ADVAITA-L Digest - classification of lucid dreams

[Ramakrishnan Balasubramanian]

Giri and Sista wrote about lucid dreams:

>>         Regarding the svapna debate, I have a question based on lucid
>> dreaming. Most of the times when I dream, I am aware that I am dreaming.
>> That is, if I see myself being attacked by a tiger, I know that it is not
>> real and that I am sleeping on the mattress and nothing will happen to my
>> body. This is mostly consistent with the term lucid dreaming { i heard of
>
>I used to have occasional lucid dreams few years ago(after my 12th, when
>I read about astral travelling). I dont have them anymore. They used to
>be lot of fun. You can do some outrageous things like fly, go through
>walls, jump off cliffs and smoothly land on the ground ..etc
>Sometimes, such outrageous events used to give me the knowledge that
>I am dreaming (this is by deduction within the dream).

The state you describe is not described as dreaming (svapna), but rather
jaagrat-svapna, by the kaivalyam. I reproduce for your benefit:

jaagrat svapna - the state of day dreaming, castles in the air. The fussy ego
conjuring up visions is the jaagrat-svapna state.

svapna - the dream state. Having _uncontrollable_ visions, sleeping after a full
meal is the svapna state.

In my case I rarely dream, even if I do dream there is virtually nothing
happening most of the time. It's like I'm just sitting there or something like
that.

egodust wrote:

>analysis--, irrelevant.  To wit: ideas that the waking and dream states are
>projections of Mind-stuff, being itself a projection of Cidakasa, only
>hold water relative to the phenomenal constructs of the shakti matrix.
>And the changeable shakti expression is only some mysterious artform spun
>from ParaBrahmam which, subject to birth and later death, even now doesn't
>exist.

>I submit that any settlement on any idea [including the idea in this
>very sentence] is prone to annihilation.  Moksha will not tolerate it.
>This seems to be the occult mandate of Siva.

Fine, but it's one thing to say it, and another thing to actually realize it.
Mere intellectual understanding of this will go only a certain distance, which
is the stage I am in :-).

As far as vyavahaarika goes, we have only logic and the scriptures (if you
believe them) to guide us. So it is impossible to abandon logic altogether.
However logic is powerful enough to reveal it's own flaws, akin to the
Cartesian way of thinking. It's like the stick used to kindle the funeral pyre,
it is finally burnt in the fire it helped create.

Ramakrishnan.
--
Two monks were arguing about a flag. One said, "The flag is moving." The other
said, "The wind is moving." The sixth patriarch happened to be passing by. He
told them, "Not the wind, not the flag; mind is moving." - The Gateless Gate