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Spiritualism describes the soul to exist is three main ‘states’:- wakefulness, dream state and death. Dreams are an intermediary state between wakefulness and death. An analysis of the dream state provides valuable insight into the other two states and thereby this whole creation.
In our dreams, we see friends, relatives and ourselves. From where do all these people come into our dreams? The body and the world being asleep, they surely have to arise from our own mind. The characters and incidents in our dreams are the whimsical creations of our own mind i.e. from the data stored and accumulated while we were awake. It is amazing that one single ‘mind’ split itself into different personalities (including oneself), each blissfully unaware of the other.
Picture this dream...............You are running in a forest in the dead of the night with no one around, except your enemy with a gun, chasing you. One would surely be petrified, fearing the enemy would shoot. The irony here is difficult to miss….......the mind created the forest and we are running searching for a place to hide in the forest (when our mind knows it all). The enemy also has been created by our mind and we are still wondering ‘whether he'd shoot you or not’, ‘what’s his next move’ etc. In spite of the fact that the actions of the 'dream characters' are completely governed by 'our' mind, each of the characters has a separate 'sub-mind' which functions independent of the other 'sub-minds'. Moreover, fantastically 'we' see the dream cinema from our viewpoint alone. Suppose one realizes this fact in the middle of the dream, how foolish would it look!
As long as one is dreaming, everything appears to be real & so true. Even if one were to doubt the dream, he/she would pinch him/herself (in the dream) and convince oneself that the dream is real.
Let us see how this analogy compares with life; reality. Could this 'real-life' similarly be a dream too? Are we just not realizing it? All the holy scriptures say that this body and this world are really non-existent and only creations of the mind. All the characters in real-life are supposedly created by a 'super-mind' (GOD), we (our minds) being just part of the 'super-mind'. The analogy is similar to the 'mind-sub mind' example in our dreams.
As long as we are in the dream, our 'sub-mind' does not realize that everything is being generated by our own 'mind'. It is only when we come out of the dream do we realize the fact. Similarly its only when we come out of this delusion of identifying ourselves with the body and believing that everything around is real, do we realize our oneness with GOD-the 'Super-mind".
Many of us might have heard the saying in Bhagawad Gita- "Aham Brahmasmi" (or in Bible- "I and father are the same"). Both mean the same i.e. - Man and god are the same. It is a difficult concept to understand. But, easy after one has understood the dream analogy. Is it now difficult to understand if I say that the enemy (sub-mind) and yourself (sub-mind), in your dream are one and the same? It is also said in the holy-scriptures that "loving others is loving yourself" and "you and your enemy are one and the same". By now, this is also well understood, since all 'minds' are nothing but part of the 'super-mind' which in turn is nothing but our mind itself.
However, it is easy to delude oneself into thinking “I am God", "I am the creator" so on and so forth. Suppose you are a beggar in a particular dream and you vaguely come to realize in the middle of the dream that you might be dreaming. Does one cease to exist as a beggar in the dream? NO. The simple knowledge of the fact is not enough. One has to literally ‘wake-up' to get out of the dream. Similarly, what one has to realize is that we do not become the ‘one’ as long as we are still in this delusion. One has to literally come out (by practicing the knowledge one has gained and believing in it), to become GOD. This is what renunciation is.
Why did the ‘One’ fool himself into this mystical dream, and then create a way to renunciate and come out of it?
This is a very difficult question to answer and can best be explained by the chicken and egg phenomenon i.e. there can be no answer. Whatever answer one may consider, there would always be the question as to why the ‘One’ did that and the questions would be never ending. This is a phenomenon that is supernatural and cannot be explained my logic. One has to remember that we are using the tool of intellect to understand a mystical phenomenon. How can the characters in our dream understand the working of our mind, however hard they think?
The great seers of the past have deliberated this fact, eons ago. The consensus solution to this question would be to accept that everything ‘IS’. One perspective is to imagine the ‘One’, being bored and therefore create this world where he wanted to live in. Surely, such a creation can have nothing evil in it.
How can we apply this knowledge practically, to make ours lives happy?
Just as the knowledge of a dream being a dream, makes fear of the enemy go away; similarly, the knowledge of this creation would help us detach ourselves from the worries of life. The realization that this existence is just the whimsical play of the ‘One’ helps us take life easy. Such a knowledge would help one detach himself from emotions and the consequent grief.