Posted on: 23 Jun 2021
[An online spiritual discussion was conducted on March 13, 2021, in which several devotees participated. The questions of devotees answered by Swāmi are given below.]
[The following question was asked during a discussion when the dream state of a soul and the dream or imaginary state of the unimaginable God.
Śrī Lakshman asked: The soul is made up of awareness and the dream is also made up of awareness, so in the dream state is it proper to say that the weak awareness that exist should not be taken as difference/comparison with the real world which exists as a dream from the angle of the unimaginable God? Also, it might strengthen the Advaitin’s conviction that since the soul (awareness) is the creator of its own dream (awareness) so it would be appropriate to conclude that God is made up of awareness.]
Swāmi replied: We should not keep our pre-existing notions and philosophies fixed and then forcibly try to bend normal logic. Our notions and philosophies should be bent to follow normal logic. That is the only way our philosophies can become logical and justified. Awareness creates both the daydream and the dream when the person is asleep. But there is a lot of difference between these two states. When a sleeping person dreams, the person has no freedom, whereas, in the daydream, the person has full freedom. The common point in both types of dreams is that the same awareness creates both. Just due to this single common point, why should we take dream of a sleeping person for comparing with the God’s creation of this world? The imaginary world (daydream) created by a waking person stands as a better comparison. If the Advaitin has to conclude that God is awarenesss, then it does not matter whether he uses the dream of a sleeping person or a daydream for comparison. In both cases, the awareness alone creates both the dream-worlds. Using the example of the daydream does not weaken his ability to prove that God is awareness. But since God has full freedom and control over His imaginary world, which is our external world, it is better to compare it with a daydream where the person too has full control over his imaginary world.
We also agree that God is awareness, but we say that the awareness of God is not this relative imaginable awareness, which is generated from inert energy in a functioning nervous system. The awareness of God is unimaginable because, even before creation, God thought of creating this world. He thought even in the absence of inert energy and a material nervous system. Hence, we have to agree that the unimaginable awareness of the unimaginable God is based on His unimaginable omnipotence alone. It is not based on the imaginable relative awareness or soul. Our objection comes up only when Advaitins say that the soul itself is God. They can say that God is awareness provided they agree that the awareness of God is unimaginable and that it is not this relative imaginable awareness or soul.
Is it not true that a soul’s dream is based on idea’s copied from the external world, whereas, God’s creation is original?
[Śrī Phani commented: Swami, I remember about one point which You mentioned in one of Your old discourses. You mentioned the word āṣṭāṅgapāda and explained that the soul can only dream about things which it already knows from its external absolutely-real world, which is God’s dream state. In that dream state of God, completely new things were created by His Unimaginable imagination, out of nowhere, when He first thought of creating some different world other than Himself for the sake of His entertainment.]
Swāmi replied: I perfectly acknowledge what you say because I have written so. Whatever I have said is again in the interest of the concept that the soul is not God. When God created this world, there was no already-created external world. Hence, the creation of the world by God is a totally new invention. It was not copied from anywhere since no external world existed to copy its design. In the case of the soul, its imaginary world is always made of items copied from the items of the external world created by God already. I have already argued that even if a soul imagines a new animal in its own daydream with eight legs and two tails, it is not a totally new invention. Tails and legs both already exist in this external world created by God and the soul merely copied them and arranged them in a different way.