation, avocation or position, we all have our share of opportunity to shine and be recognised in the society we live. Each and every one of us reaches different levels of fame, popularity and status. The said recognition or importance could extend to one’s family, community, locality, village, city, state, country or the entire world. It could also be confined to one’s office, trade, profession, business, industry or a particular grouping. Depending on the extent of a person’s ambition, s/he has the craving to be appreciated and recognised in the said circle or sphere. One’s aspirational level is however predicated upon multiple factors including the level of one’s consciousness, one’s socio-educational background, and one’s received cultural and motivational capital.

            Most of the people remain satisfied and happy in one’s own cocoon, without continually thinking of incremental upgrading one’s sphere of influence. But there shall always remain some who would not stop at any achievement or success. Like a fire is only aggravated with every pouring of oil or butter into it, similarly our desires constantly keep multiplying pursuant to the satisfaction of one or the other desire. Man’s desire to further explore and extend oneself keeps growing after satisfaction of his/her next desire. Endowed with boundless aspirational energy, s/he would not stop till one identifies with the entire cosmos by one’s eventual merging into the Supreme Consciousness.

            But we must understand the supreme truth that all this yearning for evanescent recognition or importance has no value as such but for helping us with our spiritual growth. After all, this fame or recognition has been found to be immaterial and irrelevant beyond a point. Our own Karma or actions in the past lives appear alien to us in the next lives because we don’t recognise the same. However, we do have an innate identification or affinity with particular deeds or thinking because of the permanent impressions grafted on our eternal consciousness. More than the status, fame or importance, it is the lessons learnt in each of the birth stations which is important to us as a spiritual being.

            In fact, every position or situation is nothing but a facilitating stage for learning right lessons for improving one’s Karma for one’s upward spiritual evolution. After all, the greatest of the celebrities, the most famous or the powerful movers and shakers of the world are also soon forgotten. So, any attachment or fascination for fleeting glory or fame during our temporary stay on this Blue Planet is not at all advisable. Most of us never pause to cogitate over the relevance of our birth or assigned role in the entire scheme of things.

            We should all try to do and be our best as long as we last and survive here. Time and again, it is noticed that many of us, in our bid to race past others to attain that elusive power or importance stemming from either being a celebrity, a powerful political or business leader or the master of our profession, either never get the hang of the Cosmic Drama or simply lose the plot of the game. Many religious scriptures including the Bhagwad Geeta repeatedly says that whatever belongs to us today belonged to someone else yesterday and would belong to someone else tomorrow. When we are soon to be replaced and forgotten by others, why should we take the mundane ups and downs in our lives to our heart?

            As per Bhagwad Geeta, we should keep on engaging in the everyday chores of our lives without ever thinking of the fruits of our actions. However, many have questioned this scriptural prescription on the plea that such an attitude would actually take away the primal zeal and motivation to move towards continual social, economic, cultural, educational, scientific and other enrichments of the human civilization. But against this mind bogglingly gigantic Creation population by mind bogglingly diverse variety of creatures and living beings, it’s only the humans who are endowed with the logical and rational faculties. Again, only a minuscule minority from amongst the humans are capable enough to indulge in cerebral activities to uplift themselves spiritually.

            If we notice, we would find that we all have different periods of crests and troughs in our lives. Many of us take these temporary or periodic lows in their careers, personal or public life very negatively because of which the same start hurting their spiritual evolution. A human life is very beautifully crafted by the Supreme Lord and He has a micro plan for each of us. As they say, if things are happening our way, it is good. If the same is not happening our way, it is actually better as then it is happening God’s way. So, we should not feel depressed or down in the dumps during such occasional periods of lull or so-called unimportance. These are, actually, God’s way of making us stronger to face bigger challenges of life.

            As Swami Vivekananda once said, “I asked for strength and God gave me difficulties to make me strong. I asked for wisdom and God gave me problems to solve. I asked for prosperity and God gave me brain and brawn to work. I asked for courage and God gave me danger to overcome. I asked for love and God gave me troubled people to help. I asked for favours and God gave me opportunities. I received nothing I wanted, but I received everything I needed”. So, instead of looking at life’s adversities pessimistically, we should see the same in a different perspective. They are actually God’s way of preparing us for larger and bigger roles. Hence, we should not keep looking at the door which has been closed because by doing so, we lose the capability of viewing the many doors which are lying open for our exploration.

            So, the periodic irrelevance or unimportance is actually an essential phase in our life to make us appreciate and value things when we have or don’t have them. Often, some of us get supercilious, irreverent or egotistic when we have power, affluence, success or importance emanating from different sectoral successes of our short life. Such transitory societal unimportance not only helps us value things better when we have them, the same also makes us humble and down to earth. Most importantly, such periods or time should be creatively and constructively utilised for rediscovering and reinventing oneself.

            There are many things we have always desired to do in our life or there are many relationships which become neglected for want of our desired affection and care. By deriving our importance from passing positions or situations of power, we make ourselves amenable to the arbitrary control of our eternal Self which could and ought to be carefully nourished through intelligent investment of time, care, attention and affection. Such periods of insignificance or unimportance should be wisely utilized to nurture one’s long neglected Muses and relationships instead of moping about things we have temporarily lost.

            What we lost was anyhow never ours and was going to be alienated sooner or later anyway. So, it is advisable for us to create a permanent source of importance for us, something which makes us immune to such temporary ups and downs in our fortunes. Such a permanent importance could come only by continual investment in our relationships and in the development of uplifting qualities in our personality which eventually lead us to the growth of our eternal consciousness which moves with us from one life to another and also stays with us in the finer realms after our death.

            The failures, unimportance, setbacks or periodic downfall in our stock are the most important teachers of our life. Such a phenomenon makes us appreciate and respect our fellow human beings whom often we ignore or mistreat during our temporal prominence. This also affords us an opportunity to restrategize and rework our life’s objectives. It gives us the required respite and pause to replan and redo things to take our lives to the next level. As they say, if you want things you never had, you must try things you never did. Our privations, weaknesses and challenges are God’s signal to a bigger task and achievement. After all, bigger achievements require bigger sacrifices and bigger efforts.

            Such periods should, therefore, be intelligently utilized to recharge our batteries, catch up on our family responsibilities, spend more time with our relatives and friends, learn newer things, pursue our passions, upgrade our skills and add uplifting qualities to our individual consciousness. Instead of crying over spilt milk or ruing the lost opportunities, positions or power, we should spend quality time in rediscovering ourselves to enjoy the present moment in the divine company of our friends, colleagues and family members. We also get to learn and add superior qualities like patience, forbearance and humility during these times. A significant character building happens during such times. Instead of sulking at the loss of our desired things or successes (which anyhow is nothing but momentary), we should focus on snatching the smaller pleasures of life from the present. It is such smaller pleasures which eventually add to our eternal bliss and contentment.

            In fact, the real sense of power comes from helping the helpless others and earning their admiration and gratitude. Heartfelt appreciation and admiration from the people around us is the real intoxicant or aphrodisiac. However, helping others with a selfish motive is said to be spiritually degrading. Lord Krishna in Geeta says that we should indulge in Nishkam Karma, deeming our every act as an act of prayer, without any expectation. This could be the greatest investment in our future as the same comes back to us multiplied. We often curse the God for what he has not given us or taken away without acknowledging what he has given us in abundance. We understand the value thereof only after the same is lost.

            As they say, life is like our favourite ice-cream. We must relish it before it melts. So chase your long cherished passions, nurture your creative Muses and spend quality time in the divine company of your near and dear ones. Often, in the rat race of success and achievements, we forget to uplift our character and soul. God’s ‘micro plan’ affords each of us an opportunity to undertake all such activities through these temporary lull or momentary periods of unimportance. Our attempt should be add enduring substance or quality to our individuality, something which would not be compromised with such periodic losses or would not go with the sudden loss of power or position, thereby making us stronger to stand tall in such periods of personal losses or crises.

            We should try to outgrow these externalized positions of power or importance to add permanent value to our character and individuality. Such a thing also uplifts ourselves spiritually and plants permanent impressions on our souls as part of the eternal consciousness to travel with us to next world or dimension when we finally kick the bucket. Those who understand this, carefully indulge themselves through constructive and creative pursuits. If we add such eternal value to ourselves, society would be forced to sit up, notice and value us. So, let’s make ourselves endowed with such timeless qualities that people find it difficult to ignore us.

            Mind you, life is not a destination; it is a journey. We can’t afford to stop at a particular juncture or remain stuck in the attractions of a specific position of power or importance. Often people spend such time cursing others they mistakenly think responsible for their downfall. As many Hindu scriptures and sages have said time and again, anything happening to us in this world is our own making and consequence of our past Karma. So, possessed of our insecurities, inferiority complex or momentary failures, we start bitching or backbiting about others without realising that the same would take us backward in terms of our personal growth. Such an outlook blinds us to the future opportunities and brighter prospects awaiting us. As they say, as long as you are trying to get even with others, you can’t get ahead of them. Mind you, as we can’t take someone’s destiny, similarly none can take ours. So, instead of blaming others for our woes, we should treat them as the result of our own Karma and should wise try to get out of the fleeting periods of unimportance by dint of intelligent rediscovery and enrichment of our eternal Self.

            So, let’s not crib and sulk when things are bad for us. Rather, when the life is pulling us back, be sure that Almighty is preparing you for a bigger launch like the arrow. The more backward an arrow is pulled, the longest does it travels. Periodic lull in life is an essential phase of life. If we could understand and appreciate the importance of being unimportant at regular intervals of our life, we can definitely accomplish greater tasks and achieve greater successes, not to speak of enriching our eternal consciousness.

           

Exploring Religion Without An Intermediary

                                                                                                *Saumitra Mohan

            Things are definitely better today than the Hobbesian ‘State of Nature’ or the medieval era when there were sanguinary wars and internecine conflicts among different communities for supremacy and control over vast tracts of territories and human congeries. However, as civilization advanced, superior values and understanding brought better sense among humans to lead a more harmonious life in peaceful coexistence even with people who did not share the same values, ethics, ideals, standards and principles.

            With the onset of a globalized world and faster means of communications, a better interpersonal and inter-community relationship was expected in human society. Nevertheless, what we are witnessing today is far from inspiring. All the Panglossian optimism of ‘End of History’ with the triumph of liberal democratic values towards the end of last millennium seems to have been hugely compromised with Huntingtonion ‘Clash of Civilization’ looming large on the horizon. The ascendancy of right-wing forces and authoritarian regimes all across the globe belie all the expectations of discovering the proverbial ‘Pot of Gold’ at the end of the rainbow.

            If we look at the various insidious developments around us, all the gains made through the long-drawn struggle to make our lives better and more orderly appear to have been squandered. These gains are slowly being chipped away through recidivist and revisionist relapse to the seamier times of human history. The parochial forces seem to be gaining sway over the liberal values by way of an ominous rolling back of the constructive gains made thus far. Brexit, Grexit, a truncated Kyoto Protocol, an emaciated European Union and other regional groupings, a toothless United Nations and mounting international discord - all point to the shape of things to come.

            It is against this bleak backdrop that we find a sinister avatar of religion suddenly taking centre-stage for all the wrong reasons. While religion ought to have been utilised as an instrument for consolidating and integrating human society, it has actually been playing a diametrically opposite role. Many social scientists feel that religion should be least important for the present civilization which is richly endowed with advanced education, knowledge, information and improved means of communication; it is actually exercising more disturbing influence over our policies and policymakers today.

            While many of us thought that religion would slowly die down with an increasingly modernizing and liberalizing world, the same is just not happening. Religion has intelligently mutated and survived. This is because after a basic level of affluence and cultural growth, humans have a natural tendency to expand. Once the basics of survival are mastered, humans start looking to extend and expand their limits. As an intelligent living being, the humans have an unbounded capacity to keep stretching the existential frontiers of their being. But they baulk at a point when science and technology stop supplying them with the much required explanations and rationalisations for unresolved mysteries of divine Creation.

            And it is here that the cult of the occult and arcane comes to the fore. Since nothing authoritative is known about unknown dimensions of our infinite Cosmos or its Creator, people start groping in the dark, accepting and believing whatever comes their way. It is here that the charlatans and imposters take advantage of our gullibility by dishing out half-baked knowledge which goes against the very grain of a civilized society.

            Belonging to different religions or beliefs, today we are pitched against one another without comprehending the reason or rationale for the same. Like the few blind men describing an elephant as per their own constricting vision, there are today different blind men dealing in diverse religious and spiritual truths while offering their own blinkered vision as the final truth, something which has brought us all to the present sorry pass and something we must all guard against.

            Religion being the primeval laws and being something which controls the mundane aspects of our quotidian life even today, it needs to be approached with care and consideration. As long as education and knowledge were the preserve of the privileged few, the same was understandable. However, now that we have the benefit of a progressive wisdom from an enlightened and advanced education relatively more accessible than ever before, should we not try to understand the religion ourselves rather than through some bogus middlemen who often try to con us into believing something to advance their own selfish interests?

            Instead of seeing it through the compromised prism of some vested interests, we should approach it directly. It is high time that we get out of the patronizing influence of these ‘Brokers of Religion’ to give it the importance it deserves to explore the mysteries of the Divine to discover the divinity within ourselves through gradual movement from our sundry imperfections to divine perfection.

            It is because of a garbled understanding of religion and attendant values that we have all the existential turmoil in the society today. It is advisable that the seekers after the truth and Divine Drama should browse the wisdom enshrined in various religious scriptures and tomes themselves to get a direct insight into the same. We should not only try to understand our own religion diligently, but that of others as well. It is only then can we actually realize and appreciate the functional and spiritual significance of religion.

            Such an exploration into the inscrutable Divine has often revealed profound insights about the ageless Creation to Indian mystics. There are many spiritual dimensions of our cosmos that we don’t fathom though the same has recently become scientifically amenable as done by many scholars through an intelligent correlation between Quantum Physics and spiritualism. If we can all understand religion in its right perspective, we could easily see the basic truth and unity among them all.

            Many well-read people and scholars think it infra dig to attest to any religion or discuss spiritual issues as they find the same beyond the domain of logic and reason. Notwithstanding the humans only being capable of uplifting themselves through gradual spiritual evolution to eventually merge with the Divine; still very few indulge in the same. But lack of a drive for self-exploration into the realms of the Divine has led to the rise of thousands of cults and sects which promise different revelations of the Divine as also seen in India through popularity of various ‘Babas’ and Gurus.

            The sudden proliferation of these Godmen and divine middlemen is actually a reflection of the void that human find in their lives after they reach a certain level of affluence and contentment like Maslow’s ‘Hierarchy of Needs’. While most of these so-called Gurus and Godmen are phony, some are really genuine. Through a conscious judgement and discretion, we should start engaging in spiritual discourse and discussion over such matters to discover the truths and import behind this huge Creation otherwise we shall remain doomed to be stuck in ‘history’ as Francis Fukuyama once declaimed.

            Hinduism, as the oldest of all religions, is said to be the most federal of all religions because of a rich traditions of exploring multiplicity of ways to discover the divine within. With march of time, all religions of the world have benefited from the wisdom of each other. Whatever be the truth, if we really wish to advance and survive as an intelligent being to move further in the evolution stepladder, it is advisable that we often start approaching and understanding religion without the instrumentality of an intermediary amongst us.