Should we feel guilty about some immoral desires that are unconnected with our waking desires?

Answer Podcast

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
We feel guilty of some dreams which are not at all connected to our desires.
How to deal with them? That means you are saying that we don’t have the desires in the day time but still the dreams come at night. So, what to do about them? Then in the Vedanta Sutra, in the Govinda Bhashya, that is the commentary of Baldevidya Bhashya, there is a very beautiful section on dreams. And there he explains that actually people say dreams are false.
But Baldevidya Bhashya says dreams are also real. And it’s a whole elaborate analysis. I have a whole class on dreams actually.
But here I’ll just take 2-3 points. Basically he says that if we consider our dreams, in some of our dreams we are observers, in some of our dreams we are participants. But in none of our dreams are we the absolute controllers.
That means, you know, sometimes we say it was like a dream. But actually even our dream, we are not always the absolute controller. Even in our dreams sometimes things happen which we don’t want to happen.
This happened, that happened. So, he says, if I am not the controller of the dreams, then what is determining the dreams? So, he says that just as this physical world is created by Ishwara, it is created by the Lord to give us the results of our karma. I got some good results, some bad results.
We are born in this world to get the results. So, the gross world is created by Ishwara to give us the gross results of our karma. And the subtle world of dreams is created by Ishwara to give us the subtle results of karma.
So, that means if some small wrong things have been done by us in the past, then the reactions to them come in dreams. Sometimes some people, they sleep and they get nightmares. Now, it’s miserable.
The body needs sleep, but as soon as they sleep, they get nightmares. It’s a miserable state. Now, why is that happening? They get those nightmares because those nightmares are a reaction to some karma.
So, like that, sometimes in our dreams, we may get certain desires which are just playing out of some past karma. Normally, we think of karmic reactions in terms of some sufferings. But karmic reactions are not necessarily in terms of sufferings alone.
Sometimes, karmic reactions may also come in terms of increased desires. Sometimes, we may go through some phases when suddenly the desires within us, the lust, the anger, the greed, the whole craving shoots up sometimes. So, those are also phases.
Those phases come because of our past karma. Just like those phases can come in terms of the desires hiking up because of past karma. Sometimes, so, like that, some desires may come in our heart, in our dreams also.
so, Valdivajan explains that the key difference between the dream state and the awaking state is that we have our swecha in jagruti. We can’t exercise our swecha so much in swapna. In dreams, just things happen and we also do things.
We consciously choose, should I do this or should I do that? And then we deliberate and we decide. There may be all that, but it’s not really we are thinking in the dream, we are just seeing it happening. He says, our destiny is primarily determined by our choices.
So, because we don’t consciously choose in dreams, therefore, whatever happens in dream, that is simply exhaustion of past karma. It is not incurring of new karma. So, even if I get some desires in the dream, I am not going to incur any karma by that.
It is just exhaust, that those desires are coming and my past karma is getting exhausted. In the conscious stage, in the awakened stage, we respond to desires and if we respond to wrong desires or wrong actions, then we are incurring karma. That’s why, in general, Prabhupada said don’t worry too much about dreams.
Prabhupada’s attitude was, dreams will come and dreams will go. You don’t have to get too much worried about whatever dreams might be there.