[Advaita-l] Dreams and Reality

[Pranipata]

Hari Om Shri Michaelji,  Pranaams!

Yes. Vedanta is simple and direct.

If one agrees dream is imagination, what need to put machines on some other 
sleeping person to find more how one imagines!

Now narration of an incident in form of story.

Someone walking with his food-packet, got an increasing feeling that luggage 
is very heavy and hard to carry as day progressed. So he sat down, ate the 
food, continued the journey walking not feeling the weight of luggage 
anymore.

Experiencing heaviness in carrying when the food was external to the body 
and not so when consumed! Since both cannot be true, both has to be 
imagination only.

cittakAlAH hi ye antaH tu dvayakAlAH ca ye bahiH.
kalpitAH eva te sarve visheShaH na anya hetukaH..(Mandukya Karika 2.14)
Things that exist internally as long as the thought lasts and things that 
are externally related to two points of time, are all imaginations. Their 
distinction is not caused by anything else.

In Shri Guru Smriti,
Br. Pranipata Chaitanya

There are recorded occasions of scientific discoveries made during dream :
which suggests that the old association of dreams with 'artistic dreaming'
or 'creative dreaming' may well be correct : the mind free of other states,
awareness of actuality or non-awareness.

What is most extrordinary is the totally different individual dreams that
re-occur !

It suggests that dreams confront us, in that mysterious state, with
untruth -- as if we construct cheap novels of our life, which are recognised
to be untrue on waking -- as indeed, as one gets older, one's life seems
more and more a dream which only slightly approximates to reality !

Michael