Do Dreams Mean Anything?

Do Dreams Mean Anything?

Am I the butterfly dreaming I'm Chuang Tzu or the other way around? 

Do dreams mean anything? We are a bi-mundial species — we live in two worlds, a real world and an imaginary world. It may seem that we spend all our time in the real world but this feeling is an illusion in itself. The time we spend in our thoughts of the past or the future is the time we spend in the imaginary world. How come? Because there is no direct handle on the reality of such thoughts; past is dead and future, mostly unknown. Vedic texts divide states of consciousness into three categories, namely, jagrata, wakeful, svapna, dreaming, and sushupta, sleeping. There are two more states, turiya and turiyatita, for transcendental and beyond.

On the surface, the distinction seems clear that you are awake when in the wakeful state, while sleeping you are in the sleeping state and other times in your sleep you may be dreaming. Upon closer examination though a deeper truth is revealed — these states, at times, are interchangeable and simultaneous. You could be in the sleeping state even when wide awake. Most people are in fact living their lives like clockwork, they are sleeping. Thoughts and actions in
the dreaming state can easily trigger physical response in the real world. People can get wet, sweaty and scared in their dreams, for example.

Allow me to quote Chuang Tzu from a text also called Chuang Tzu, a classical Taoist treatise. He was a phenomenal Chinese thinker who graced our planet in the fourth century B.C.E.. Quoting him verbatim from a translated text:

"Those who dream of the banquet may weep the next morning, and those who dream of weeping may go out to hunt after dawn. When we dream we do not know that we are dreaming. In our dreams we may even interpret our dreams. Only after we are awake do we know that we have dreamed. But there comes a great awakening, and then we know that life is a great dream. But the stupid think they are awake all the time and believe they know it distinctly.

"Once I, Chuang Tzu, dreamed I was a butterfly and was happy as a butterfly. I was conscious that I was quite pleased with myself, but I did not know that I was Tzu. Suddenly I awoke, and there was I, visibly Tzu. I do not know whether it was Tzu dreaming that he was a butterfly or the butterfly dreaming that he was Tzu. Between Tzu and the butterfly there must be some distinction. This is called the transformation of things."

Om Namah Shivay