World-view as dream

[Bhadraiah Mallampalli]

>>I disagree with this. The people who first designed cars and >>aeroplanes
>>dreamt about them before cars and aeroplanes became >>material realities.

>Yes. But it is still based on some related material knowledge acquired
>by those inventors. Isn't it? For eg., a cart for a car or a bird for >an
>aeroplane.

Let us consider an illustration. It rained heavily in a catchment area and
that creates a flash flood. The waters rush towards any area that has lower
potential, and finally they come together as a river. If the waters hit upon
a huge rock they deflect. When they hit another rock they deflect again, and
continue in any direction that offers a lower potential.

The objects that we see in waking state are similar to the rocks the river
met on its way from time to time. If the river met two rocks on its way one
after another: Is one rock in any way related to any other rock? Is one rock
the cause of another rock? Did one rock become another rock? The answer is
NO to all of these questions.

Now the thought process works exactly the same way. We experience different
objects at different times, like the flash flood met with different rocks.
The objects that we see at one time and no way related to objects that we
see at other times (but we see them as related, and this adhyaasa is
precisely what we need to get rid of). One object does not become another
object. One object does not cause another object. Even the perception of one
object does not cause perception of another object. As a corollary the
objects we see in waking state are no way related to each other and they are
no way related to objects we see in dream state, even if they have same
names.

If an object is indeed seen twice by some chance, it is the consciousness
that has decided to see it again, whether in waking state first and then in
dream, or in dream first and later in waking state. It is not the fault of
the object itself, or any material knowledge concerning the object. Cause is
more important than the effect.

Consciousness is like the flash flood. What objects the flash flood meet
with depends on how and where it rained, which in turn depends on how and
where clouds gathered together and decided to rain. What the consciousness
wants to see depends on what is known, knowable and unknown at that point of
time.

Yes, your original proposition is to some extent correct, that what the
consciousness sees depends on the material knowledge (known)! But this
dependency is only partial. The other parts are knowable, and more
importantly the unknown. The presence of the unknown makes a mockery of
whatever certainty we have about the material knowledge being the cause of
objects seen in dreams.

As they say, the unknowable in always in the background. It neither
experiences nor is experienced.

I am not denying the karma theory here. If the river indeed hits the rock a
little hard the rock may even move. Material knowledge is always logically
perfect, because we are limiting the focus to what is known, and
conveniently avoiding what is unknown. So it appears as if it we recycle the
same objects in dream or waking state. What is known is always conserved,
because if something is known to exist once it should exist forever, because
nothing is ever born. Existence itself is never born, so its dream is also
never born, in other words the dream if it existed once always existed.

But then we also say "Oh, I forgot about that!". That is what is unknown.
Looking into the cause of perception or its loss is more powerful than
studying the recurrence of the objects during perception.

Best regards
Bhadraiah

_________________________________________________________________
The new MSN 8: advanced junk mail protection and 2 months FREE*
http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail