The Vital and Subconscient Dreams

You recently wrote to me apropos of incoherent dreams: “It depends on your attitude and consciousness; it is by bringing light down into the subconscient that these things can go.” What exactly did you mean by “attitude” and by “consciousness”?

Your aspiration to a less downward consciousness in sleep.

It is the condition of your consciousness I spoke of — the more conscious you become, the more you will be able to have dreams worth having.

From where does what we ordinarily see in our dreams come?

It is more often the impressions of the waking state that come up in this (subconscient) type of dreams.

How to understand our dreams?

Observe them — if they are of importance or of a dynamic character, the meaning is not so difficult to find.

Is it helpful to study one’s own dreams, unravel them and find out their meaning?

Unless they are really significant dreams it is a waste of time.

I don’t think it is necessary to make the effort to remember unless you feel that there has been something of special importance.

In what way can our dreams prove useful?

They show what the subconscient contains.

For the last three nights I have been absolutely unconscious in sleep and don’t remember even my being’s participation in any dreams. What happens at night to the being in these cases? Where does the subconscient go?

The subconscient remains in the body. The being really goes out into different planes of consciousness, but its experiences are not kept in the memory, because the recording consciousness is too submerged to carry the record to the waging mind.

Are the forms, seen in dreams, of subtle beings those beings themselves or formations created by them?

They are rather formations created from the subconscient. It is a hotchpotch of subconscient impressions thrown out on the vital plane.

I am told by S that the people we see in our dreams are sometimes parts of our own being, and that the mind gives them the forms of men or women, with whom we are acquainted on the physical plane. Is it true?

It is not parts of our own real “being” usually. It is different forces and forms of nature — whether of general nature or of our own nature, also ideas, impulses etc., the formations of our outer personality, or mind, vital etc.

These dreams on the vital plane are often very mixed owing to the intrusion of figures and details from the subconscient.

These are dreams on the vital plane or excursions into the vital world of which the happenings are rendered in terms familiar to the physical mind — e.g. shopkeeper, police etc. though arranged in a different way from the physical. I cannot say they are clear and precise in significance as the mental dreams are.

The dream is a seeing of things that have their truth on the vital plane.

You do not know that you live on other planes as well as on the physical and that what happens there need not be the same as what happens on the physical. If you meet the Mother on the vital and certain things happen they can have their truth on the vital plane but it does not mean that they happened here in the physical world.

Things do happen on the vital plane — but they are not more important than what happens here because it is here we have to realise and what happens on the vital is only a help.

Subconscient dreams and lower vital dreams are usually incoherent. Higher vital dreams are usually and mental dreams are always coherent.

It was a sexual formation probably rising from the subconscient vital. Instead of allowing yourself to be disturbed by it, you should dismiss it from your mind altogether.

In our dreams, why sometimes do the figures take the form of a particular woman?

They take often the form of one who has some power of vital attraction in her so as to support their effort.

When I once asked you whether a certain dream was an attack by a vital force, you said “Yes”. And you added: “There are other dreams that are formations put in by the vital forces, but this is not one of them.” Please elucidate the difference.

I said this dream was an actual happening on the vital plane, not a formation. If somebody attacks you in the street, that is not a formation. But if somebody hypnotises you and suggests that you are ill — that suggestion is a formation put in by the hypnotiser.

It depends on the dream. It is sometimes a fact on the supraphysical plane, sometimes a representation in the mind of something that happened otherwise — sometimes only a formation.

Last night I saw in a dream a train passing at full speed and a horse which was very faithful to me. What does the dream mean?

The horse is a force acting for progress. The railway train at full speed means rapid progress.

What should we try to understand about dreams?

Simply to make precise where you are in the dream state.

In a dream I saw X who had my time-piece. First he went straight to Arjava and then told me, “Now I will repair your time-piece.” Does not this dream differ from the previous ones of memory? For I never asked him to do anything for me.

But you have seen X and Arjava and know that X repairs time-pieces for the sadhaks. When all that comes up from the subconscient it arranges itself not as it is in life but in a confused and incoherent way because the coordinating mind is not at work — everything combines together in a haphazard way.

During the afternoon sleep I seem to come often into contact with the Mother. Is it the Mother who sends her emanation?

Yes, or rather something of her is always with you.

A dream: The time was hushed with twilight. I was entering the Ashram when I saw that the Mother had already come down. When she saw me, such a gracious and blissful smile escaped her lovely lips! There were many sadhaks about her.

Then she began to conduct music with a small and beautiful stick. There were three girls around her; one of them was playing on a harmonium and the other two on tamburas. While directing the music the Mother was also singing, but mostly in a trance.

Am I right in taking those three girls as the Mother’s presiding Shaktis?

Yes.

Was it a mere dream or a real experience within?

It was an experience on the vital plane.

What does such a spiritual music signify?

There is such music on the supraphysical planes.

 …You entered some part of the higher vital world and had the experience.

In a dream I saw the dawn of the 15th of August: a great storm arose, something like a cyclone. My mind considered it as a final revolt of the material nature against the higher Powers that were brought down by you on the occasion of your birthday. Very soon all the resistance vanished and instead of the obscurity, created by the storm, I found a bright sunlight! What does this event signify?

It is not an event. It is simply a symbolic dream in the vital indicating a tendency or possibility.

There was another dream: I felt as if two parts of the being — one turned towards light and the other towards ignorance — came out of the body. They fought a duel. It was not clear who won, but I afterwards experienced a sort of release in the consciousness.

It was probably not a dream, but an experience within.

I dreamt that a few Christians were jeering at you. Then you made a statement by which the court could fine them.

It is a purely vital dream. Of course one can take the Christians as forces of the vital physical nature, which can be converted.

In a dream I saw the Mother walking with some of us. She asked me, “What is this tree?” I replied, “Peace in the vital.” Amongst us there were many newcomers. One of them prostrated herself before the Mother. Sobbing, she prayed, “O Mother, how wretched I am that I am not able to stay here. I am already married,” etc. In the dream itself my mind thought that it was her soul that had expressed itself.

That is more coherent than many of your vital dreams and was probably an actual fact of experience in the vital plane.

In last night’s dream I saw a monkey. What does a monkey stand for?

The monkey may have been of the Hanuman type. Hanuman is a symbol of Bhakti and devotion.