ADVAITA-L lucid dreams and astavakra gita

[Giri]

There was a query here on obtaining astavakra gita. There are many
well-known translations of the text available including an online copy of
it in my home page,

http://www.geocities.com/RodeoDrive/1415/asta.html

        Some good bookstores where the book may be obtained are

vedanta bookstore (800-816-2242) (vedanta at aol.com)
21st century bookstore (800-593-book)
Bodhi Tree (800-825-9798) (bodhitree at bodhitree.com)
east-west bookstore (800-909-6161)


Ramakrishna wrote:
> Another thing is that I have seen some lucid dreamers and all of them are very
> light sleepers, are you also one? Usually nothing short of an earthquake can
> wake me up :-).

        If you want earthquakes to wake you up, you better move to
southern California :-) Lucid dreams, similar to other dreams, occur
during REM (rapid eye movement) sleep, which follows the "delta" sleep.
Thus there is a difference between lucid dreams and "day-dreaming"  or
dreaming due to indigestion (Hell is the idea first formed from an
undigested apple dumpling - 'Moby Dick'). I don't think there is a
correlation between "light" sleepers and lucid dreamers (though I haven't
seen the research papers published on this subject).
        Lucid dreaming is certainly not a new subject. It has been
practiced for thousand of years by Tibetan yogis and Tantric yogis. The
idea was to dream whatever you want and realize the subjective nature of
the experience. The purpose was to extend it to the waking state. In fact,
the person who made lucid dreaming famous and wrote a doctoral
dissertation on it, Stephen LaBerge, remarks that lucid dreaming can be
used to ascertain that there is essentially no difference between the
waking state and the dream state and that both are unreal since all matter
are projections of the mind. As Homer simpson says, 'What is matter ?
Never mind. What is mind ? Doesn't matter.' :-)

Giri