What exactly are dreams?

Question: Are dreams real? What exactly are they according to the Vedic perspective. During dream, does the soul actually leaves the body or are they just imaginations of the mind.

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Question.
What exactly are dreams according to the Vedic literature? Are they real or are they false? In the sense that do we really go to the places and people that we experience in our dreams or are they just hallucinations of the mind? Answer. From the Vedic perspective, dream is a state of consciousness. In fact, from the Vedic perspective, even what medical science calls as unconsciousness is also a state of consciousness.
It is a state of consciousness in which the consciousness of the soul is not expressed in any apparent way through the body. But the soul still has consciousness. Coma is also a state of consciousness.
So, consciousness is the characteristic of the soul. It is the energy of the soul and normally it is rooted through the body to the external world. By the body, we refer here to the subtle body as well as the gross body.
So, depending on how and to what extent the consciousness is rooted, the consciousness is said to be in different states. So, normally when we are perceiving the external world through our senses and interacting with it, that state of consciousness is called as Jagruti. When we are sleeping and are dreaming at that time, at that time our consciousness is primarily being rooted through the subtle body.
Of course, when the experiences in the dream that we are having become particularly intense, at that time there are certain expressions in the physical body also. If we are being chased by a tiger in our dream, then we may start panting or sweating. If a person imagines some sensually tempting objects, that may have some biological effects on the body.
So, that means that whatever happens in the subtle body also has its effect on the gross body in at least some of the more intense dreams. So, during dreams the consciousness is rooted primarily through the subtle body. And there may be some psychophysical effects of that, but the person is not necessarily conscious of those effects, generally is not conscious of those effects.
So, when this consciousness is not expressed even through the subtle body, at that time, one is said to be in the state of Sushupti. When it is rooted through the subtle body, it is called as Sapna. When it is rooted through the gross body, it is called as Jagruti.
So, in Sushupti stage, that is practically there is no physical expression of consciousness. There are some technical differences between the categorisations given in Vedic literature and in modern science. But, in a broad sense for us to get an understanding, according to modern science, there is deep sleep and there is REM sleep.
REM is Rapid Eye Movement. So, if the person’s eyes are moving rapidly during sleep, that is generally taken by neuroscientists and psychologists to indicate that the person is dreaming. So, when even that is not there, then the person is said to be in deep sleep.
So, Sushupti is a state of deep sleep. So, it is also a state of consciousness. At that time also the soul is conscious, but that consciousness is not expressed through the gross or the subtle body.
Now, beyond this, when there is the expression of consciousness at the spiritual realm independent of the gross and subtle bodies, that is called as Turiya or Samadhi. So, in Turiya or Samadhi stage of consciousness, the fourth and the highest, there is practically no connection of the consciousness of the soul with the body. The person is existing at an entirely different level of consciousness, and when the person is in the body and still experiencing Samadhi or Turiya, the person is often called as Jeevan Mukta, if the person has fully realised the spiritual identity and the spiritual relationship in the spiritual identity.
So, now, Baladevidya Bhushan in his Govinda Bhashya commentary on the Vedanta Sutra explains two important concepts Jnana Swaroopa and Jnana Roopa. So, Jnana Swaroopa is the quality of the soul of being the knower, or rather the very fact that the soul is the knower is called Jnana Swaroopa. And the capacity of the soul to have knowledge of things other than itself is called as Jnana Roopa.
What is the fundamental difference between the two? The soul is the knower, but it is to know something. So, the soul’s being the knower, the soul’s being an ontological specific entity is indicated by the term Jnana Swaroopa. And the soul’s capacity to know various things is connoted by the word Jnana Swaroopa.
So, now when we talk sometimes about expansion of consciousness or blossoming of consciousness. So, what does this refer to? This refers to the expansion of blossoming of the Jnana Roopa. As Jnana Swaroopa the soul is unchanging, but as its power of consciousness is concerned that can contract or expand, that is Jnana Roopa.
This is how Valdividya Hoshan explains that the soul is both changing and unchanging because in the Upanishad literature sometimes it is said that the soul is unchanging. It is Avikarya. There is absolutely no change in the soul.
But then there are other places where it is said that the soul does change. So, he explains that these statements apply to different aspects of the soul. So, as the knower the soul never changes.
The soul is always the knower. But, what it knows may change. That is because its Jnana Roopa may change.
So, in the spiritual world the soul knows Krishna and the associates of Krishna and how to perform devotional service to Krishna. In the material world, the Jnana Roopa of the soul does change. And so the soul comes up or acquires knowledge about various schemes and dreams for sense gratification.
In the Brahma Jyoti, the soul Jnana Roopa changes. The Jnana Roopa is no longer caught in the material realm but it is not entirely entered the spiritual realm also. So, at that time it is a sort of neutral or transitional stage between material and spiritual where the soul is just conscious of its own identity.
Now, in the Advaita philosophy of Shankaracharya, he gives the example of deep dreamless sleep as an example of the bliss of self-realisation. And his idea is that in the deep dream stage the soul actually returns to Brahman. And just as we have no consciousness of anything but when we wake up from dream, we feel relieved.
We feel refreshed. Similarly, that is a glimpse of the joy of Brahman realisation. So, in the Advaitic idea that dream consciousness is the closest that we can get to the bliss of Advaitic realisation, of the oneness of all of creation.
So, however actually, during sleep there is no consciousness at all. So, there is not even the consciousness of bliss that is actually basically the relief from bodily misery and bodily exhaustion and tiredness and rejuvenation of the bodily energy that takes place. And that is what gives the sense of relief.
So, Baladeva Devotion critiques the idea that dream consciousness is an example of the occasion when the soul sort of merges with Brahman and gets the experience of Brahman realisation. But, he does indicate something very substantial about dreams. He explains that the Supreme Lord creates the gross material world using the gross material element and engages Maya in the process of creation.
Maya is the force or energy of illusion. But in dreams actually the Lord engages Maya alone without the utilisation of any gross elements to create the dream objects. What does this mean? This means that he gives the analysis that some dreams are very organised and there are some dreams in which we see events happening in sort of proper space and time.
This thing is happening here, that thing is happening there. So, dreams appear to be like a drama and in some of these dramas we are witnesses, some of these we are participants. But, when we are observing the dreams we are practically never the directors of the drama.
We are not controlling or coordinating everything that is happening in the dream. So, if something is happening in an organised way and we are witnessing or participating in what is happening but we are not controlling or coordinating it, then the very fact that something is happening in an organised way indicates that there has to be an organiser. And Bhaldev Vidyabhushan says that that organiser is the Supreme Lord.
And what is the purpose of dreams, all the drama that is organised in the dreams by the Lord? He says that that is for the purpose of delivering the reactions of certain minor karmas. Just like in the gross world, what happens to us not how we respond, but what happens to us is a playing out of our karmic reactions. Similarly, what happens to us in our dreams is also a playing out of our karmic reactions according to Bhaldev Vidyabhushan.
At the same time, there is a significant difference between dream consciousness and waking consciousness in that in waking consciousness we can choose our responses and we can create fresh karma or by practising devotional service we can avoid creating further karma and initiate the process of burning up our present karma. But in dreams, basically we passively receive the reactions to our karma. So there are some people who often get nightmares whenever they sleep and that is why their sleep is very disturbed.
And why do some people get very peaceful sleep? Why do some people get very joyful dreams? And why do some people get nightmares? Psychology and neurology have no answers for these questions. In fact, even when a rapid eye movement is seen and even if neurology advances to a level where certain brain patterns can indicate that a person is having dreams the brain scans give no idea of what the content of the dream is. So a brain scan may tell that a person is dreaming but to know what the person is dreaming you have to wake up the person and ask.
And if science cannot explain what the person is dreaming, it can have no clue of the answer of why the person is dreaming what he is dreaming. This is not to anyway criticise science but to objectively point out the limitations of the scientific claims that science can explain everything. So why do we have variety in the dream experiences? That is to help us receive our karmic reactions especially minor karmic reactions because even if nightmares involve some intense suffering or certain nightmares involve some intense pleasures they are very briefly lasting.
And so minor reactions come out. Now Baldevudhyamushan further talks about how the dream objects are real. They are not just hallucinatory.
They are not just imaginary. He gives examples of where, of many places in scripture when real knowledge is passed on through the dreams and when real knowledge is passed on through the dreams he gives the example of how Vishwamitra Muni received the Ramakrishna mantra in his dream. So similarly there are examples in modern science of also scientists getting significant insights in how to do their scientific research during their dreams.
So we can just consider one example of German physiologist Otto Loewi who won a Nobel Prize in 1936 for his work on the chemical transmission of nerve impulses. He explains that the key insight for this was received by him in a dream. One night before Easter Sunday he woke up, turned on the light and just wrote down some things on a slip of paper.
Then when he went to sleep again and woke up in the morning he felt that he had written something which was very critical for understanding a statement that he had made 17 years ago of how the chemical transmission of nerve impulses could be explained. But when he went to what he had written the scrawl was incomprehensible. Then he went to sleep again the next day and the next night again at around 3 o’clock he got a further idea.
That idea became more clear. He wrote it down and he just got up and went to the laboratory and performed a single experiment in the frog’s heart according to the design of the experiment that he had got in the dream and the result of that experiment was set up and the results of that experiment resulted not only in a proper explanation of the chemical transmission of nerve impulses but it also helped him, that particular experiment and its results helped him to win the Nobel Prize. So, both historically from the scriptural point of view Vishwamitra getting the Ramakrishna mantra from Lord Shiva and the experience of modern scientists like Otto Loewy indicates that dreams are real in the sense that real information comes in the dreams.
At the same time, Shila Prabhupada in general did not emphasise too much preoccupation with one’s dreams. Since the time of Sigmund Freud and others the analysis of dreams has become a favourite pastime of many psychotherapists and also of common people and Shila Prabhupada did not appreciate this infatuation. He felt that primarily the soul has to change its own mode of action.
The soul has to exercise its free will so that the soul doesn’t serve maya but serves Krishna and that exercise of free will is possible only in the jagruti stage. It is not possible in the swapna stage and therefore our obsession with the dream stage is not very productive from the spiritual point of view. Of course, in the Vedic tradition, in the Vaishnava tradition and even in the Gaudiya Vaishnava tradition, there are examples of the deities being discovered during dreams in the sense that the location of the deities was revealed.
We have Madhavendra Puri being told in a dream by Gopal, where his deity was. Sujata Karmaprabhu, Dr. Michael Cremo has written a series of papers on archaeology using paranormal techniques and he talks about how many of the Vraj deities were excavated based on insights given in the dreams. So, if the spiritual master or a spiritual personality comes in our dream and gives us some instruction or guidance, that is something which is valuable, that is something which can be considered authentic.
But again, that authenticity also has to be seen in the light of scriptures because whenever Krishna gives us some paranormal instructions, paranormal means apart from the normal, we get normal instructions from Guru Sadhu Shastra and Krishna may give us some paranormal instructions or insights through dreams say, but the paranormal instructions normally reiterate and elaborate on the normal instructions. Prabhupada was asked once, Prabhupada, yesterday you came to me in a dream and told me to take LSD. In the early days of ISKCON, one upcoming devotee had asked this.
Prabhupada said, that was not me, that was maya in my garb who came. So, just as Ravana came in the garb of a sadhu, maya may come in the garb of the spiritual master. Therefore, what images we see and what say, instructions or whatever we get in our dreams, the standard to evaluate them has to be Guru Sadhu Shastra.
So, can we get dreams of Krishna as sadhaka devotees? There is no rule that will stop Krishna from coming in our dreams if he wants to. But the important thing is not whether Krishna comes in our dreams or not, because Krishna’s coming in the dreams is an expression of his free will and his free will is always free and his will is sweet. So, if Krishna comes in our dreams, that’s wonderful.
But, that in and of itself is not going to lead to our spiritual advancement. Our spiritual advancement comes not just by Krishna’s mercy, but our reciprocation with Krishna’s mercy. So, if Krishna comes in our dreams, we need to reciprocate by waking up and increasing our service to Krishna.
If we say that Krishna is coming in the dreams, so I am remembering Krishna even while I am sleeping and I sleep for 6 hours, so I am remembering Krishna for 6 hours so there is no need for me to chant the 16th round, because that would be remembrance of Krishna only for 2 hours. What is the use then? Or, if we start taking credit and glory, oh, Krishna came in my dream, Krishna came in my dream, and then we start seeking glory from and respect for or bad from others, then basically, we might have been Krishna conscious in our dreams, but we are ego conscious when we are awake. So, we are not really exercising our free will in a proper way that will lead to our spiritual advancement.
So, therefore, the important thing for our spiritual advancement is not what happens in our dream state, but what happens in our waking stage. What happens in our dream stage may contribute to our getting inspired to do the right thing in the waking stage. Sometimes when devotees are trying to follow the regulative principle of especially no illicit sex, devotees may get some bad dreams at night.
So, as per what Baldev Dev Jain explains, that is the dissipation of some sort of karma which we were supposed to get. Karma can involve pleasure, karma can involve pain and certain sort of dream images may give us some pleasure. And that is how Krishna may dissipate that karma so that a devotee does not have to physically indulge in sensual activities to exhaust that karma.
Now, if we get those images, we may wake up agitated. But if we let ourselves be misled by the mind and start thinking that oh, I am so fallen that even in my dreams I am thinking of Sanskritification. So, therefore, what hope is there for me to give up Sanskritification in my real life? So, let me just indulge in Sanskritification.
Then we are defeating the purpose for which Krishna gave us that dream. Krishna gave us that dream not to agitate us, not to make us hopeless, but to exhaust whatever karma we might have had to accept which would involve us in getting some indulgence so that we can just get it out of the way and focus on Krishna Consciousness. So, what is important is how we practise the normal process of Krishna Consciousness.
So, either way, if we get some dreams which are, which agitate us, then we should see that as an opportunity to deepen our Krishna Consciousness and transcend that agitation. I see that Krishna has given me this agitation in the dream so that I won’t have to get agitated in the daytime. That karma has got exhausted.
But of course, another possibility is that I am myself stimulating my imagination and getting myself agitated. And that causes the agitation in the dream. Then again, we are not using our free will properly.
So, we are conscious of some gratification in the daytime and that’s why we are conscious at dream time also. But here we are talking about the important point is the response. Krishna Prabhupada said that don’t bother too much about the dreams.
Bother about what we are doing when we wake up and serve Krishna. So, if Krishna comes in our dreams, wonderful! Let’s use that inspiration to increase our remembrance and service of Krishna when we are awake. And maybe we can share that with a few intimate devotees.
But no need to broadcast it to the world. Because firstly, the world may not believe us. Even the devotee community may not believe us and may think that we are Sahajiyais.
And even if the devotee community believes us, how is that going to lead to our spiritual advancement? It may just inflate our ego and that will hurt our spiritual advancement. So, our primary relationship with Krishna is through our service. And we can perform service to Krishna only in our Jagatji stage.
Even if say, we get a dream like Madhavendra Puri that so and so deity is hidden somewhere. But even after that we have to wake up and do the hard work of excavating the deity. So therefore, the important point is whether in our Jatruti stage we are trying to serve Krishna or not.
And if we are doing that, we may be Krishna conscious in our Sapna stage or let’s not be Krishna conscious. We will make spiritual advancement. So that’s why we focus on Srila Prabhupada’s direction which is very practical for us.
That, just focus on increasing our service to Krishna and don’t bother too much about dreams. And if some self gratificatory images come up, don’t use that as justification for indulging in self gratification when awake. And if some devotional images and devotional personalities come up, use that as inspiration for deepening our devotional service.
And this way, focus on the Jagruti stage. So, the dreams are real. Now does the soul go out of the body during the dreams? It may or may not.
There is a phenomenon called out of body experiences during which the soul or the person can observe his own body from outside the body. And the person is conscious that I am coming out of the body. Whereas generally speaking, when we are conscious of our dreams, we don’t see our own body.
We experience a different world. We may be in a particular city or we may be flying in the sky or whatever. But generally we don’t look back and see I am flying in the sky and there my body is lying down on bed asleep.
So, generally because we do not experience ourselves coming out of the body as it happens in out of body experiences. Therefore, it is reasonable to infer that actually we do not come out of the body. But, or at least we do not come out of the body in a physical, literal sense.
At a mental level, the subtle world is very different from the gross material world. And as Baldevi Devotee says, subtle world is made by Maya without any gross material substance. And that’s why our sense of time and space doesn’t really apply so clearly in the dream stage.
Yes, we have a sense of passage of time and we may have a sense of travel through space in our dreams. But how that sense of time and space relates with our sense of time and space when we are awake. Generally speaking, the soul imagines everything at the level of the mind.
Imagines in the sense that we are not saying that it is false when he says imagine. We are saying that it is being experienced at the level of the mind. So, according to the Vedic scriptures, the mind is real.
And in that sense, what is experienced at the level of the mind is also real. It is not physical but it is real. That’s why in the earlier ages, for whatever thoughts we would get, if the thoughts were sinful, there would be some level of karmic reaction.
In Kali Yuga, we are exempted because our mind is so restless that we can’t really control what kind of thoughts we will get. But still the underlying principle remains that the mental level is also real level. Irrespective of whether we are in a physical sense, the soul and the subtle body are coming out of the gross body and going to some dream realm or whether the soul and the subtle body are inside the gross body but are experiencing the mental world at a mental realm.
So, both possibilities are there. And in general, the soul stays within the body and experiences at a mental realm where the concepts of time and space are different. They are not as gross as we are.
And that’s why we can experience a different sense of time and space within our dreams. And still, the body can have its basic functions going on and we don’t perceive ourselves from an outer body perspective. So, to summarise, firstly, dream is a state of consciousness in which the consciousness is channelled primarily to the subtle body and some effects are there in the gross body but not in terms of we being conscious of those effects.
So then we discuss dream objects and dream world is real but it is created by Maya, by Krishna using Maya but without using of any gross elements. So, the relief and the joy in the dream is not because the soul is merging with Brahman as the Advaita philosophy says. I didn’t explain this quickly.
The problem with this idea of merger is that the person who sleeps and the person who wakes up remains the same. I remember that I went to sleep yesterday and I remember that I woke up and I also remember that I dreamt something. If the soul is merged in Brahman then what is the reason logically that the same particle that merged in Brahman came out again.
Actually, in Brahman there are no particles. So, the very fact that the same sense of identity continues before sleeping, during dreaming and after waking indicates that there is no merger of the soul with any other entity. There is a continuity of consciousness with the consciousness going to subliminal level.
Now, in deep dream sleep because the soul’s external consciousness is no longer there. The soul goes to the Dahar in the heart in the ether of the heart where the Lord is reciting. Because of that some proximity might be there and some semblance of bliss might be there.
But that is not because of merger. That is because of proximity. And at a biological level it is because of the rest that the body gets.
But again even if there is some proximity to Brahman that doesn’t lead to any spiritual advancement. Because spiritual advancement comes by consciously exercising our free will. And the exercise of the free will is possible only in the Jagatri stage.
Not in the Sapna stage. Then we discussed how real insights may come in the dreams. Further substantiating the idea that dreams are real.
But real spiritual advancement happens only based on what we do when we wake up. So even if we get some instructions when we are dreaming or some insights or special visions that is Krishna’s mercy. But how we reciprocate with Krishna’s mercy depends on what we do after we wake up.
And that is why Srila Prabhupada did not take dreams too seriously and urges not to become infatuated with dreams. Whether they are agitating dreams where we experience some sensual temptations or indulgences. Or whether they are devotional dreams where we experience some visions.
The important point is that we continue our devotional service either way. And if in a dream we get an idea that we should increase our devotional service, that is wonderful. There is a in Vallabhidhyanagar there is a temple where the owner of a big house got a dream in which Srila Prabhupada told him, you have become old now you retire and give this house for Krishna’s service.
And he woke up and did that. And that is how we made spiritual advancement. The dream in itself did not lead to spiritual advancement.
So that is why without becoming too preoccupied with dreams. We understand that the Vedic philosophy gives us a broad philosophical interpretive framework for understanding everything including dreams. But the transformation happens only in the waking stage.
And that is why we need to focus on the waking stage to exercise our free will properly and make spiritual