VBT – Meditation 75.0
WAKING, SLEEPING, DREAMING, KNOW YOU AS LIGHT.
The Life Of The Mind
WAKING, SLEEPING, DREAMING, KNOW YOU AS LIGHT. First start with waking. Yoga and Tantra divide the life of man’s mind into three divisions – the life of the mind, remember. They divide the mind into three divisions: waking, sleeping, dreaming. These are not the divisions of your consciousness, these are the divisions of your mind, and the consciousness is the fourth.
They have not given any name to it in the east; they call it simply the fourth, turiya. These three have names. These are the clouds, they can be named – a waking cloud, a sleeping cloud, a dreaming cloud. They are all clouds, and the space in which they move – the sky – is unnamed, left simply as the fourth.
Western psychology has only recently become aware of the dreaming dimension. Really, only with Freud, dreaming became important. But with Hindus, this is one of the most ancient concepts: that you cannot really know a man unless you know what he is doing in his dreams. Because whatsoever he is doing in his waking hours is more or less bound to be acting, false, because in the waking state of his mind he is forced to do many things.
He is not free. The society is there, rules are there, moralities are there. He is constantly struggling with his own desires: suppressing them, modifying them, moulding them in the mould the society allows. And society never allows you to be your total being; it chooses. That is what a culture means – culture means a choice.
Every culture is a conditioning: a choice of certain things and a denial of certain things. Your total being is not accepted anywhere; it is not – nowhere. Certain aspects are accepted here, certain aspects are accepted there, in this country or that, but nowhere is the total human being accepted.
So the waking consciousness is bound to be false, pseudo, artificial, forced. You are not real there – just actors; not spontaneous – manipulated. Only in dreams are you free; only in dreams are you authentically yourself.
You can do whatsoever you like in your dreams. No one is concerned; you are alone. No one can penetrate, no one can look into your dreams. And no one is bothered: what you do in your dreams is your business, no one is concerned. They are absolutely private. Because they are absolutely private and related to no one, you can be free. So unless your dreams are known, your real face cannot be known. Hindus have been aware of it: dreams must be penetrated. But they are still clouds – private of course, freer, but still clouds, and one has to go beyond them also.
These are the three states: waking and sleeping and dreaming. Dreaming became very primary with Freud. Now sleeping has been touched. Now, many sleep labs are working in the west to know what sleep is, because it seems to be very strange that we don’t know what sleep is. What really happens to you in sleep is not yet known scientifically.
And if we cannot know what sleep is, it will be difficult to know what man is, because for one third of his life he will be sleeping. One third of your life! If you are going to live for sixty years, for twenty years you will be sleeping. It is such a major part. What are you doing while you are asleep?
Something mysterious is going on, and it is so essential that life is not possible without it. Something deep is happening, but you are not aware.
Tags: The Life Of The Mind
