The Treasure_ at The Turiya Files

RABBI BUNAM USED TO TELL YOUNG MEN WHO CAME TO HIM FOR THE FIRST TIME, THE STORY OF RABBI EISIK, SON OF RABBI YEKEL IN CRACOW.... 'AFTER MANY YEARS OF GREAT POVERTY, WHICH HAD NEVER SHAKEN HIS FAITH IN GOD, HE DREAMED THAT SOMEONE BADE HIM TOOK FOR TREASURE UNDER THE BRIDGE WHICH LEADS TO THE KING'S PALACE IN PRAGUE. WHEN THE DREAM RECURRED THE THIRD TIME, HE SET OUT FOR PRAGUE. BUT THE BRIDGE WAS GUARDED DAY AND NIGHT AND HE DID NOT DARE START DIGGING. NEVERTHELESS HE WENT TO THE BRIDGE EVERY MORNING AND KEPT WALKING AROUND IT UNTIL EVENING.

FINALLY, THE CAPTAIN OF THE GUARDS, WHO HAD BEEN WATCHING HIM, ASKED IN A KINDLY WAY WHETHER HE WAS LOOKING FOR SOMETHING, OR WAITING FOR SOMEONE.

RABBI EISIK TOLD HIM OF THE DREAM WHICH HAD BROUGHT HIM FROM A FAR AWAY COUNTRY.

THE CAPTAIN LAUGHED, 'AND SO TO PLEASE YOUR DREAM YOU WORE OUT YOUR SHOES TO COME HERE! YOU POOR FELLOW. AND AS FOR HAVING FAITH IN DREAMS, IF I HAD HAD IT, I WOULD HAVE HAD TO GO TO CRACOW AND DIG FOR TREASURE UNDER THE STOVE IN THE ROOM OF A JEW - EISIK, SON OF YEKEL! THAT'S WHAT THE DREAM TOLD ME. AND IMAGINE WHAT IT WOULD HAVE BEEN LIKE; ONE HALF OF THE JEWS OVER THERE ARE CALLED EISIK, AND THE OTHER HALF YEKEL! AND HE LAUGHED AGAIN. RABBI EISIK BOWED, TRAVELED HOME, DUG UP THE TREASURE FROM UNDER HIS STOVE, AND BUILT THE HOUSE OF PRAYER WHICH IS CALLED REB EISIK'S SHUL.'

RABBI BUNAM USED TO ADD, 'TAKE THIS STORY TO HEART AND MAKE WHAT IT SAYS YOUR OWN. THERE IS SOMETHING YOU CANNOT FIND ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD, NOT EVEN AT THE ZADDIK'S, AND THERE IS, NEVERTHELESS, A PLACE WHERE YOU CAN FIND IT.'

The first thing to be understood about the story is that he dreamed. All desiring is dreaming, and all dreaming takes you away from you - that is the very nature of the dream.

You may be sleeping in Poona [India] & you may dream of Philadelphia. In the morning you will not wake up in Philadelphia, you will wake up in Poona. In a dream you can be anywhere; a dream has a tremendous freedom because it is unreal. In a dream you can be anywhere: on the moon, on Mars. You can choose any planet, it is your game. In a dream you can be anywhere, there is only one place you cannot be - that is where you are. This is the first thing to be understood about the dreaming consciousness. If you are where you are, then the dream cannot exist, because then there is no point in the dream, then there is no meaning in the dream. If you are exactly where you are and you are exactly what you are, then how can the dream exist? The dream can exist only if you go away from you.

You may be a poor man and you dream about being an emperor. You may be an ordinary man and you dream about yourself being extraordinary. You walk on the earth and you dream that you fly in the sky. The dream has to be a falsification of reality; the dream has to be something other than reality. In reality there is no dreaming, so those who want to know the real have to stop dreaming.

In India we have divided human consciousness into four stages. We call the first stage the ordinary waking consciousness. Right now you are in the ordinary waking consciousness. What is an ordinary waking consciousness? You appear to be awake but you are not. You are a little bit awake, but that little bit is so small that it doesn't make much difference. You can walk to your home, you can recognise your wife or your husband, you can drive your car...that little bit is only enough for this. It gives you a sort of efficiency - that's all.

But it is a very small consciousness, exhausted very easily, lost very easily. If somebody insults you it is lost, it is exhausted. If somebody insults you, you become angry. You are no longer conscious. That's why after anger many people say, 'Why did I do it? How did I do it? How could I do it? It happened in spite of me.' Yes, they are right - it happened in spite of you because you lost your consciousness. In anger, in violent rage, people are possessed; they do things they would never do if they were a little aware. They can kill, they can destroy; they can even destroy themselves.

The ordinary waking consciousness is only 'waking' for name's sake - deep down the dreams continue. Just a small tip of the iceberg is alert - most of the thing is underneath, in darkness. Watch it sometimes. Just anywhere, close your eyes and look within: you will see dreams floating like clouds surrounding you. You can sit on the chair any moment of the day, close your eyes, relax, and suddenly you see that the dreams have started. In fact they have not started, they were continuing - just as during the day stars disappear from the sky. They don't really disappear, they are there, but because of the light of the sun you don't see them. If you go into a deep well, a very deep, dark well, from the dark well you can look at the sky and you will be able to recognise a few stars - even at midday. The stars are there; when night comes they don't reappear, they have always been there, all twenty-four hours. They don't go anywhere, the sunlight just hides them.

Exactly the same is the case with your dreaming: it is just below the surface, just underground it continues. On the top of it is a little layer of awareness, underneath are a thousand and one dreams. Close your eyes any time and you will find yourself dreaming.

'That's why people are in great difficulty when they start meditating. They come to me and they say, 'This is something funny, strange. We never thought that there were so many thoughts.' They have never closed their eyes, they have never sat in a relaxed posture, they have never gone in to see what was happening there because they were too engaged in the outside world, they were too occupied. Because of that occupation they never became aware of this constant activity inside.

In India, the ordinary waking consciousness is called the first state. The second state is that of dreaming. Any time you close your eyes you are in it. At night you are continuously in it, almost continuously. Whether you remember your dream in the morning or not is not of much importance, you go on dreaming. There are at least eight cycles of dreaming during the night. One cycle continues for many minutes - fifteen, twenty minutes; then there is a gap; then there is another cycle; then there is a gap; then again there is a cycle. Throughout the whole night you are continuously dreaming and dreaming and dreaming. This is the second state of consciousness.

This parable is concerned with the second state of consciousness. Ordinarily, all desires exist in the second state of consciousness, the dreaming state. Desire is a dream and to work for a dream is doomed from the very beginning, because a dream can never become real. Even if sometimes you feel it has become almost real, it never becomes real - a dream by nature is empty. It has no substance in it.

The third state is sleep, deep sleep, SUSHUPTI. In it, all dreaming disappears - but all consciousness also. While you are awake there is a little awareness, very little; when you are dreaming, even that little awareness disappears. But still there is an iota of awareness - that's why you can remember in the morning that you had a dream, such and such a dream. But in deep sleep even that disappears. It is as if you have completely disappeared. Nothing remains. A nothingness surrounds you.

These are the three ordinary states. The fourth state is called TURIYA. The fourth is simply called 'the fourth'. TURIYA means 'the fourth'. The fourth state is that of a Buddha. It is almost like dreamless sleep with one difference - that difference is very great. It is as peaceful as deep sleep, as without dreams as deep sleep, but it is absolutely alert, aware.

Krishna says in his Gita that a real yogi never sleeps. That does not mean that a real yogi simply sits awake in his room the whole night. There are a few foolish people who are doing that. That a real yogi never sleeps means that while he is asleep he remains aware, alert.

Ananda lived with Buddha for forty years. He asked Buddha one day, 'One thing surprises me very much; I am intrigued. You will have to answer me. This is just out of curiosity but I cannot contain it anymore. When you sleep at night I have watched you many times, for hours together, and you sleep in such a way that it seems as if you are awake. You sleep in such a graceful way; your face, your body - everything is so graceful. I have seen many other people sleeping, and they start mumbling, their faces go through contortions, their bodies lose all grace, their faces become ugly, they don't look beautiful any more....' All beauty has to be managed, controlled, practised; in deep sleep it disappears. 'And, one thing more,' Ananda said. 'You never change your posture you remain in the same posture. Wherever you put your hand in the beginning, you keep it there the whole night. You never change it. It seems that deep down you are keeping absolutely alert.' Buddha said, 'You are right. That happens when meditation is perfect.'

Then awareness penetrates your being so deeply that you are aware in all of the four states. When you are aware in all four states dreaming absolutely disappears, because in an alert mind a dream cannot exist. And the ordinary waking state becomes an extraordinary waking state - what Gurdjieff calls self-remembering. One remembers oneself absolutely, each moment. There is no gap. The remembrance is a continuity.

And deep sleep is there but its quality changes completely. The body is asleep but the soul is awake and alert, watchful. The whole body is deep in darkness but the lamp of inner consciousness burns bright.

After many years of great poverty it is natural that one should start dreaming about treasures. We always dream about that which we don't have. Go on a fast for one day and in the night you will dream about food. Try to force celibacy upon yourself and your dreams will become sexual, they will have a quality of sexuality.

That's why psychoanalysis says that the analysis of dreams is of tremendous import, because it shows what you are repressing. Your dream becomes a symbolic indication of the repressed content of your mind. If a person continuously dreams about food, about feasts, that simply shows that the person is starving himself. Jaina monks always dream about food - they may say so, they may not. If you fast too much you are bound to dream about food. That's why many religious saints become so afraid of falling asleep.

Even Mahatma Gandhi was very afraid to go into sleep. He was trying to reduce it to as little as possible. Religious people make it a point to try not to sleep for too long - four hours, five hours at the most. Three is the ideal. Why? Because once your need of bodily rest is satisfied your mind starts weaving and spinning dreams. And immediately the mind brings up things which you have been repressing. Mahatma Gandhi said, 'I have become a celibate as far as my waking consciousness is concerned, but in my dreams I am not a celibate.' He was a true man in a sense - truer than other so-called saints. At least he accepted that in his dreams he was not yet celibate.

But unless you are celibate in your dreams you are not yet celibate, because the dream reveals whatsoever you are repressing during the day. The dream simply brings it back to your consciousness. Dreaming is a language, a communication from the unconscious which is saying, 'Please don't do this to me. It is impossible to tolerate. Stop this nonsense. You are destroying my natural spontaneity. Allow me, allow whatsoever is potential in me to flower.'

When a person represses nothing, dreams disappear. So a Buddha never dreams. If your meditation goes deep you will immediately find that your dreams are becoming less and less and less. The day your dreams completely disappear and you attain to clarity in your sleep - no clouds, no smoke, no thoughts; simple, silent sleep, without any interference of dreams - that day you have become a Buddha, your meditation has come to fruition.

Psychoanalysis insists that dreams have to be understood because man is very cunning: he can deceive while he is awake but he cannot deceive when he is in a dream. A dream is truer...Look at the irony. A dream is more true about you than your so-called waking consciousness. Man has become so false. man has become so fake that the waking consciousness cannot be relied upon - you have corrupted it too much. A psychoanalyst immediately wants to go into your dreams, he does not want to know about your religion, he does not want to know about your philosophy of life, he does not want to know whether you are a Hindu or a Christian, an Indian or an American - that is all nonsense. He wants to know what your dreams are. Look at the irony - your dreams have become so real that your reality is less real than your dreams. You are living such a pseudo-life, inauthentic, false, that the psychoanalyst has to go to your dreams to find a few glimpses of truth. Only your dreams are still beyond your control.

There are people who try to control dreams also. tn the East methods have been invented to control dreams. That means you are not even allowing the unconscious to convey any message to you. You can do that too. You can cultivate dreams if you work hard. You can start planning your dreams. You can give a story to your own unconscious to unfold in your dreams. If you do it consistently, every day, by and by you will be able to corrupt the unconscious.

Once a devotee of Krishna stayed with me. He said, 'I always dream of Krishna.' I asked him, 'How do you manage it? A dream is not something that you can manage. What method have you tried?' He said, 'A simple method which my guru gave to me. Every night when I go to sleep, I go on thinking and thinking about Krishna, fantasising. After three years of continuously practising fantasy while falling asleep, one day it happened. Whatsoever I had fantasised continued in my dream and it became my dream. Since then I have been having tremendously religious dreams.'

I said, 'You just go into the details - because you may have managed the story but the unconscious will be sending messages in the story itself, the unconscious can use your story to send its messages.' He said, 'What do you mean?' I said, 'You simply give me the content of your dream, the detailed content.'

And he started telling me. It was absolutely sexual. Krishna was his lover and he had become a male gopi, a boyfriend. The content was homosexual. And they were dancing together and kissing and hugging and loving each other.

I said, 'You have changed the figure, but the content still remains. And my understanding is that you are a homosexual.' He was very much disturbed and shocked. He said, 'What do you mean? How have you come to know about it?' I told him, 'Your dream is a clear message.'

He started weeping and crying. He said, 'From my childhood I was never attracted to women, I was always attracted to men. And I thought that it was good because women would distract me from my path.'

The homosexual content had entered into his religious story. Krishna was nothing but a homosexual partner. He became very disturbed and that very night the dream disappeared and a purely homosexual dream entered. He said, 'What have you done to me?' I said, 'I have not done anything. I have simply made your message clear to you. You can fabricate a story but that doesn't matter, the inner content remains the same.'

Just see. Go to a person who is not religious. You will find nude pictures of women in Indian homes, in bachelors' homes. These people are not religious. But go to a religious man. He may have beautiful pictures of gods and goddesses but just look at the content, at the detail of it. Whether it is a film actress or whether it is a goddess makes no difference. Just look at the breasts! They will indicate exactly the same content. The story is different. Somebody has a picture of a goddess on his wall and somebody has Elizabeth Taylor or somebody else's picture, or Sophia Loren - but it makes no difference. Whether you call her a goddess or you call her a film actress makes no difference. Look at the detail and you will see what that man is hankering after.

You can manipulate your dreams, you can destroy the purity of your unconscious's messages but still the unconscious will go on giving you messages. It has to. It has to scream to you because you are destroying your own nature, your own spontaneity.