Day 40 

There are five types of dreams. The first are those that are fulfilment of your cravings and your unfulfilled desires. You may want to have an icecream or a pizza but you postpone it. Then, when you are asleep you have a dream in which you are eating a pizza or having a big scoop of ice-cream. 

You may have wanted to go for a walk with somebody and you could not do it. And then you dream that you are in such a walk. Your latent desires come up in dreams. Desires and fears are seen in dreams. The second type of dream is when there is some stress released from the past. Past experiences are seen in such dreams.

The third type is an intuitive dream. It might be about what might happen in the future, an intuition. The fourth type of dream is a combination of all three - fulfilment, stress release and intuitive. And the fifth type of dream has nothing to do with you. It is about the place where you are sleeping. 

You may be in hotel in Italy and you dream of the unfamiliar Italian language, and all the unfamiliar sounds that you have been hearing in that country. So, these five types of dreams can occur. And you may not be able to categorize your dreams. Usually, it will be the fourth type, which is a combination of all five. Therefore, a wise person will just brush them aside. Even the reality of wakefulness is a dream. 

You may be in a place on one day and in another the next and in a third the day after. Your presence in a place in the past will seem like a dream. Similarly, what you are planning to do next week is like a dream right now. Your mind is more in a dream than in wakefulness. 

There are only two states of consciousness. One is deep sleep or dream day dream or night dream. Day dream building castles in the air. The day dreaming goes on and on in the mind, all the time.

But, once you know that you are day dreaming, there is a gush of energy in you. You become alert. This alertness wakes you up to the reality. 

You are awakened. This awakening is pragya. It is samadhi. Only at that moment you are fully alive. Only then are you awake to the truth of what is. The rest of the time, you are sleep. You wake up even when you know that you have been in a deep sleep and have been dreaming. And Patanjali has done a marvelous thing just quoting this one sutra. 

Knowledge of sleep awakens you. This is because when a person is asleep, he is not at all aware of it. The moment he knows that he is sleeping, he is already awake. A person, who is day dreaming does not know it. And the moment he knows that he is day dreaming, he wakes up to reality at that very moment, instantly. When you are doing Kriya and pranayam and nothing is happening to you, you begin to day dream or sleep. 

There can be only two possibilities. If you are day dreaming, the pranayam cannot help you. It is very difficult for politicians to get into any sadhana because their mind is in a constant state of day-dreams. And the tragedy is that they do not know it. Their dreams are worth noting. The knowledge of dream and sleep can also awaken you to the truth.

Gurudev Sri Sri Ravi Shankarji 

PATANJALI YOGA SUTRAS