Are dreams real or not?

Answer Podcast

Now, are dreams real or not? See, sometimes the category of reality and unreality, it is just inadequate to describe things because sometimes we just, we have a particular conception when we say something is real and that conception itself may be questionable. So, what I was quoting Baldev Vidyabhushan I said that he says, in our dreams, we are observers or participants but we are not the controllers.
So, dreams are also real in some senses. In what sense? He says that some people always have bad dreams. Some people always have bad dreams.
Yes. I know one friend who he basically is afraid of sleeping because whenever he sleeps, he gets bad dreams. And he needs sleep.
All bodies need sleep. Right. He is so afraid of sleep.
So, what to do? Even if he takes sleeping pills and he gets to sleep, as soon as he sleeps, he gets nightmares. It’s a very difficult situation to be in. So, what the explanation for this is that just as some people in their living real life, they get too many distresses.
Too many distresses. Maybe they get two diseases, they lose their job, their loved ones leave them or whatever. All of us get distresses but some people get at some phases in their life just too many distresses.
So, the understanding is that we all have, there is a law of karma by which we do certain actions and we get certain reactions. So, for major karmas that we do, for big karmas, the reactions come at the physical level. So, I might get a fracture or I might lose my job or my loved one might leave me.
These are major reactions. But for minor karmas that we have done, we get reactions in dreams. So, when I get a bad dream, that is also a reaction to a karma.
So, that’s why some people get good dreams, some people get bad dreams. So, dreams are real in the sense that we do really experience whatever comes in the dream. We experience pleasure, we experience pain and that is a karmic reaction to what we have done in the past.
So, in that sense, the dreams are real. Now, if somebody is using the reality, the word reality in the sense that whatever is foretold, whatever is seen in the dream is going to happen in real life. That may or may not happen.
That varies. Not everything that we see in the dream is going to come true. So, that depends on other circumstances also.
But so, if we are, if we equate reality with what we experience at the physical level, then somebody can argue dreams are not real. But if we understand reality in terms of what we tangibly experience, then we do experience dreams. And whatever we experience in the dream, that does have an effect on it.
So, then, rather than saying that dreams are real or unreal, we can say that reality itself is at three levels. There is physical reality, there is mental reality, there is spiritual reality. And dreams are, may not be real at the physical level, but they are real at the mental level.
They are real experiences that the soul has at the mental level of reality. And some of the dreams may be some kind of prophecies or oracles which may become real. Some of them may just be fantasies.
Sometimes I see a golden mountain and I see a horse. I think I, sometimes I see a mountain, I see gold and I see a golden mountain. So, there are two images which are brought together.
So, some of the dreams are like that.