Chapter 36Dreams · Understanding the Meaning of Dreams

Unless they are really significant dreams it is a waste of time [to study them].

* Yes, these are symbolic dreams, but the exact meaning varies with the mind and condition of the one who sees them.

* That [dream] is evidently unlike many others a symbol dream on the vital plane. But it is difficult to interpret these vital symbolic hieroglyph in their forms. Once one gets the clue some of them can be very significant — others of course are rather trivial.

* No; all dreams are not true. Even of those which have some truth in them, may have to be interpreted rightly before you can know what is true in them. There are others that are true — they are experiences that you have in other planes or worlds into which you go when you are asleep. As for the bad dreams, you should not allow them to upset you, but reject them as untrue.

* How do you say that vital dreams have no link or reason? They have their own coherence, only the physical mind cannot always get at the clue by following which the coherence would unroll itself. For that matter the sequences of physical existence are coherent to us only because we are accustomed to it and our reason has made up a meaning out of it. But subject it to the view of a different consciousness and it becomes an incoherent phantasmagoria. That’s how the Mayavadin or Schopenhauer would speak of it, the former say deliberately that dream-sequences and life-sequences stand on the same footing, only they have another structure. Each is real and consequent to itself — though neither, they would say, is real or consequent in very truth.

* The physical mind (or else the subconscient) almost always in-terferes in dreams and gives its own version. It is only when there is a clear experience on the mental or vital plane that it does not try to intervene.

* I am not sure that it is advisable to tell these dreams to others — as a rule, the movements of the sadhana should be kept to oneself, because by speaking of them to others there is likely to be a dispersion of their force and perhaps a calling in of other atmospheres by the mental or vital reaction of the people to whom you tell them. It is only to very fit persons that one can safely speak about them. I don’t think these dreams could be made into a book because they need a special knowledge to understand them and this knowledge is not common. For yourself you can do it, but perhaps it would be better to wait a little before you do it.