August Seminar
Online Seminar: August 3 & 4, 2024
From Dreams Awake, From Bonds Be Free!
What Happens to Consciousness in Deep Sleep
Often presented to spiritual aspirants either in the form of a guru’s instructive interpretation of dreams, or as an illusion of the mind which the soul is attempting to awaken from, the dream state, called svapna in Sanskrit and Vedanta, both supplies the waking state with its objects, and facilitates the individual’s (ego’s) smooth passage into Sushupti, or deep sleep. Deep Sleep, in turn, is both a potential precursor to nondual Samadhi, and a storehouse of subtle seeds for all the “dream-stuff’ of the mind, or its chitta. These un-watered seeds later become thoughts which produce solid objects in the waking state (jagrat).
This fascinating way of inner perception given to us by illumined Indian seers such as Gaudapada, termed the “Three States of Consciousness,” reveal the mind’s unique ability to produce all things out of its internal fabric of awareness, and also fill in philosophical gaps in today’s spotty understanding of the truth of Nonduality. Along with Turiya—That what lies beyond the “Three States”(Formless Reality)—we can behold the human mind’s role in God’s magnificent Divine Sport, availing our understanding of what is called “The Four Feet of Brahman,” or how God gets from place to place in the worlds of name and form in time and space.
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