DREAMS

I am not only saying that dreams are dreams; I say that whatsoever you see when you think you are awake is also a dream. The dreams that you see with closed eyes in your sleep, and the dreams that you see with your open eyes in your so-called awake state -- both are dreams and both are meaningless.

The questioner must have felt hurt -- because you would like even your dreams to have meaning. That's how psychoanalysis has become so important. People are foolish: they want their dreams also to have great meaning. Even their lives are meaningless! And they think their dreams are meaningful.

You don't have any meaning right now -- you cannot have. Meaning arises only when you are in flow, flowing with God. Meaning is a happening between you and God, when you are in tune: there is no other meaning. All other meaning is just illusion.

Try to understand what I mean by "meaning". Meaning is when there is a harmony between you and the whole. When there is a subtle dance and you are in step with the whole, there is meaning. Life is an orchestra, and if you start playing your flute solo and you forget the orchestra, then there is no meaning. Then you are a nuisance. And whatsoever you are doing is not only meaningless, it is against meaning. It is better that you stop. For God's sake, stop! When you are flowing with the total and there is no individual left, no ego left, there is meaning. With the ego there is no meaning -- because ego is a jarring note, ego is a noise, ego is a resistance against the whole.

The ego says: "I am separate and I have my own private destiny." Hence, egoistic people always feel deep down that their lives are meaningless. In the west now meaninglessness has become almost a common thing, a cliché. Everybody is talking about meaninglessness.

People are rich, people are well-fed, they have good shelters. In fact, for the first time in history a few countries have come to a point where they are free of poverty, of all the ugliness that comes through poverty and all the limitation that poverty brings. They are free. But the moment they become free, they start feeling meaningless.

Poor persons are not so aware of meaninglessness. Because they have to earn money, there is meaning; they have to send their children to the university, there is meaning; they are going to make a good house somewhere in the future, they are accumulating, by and by, a little money for it, they will have an Ambassador car someday; there is meaning.

One day suddenly you have all: a good life, good clothes, good food. Then meaning disappears.

A poor man always seems hopeful. You can always see a glimpse of hope in the eyes of a beggar. But rich men's eyes become dim, dull; the hope disappears.

The rich man's eyes become like a desert, with no oasis, with no hopes. What happens? All that he had been thinking up to now as meaningful has become meaningless because he has achieved it. And suddenly he becomes aware of the total emptiness within.

Meaning happens, real meaning happens only when you start falling in tune with God, or the whole, or call it cosmos, existence, or whatever. When you are in tune with the whole there arises great benediction. Great grace surrounds you. Your heart is full, fulfilled; a deep contentment and peace and serenity. There is meaning.

That's why I said that dreams are dreams; don't be too bothered by them. And if you want to have some meaning, you can have it. You can go to the Freudian psychoanalyst -- he will find meaning in it. He has some meaning already prepared for you. Whatsoever dream you bring, he will enforce his meaning on it.

You saw the Taj Mahal in your dream? He will say these are phallic pillars. So the dream is sexual. Go to the Adlerian: he says that all problems arise out of an inferiority complex. You have seen the Taj Mahal? So you want to be like the Taj Mahal -- superior, great, unique. Go to the Jungian and he will find some other meaning.

You can go to many psychotherapists and they will all find different meanings. And this is something that nobody looks at: the whole thing that the meaning is not coming from your dream, the meaning is coming from the analyst.

I have heard about President Sukarno of Indonesia. He was strictly a sex man, strictly a libido man, strictly Freudian. He could never pass a statue without patting it on the derrière. All his conversation away from the affairs of state -- and he had some of the greatest affairs in his state -- was always about the ladies. Here is his description of women:

A woman of twenty is like the continent of Africa -- wild and untamed.
A woman of thirty is like Asia -- hot-blooded and passionate.
A woman of forty is like the U.S.A. -- overly-trained and too well-techniqued.
A woman of fifty is like Europe -- decaying and falling apart.
A woman of sixty is like Australia -- everybody knows where it is, but who wants to go there?

So you can go and take your dreams to some Sukarno; he will find nothing but sex. Even geography becomes symbolic only for sexuality. Even Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia -- suddenly they have a totally different meaning you have never heard before. You project.

I am not a psychoanalyst. And people feel very good when they go to a psychoanalyst and the psychoanalyst listens very attentively to your nonsense. Nobody listens to your nonsense so attentively. And why should anybody listen? The psychoanalyst has to listen; you pay for it, so he listens very attentively. It is your time! In fact, who bothers? Even the psychoanalyst just pretends that he is listening.

I have heard an anecdote about Freud.

A young apprentice was working with him. He was young and full of energy, but to listen to people's nonsense dreams the whole day is tiring business, uninteresting, boring. But he was always surprised to see Freud: he was always full of energy. never bored. One day, by the evening when he was leaving his master, he asked Freud: "You are old, aged, but you are never tired. And from the morning to the night you are continuously listening to neurotic things, meaningless. But I get tired -- after two, three patients, I'm completely exhausted."

Freud laughed. He said: "Who listens?"

You have just to pretend that you are listening, you have just to learn the trick of pretending that you are listening, that you are tremendously interested. You are interested only in the money that he is going to pay.

But the patient feels very good: "Here is somebody who listens so attentively." There is a great desire in human beings that somebody should listen to their miseries. It unburdens them, and it gives them a feeling that somebody loves, cares. That's why you go on talking about miseries

Everybody goes on talking about his miseries, illnesses, this and that, and wants the other to sympathize.

You feel you are not alone. And when you are telling nonsense dreams and the psychoanalyst brings beautiful explanations, great theories, suddenly you feel you are very meaningful, you are no ordinary person -- just see what beautiful dreams you have! Maybe you have not created a great painting like Picasso and you have not written a great book like Shakespeare, but so what? You have dreamed such beautiful dreams that even a Freud, a Jung, an Adler is interpreting them -- and they really interpret very beautifully.

But this whole business is nonsense; a dream is a dream.

And the whole effort in the East has been totally different: we have never bothered about the meaning of dreams. Our whole effort is to make you aware so that dreams disappear.

I have been telling you again and again a famous Zen anecdote....

A Zen Master woke up in the morning and he saw a disciple passing by. He called him: "Come here! I had a very beautiful dream. Would you like to interpret it?"

He said: "Wait. Let me bring a bucket of water. You please wash your face."

The Master waited. The disciple brought a bucket of water and the Master washed his face. By that time another disciple was passing, and he called. He said: "Listen, come here! I had a beautiful dream. Would you like to interpret it?"

He said: "Wait. You have washed your face? I will bring a cup of tea for you." And he brought a cup of tea.

The Master was very happy and he said: "If you had tried to interpret, I would have thrown you out of the monastery!"

This is the right interpretation: you had a dream? Wash your face, be finished! Still lingering a little? Have a cup of tea, but get out of it! It is a dream! What is there to interpret?

Only one thing has to be remembered: that you dreamed because you were unconscious. And now you are trying to interpret it; still you are clinging to it. It happened because you were fast asleep.

For a Buddha dreams disappear; they don't happen, they cannot happen -- because he becomes so alert that even in sleep a subtle layer of awareness remains. He never loses his awareness. That's what Krishna means when he says in the Geeta: "When everybody is fast asleep, the yogi is awake."

It does not mean that the yogi just stands in the room and remains awake -- he would go mad! He also sleeps, but somewhere deep down a substratum remains alert, a small lamp continues burning inside. And in that light, no dreams can penetrate.

Buddha is reported to have said that dreams are like thieves: if the house is dark and there is no lamp inside, the thieves become interested in the house. They come closer, they look from the windows. And if the master is fast asleep, then even better. And if the guard is no longer on duty today, then perfect -- they enter.

Dreams are like thieves.

When there is a guard sitting at the door, thieves stay away. When the light is inside the house and the windows are full of light, they don't dare to come close. And when they see that the master is fully awake and moving, and there is talk and singing and people moving around, and shadows, they don't come at all.

Dreams happen because you are not aware in your sleep. And dreams continue to happen in your waking state also, because then too your awareness is just so-so, very lukewarm, nothing much.

So think of dreams only as symbolic in this sense: they prove that you have not yet become alert enough -- that's all. That's the meaning when I said that to you.

The questioner had written a long letter relating a dream. This was my message: that dreams are dreams, without any meaning; don't be too bothered by them. Only one thing is important: when dreams are happening in your sleep you lose all your consciousness. In the daytime also you are not very conscious; so become more conscious. Don't pay much attention to dreams, otherwise it can become a very dangerous game.

You start playing with dreams -- their meaning, their symbols, their myth, and you go in and in -- one layer upon another layer, and you will be lost!

Mulla Nasruddin was walking into town one evening when he suddenly came across a pile of cow shit on the path. He bent over slightly and looked at it carefully.
"Looks like it," he said to himself.
He leaned closer and sniffed: "Smells like it."
He cautiously put his finger in it, then tasted it: "Tastes like it. I'm sure glad I didn't step in it!"

Beware of analysis!
by
k.jagadeesh 
+91-9841121780, 9543187772.
Email:jagadeeshkri@gmail.com