Dreams Are Portals To Other Realities

Now we must examine what the contemplative traditions say about dreams as portals to other realities because the traditions have been investigating the dream state through the instrument of trained consciousness for far longer than either neuroscience or quantum physics has existed. And their descriptions of the dream's relationship to other levels of reality provide an extraordinary body of experiential data that the quantum frameworks are only now beginning to formalize. We will begin with Hinduism which provides the most comprehensive philosophical framework for understanding dreams as perceptions of other realities. The Hindu understanding of dreams is built on a specific cosmological foundation. Reality is multi-layered. The Mandukya Upanishad identifies four states of consciousness. Waking, dreaming, deep sleep and Turiya. And each state corresponds to a different layer of reality. The waking state perceives the gross physical layer, the jagrat, the visible universe of matter and energy. The dreaming state perceives the subtle layer, the svapna, the golden womb, the luminous realm of mental forms, emotional energies and informational patterns that underlies the physical layer. The deep sleep state rests in the causal layer, the sushupti. The divine creative potency from which both the subtle and the gross layers emerge. And Turiya transcends all three layers perceiving the Brahman the infinite undifferentiated ground from which every layer, every state and every reality arises. The subtle layer is not a metaphor. It is an ontological level, a genuine stratum of reality that is as real as the physical layer, but that operates through different principles. The subtle layer is not spatial in the ordinary sense. It does not have the three-dimensional extension that the physical layer displays. It is not temporal in the ordinary sense. It does not flow from past to future in the linear sequence that the waking consciousness experiences. And it is not governed by the physical laws that constrain the gross layer. The laws of thermodynamics, the speed of light, the gravitational constant do not apply in the subtle realm. The subtle layer operates through the laws of mind, through association, through intention, through the karmic resonances that connect experiences across time, space, and lifetimes.

The physicist Erwin Schrödinger whose engagement with the Vedantic tradition we have encountered throughout this series described the subtle layer in terms that bridge the Hindu and the quantum frameworks. "The world is given to me only once, not one existing and one perceived. Subject and object are only one." In the subtle layer, the distinction between the perceiver and the perceived dissolves. The dreamer and the dream are one. The consciousness and its content are unified and the experience has the nondual quality that the Vedanta identifies with the deeper levels of reality. The dream in this framework is not a hallucination. It is a perception of the subtle layer. The Hiranyagarbha, the level of reality that is more fundamental than the physical layer but less fundamental than the causal layer. The subtle layer contains information that the physical layer does not. Information about the past, the future, the hidden connections between events and the karmic patterns that shape the trajectory of individual lives. The dreaming consciousness accesses this information because the dreaming consciousness is perceiving the subtle layer directly without the mediation of the physical senses that the waking consciousness requires. The yoga Vasistha provides the most radical Hindu account of the dream's reality. The sage Vasistha tells Rama, "The dream world and the waking world are both projections of the same consciousness." The dream is not less real than the waking world. The waking world is not more real than the dream. Both are appearances in consciousness. Both are dreams, dreamed by the infinite consciousness that constitutes the ground of all reality. The statement is not metaphorical. It is ontological a claim about the fundamental nature of reality. The waking world is a dream. The dream world is a dream. And the difference between them is not a difference of reality but a difference of mode. A difference in the way that consciousness projects its content, not a difference in the ontological status of the content projected. Shankara, in his commentary on the Brahma Sutras, uses the dream precisely as an argument for the illusory nature of the waking world. If the dream world which appears completely real while the dream lasts is revealed as a projection when the dreamer wakes, then the waking world which appears completely real while waking lasts may similarly be revealed as a projection when the consciousness achieves the awakening that the spiritual traditions describe. The dream is the proof of concept for Maya. It demonstrates that consciousness can generate a complete convincing experientially real world that is from a deeper perspective a projection rather than a fundamental reality.

The philosopher Zhuangzi expressed the same insight with his famous butterfly dream. Once Zhuangzi dreamt he was a butterfly fluttering happily. He did not know he was Zhuangzi. Suddenly he woke up and there he was solid and unmistakable Zhuangzi. But he did not know if he was Zhuangzi who had dreamt he was a butterfly or a butterfly dreaming he was Zhuangzi. The parable captures the ontological symmetry between the waking state and the dream state. the symmetry that the yoga Vasistha asserts and that the quantum physics of the multiverse with its multiple equally real branches supports. The implication is extraordinary. If the waking world and the dream world are both projections of the same consciousness, then the dream world is a genuine reality, a genuine configuration of consciousness, a genuine projection of the creative power that produces all realities. The dead person who appears alive in the dream is alive in the dream reality in the subtle layer in the configuration of consciousness that the dream projects. The building that rearranges itself is rearranging itself in the dream reality where the spatial constraints of the physical layer do not apply. And the information that the dream contains, the information about future events, about distant locations, about other people's mental states is real information perceived through the dreams access to the subtle layer that the waking consciousness cannot reach. The practice of yoga nidra, yogic sleep, the systematic cultivation of conscious awareness in the state between waking and sleeping is the Hindu technology for exploring the dreams reality deliberately. The practitioner of yoga nidra lies down, relaxes the body and progressively withdraws the consciousness from the physical senses, entering a state that is physiologically similar to sleep but that maintains the thread of conscious awareness. In this state, the practitioner perceives the subtle layer directly perceiving the mental forms, the emotional energies and the informational patterns that the physical senses cannot detect. The practice is not visualization. The practitioner is not imagining the subtle layer. The practitioner is perceiving it directly experientially with the same immediacy and the same certainty that the waking consciousness perceives the physical layer.

The modern researcher Kamakhya Kumar at Banaras Hindu University has studied the neuropsychological effects of yoga nidra and found that the practice produces a specific brain state that is distinct from both waking and sleeping. enhanced theta wave activity, the brain wave frequency associated with the hypnagogic state between waking and sleeping, reduced cortical arousal, and maintained conscious awareness. The state is physiologically similar to REM sleep. In some respects, the visual cortex is active. The default mode network is partially suppressed but differs in that the prefrontal cortex maintains a level of activation that the ordinary REM state does not display. The yoga nidra practitioner is in a controlled conscious prefrontal monitored version of the dream state. A state that combines the dream state's access to the subtle layer with the waking state's evaluative capacity. The practice of yoga nidra has been shown to produce specific experiences that are consistent with the perception of the subtle layer, vivid, spontaneous, involuntary visual and auditory experiences that the practitioner does not generate deliberately and that often contain information that the practitioner identifies as meaningful, revelatory or previously unknown. The experiences are not dreams in the ordinary sense. The practitioner is not asleep and is maintaining conscious awareness throughout. They are perceptions direct conscious perceptions of the subtle layer that the yoga nidra state makes accessible.

The Brihadaranyaka Upanishad describes the dreaming consciousness with an image of stunning precision. In the dream state, the self takes apart the material of this world and creates another world with its own luminosity. In the dream state, there are no chariots, no roads, no horses, but the self creates chariots, roads, and horses. There are no joys, no pleasures, no pools, but the self creates joys, pleasures, and pools. For the self is the creator. The dreaming self is not a passive receiver of random neural signals. It is a creator, a consciousness that generates entire worlds from its own creative power. And the worlds it generates are not arbitrary. They are drawn from the subtle layer, the level of reality where the informational patterns that the physical world expresses exist in their pure, unmanifest, creatively potent form.

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