52. Working on Dreams🔗

So far we looked at the first level of nidra, waking-sleep. The second-level nidra is dream-sleep. Please understand, in the dream state, you experience completely confused identities. It is not chronologically clear. For example, you may have a dream that you are going to school with your wife! Means, the mixed identity, the confused identity. In the same way, you may mix two incidents, which happened when you were twenty years old and fifty years old, and see them together in your dream. It shows that in the dream-sleep also, you miss the continuity.

If you are able to be aware even while the dream continues, you will use your dream to enrich your life. Please understand: if you can master this art, your whole life will be totally different! You can straightaway achieve whatever you want. Mastering your dream means being aware even while you are dreaming, not letting the disconnection or the pause happen while you dream.

There is a great spiritual tradition in India which works only on dreams. Just on dreams! One tradition of Vedanta - they are called Aghoris. They master dreams. They use the dream state to solve all their problems, to find out the mysteries of the planet Earth and the universe. There is also a branch of Tibetan Buddhism which works on dreams. They call it dream creation. Of course, Buddhism itself is a branch of Hinduism.

'Aghori' means 'compassionate, soft'. 'Ghora' means 'wild, violent'. 'We have a wrong understanding about Aghoris. We think 'Aghori' means 'violent, wild'. No! 'Aghori' means 'soft, compassionate'. hours, your dreams and your sleep will also be continuous. If you are able to In Madhya Pradesh in India, there is a village which belongs to the Aghori maintain the continuous flow of awareness during the waking state, you will sampradaya, the Aghori tradition. The Aghori monks and householders be able to maintain that continuity in the dream state also. live there. They have a tradition – if they have a dream in which they have You may ask, 'How to master dreams?' disrespected somebody, or abused somebody, in the daytime they will go to There is a beautiful technique, a very powerful technique from Tantra, which that person’s house and ask forgiveness! Even if they disrespect somebody Patanjali speaks about in Sadhana Pada and Vibhooti Pada in this book: in their dream, they go and apologize to that person. ‘Whatever makes you feel very pleasant - something, They believe that dreams are an extension of the some person – just remember that, alive, inside, waking state. while you fall asleep.’

Mastery over dreams If you feel very pleasant by remembering your master, The great mathematician Ramanujam from South means being aware or by remembering your beloved, or by remembering India had mastery over dreams. Any mathematical even while some scene like a beach, just remember that when problem he was unable to solve, he would just you are dreaming you lie down in your bed - alive, vivid, visually, in contemplate on it in the night and fall asleep, and multi-color, four-dimension – remember it and he would have the solution in the dream. The next continue to be with it till you fall asleep. morning, he would just repeat the solution. But he Try this just for ten days. You will see that that vivid wouldn't know the steps! He wouldn't know the method, but he would know picture, that vivid visualization, that vivid experience, will penetrate your the result. He was a great devotee of the deity Solingapuram Mahalakshmi. dream state within ten days, and will continue to be there throughout your So if somebody asked him, ‘How did you arrive at this answer?’, he would dream. It means that you have mastered that dream. just say, ‘Solingapuram Mahalakshmi told me, that’s all!’ That's why some You may think, ‘How can this happen in just ten days?’ Try it and you will people started suspecting that he may be stealing the answers from others! see! But only on one condition – you have to choose something which really makes you feel pleasant. Listen: if you are not daydreaming or falling asleep during your waking If you master this technique, you will not have dream-sleep.

For the next ten days, try this technique:

‘Whatever makes you feel very pleasant - something, some person – just remember that, alive, inside, while you fall asleep.’