The Philosophy of Life

by Swami Krishnananda

Analysis of Dream

A study of dream is now generally regarded as essential in all investigations of the human personality, for dreams are known to form a kind of index to one’s inner constitutions and also to indicate certain possibilities of experience. Usually, four classes of dream are distinguished: Dreams due to (1) physiological disorders, (2) psychological excitations and projection of desire and will, (3) contact of superhuman beings or astral spirits, and (4) the fruition of one’s good and bad deeds. Another type of classification distinguishes between seven kinds of dream: (1) Dreams of objects seen, (2) dreams of objects heard of, (3) dreams of objects felt, (4) dreams of objects wished for, (5) dreams caused by imagination, (6) dreams which foreshadow future events, and (7) dreams which are caused by disordered bodily functions, such as those brought about by wind, bile, phlegm, indigestion, and other disturbed conditions of the body.

Dreams are regarded as phenomena caused when the mind functions in the Svapnavaha or Hita-Nadi. Though disconnected from external sense-perceptions, the mind is somewhat connected here with the tactile sense. When it withdraws itself from its connection even with the tactile sense, it enters the Puritat-Nadi, and experiences deep sleep. The stimulation of the Manovaha-Nadi, or the nerve-current through which the mind externalises itself, is said to cause dreams of a prognostic character, especially indicating diseases or death. The Manovaha-Nadi is the channel of the activation of the seat of the mind in the brain, by consciousness. The sensations received from outside are transferred to the seat of the mind in the brain, and from there these sensations receive the impact of consciousness by means of the Manovaha-Nadi. It is this enlivening of sensations by consciousness that makes possible any determinate perception. The Svapnavaha does the same function as the Manovaha, it being only a section of the latter.

Swami Sivananda presents a detailed analysis of the dream phenomena and throws some light on certain questions raised by the modern theory of psychoanalysis (The Divine Life, vol. IX, pp. 127, 175):

According to Sigmund Freud, dreams indicate a process of wish-fulfilment. Dream is said to be caused by suppressed desires. The physical stimulus alone is not enough or responsible for the production of dreams. The dream mechanism is very intricate, and the wishes are of a complex nature. They clamour for satisfaction, and do not die before self-expression and fulfilment. They are revolting to the moral self, which seeks to exercise a control over their appearance and activity. The wishes, therefore, emerge in several disguised forms, by means of defence-mechanisms, to evade the moral censor. Very few dreams present the wishes as they really are. They provide a partial gratification of unfulfilled desires. Often, their function is to become safety valves to strong impulsions, and relieve mental tension. The animal self is visualised in dream.

The Freudian theory of dreams is apt to associate almost every kind of dream with the sex-urge, try to interpret every dream-object in terms of the sex-impulse, and carry this process to a sort of extreme. This tendency is evidently the result of a failure to take into account many important factors, besides sex, in the make-up of the individual, and the direction of evolution through successive cycles to the present human state. To the Freudians, man is mainly a psychical creature formed of urges, instincts and wishes buried unfulfilled in the unconscious mind. As the need for a permanent self is not felt, the question of reincarnation does not arise. This is just the essence of the empirical view of life, that what is observed through the senses and the mental apparatus is considered to be ultimately real, and nothing beyond it is recognised to exist. The more considered view, however, is that man, in reality, is a spiritual being, expressing himself through the medium of a mind that has the physical body as its objective counterpart to function upon the gross plane of the senses. The true Self of man is devoid of sex, and even of personality and individuality. It is the body influenced by a state of mind that suffers under the tyranny of gender. The body is the least part of man as envisaged and defined by true philosophic wisdom. Sex is just but one aspect, though a dominant one, perhaps, of a living being stationed in a sense-world.

That unconscious desires relating to sex appear as objects in dream is not the whole story. The waking experiences are often retained in the subconscious and unconscious minds in the form of a memory or impression. The unconscious is, in fact, the storehouse of such potentialities of memories and impressions formed in one’s waking life, through aeons. It need not mean that the unconscious contains impressions of experiences which one has gathered in this life alone. The unconscious is the reservoir of unmanifested impressions of experiences undergone in several previous lives. Only a part of this store is expressed or given out for experience in a single bodily life.

The factors of sex-impulse, repressions and activities during waking hours are not exhaustive in their nature. Impulses arising out of the sum total of the impressions of experiences of previous incarnations also, at times, provide material for dreams. That portion of the results of one’s actions allotted for being worked out in the present incarnation alone gets consciously expressed here in thought and action. Though, generally, the major part of this allotment is worked out in the form of pain and pleasure in one’s waking life, it is not unusual for a measure of it to be repaired in the shape of dream experiences. The dream life is as vital and real, while it lasts, as the waking one. Many a time, certain serious and extremely painful experiences that one has to undergo in waking life become averted by being lightly undergone in dream. This is particularly so in the case of fortunate devotees and aspirants of truth, who have surrendered themselves to God, or taken shelter under a godly man as a preceptor, and have generated in themselves a tremendous Sadhana-Sakti, or a power of the spirit within, through self-restraint and meditation. The working of Grace and the power of Sadhana react upon the aspirant by shielding him from the too violent repercussions of his past deeds, by enabling him to pay off certain of his old debts in the form of some similar experiences in dream. This method is employed due to a mysterious peculiarity of the dream-consciousness, in which lengthy periods of time (in terms of the waking consciousness) can manage to get packed into the short space of a single night’s, nay, a single hour’s dream.

Thus, apart from the merely physical and the occult, deeper spiritual laws seem to have a part in the making of an individual’s dream. The Sadhana performed by a person in past lives makes him qualified and destined to obtain the guidance of a certain saint in his present incarnation. Though separated by thousands of miles, or thousands of years, the aspirant may be enabled, when the appointed time for their spiritual union approaches, to find out, through a graphic and insistent dream, the whereabouts of his would-be teacher, and through this unmistakable dream-guidance, enable the aspirant to reach his hallowed feet. The dream consciousness plays, many times, a very important role in influencing, moulding and determining one’s activities in the waking life. This shows that it is not always that dream is merely a reproduction or image of waking life. There are instances of Svapna-Siddhas, i.e., aspirants who were shown the way to perfection by means of dream. These phenomena go to prove that deeper forces and factors operate, than merely the suppressed or repressed animal instincts of the individual. But these phenomena can hardly be comprehended properly by the merely science-ridden mind wedded to an empirical observation of things that are truncated from the essential consciousness and its implications. The dream of a spiritual aspirant who has a genuine longing for the salvation of his soul, and who intensely strives in the right direction towards the achievement of that end, is of a unique character, and cannot be compared with the process of wish-fulfilment or even with a mere reproduction of waking events. Such dreams have a supermental significance.

There are some dreams that are definitely prophetic in their nature. They keep the dreamer forewarned of approaching diseases, calamities or bereavements. This feature of certain dreams has been established beyond doubt by countless concrete cases, a feature that has nothing whatsoever to do with sexual expressions or submerged anti-social elements. Again, besides forewarning, simple forecast is also effected, at times, in dream. The reason for this is that certain elements in the mental consciousness connected with the future event have begun to rise in that consciousness at the time of the dream. Cases are recorded where a person dreams vividly of certain sceneries, places and objects as distinguishing landmarks in a place. Several years later, quite unexpectedly, the person happens to come across the actual place, which, to his astonishment, he finds tallying even in the minutest details with the scene observed by him in dream, years before. In addition to this, the countless millions of subtle ethereal records embedded in the vast scroll of elemental space operate, sometimes, as direct causative factors in dream. It is not uncommon for a person happening to spend a night at some sacred place of hoary religious tradition or some historical place marking the spot of great and stirring events in the dim past, to dream of objects, persons and occurrences connected with the place, though he may be totally unaware of any such thing as ever existent or possible. This comes about due to the impact of the powerful ethereal impressions teeming at that place upon the consciousness of the person sleeping there. We have to take special note of a phenomenon like this, for here we have a purely objective factor giving rise to dream, demonstrating the error of laying too much emphasis upon a purely subjective causation of the dream process.

It is possible, again, for close friends, relatives or twins to influence the dreams of each other. It is quite common for a person to have a dream of any extreme danger or pain that his friend or relative or twin is undergoing at that time. We have instances where a person upon death bed appears in dream to a friend at a great distance, apprises him of his departure, and bids him farewell. There are also cases where a person long dead appears in dream to someone connected with him when alive, and urges him to do some particular work. This astral being keeps on appearing in successive dreams until the person thus visited accomplishes satisfactorily the purpose indicated. All these are irrespective of the dreamer’s temperament, predisposition, personal sexual life, early impressions, repressed desires, etc. (Vide, Ibid. pp. 175-77).

Certain kinds of external sounds, such as the ringing of a bell, the noise of alarm clocks, knocks on the door or the wall, the blowing of wind, the drizzling of rain, the rustling of leaves, the sound of the horn of a motor car, the creaking of the window, etc., may produce in the mind of the dreamer a variety of imagination. These generate certain sensations which increase in intensity according to the sensitiveness of the mind of the dreamer. The sounds may cause very elaborate dreams. If one touches the dreamer’s chest with the point of a pin, he may dream that someone has given him a severe blow on his body, or stabbed him with a dagger (Ibid. p. 128). Medical men opine that an organic disturbance in the system, especially in the stomach, can cause dreams, and even indicate the coming of a disease. Indigestion also becomes often a cause for several kinds of dream. A patient suffering from heart disease may dream of death under painful conditions. One who has lung disease may dream of suffocation. Intense pain in the teeth may cause the dream of dropping of teeth. It is not also quite unusual for a person whose system in the state of sleep feels a necessity to micturate to dream of swimming in a river or an ocean, or for one suffering from flatulence to dream of flying in the air.

Freud tries to establish his theory of wish-fulfilment in dreams by observation and analysis, which, he thinks, show that the dream content is not merely a translation of latent potency, but is reinforced by an unconscious wish, to fulfil which the content of the dream is transformed. He also advances an additional argument that the residuum of impressions of waking life cannot find expression in dream without the aid of the unconscious drive. Desires supply the impulse to manifest the impressions of waking. To what extent these assertions can be correct we have already noticed in our observations of the different phenomena that act as causes of dream. Freud often starts with what he wishes to prove. He is intent on discovering a wish behind dreams; and when one is not discovered there, the analysis is thought to be incomplete. Often, when we search for a thing in the mind, it is found there.

The mind in the waking state manifests only certain prominent aspects of the reservoir of the unconscious. The subconscious, too, is a partial manifestation of the deep unconscious. The waking and the dreaming states are regarded as expressions of the consequences of the deeds to be worked out in this particular life. In this respect, these states may be considered not as experiences of original conditions but of reflections of experience or reproductions of forces that are buried in the deepest recesses of the unconscious. But what is the unconscious made of? It is constituted of unmanifest impressions and latent tendencies given rise to by past conscious acts. Thus the unconscious in the individual plays a double role: it is the result of past desires and actions, and also the cause of future desires and actions. Originally, it was caused by deliberate psychological acts and volitions, but in the course of countless lives which the individual undergoes, it continues doing newer and newer actions, due to fresh desires cropping up on account of attachment to individuality in every one of its incarnations, and thus adds fresh impressions to the old stock of the unconscious. The result is that the potential forces of the unconscious become so strong that they begin even to direct the course and determine the nature of future actions. This is the tragedy of individual life, that every new conscious action produces fresh impressions that are added on to the unconscious, thus enabling it to have a powerful hold on the destiny of the individual. The misery of bodily existence begins first with conscious acts, and then it becomes the consequence of the incessant surge of unconscious forces hidden behind visible causes. Man is, accordingly, free as well as bound.

Dreams occur in the Manomaya-Kosa or the mental sheath. The functions of the mind are chiefly thoughts of objects. Emotions, feelings, desires, and the like, are natural to the mind, which works in coordination with the Pranamaya-Kosa or the vital sheath. During dreams, the mental sheath acts as a screen on which the pictures of forms are thrown by the impressions lying deep in the Annamaya-Kosa or the bliss-sheath, and the Vijnanamaya-Kosa or the intellectual sheath functions partially, and due to a hazy and dull manifestation of consciousness therein, it gets deprived of its power of volition and proper discrimination. The Atman is the witness of the play of the five sheaths, but the Jiva actually feels the vibrations and activities of the sheaths due to its self-identification with them. In waking, the whole of the intellectual sheath is lighted up and becomes active, but only a very weak part of it is active in dream, it being clouded by Tamas or inertia. A set of impulses which could not have free play in the waking life, because of the operation of the discriminative intelligence, is drawn out by a stimulus of a like character, when the power of discrimination fails and the mind begins to work independent of the senses by means of impressions of waking consciousness alone. The result is that we have a dream. Under these circumstances, there comes about a displacement of emphasis from the proper objective to an unimportant element. When dreams of a shocking nature are cast on the mental screen, the whole system, unable to bear them, awakes, and puts a stop to the dream.

Along with the projection of impressions, the rays of consciousness from the Atman, also, travel and illumine the play of the imagery in dream. These rays, while passing on to the mental sheath, have necessarily to pass through the intellectual sheath, but they are not strong enough to illumine the whole of the sheath on account of the intellect then being dominated by Tamas. This leads to the diminution of the dreamer’s discriminative sense, and to experiences that are not in conformity with the characteristics of objects usually seen by the waking mind. But one does not dream anything that one has not placed in the Anandamaya-Kosa, sometime or the other, except, of course, in the case of dreams which are caused by factors outside the individual’s mind.