The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v2.c40.s9.6

v2.c40.s9.6

In the waking state the man uses all his faculties and is confronted by a real world, but the waking state is in reality merely a dream condition, since it has not true reality, and the man who is awake is really furthest removed from the clear knowledge usually attached to the waking condition. Hence in the Aitareya Upaniṣad¹ we find three sleeps or dreams mentioned which may well be the three states, the first regarded as dreaming no less than the other two. In the case of a dream, however, the outer world is not there:² there are no carts, horses, roads, but he makes them for himself; there is no joy, happiness, nor desire, but he makes them for himself; wells, pools, and streams also he fashions for himself. The spirit serves as light for itself in this condition. From another point of view³ the primitive idea of the absence of the mind during sleep is recognized, and a warning given not lightly to waken the sleeper, lest he not easily find his way back to the body. These two views, the activity of the self in the body in sleep, and the journeying of the self from the body, are united in a third⁴ which pictures the self as engaged in the process of wandering through his own body here and there. The vital spirits are then treated as being his subjects, who attend him in his movements, like a king, through the realm of his body. The nature of the dream consciousness is shown also by the Upaniṣads to be closely connected with the character of the consciousness which was enjoyed in the waking life, and which thus is the material (*mātrā*) on which the soul acts; what a man feared might happen to him, to be slain, to be flayed, to be trampled on by an elephant, or plunged into a pit, all these ideas crowd in upon him.⁵ In the Praçna⁶ the whole process of dreaming is a review of what has been experienced in the waking state.