Hinduism explains that we live our lives in three conditions or conditions. They are:
- Awake,
- Visualizing or lost in the virtual world, and
- Deep Sleep.
Throughout the whole of human life, we are in one of these three states.
Curiously modern human beings are essentially asleep in their waking lives and attentive or wakeful to their dreaming lives. This doesn’t seem very clear but let me explain.
We live in hallucinations and enjoy creating different scenarios in our heads while we are awake because it is often more interesting to us than what we call everyday life.
And there is a real reason for this. With the dying, in the outer world, of the sacred- the realms of rituals, history, and symbols – the ceremonies of guidance and insight have now become internalized. When you’re asleep, your guard is down; the natural inhibitors are relaxed. So that is the time that the subconscious rises and makes itself heard.
There is an additional reason for our addiction to hallucination and dreams; we have become compulsively visual individuals. Of the five senses, sight is the one most highlighted in modern society. We experience, take in, and evaluate other individuals and the world around us chiefly through optical impressions. The other senses are necessary too, but they are gathered around the central visual image.
We have become beings who need visual distraction – Instagram, video, Netflix, in our pockets, in our workplace and our home, in our magazines, cars, pictures of food on packaging, cinematography, photography, 3D panoramic visual images abound. So is it any surprise that we have begun to experience the world as if it were a kind of a 1080 video presentation – over-stimulating, spectacular, sense-numbing, visually and emotionally invasive? By comparison, the world may seem rather pedestrian and unspectacular.
The dream world, however, knows nothing of such restrictions as those in waking life. They are absolutely wild. We fly, perform enormous feats, and defy limitations of place, time, and normal inhibitions. Dreams fascinate us with fantasies of pleasure; we can meet individuals we feel supernaturally close to, perceive clarity and light beyond the vividness of waking life and perform deeds and actions about which we may feel ashamed or guilty.
Dreams Can guide you.
By developing a kind of an agreement with your dreams, you can create a dialog with the unconscious mind, ask for specific guidance, and access profound wells of wisdom. This takes us back to where we started – the three states of Awake, lost in the virtual world, and Deep Sleep. Hinduism’s greatest discovery, the sacred syllable OM, or A U M, is the sound of the universe, and it is the primary experience of transcendence, revealing as inner radiance.
Breaking down A-U-M, the A is the conscious state of consciousness; the M is the event of transcendent consciousness, and the transitional or mediating sound in the middle is the U, which is the dream consciousness. So dreams mediate between our waking self and our transcendent self.
Master this, and you will master life.
