The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo - Part 7

WHY ARE DREAMS FORGOTTEN?

It is because dreams do not occur always in the same domain. It is not always the same part of the being that dreams nor is it the same place where one dreams. If one were in conscious communication with all the parts of one's being then one would remember all his dreams. But it is only with a few parts of your being that you remain in conscious contact in sleep. For example, you have a dream in the subtle physical, that is to say, in the domain very near the physical. This generally happens towards the end of the night, in the early hours of the morning just before you get up (say between four and five). Before rising from bed, if you remain very quiet, without making any movement and concentrate a little, you will be able to remember the dreams that you had immediately before: the communication between the physical and the subtle physical being close, you would be able to remember easily enough. Now if you begin from the beginning what happens is something like this. As you fall into sleep, the body becomes quiet and the vital too goes to rest; but the mind continues to be active, it has not gone to sleep. You have now what are called mental dreams built out of all kinds of ideas and imaginations set free. After a time the mind gets tired and falls silent; the vital has rested sufficiently and wakes up in its turn and moves about. Your dreams of the mental domain

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are pushed back giving place to vital dreams. When you are active in the vital you very often go out of your body, visit all kinds of places and get involved in various exploits and adventures. If you wake up suddenly then, you would remember your vital exploits in sleep. Some people train themselves to get up at fixed hour of the night. They thus bring to memory the dreams they had just before waking. Now the vital too after having been sufficiently active gets tired and goes to rest. Yet another part of the being now replaces the vital and comes forward. It may be the turn of the subtle physical to enter the arena. The vital is pushed back and you lose contact with it.

To become conscious of all the various movements of your nights, to recover them in your memory, some sort of training is necessary. The different states of the being in which you roam at night are, as you have seen, usually separate from each other. There is a gap in between two states; you jump from one to the other. There is no highway passing through all the domains of your consciousness connecting them without break or interruption. That means forgetfulness. When you leap from one into the other, you push back, that is forget, the one you leave behind. So you have to construct a bridge and very few people know how to do it; it requires more engineering skill than to build a material bridge. You may have very wonderful experiences in sleep, but you forget them all; perhaps you remember, as I have said, the last one, the one nearest to the physical mind. The

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best way then to remember and become conscious of the whole night is to begin at the end and go backward. Catch hold of the last image that still persists in your memory, like the loose end of a thread and then pull, pull slowly, till image after image comes back: it is something like the unrolling of a cinema film in the reverse direction. When you lose trace, stop and concentrate a little; try to call back whatever stray bit or faint impression still persists or can be more easily revived and then again pull slowly, gently, pick up whatever shows itself, try to join the bits. In this way, after some trial and training you will be able to recover a good part of the lost underworld.

There are, however, many ways of going about the thing. For you must know that your nights are not all the same. Each one is different and brings its own kind of sleep and dream. As each day is different having its own particular kind of activity, each night too likewise comes with its peculiar experiences. You may think that one day is more or less exactly like the previous day, that you are doing the same thing from day to day; but it is not so. Outwardly the activities may appear to be the same, but really their nature and significance vary from one day to another. No two moments are alike in the universe. Your night too is an universe of its own kind. Each night brings its own problem and needs its own solution.

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