REVERENCE TO THE HIGHEST SELF!

1. In the intermediate place [of dreams] there is (a real) creation; for (scripture) says (that).

In the preceding pâda we have set forth, with reference to the knowledge of the five fires, the various stages of the soul's passing through the samsâra. We shall now set forth the soul's different states (waking, dreaming, &c.)--Scripture says (Bri. Up. IV, 3, 9; 10), 'When he falls asleep--; there are no chariots in that state, no horses, no roads, but he himself creates chariots, horses, and roads,' &c.--Here a doubt arises whether the creation thus taking place in dreams is a real one (pâramârthika) like the creation seen in the waking state, or whether it consists of illusion (mâyâ).--The pûrvapakshin maintains that 'in the intermediate place (or state) there is (a real) creation.' By intermediate place we have to understand the place of dreams, in which latter sense the word is used in the Veda, 'There is a third intermediate state, the state of dreams' (Bri. Up. IV, 3, 9). That place is called the intermediate place because it lies there where the two worlds, or else the place of waking and the place of bliss (deep sleep), join. In that intermediate place the creation must be real; because scripture, which is authoritative, declares it to be so, 'He creates chariots, horses, roads,' &c. We, moreover, infer this from the concluding clause, 'He indeed is the maker' (Bri. Up. IV, 3, 10).

2. And some (state the Self to be) the shaper (creator); sons and so on (being the lovely things which he shapes).

Moreover the members of one sâkhâ state that the Self is, in that intermediate state, the shaper of lovely things, 'He, the person who is awake in us while we are asleep, shaping one lovely thing after another' (Ka. Up. II, 5, 8). Lovely things in this passage means sons, &c., that are so called because they are beloved.--But may not the term 'kâmâh' denote desires merely?--No, we reply; the word kâma is here used with reference to sons, &c.; for those form the general subject of discussion, as we see from some preceding passages, 'Choose sons and grandsons,' &c., and 'I make thee the enjoyer of all kâmas' (Ka. Up. I, 1, 23; 24).--And that that shaper is the highest Self (prâgña) we infer from the general subject-matter and from the complementary sentence. That the highest Self is the general subject-matter appears from II, 14, 'That which thou seest as neither this nor that.' And to that highest Self there also refers the complementary sentence II, 5, 8, 'That indeed is the Bright, that is Brahman, that alone is called the Immortal. All worlds are contained in it, and no one goes beyond.'--Now it is admitted that the world (creation) of our waking state of which the highest Self (prâgña) is the maker is real; hence the world of our dreaming state must likewise be real. That the same reasoning applies to the waking and the sleeping state a scriptural passage also declares, 'Here they say: No, this is the same as the place of waking, for what he sees while awake the same he sees while asleep' (Bri. Up. IV, 3, 14).--Hence the world of dreams is real.--To this we reply as follows.

3. But it (viz. the dream world) is mere illusion (mâyâ), on account of its nature not manifesting itself with the totality (of the attributes of reality).

The word 'but' discards the pûrvapaksha. It is not true that the world of dreams is real; it is mere illusion and there is not a particle of reality in it.--Why?--'On account of its nature not manifesting itself with the totality,' i.e. because the nature of the dream world does not manifest itself with the totality of the attributes of real things.--What then do you mean by the 'totality'?--The fulfilment of the conditions of place, time, and cause, and the circumstance of non-refutation. All these have their sphere in real things, but cannot be applied to dreams. In the first place there is, in a dream, no space for chariots and the like; for those cannot possibly find room in the limited confines of the body.--Well, but why should not the dreaming person see the objects of his dream outside of his body? He does as a matter of fact perceive things as separated from himself by space; and Sruti, moreover, declares that the dream is outside the body, 'Away from the nest the Immortal moves; that immortal one goes wherever he likes' (Bri. Up. IV, 3, 12). And this distinction of the conceptions of staying and going would have no good sense if the being (the soul) did not really go out.--What you maintain is inadmissible, we reply. A sleeping being cannot possibly possess the power to go and return in a moment the distance of a hundred yoganas. Sometimes, moreover, a person recounts a dream in which he went to some place without returning from it, 'Lying on my bed in the land of the Kurus I was overcome by sleep and went in my dream to the country of the Pañkâlas, and being there I awoke.' If, now, that person had really gone out of his country, he would on waking find himself in the country of the Pañkâlas to which he had gone in his dream; but as a matter of fact he awakes in the country of the Kurus.--Moreover, while a man imagines himself in his dream going, in his body, to another place, the bystanders see that very same body lying on the couch. Further, a dreaming person does not see, in his dream, other places such as they really are. But if he in seeing them did actually go about, they would appear to him like the things he sees in his waking state. Sruti, moreover, declares that the dream is within the body, cp. the passage beginning 'But when he moves about in dream,' and terminating 'He moves about, according to his pleasure, within his own body' (Bri. Up. II, 1, 18). Hence the passage about the dreamer moving away from his nest must be taken in a metaphorical sense, as otherwise we should contradict scripture as well as reason; he who while remaining within his own body does not use it for any purpose may be said to be outside the body as it were. The difference of the ideas of staying within the body and going outside must, therefore, be viewed as a mere deception.--In the second place we see that dreams are in conflict with the conditions of time. One person lying asleep at night dreams that it is day in the Bhârata Varsha; another lives, during a dream which lasts one muhûrta only, through many crowds of years.--In the third place there do not exist in the state of dreaming the requisite efficient causes for either thought or action; for as, in sleep, the organs are drawn inward, the dreaming person has no eyes, &c. for perceiving chariots and other things; and whence should he, in the space of the twinkling of an eye, have the power of--or procure the material for--making chariots and the like?--In the fourth place the chariots, horses, &c., which the dream creates, are refuted, i.e. shown not to exist by the waking state. And apart from this, the dream itself refutes what it creates, as its end often contradicts its beginning; what at first was considered to be a chariot turns, in a moment, into a man, and what was conceived to be a man has all at once become a tree.--Scripture itself, moreover, clearly declares the chariots, &c., of a dream to have no real existence, 'There are no chariots in that state, no horses, no roads, &c.'--Hence the visions of a dream are mere illusion.

4. (Not altogether) for it (the dream) is indicative (of the future), according to null; the experts also declare this.

Well then, as dreams are mere illusion, they do not contain a particle of reality?--Not so, we reply; for dreams are prophetic of future good and bad fortune. For scripture teaches as follows, 'When a man engaged in some work undertaken for a special wish sees in his dreams a woman, he may infer success from that dream-vision.' Other scriptural passages declare that certain dreams indicate speedy death, so, e.g. 'If he sees a black man with black teeth, that man will kill him.'--Those also who understand the science of dreams hold the opinion that to dream of riding on an elephant and the like is lucky; while it is unlucky to dream of riding on a donkey, &c.; and that certain other dreams also caused by special mantras or devatâs or substances contain a particle of truth.--In all these cases the thing indicated may be real; the indicating dream, however, remains unreal as it is refuted by the waking state. The doctrine that the dream itself is mere illusion thus remains uncontradicted.--On this account the Vedic passage to which the first Sûtra of this pâda refers is to be explained metaphorically. When we say 'the plough bears, i.e. supports the bullocks,' we say so because the plough is the indirect cause of the bullocks being kept, not because we mean that the plough directly supports the bullocks. Analogously scripture says that the dreaming person creates chariots, &c., and is their maker, not because he creates them directly but because he is the cause of their creation. By his being their cause we have to understand that he is that one who performs the good and evil deeds which are the cause of the delight and fear produced by the apparition, in his dream, of chariots and other things.--Moreover, as in the waking state, owing to the contact of the senses and their objects and the resulting interference of the light of the sun, &c., the self-luminousness of the Self is, for the beholder, difficult to discriminate, scripture gives the description of the dreaming state for the purpose of that discrimination. If then the statements about the creation of chariots, &c., were taken as they stand (i.e. literally) we could not ascertain that the Self is self-luminous. Hence we have to explain the passage relative to the creation of chariots, &c., in a metaphorical sense, so as to make it agree with the statement about the non-existence of chariots, &c. This explains also the scriptural passage about the shaping (III, 2, 2). The statement made above that in the Kâthaka the highest Self is spoken of as the shaper of dreams is untrue; for another scriptural passage ascribes that activity to the individual soul, 'He himself destroying, he himself shaping dreams with his own splendour, with his own light' (Bri. Up. IV, 3, 9) 1. And in the Kâthaka Upanishad itself also we infer from the form of the sentence, 'That one who wakes in us while we are asleep,'--which is an anuvâda, i.e. an additional statement about something well known--that he who is there proclaimed as the shaper of lovely things is nobody else than the (well-known) individual soul. The other passage which forms the complementary continuation of the one just quoted ('That indeed is the Bright, that is Brahman') discards the notion of the separate existence of the individual soul and teaches that it is nothing but Brahman, analogously to the passage 'That art thou.' And this interpretation does not conflict with Brahman being the general subject-matter.--Nor do we thereby deny altogether that the highest (prâgña) Self is active in dreams; for as being the Lord of all it may be considered as the guide and ruler of the soul in all its states. We only maintain that the world connected with the intermediate state (i.e. the world of dreams) is not real in the same sense as the world consisting of ether and so on is real. On the other hand we must remember that also the so-called real creation with its ether, air, &c., is not absolutely real; for as we have proved before (II, 1, 14) the entire expanse of things is mere illusion. The world consisting of ether, &c., remains fixed and distinct up to the moment when the soul cognizes that Brahman is the Self of all; the world of dreams on the other hand is daily sublated by the waking state. That the latter is mere illusion has, therefore, to be understood with a distinction.

Excerpted from The Vedanta Sutras of Badarayana, Commentary by Sankara (ca. 800 BC), a classic work of India.