Pariprasna
November 2020
Srimat Swami Tapasyananda Ji (1904 – 1991) was one of the Vice-Presidents of the Ramakrishna Order. His deeply convincing answers to devotees’ questions raised in spiritual retreats and in personal letters have been published in book form as Spiritual Quest: Questions & Answers. Pariprasna is a selection from this book.
The Vedanta Kesari
52
QUESTION: The Upanishads give to the dream state an importance almost equal to that of the waking state. Ordinarily, we try to progress by learning from our waking experience. How are we to press into service our experience of dreams for our spiritual progress? MAHARAJ: In some of the Upanishads there is an attempt made to analyse the three states of waking, dream and sleep and put them on a state of equality ontologically on the assumption of the fourth or pure consciousness or awareness that runs through and records the experience of all the three. It is however doubtful whether we can put all the three states on a status of equality, while remaining in the waking-consciousness itself. What the philosopher attempts is probably to abstract himself from the waking-consciousness and view it as a memory, just like a memory of dream and sleep. In so abstracting he is attempting to stand on the Fourth. But this process of abstraction can become a fact of experience, apart from being a mere speculative assumption only if, through proper spiritual discipline on waking, a split, as it were, takes place in his consciousness and the subject pole of consciousness is able to stand apart and remain unaffected by all the fluctuations of the object pole of consciousness. In the case of a person attempting this discipline, an intellectual understanding through imaginative abstraction from waking consciousness and a putting together of all the three states on the same ontological status may be helpful in spiritual practice. Such abstraction may help the person to be established in pure intelligence, the seer unentangled by anything that is seen. It is the awareness in which these states of waking, dream and sleep arise and subside. Even without going to such metaphysical heights, the experience of dream can in itself give us a ground for strengthening our conviction in a spiritual world-view. One of the great stumbling blocks in the way of a spiritual world-view is the opposite materialistic view that we know only matter as existing independently and whatever intelligence we have experience of, is only of intelligence manifesting in brain-matter as a by-product of the functioning of brain-matter itself. So matter should get precedence over intelligence or spirit and there is no intelligence or consciousness other than what we find in living brain-matter. This can be answered only by presenting the opposite thesis that, consciousness is primary whereas matter is dependent on it. In the first place the statement—that intelligence is only what manifests in brain-matter as human consciousness—is a dogmatic assumption. It is more plausible to assume that the brain is only a field for intelligence to manifest as human consciousness, just as a bulb is the field for electricity to manifest as light. Such a view is supported by the fact that metaphysically the very concept of matter presupposes an intelligence which reveals it. Matter can be understood only as something external impinging on an intelligent subject. If you say there is a line, you have to admit both its
