Why the same dream?

[egodust]

Miguel Angel Carrasco wrote:
>
> Sorry to trouble you with this that may seem to you a silly subject.
>

Yes, after sufficient contemplation, *all* subjects are necessarily seen
to be silly.

Namaste.

_______________________

"There are no answers
       because
there are no questions."
_______________________

http://digital.net/~egodust
>From ADVAITA-L at TAMU.EDU Sat Nov 22 17:06:44 1997
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From: Miguel Angel Carrasco <nisargadata at MX3.REDESTB.ES>
Subject: Why the same dream?
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>From the latest answers to the subject ^ÓWhy the same dream?^Ô, I see that we
are converging into Thesis B), ie Coincidence in the many dreams due to a
common factor.

Gummurulu wrote: ^ÓWe see the same Milky Way [...] because we are
indoctrinated by the same maaya^Ô.

And Prashant Sharma: ^ÓThe mind is like an atmosphere that all living beings
share^Ô.

So we have Thesis B). I like that.

Rereading all the postings, I must confess I was not very honest: I said ^ÓI
have a provisional satisfactory answer to this question^Ô, but I did not say
which. That was too conceited of me, and I apologize. So I will try to
state my position now, but not before properly answering the two postings
mentioned above.

Dear Gummuluru, you say that ^ÓOnly after our indoctrination by maaya, do we
see the difference between the snake and the rope and our superposition of
the snake on the rope^Ô, which does not yet apply with children  : ^ÓThe
child would be playing with the snake as she would be playing with a rope^Ô.
But that would imply that maaya is just the result of experience or
education, and that a person´s first few years or months are free from
maaya. OK, then why are the worlds (the waking dreams) of several small
children living near each other remarkably the same? You cannot say
^Óbecause they share the same outside world^Ô: there is no such thing,
everythings is in consciousnes, in those children^Òs minds. Why do those
infant minds have such similar dreams? No, maaya may be the cause of taking
the whole picture for real, but that picture appears in billions of copies.
Why are they so very much alike? Minds cannot see outside themselves (there
is nothing outside). However all minds have very similar contents. Why?

Dear Prashant Sharma, I just cannot understand what you mean by ^ÓThe mind
is like an atmosphere that all living beings share^Ô. As I understand,
living beings are just minds. Bodies do not exist outside consciousness.
There is only consciousness, and the content of consciousness can be
described as minds, bodies, etc. In fact, all things, all concepts and
percepts are just thoughts, the contents of consciousness. There cannot be
an outside atmosphere which would influence minds, because there cannot be
an ^Óoutside of consciousness^Ô. I think this is a very fundamental point in
Advaita. Consciousness does not appear in matter, but the other way round.

You also said, dear Prashant, something very interesting: ^ÓFor a realized
person, there is still the world, the Milky Way and the continents^Ô.
Indeed. And that brings me back to ask again: Why did Samkara, Ramakrishna,
Vivekananda, Nisargadatta, Ramana etc continue to dream of the _same_
cosmos even after realization of their true Self? Of course they now saw
it, as you well say, ^Ófor what they are, just superpositions on Nirguna
Brahman^Ô. But why the same superimpositions in all cases?

Before I go on to state my personal, provisional and possibly wrong
position, I would like to stress first that of course I do not take dreams
(both sleeping and waking) as something real. There is no reality in
anything perceivable. Whatever can be seen, felt, heard, remembered,
foreseen, or otherwise experienced, is just a thought in dual
consciousness. Even the sense ^ÓI am^Ô.  No content, not form, no idea, no
object, no subject, no anything is real. Only the Absolute One.

My version of Thesis B) :

This well established, I must also admit that The One manifests Itself onto
Itself. And that manifestation is necessarily dual (by definition). The One
is a present infinitude of beingness, blisss and pure awareness (Nirguna,
Avyakta), but also an infinite potentiality. Everything imaginable is
potentially contained in It. And It manifests a minimal portion of that in
Its manifestation (Saguna, Vyakta). Saguna is nothing but Nirguna, or
rather a tiny aspect of It. We can hardly say anything about Nirguna, the
One Fundamental Reality. But I think we can say a few things about Saguna.
Saguna, the manifestation, is Dual-Consciousness. In it, the Subject (the
Witness) and the Object (the Universe) appear together.

But the Witness does not only watch the Universe as a whole, as the Not-I.
The Subject also experiences it in each and every object. In every person,
in every animal, in every plant, even in every stone, the Self is present.
It gives beings (which are only mental appearances in the One
Consciousness) their power to feel, to see, to react. When a sunflower
turns towards the sun, it is the Self, the Witness, who senses the
sunlight. When animals see or hear, it is the Witness who experiences. When
persons think or sleep, it is the Self who is imagining. There is hardly
any difference between dead or living beings. Everything is dead and alive
at the same time. Alive, because everything changes, interacts, affects and
is affected by everything else. Dead, because it is only through the Self
that any object can appear to interact. The Self is Life itself.  There is
thus only one dreamer, and only one total dream, but there are also myriads
of partial versions of the one dream.

This also explains how a partial dream (an individual mind) can affect
another one. That is also the basis for the feeling of love: the Self in
each partial dream is seeking unity by joining the other dreams. And the
jnani is the dream where the Self sees all other dreams as various aspects
of the same whole, without any sense of  ^Óme^Ô anymore, but watching
everything as a cinema film shown in many screens, a splendid
breathtakingly beautiful picture. Because the One is quite an Artist.

Miguel Angel

PS. If you like this version of Thesis B) that is because it is based on
Nisargadatta Maharaj^Òs teachings. If there is something in it you do not
like, that is due to my faulty interpretation of it. This is not false
modesty.
Quite the opposite, I´m afraid. Because who is Nisargadatta but my truer
Self?