Once in a few hundred years comes a Siddh Guru who dedicates his entire life to making people aware of the dizzying heights they can soar to spiritually, initiating them on the path to meet their divine selves.
Guru Sutra is based on the philosophy and teachings of a powerful Mahaguru who trained hundreds in the art of selfless service and healing, while leading thousands more on the road towards enlightenment.
For the first time ever, the author reveals the secrets governing a Guru-Disciple relationship, so the latter can navigate the pitfalls in the snakes and ladders game of spiritual evolution. Filled with anecdotes and real-life experiences, Guru Sutra shatters long-held beliefs, in turn mapping the trajectory to channelising spiritual power.
Excerpt:
Dreams can induce joy and grief, provide message and reprieve. Yogis, saints and seers have harnessed them as tools of communication.
Across religions, ancient texts have exemplified the prophetic power of dreams. They come to one and all, and without calling- age and physical disability notwithstanding. So what are dreams? Are they merely inspiration for some and aspiration for others? Or are they an exploration of the mind?
While the subject of dreams is as old as creation itself, its discussion too has spanned over 12,000 years or… 32,000 years for that matter. Who knows?
To delve further into this mystical subject, and increase our understanding about it, let us take a flight into the world of dreams.
Dreams, Visions and Out-of-Body Experiences
Simply defined, dreams are a series of thoughts, images and sensations that occur in a person’s mind during sleep.
If dreams occur during sleep, then what are visions? Many people use the terms ‘dreams’ and ‘visions’ interchangeably. Visions are also a series of thoughts, images and sensations but they occur at the threshold of sleep – in a ‘half-awake, half-asleep’ state. Visions can seldom appear in the waking state as well, often when the eyes are shut and in rare cases, when the eyes are open. People have visions either during meditation or in between sleep. Vision-like hallucinations can also occur when trance is induced by the use of psychotropic substances and mood-altering drugs.
Images, thoughts and sensations also occur as out-of-body experiences (OBEs) in a state of deep sleep. OBEs are those in which you have a sensation of moving out of your body. Most times, you can see your physical body asleep while you are out of it. The part of you that is outside your body can move through ceilings and walls and, at other times, fly at extreme heights across seen and unseen locations. You can even touch and move objects and, in rare cases, bring them back with you into the physical world! Examples in this book will help you understand exactly what I mean.
Categories of Dreams and Visions
Both animals and humans dream. Some dream in colour, while others in black and white. Some dreams get stored in memory while others are easily forgotten.
Let us deconstruct the world of dreams by categorising them, so that eventually you can attempt to catalogue and index your own dreams as best as possible.
Let us start with analysing dreams that allow certain samskars (mental impressions recorded while in the conscious state – to be exhausted during the dream state).
Some years ago, I dreamt of two car accidents, one after the other. In both the accidents, I was in the car that was damaged. I felt all the sensations of being trapped until people who had gathered at the crash site rescued me. Imagine the horror of being in a car crash and living all the related sensations not once but twice! It was emotionally terrifying, but when I woke up, I remember feeling grateful for being alive. The first thought that ran through my mind was that I had exhausted my karmas and that any bodily harm to me by way of a car accident had been averted.
Of course, that did not stop me from driving around cautiously the next day. I was unusually careful around the bends and turns, and almost drove in slow motion when I passed through the area I had seen as the accident site in one of the dreams. This was a section of the road I took to work every day. As expected, nothing happened. My destiny was fulfilled but in a parallel existence. The guru’s grace had pressed the changeover switch but not the delete button.
Many of us have dreamt of either our loved ones or ourselves in the throes of death. There is a popular belief that seeing the death of a loved one in a dream lengthens the lifespan of that person. In most cases, this is true. The implicit meaning of such a dream is that death did happen but in another realm of reality. Thus, the death occurrence in the dream state pushed away the probability of it actually transpiring in that person’s physical state. The point to be cognizant of is that the dream state is a state of parallel reality. That is why we have the term Svapan Lok, which means ‘Dimension of Dreams’.
In the early hours of a spring morning in 1994, Nina dreamt that her mother had taken ill. She saw her mother lying on a bed, looking pale. An aunt who was sitting by the bedside was sobbing uncontrollably while telling Nina that her mother was in a serious condition.
‘I remember my aunt talking on and on while I was not paying much attention. Strangely though, in this dream, I knew I was dreaming! But the mood was so dreadful and the tension so palpable that even after so many years I can recall the dream vividly.’
The untiring ringing of the phone broke Nina’s sleep. It was Nina’s cousin informing her that her mother had woken up that morning and lost her voice. ‘Even though mum tried, there was no sound, not even a whisper!’
Nina’s mother was alive but unable to utter a word or make a sound. Neither her mother nor the doctors could explain the reason for the voice loss or for that matter, its recovery 15 days later! Did Nina’s dream bear any correlation with the actual event? Perhaps.
Another level of dreams is premonitory dreams. They give us signs of our future, almost indicative of a yet-to-happen event.
However, a word of caution- it is not necessary that everything happening in a dream is actually warded off in our physical lives since some dreams are premonitory. It is not uncommon that some people can get both, premonitory dreams as well as fructification ones and therefore, it makes it all the more difficult to be able to distinguish between the two.
Deepangshu shared with me a dream that falls in this category. In 2008, a year into his marriage, he saw an enormous greyish triangle in his sleep. The triangle was so huge that he felt like ‘an ant in front of it’. In his dream, the triangle-like figure extended its arms to hand over a baby to Deepansghu. As he reached out to accept the baby, Deepangshu heard a voice say in Assamese, ‘This is your daughter. Her name is Anoya.’
He recollected being in a state of awe as he held the baby in his arms. Startled by this dream, Deepangshu woke up in shock. His wife and he had not planned for a family, so what was this? Restless, he surfed the Internet for a meaning to his dream. He discovered that Anoya was Hebrew for ‘God’s answer’.
Three years after this dream, Deepangshu was blessed with a daughter. Guess what he named her? ‘When my daughter was born, my wife and I instinctively knew what to call her. She was a gift I had received in my dream. I recalled the exact pronunciation of the baby’s name and accordingly named her, Aanoyah’, he said.
The symbolism of triangles or triangle-like figures is not lost on me although I am not too sure what to make of it. Amongst my spiritual associates, both Uddhav and Jain Sahib, disciples of Gurudev for the last several years, saw triangles in their waking state. Although Uddhav recognised these figures as powerful forces, he found himself momentarily paralysed as he saw two triangles come into his room through the window. On the other hand, when Jain Sahib sighted similar triangles, he felt he had been blessed with a vision of deities.
