The Mandukya Upanishads - 4.3. Swami Krishnananda.

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Wednesday, August  26, 2020.10:11. AM.
Section 4: The Mystery of Dream and Sleep-3.
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1.
A comparison justly made, dispassionately conducted, philosophically approached, between the waking and the dream states, will place you in a very awkward condition, so embarrassing that you will not know where you are. Are you waking, or, are you dreaming; are you possessed of a thing or are you dispossessed of a thing – this you will not know. And that, perhaps, the dream experiences are due to impressions of waking life does not make matters better. It is only a way of arguing.


2.
When you practically enter into the field of experience, you will find that this analysis, theoretically made, has not made a difference to your practical life. It may be that, if the waking impressions have created the dream world, the waking experiences might have been created by some other impressions. If, on account of the satisfaction that the dream world is only a creation of impressions of waking experiences, you regard dream as unreal, then you may regard the waking world, also, as unreal, because it is the outcome of some other impressions of some other experience undergone in some other state.


3.
If the dream world is the effect of a cause, the waking world, too, may be an effect of another cause. If the causal relation is responsible for your judging the dream world as unreal, the very same reason can apply to the conclusion that the waking world, also, is unreal. And, why do you hug the waking objects, rather than the dream objects?


4.
You do cling to dream objects, but you do not think of them when you wake up. If a comparison of the two states is responsible for your regarding the dream world as unreal, why do you not make a comparison of the waking world with another higher state? Why do you confine your analysis merely to the two states, waking and dream?

What makes you think that there are only two states, and not more?


5.
Just as in dream you cannot make a comparison between dream and waking, you cannot make a comparison between waking and a higher life, unless you wake up from this life. While you are in dream, you think only of the dream world and you do not know that there is such a thing as waking. You forget all your empire of the waking world while you are dreaming. You are so much engrossed in the dream world that you are totally oblivious of there being a thing called waking life, and you eagerly go for the waking world when you wake up, but not before.


6.
If this is the case with dream, this is also the case with waking. If, in dream, dream appears to be real, in waking, waking appears to be real. Waking is real because you are awake, and dream is real when dream is functioning. While you are in a particular state, that state appears to be real. In the famous analogy of the rope appearing as a snake, the snake is not there at all, and yet you jumped in terror.


7.
The snake, to you, was not non-existent in the rope; it was there. You did not see the rope; you saw only the snake; and you say that the snake is not there only after seeing the rope. When you did not see the rope, you saw only the snake, and then you jumped. You should not say that the snake is unreal. If it was unreal, why did you jump? Why was there a real jump over an unreal snake?


8.
The snake was not unreal at that time. It was real at that time of its being perceived, and it became unreal when you saw something else, namely the rope. When it is seen, it is real, and it appears to be otherwise only when it is compared to something else that you see subsequently. If this is the way we judge things, then, why do we not judge the entire waking world in a similar manner?


9.
What makes us say that the waking world is real?

It is the same thing that makes us feel that the snake in the rope is real. And just as we jump over an apparent snake, we are affected by the apparent objects of the world. Just as we get possessed of a feverish sentiment on account of the perception of the snake which was not there, we are in the agony of Samsara due to the perception of something which is not there. We should not say, it is there. If it is there really, then the snake also is there really.

To be continued ...

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