A Child on the Seashore_of_Time_

A Child on the Seashore of Time

The third question:

Yes, to a limited extent it can be of great help - but remember, only to a limited extent. Otherwise people are such that first they waste their time in dreaming, then they waste their time in enacting the dream in the waking state; then they waste their time on some psychoanalyst's couch talking about their dreams - and the psychoanalyst analyses them. Then the dream becomes too important. That much importance should not be given to them.

There is a great need of a shift of the consciousness from the content to the container. For a time being, dreams can be used. Enacting them will be useful. If in the night you have seen a dream, then enacting it in the morning can be of tremendous help because in the night you were asleep. The dream was there, the message was there, the message was delivered by the unconscious, but the conscious was fast asleep. So it was as if you were drunk and somebody called you and you took the phone somehow, and you listened, but you cannot remember exactly what the message was because you were drunk. The message was delivered, the unconscious delivered a certain message - that's what a dream is: a packaged message from the unconscious that you are doing something unnatural, that you are moving against nature, that you are going against me, that you are going against yourself. It is a warning from the unconscious that enough is enough, stop! Come back home, be natural, be more spontaneous. Don't be lost in social formalities and moralities and don't become a fake. Be real.

The message is delivered, but you are asleep and in the morning you cannot even remember anything exactly. Have you watched it? When you wake up in the morning, for a few seconds some fragments of the dream float in the consciousness - just for a few seconds, not more than thirty seconds, or at the most sixty seconds, one minute. Then they have gone. You have washed your face, taken a cup of tea; finished with the night, you don't remember now. And even when you awake in the morning, only very, very fragmentary things are there. And those, too, are the tail parts of the dream. When you dream, you dream in a certain way: you started the dream at five o'clock in the morning, then you went into it, and at six o'clock you woke up. That was the end part of the dream - it is as if you were seeing a film and you were only awake at the end part. So you remember the end part of the dream, not the beginning. not the middle. Then you have to go upstream. If you want to recollect the dream you have to move in the reverse order, as if you are reading a book backwards. It is very difficult.

And then, one thing more. When you are conscious you again start interpreting the dream content, you don't allow the whole message to be received. You will drop many things. If you have murdered your mother in the dream, you will drop it. You will not remember it, you will not allow it to become conscious. Or, at the most, you will allow it to be there in a very deep disguise: you have murdered somebody else. Or, if you have lived in a community which values non-violence very much, you may not even remember that you murdered - that part will simply disappear. We listen only to that which we want to listen to.

I have heard.

As he lay on his deathbed he spoke, 'Sara, I want you to know before I die that Ginsburg the tailor owes me two hundred dollars, and Morris the butcher owes me fifty dollars, and Klein next door owes me three hundred dollars.'

His wife turned to the children and said, 'What a wonderful man your father is. Even when he's dying he's got the brains to realise who owes him money.'

The old man continued, 'And Sara, I want you also to know that I owe the landlord a hundred dollars.'

To which the wife cried, 'Ho ho, now he's getting delirious.'

Whatsoever you want to hear is right, otherwise 'ho ho!' Then immediately you become disconnected.

You will remember the dream, now the mechanism has to be understood. The dream is a message from the unconscious to the conscious because the conscious is doing something which the unconscious feels is unnatural. And the unconscious is always right, remember; the unconscious is your nature. The conscious is cultivated by the society, it is a conditioning. The conscious means society inside you. It is a trick of society. The conscious is doing something which the unconscious feels is too much against nature, so the unconscious wants to give a warning. In the morning, when you remember, again you will remember from the conscious, again the conscious will interfere. Whatsoever is against it, will not be allowed; whatsoever is sweet will be allowed. But that is not the point. The bitter part was the real message.

But try it. What they do in psychodrama can be useful. Rather than remembering a dream, re-living a dream is more useful. And -they are different. When you remember, you remember from the conscious; when you re-live, you re-live from the total. In re- living there is more possibility that the unconscious will again be able to give some messages.

For example: you dreamed during the night that you were walking on a road. You go on walking and walking and walking and the road never ends. The non-ending road creates tremendous fear in you because with anything non-ending the mind cannot cope, the mind becomes afraid. Non-ending? It looks very boring. You go on, you go on, you go on - and the road is non-ending. You become tired, you become frustrated, you are fed-up, you fall down - but the road goes on and on. You have limitations and the road seems to be unlimited.

If you dream such a dream.... Many people dream about it because there is a message in it. The famous Russian author, Maxim Gorky, used to dream it many times. He said that in his life it was one of the most important dreams - it was repeated almost every month.

It must have had a great message otherwise it wouldn't have been repeated. And it was repeated - that simply shows that Gorky never understood it. Once you understand a dream, once the message is delivered, the dream stops. If a dream is continuously repeated, that simply shows that you have not understood it, so the unconscious goes on knocking at your door. It wants you to understand it.

Remembering is one thing - you can close your eyes and remember the dream and it will be as if you are seeing a film, a movie. Re-living is totally different. You create the whole situation, you visualise the whole situation. It is not a dream on the screen, you re-live it.

Again you are on the road. Look around. Close your eyes when you remember it, look around. What type of road is it? Are trees there or is it a desert? What kind of trees? Is the sun there in the sky or is it night? Visualise it, stand on the road and visualise it and let it be as colourful as possible - because the unconscious is very colourful. The conscious is just black and white, the unconscious is very psychedelic.

So let it be colourful. See the glory of the trees, the colour of the flowers, the brightness of the stars. Feel the road, the touch underneath the feet. Feel the road - rough, smooth, dead, alive? Every road has its own individuality. Smell. Standing there, smell. What type of smell is it? Has it rained just now and a delicate smell from the earth is arising? Or have the flowers bloomed and the fragrance is there? Feel the breeze; feel whether it is cool or warm. Then start moving - as if you are moving in reality. It is not on the screen of the memory, you are re-living it. And through this sensitivity of taste, touch, air, feel, coolness, warmth, greenery, colour; it again becomes real. Again the unconscious will start giving you messages. They can be of tremendous value.

But there is a limit to it. Try to understand in this way but always remember that whether the dream is seen in the night or re-lived in the day, it is a dream. And below the unconscious - or beyond the unconscious - is still another door of your being that has to be opened.

Freud and the Freudians think that man ends with the conscious and unconscious. Man does not end with the conscious and unconscious, there is a super-conscious-element also. And that is truer.

So, don't think that the conscious is the only mind. Before Freud it was thought that the conscious was the only mind. When Freud introduced the concept of the unconscious for the first time, he was laughed at, ridiculed, because people said, 'What nonsense! How can mind be unconscious? Mind means consciousness. If it is unconscious, it is not mind; if it is mind, it is conscious.' Of course, their grammar was right and their language was true - but existentially they were wrong. And Freud by and by became victorious. Truth always wins.

Now another layer has to be introduced into the world of psychology - that layer is of the super-conscious. Psychologists will again be against it. They will say, 'What nonsense you are talking! You are bringing religion into psychology. Somehow we have got rid of religion and now you bring it in again from the back door!' But you cannot get rid of religion - religion is not something accidental, it is very essential. You have to recognise it. And you have to recognise its claims.

Man is conscious, unconscious and super-conscious. Man is a trinity - that is the meaning of the old concept of the trinity in Christianity, Judaism. In the East we have the concept of trimurti - three faces of God, three faces of being. Man is a triangle. The third has to be remembered.

The questioner has asked:

Yes, a useful method but with a limited possibility. And rather than remembering, emphasise re-living.

Certainly, but only the first step. There are many people who become lost in the first step and then they never take the second. Then the first is useless. Unless the second happens, the first is meaningless. Only with the second does the first become relevant. And only when you have achieved the goal does your journey becomes relevant. Otherwise it remains irrelevant; the relevance is transcendental.

So, first re-live your dreams. It will be helpful, it will make you more alert. And then, even in your dreaming, even while you are re-living, or when you are awake, walking on the street, in an ordinary waking state, start seeing yourself as a witness not as a participant. As a watcher. The watcher, the observer, the seer, the witness, is the real step which leads you into reality. It is beyond dream.

The dreams can be helpful so that the grip of the dreams on your mind is loosened, but the real step is only when you have started becoming watchful. Try it the whole day.

Whatsoever you are doing, remember that you are the watcher. Walking...remember that the body is walking, you are the watcher. Eating...remember that the body is eating, you are the witness. If it spreads all over your day, one day, suddenly, you will see that in the dream also the watcher has a little possibility. And when you can also remember that 'I am just the watcher' in the dream, then dreams disappear. Then, with the disappearance of the dreams, a new consciousness arises in you. That consciousness I call the super-consciousness. And that consciousness is the goal of the psychology of the Buddhas.

 

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