May 2020 Newsletter from Srivatsa Ramaswami-- Dreamer

[Srivatsa Ramaswami]

May 2020 Newsletter from Srivatsa Ramaswami--Dreamer

Greetings from my sweet home in hot humid Chennai. It is getting hotter by the day. 

During April I was learning how to  stay  doing nothing. I hope I do not become addicted to the pleasures of 'do nothing'. 

My programs are getting cancelled one by one. Programs in Delhi and Canada have already been cancelled. Now the 100 hr Vinyasakrama Yoga program at Loyola Marymount University stands cancelled as the university is doing only on line programs for the summer. I am not sure if I can teach a 100 hr program with a heavy asana component on line. So I will just be doing a 20 hour lecture program on Yoga Yagnyavalkya on line for LMU starting from July 30 for 8 days. I will post the link in my website when ready and also on face book page.

Dreamer

I woke up that morning more cheerful than depressed. I had seen my school time friend Krishna Prasad in my dream. We were very good friends in school. But each one followed a different route in our lives (krama anyatva). I studied business and joined my father who was a businessman. My friend's father was a Sanskrit teacher in school. He would explain Sanskrit grammar and make it look easier than English grammar. Krishna Prasad was very good in studies. He went on to get a PhD in vedanta philosophy and was teaching in a college. He was not a mere scholar. When you listen to him you get a feeling that Advaita vedanta is not just an intellectual exercise but an actuality, absolute truth. Of course I did not understand much of what he would say. But whenever we met, very rarely though, he would  talk about vedanta or show interest in current economic situations as I would concern myself with. 

So that morning I decided to call him and tell him about my dream. I rang him up and cheerfully told him that I saw him in my dream the previous night. He just replied "Really". I did not know how to respond and paused for a few moments before explaining to him the dream. Later on we talked about our families.

I was not comfortable with his "Really" response to my excitement.  Did he mean that I could not see him in my dream because he was away and did not come near my place. Or that he could not get into my head because it is not physically possible. This kind of reasoning is childish. I decided that his response had nothing to do with him being in my dream, but the other part of my statement "I saw you in my dream" The portion "I saw...... in MY dream"

We quite often say that I had a dream or I saw a dream. Children talk about it to the parents, sometimes to alleviate the fear pain. But does the individual really see the dream? The individual, the prakritic Ramaswami, Tom, Dick or Harry when sleeping or dreaming has almost all the motor activities temporarily paralyzed and is oblivious to one's physical or prakritic self made up of the three gunas, the five bhutas etc. Except for the involuntary functions, like the heart, lungs, the digestion and a few others the main motor functions, the legs the arms, the speech instrument are all paralyzed. Therefore even in the dream as one speaks, walks or grabs something the physical person's limbs do not move. Further if Ramaswami is seeing the dream how does he allow another impostor or a a sarupi take Ramaswami's role without objecting like say,"Hey you are an impostor I am Ramaswami here not you who assumed my role. I am 80 and you look 18." So is it right that I or anyone else identified as Tom Dick or Harry  or Ramaswami say that one saw a dream. What entity sees all the dreams every night the billions of them all over . It is not the physical person, then who or what else, is it  something else?

Then one goes to sleep when there is a feeling of nothingness or abhava. Both the waking state Tom and the dream state impostor are not in the picture. However when one wakes up there is a feeling that one slept, maybe slept well. There has to be an experience of sleep by some entity, else there will be no memory of that. So we have three stages-- waking, dreaming and sleeping and we have to find the experiencer of these states, and identify it as I or the subject which witnesses these three  experiences. 

 The essential nature of that entity is pure awareness, The entity or awareness which is aware of all the waking state experiences of I am happy, I am great etc is the real subject the real "I". There may be ups and downs in the waking state experiences of Ramaswami but the observer the pure awareness does not undergo any change. So when the mind projects and entirely different world different from Ramaswami's world and different set of experiences in a state called dream again these experiences are experienced by the same awareness. Then during sleep the same awareness is aware of nothing though this gets into the memory and one remembers a part of it on waking up.

So when as Ramaswami, I am awake and doing all these activities, the innermost entity is pure awareness and that should be called as I and not the physical prakriti the 150 lb old  man. Likewise when there is the dream. when an impostor acts as Ramaswami without a body without a brain, the one that observes the dream is not Ramaswami but this awareness which should called as "I".  Ramaswami is completely out of the picture as one could see. And then when I sleep the sleep is experienced by the same awareness. So we have one entity which is there all through the three everyday states, So when I told Krishna Prasad that I saw him in my ream, he asked incredulously "Really?". This non changing awareness the yogis samkhyas vedantins call as the Self, the Atman, the purusha the drashta . So the drashta has  waking state experience the dream state and the deep sleep state experience. Ramaswami, the dream state impostor and the deep sleep kumbhakarna in me are not the self.

So Ramaswami did not see Krishna Prasad in the dream. Ramaswami was lying in bed partly and temporarily paralyzed  and unaware of his own body or prakriti. And Krishana Prasad was in his place completely oblivious to his being seen in a dream. It was the non changing Atman that saw in a dream. The bodiless  image of Krishna Prasad  was meeting the brainless image of Ramaswami and engaged in an animated fruitless conversation.. Ramaswami when he woke up recollected some part of the dream and called Krishna Prasad. 

The vedantins say that one has to consider all the three avasthas or states of our daily life which are wakeful, dreaming and sleeping states to understand the real nature of the subject or "I".  The Self or Atman is the non changing awareness witnessing all that goes on in the waking, dream and deep sleep stages of Ramaswami's day --day after day, all through life and the life beyond.'  

Sri Sankara  says

स्वप्ने जाग्रति वा य एष पुरुषो ...... This purusha the Self present always in the dream and waking states (and deep sleep).....

Thereafter one may be able to realize the true unencumbered state of the Self, Atman known as the fourth ,  the turiya state or mukti  .