Because in a short dream that you might have had for only a minute or half a minute or
two minutes, but it feels as if the whole year has passed and you have met already
dozens or thousands of people in one single dream that lasted hardly two minutes.
During that dream, this past, present, and future everything collapses.
So, shuru karte hain [let us start].
We are still on the third chapter, Spirituality, from ‘Truth Eternal’.
Let’s offer our humble prayer and center ourselves for better understanding.
Neither the ignorant nor the wise has risen higher than the field
of the body or the physical plane.
Both of them are on the physical plane.
The only difference between them is that one is possessed of multiplicity
and the other is possessed of unity.
Lalaji says, “Ignorance possessed of multiplicity and the wiser
ones possessed of Unity”.
It simply means identifying oneself either with the center of your being or with
the outermost manifestations like body or communities with whom we identify, the
country we identify with or we identify with our sexism, identifying with our
prestige, our status, these are all multiple things, there is no end to this.
Identifying ourselves with so many multiple things, that is why multiplicity,
while the wiser ones though they remain engaged with multiplicity, their main
focus is always the atman [soul].
One finds peace and steadiness in the soul.
Whereas the other finds peace in the body, physical organs and their activities
like satisfying the needs of physical organs they feel satisfied, they feel at peace.
They are hungry, they take food and for a moment they feel
satisfied and they are at peace.
You have a craving for a movie, you watch a movie, you are at
peace if that movie goes well.
Likewise romance, these are all at a very superficial level.
Neither of the two has the knowledge of real peace and steadiness because
the ignorant man loves multiplicity through action and knowledge and
enters the field of unity every day.
The wise man loves unity and is compelled to return to the plane of multiplicity.
Neither can the wise cast off the body nor can the ignorant be
denied the happiness of the spirit.
Both are similar, but the condition of the wise man, in comparison with that of the
ignorant is relatively superior because the physical body is the field of multiplicity,
whereas the soul is the field of unity.
So despite having wisdom, as long as we have this body we have to remain
engaged with multifarious activities.
But the focus is not these multifarious activities, focus is always the soul.
That is how we in Sahaj Marg, what do we do?
We do all kinds of things thinking that it is my Master doing it or I am doing it
for my Master, or whatsoever I am doing is also being done while I am in a meditative
state and absorbed in the Remembrance.
There are so many ways of engaging ourselves with multiplicity while keeping this
internal current of remembrance going on, be you a dictator or be you a saint, both
are necessary, physical body and the soul.
There is one important statement which Lalaji uses here where he says, “neither
can the wise cast off the body nor can the ignorant be denied the happiness of
the spirit.” So there is a solution here also, he says “neither can the wise cast
off the body”, that only means that if you do cast off the body, that does not
mean you have got to kill yourself, no, or you have to wait till you die, no.
It only means that I need to transcend this body and mind.
Transcending you know as they say in religion, transcending religion,
transcending spirituality, transcending reality, transcending bliss, all these
are incremental states of consciousness where we transcend from ‘I’, ‘Me’ and
‘Mine’ to the ultimate void - nothingness.
Our prayer is already teaching us how to go beyond ‘I’, ‘me’ and ‘mine’,
simply by incorporating this plurality that “We are yet but slaves of wishes”.
It is ‘we’, ‘us’ and ‘ours’.
We begin like this, “O Master, Thou art the real goal of human life;
we are yet but slaves of wishes putting bar to our advancement.
Thou art the only God and Power to bring us up to that stage”.
So it is all about ‘we’, ‘our’ and ‘us’.
It is transcending ‘me’, ‘mine’.
So it is all about ‘I’, ‘me’ and ‘mine’ transcending this identification with
the self and instead, bringing in this element of togetherness, that I am
praying, but I am praying for one and all.
Multiplicity is the conscious and waking state and oneness is the state of deep sleep.
So here Lalaji reveals the fact that when do you become united?
When do you come back to this state of unity?
It is in this deep state of sleep.
Now, what becomes of ‘time’ during sleep?
We say of course “oh I slept between these and these hours but during the
sleep, we do not realize anything, we do not perceive anything.
Only during the dream, we perceive a few things here and there but then too, our
idea of perception of time is no longer the same or comparable to our wakeful state,
because in a short dream that you might have had for only a minute, or half a minute or
two minutes, but it feels as if the whole year has passed and you had met already
dozens or thousands of people in one single dream that lasted hardly two minutes.
During the dream, this past, present, and future everything collapses.
Past, present, and future is the idea that we entertain during our wakeful hours.
This conditioning of the time or samaya, kaal does not touch us during
sleep nor does it touch us after death.
Time is a human conception.
We measure time and say, it is a gap between two events.
But what is time?
It is difficult to say except this way – time gap between two events.
If there were no events what would you call that time?
Suspension, maybe?
So we see that time-related conditioning simply dissolves, thus
one cannot perceive time like we do perceive time during wakeful hours.