Evidence Of Illusion In Dreams

Keshav Shrivastava

When I had first learnt regarding the illusory nature of the world and self, I was left confounded. I had been looking for the truth and I was imagining it to be complex and final. However, it is so simple, yet it is so difficult to imbibe.

Growing up, I had always felt that something is wrong with the world and myriad purposes that seemed to be driving my life around are flimsy, yet it was difficult for me to fully accept the truth when I finally learnt it. The reason lies in the design of the illusion. When the self that we identify with, is itself illusory and all its endeavours converge on this illusion then it is almost impossible to turn our attention away from this cyclic mechanism. For example, when we are completely lost in colorful imagery on the film screen then it is easy to forget the screen in the background. However, just as every puzzle has clues and as every movie screening has intervals, similarly state changes in experience are filled with clues. Mainly for me, the dream state experience seems to be regular reminder of the true nature of self and the world.

I was filled with amazement when for the first time I had heard Guruji unlock another simple truth, that what we identify as reality is actually a subset of dream state. It is almost as if the illusion itself has dropped breadcrumbs on our path of knowledge. And we walk this path full of breadcrumbs nearly every night.

Although the dreams are highly meaningless, short and often event ripples of our waking world yet the dream has all the clues of self appearance and purposelessness. In the dream, the self, the people and world are not reality, and just as we realize that the dream self and dream experience are meaningless, so is this worldly self and the worldly experience which we call reality. Just as the myriad events in dream occur on their own, so is the case in the waking world. As difficult as it is to see this truth now while we are in the waking state, but we do realize this truth every time the dream breaks and our attention returns to the waking state. With this analogy, we can relate to the experience as self appearing and purposeless and this knowledge has become one of my tools to stay in awareness.

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Evidence Of Illusion In Dreams

Keshav Shrivastava