From Sri Sarada Devi and Her Divine Play by Swami Chetanananda, Page 657
In response to a question as to whether the Master dwells in the picture, Mother says in clear words, “Of course he does.” We see this in the incident with Mother where She has a dream that Sri Ramakrishna is affected by something that is done to His living presence in the picture. And then She fixes the problem in Her waking state.
This is a similar to an incident in Bangalore when Swami Yatishwarananda was the head of the Math. The shrine there faces the east so the idol of Sri Ramakrishna faces the east. On the wall opposite the shrine there is a ventilator at the top, and a picture of Sri Ramakrishna was placed, with its back to the ventilator. Since the sun rises in the east, the sunrays would shine through the ventilator and fall on the back of the picture of Sri Ramakrishna that was placed on the ventilator.
Swami Yatishwarananda would keep getting dreams of Sri Ramakrishna saying that His back was burning and he (Swami Y) couldn’t understand what the dream meant. Then upon examining he realised that the sunrays were hitting the back of the picture of Sri Ramakrishna through the ventilator. So Swami Yatishwarananda got wooden boards put on the ventilator to block the sun, so that the sunrays would not hit the picture of Sri Ramakrishna. This solved Sri Ramakrishna’s burning back problem.
So here too Sri Ramakrishna appeared in the swami’s dream many times till he realised the problem and fixed it by putting wooden boards on the ventilator.
We may wonder, are these dreams true? If we analyse our dreams, they are not random. They are somehow connected with incidents that would have that day or the previous day, something that is fresh in our mind. So there is definitely a correlation between the waking and the dream state.
Just as the incidents of the waking state influence what we dream about, in these two incidents we see how Mother and Swami Yatishwarananda get instructions in their dream states to carry out in Their waking state. Many people have also experienced getting their mantra from Mother or Sri Ramakrishna in their dream states.
So it is our intimate experience that in our dreams we see random combinations of our waking played out. Maybe in a bizarre sequence but the basis of the dream will be something that happened in our waking state. But the fact that in our dream we get an experience that drives our waking future like getting a mantra, is evidence that the dream state is as real as the waking state. This is a point to ask – why is the waking experience any more real or valid than the dream experience?
If the waking experience is real, then so is the dream experience.
From the waking state when we try to explain the dream state, it seems unreal, bizarre, illusory. So from the Bodha state of illumination, the waking state seems equally unreal, bizarre and illusory!
How can we attribute any water to the middle of the desert when all there is, is sand? But we see it. It’s called a mirage, an illusion.
The problem is we suffer from thirst, and we go towards the mirage thinking we’ll get water when all we end up getting is sand. So when we suffer under the influence of Maya, we believe the waking state is real and perform actions within an illusory mirage, thinking that it will lead to eternal happiness and peace of mind when all we end up with bouts of pleasure and pain.
It’s so fascinating that no rational mind will deny and that’s what makes this very entertaining. Life is quite fun when we think of it this way. So let us work towards illumination where we can see even the waking state as a mirage and be entertained but the bizarre happenings in it!