We are God’s dream.

I want to share something I learnt watching a video by Swami Tadatmananda. 

So we know in the Vedic tradition, God is in everything, all of existence is an extension of God. There is no separation.  Any separation you see is an illusion. 

Swamiji explains, before the universe existed, only God existed.and God created all of existence without any external help or external material. So how is this possible?

The Vedic scriptures explain these ideas through metaphors.

Each metaphor is helpful in some ways and limited in other ways.

In the Mundaka Upanishad, the metaphor of a spider shows the creation process. A spider spits thread from its mouth, and uses this material to spin a beautiful and intricate web. It enjoys its creation, travels around the web and uses it for different purposes. Eventually it eats the web, recycling the material back into its own body. 

This is a metaphor for how God creates the universe from within himself. He experiences this beautiful intricate web, and then destroys it, all of existence returns to God. This happens in repeating cycles. 

This is a great metaphor, but here is the limitation. A spider can separate herself from her web. A gust of wind comes and the spider is blown away, or maybe  just crawls away from its web. It is quite easy to separate a spider from its web. But God can never be separated from existence. So we need another metaphor.

For this Swamiji brings in the metaphor os sleep and dreams. The Vedas and Upanishads use this concept frequently, here we we find a more useful metaphor. 

When a human, such as yourself, is in deep sleep, we dream. Our dreams create entire worlds, we live vivid  life experiences in our dream. There is always a landscape such as a house, a building, a forest etc. The dream version of us is having conversations, attending events, and for me…I am usually running late to something. Of course, even dream me is running late. 

So what is making up the material of our dreamscape? In my dream, I touch solid materials, I talk to real people, but all of this is coming from my mind. It is being created from my memories, my imagination, or my fears. I know that everything in my dream is coming into existence from my own mind. It is my consciousness that creates and animates my dream. When I wake up, everything in my dream disappears, where does it go? Back into my mind. 

If we contemplate further, we realize the dream never left our mind, its location was always within our mind. Similarly, we never leave God, all of existence takes place within God. 

Swamiji poses a question that gave me an AHA moment.

What if I dream a scenario where  I am confused and searching for answers, I call out in prayer “God where are you?”

Who would I be praying to?

Of course…dream me is praying to real me, as I am the one creating the dream. I am the creator, the sustainer, and the destroyer of this dream. Every part of this dream comes from me.

So here is how I am applying this metaphor to my life.

When my dream self calls for God, the solution is clear. I dont need external help, I just need to realize that I am dreaming, and that I can do anything in this dream.

The answer is to become conscious, the answer is to lucid dream. 

I am the main character, I am all powerful, I just need to REMEMBER who I am. I am the main character, I am all powerful, and I can save myself. 

Now, I take this metaphor and apply it to my life. Instead of always looking up and saying “God please fix this for me”, I just remind myself that God has already given me everything I need to solve anything in this dreamscape. All I need to do is remember I am all powerful, and to wake UP,  to LUCID DREAM in real life.

We are all GOD embodied, you don't need to wait for anyone to give you permission to start living from this space, you just have to CLAIM it. On your own volition.

Links:

Swamiji’s Video : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oOYtZYme6zU&t=656s&ab_channel=ArshaBodha-SwamiTadatmananda