16 January 2014

Swami Vivekananda's Quotes On Dream Or Dreaming

We seem to be walking in dreams.
Dreams are all right in a dream-mind;
but as soon as you want to
grasp one of them, it is gone.
—Swami Vivekananda
Image source: Wikimedia Commons
In this article we are going to make a collection of Swami Vivekananda's quotations on dream.
  • A dream cannot be without a reality, and that reality is that one Infinite Existence.[Source]
  • Awake, arise, and dream no more![Source]
  • Dream no more! Oh, dream no more, my soul![Source]
  • Dreams, oh dreams! Dream on! Dream, the magic of dream, is the cause of this life, it is also the remedy. Dream' dream; only dream! Kill dream by dream![Source]
  • Every child is a born optimist; he dreams golden dreams. In youth he becomes still more optimistic. It is hard for a young man to believe that there is such a thing as death, such a thing as defeat or degradation. Old age comes, and life is a mass of ruins. Dreams have vanished into the air, and the man becomes a pessimist. Thus we go from one extreme to another, buffeted by nature, without knowing where we are going.[Source]
  • Everything that we see, or imagine, or dream, we have to perceive in space.[Source]
  • Go on, life is but a dream.[Source]
  • God alone is real; everything else is a dream only.[Source]
  • I hate this world, this dream, this horrible nightmare with its churches and chicaneries, its books and blackguardisms, its fair faces and false hearts, its howling righteousness on the surface and utter hollowness beneath, and, above all, its sanctified shopkeeping.[Source]
  • In dream our souls read a layer of our mind which we do not read in our waking hours, and however unsubstantial imagination may be, it is behind the imagination that all unknown psychic truths lie.[Source]
  • It is a land of dreams; it does not matter whether one enjoys or weeps; they are but dreams, and as such, must break sooner or later.[Source]
  • Life is but a dream of death.[Source]
  • Nightmares always begin pleasantly — only at the worst point [the] dream is broken — so death breaks [the] dream of life. Love death.[Source]
  • Our lives are but a passing from dream to dream. Man the infinite dreamer, dreaming finite dreams![Source]
  • The free never became bound; to ask how he did, is an illogical question. Where no bondage is, there is no cause and effect. "I became a fox in a dream and a dog chased me." Now how can I ask why the dog chased me? The fox was a part of the dream, and the dog followed as a matter of course; but both belong to the dream and have no existence outside.[Source]
  • The great sages say that to attain truth takes but the twinkling of an eye -- it is just a question of knowing -- the dream breaks.[Source]
  • The idea of heaven after death where the good live a life of eternal happiness is a vain dream, without a particle of meaning or sense in it.[Source]
  • The non-dualists say, "This universe does not exist at all; it is all illusion. The whole of this universe, these Devas, gods, angels, and all the other beings born and dying, all this infinite number of souls coming up and going down, are all dreams.[Source]
  • The whole world seems like a dream to the liberated.[Source]
  • They know not truth who dream such vacant dreams
    As father, mother, children, wife, and friend.
    The sexless Self! whose father He? whose child?
    Whose friend, whose foe is He who is but One?
    The Self is all in all, none else exists ;
    And thou art That, Sannyâsin bold! Say—
    "Om Tat Sat, Om!"[Source]
  • This universe is a dream, pure and simple. Why bother myself about a dream?[Source]
  • To live in a world where it is all good and no evil is what Sanskrit logicians call a "dream in the air".[Source]
  • We do not want anyone to break our dream. You see, the teachers are not wanted. Who wants to learn?[Source]
  • We only dream this bondage. Wake up and let it go.[Source]
  • We seem to be walking in dreams. Dreams are all right in a dream-mind; but as soon as you want to grasp one of them, it is gone.[Source]
  • We would be better and the little foolish dreams we are dreaming would break sooner if there were no heaven, no continuation of this silly life on earth. By going to heaven we only prolong the miserable illusions.[Source]
  • When the mind is in a particular condition it sees a certain vision, dreams a certain dream. So in this condition, we are all seeing this world and man and animals and all these things. But in this very place, this condition will change. And the very thing we are seeing as earth, we shall see as heaven, or we may see it as the opposite place or as any place we like.[Source]

How do perceptions in dreams arise?

From Swamiji's Raja Yoga[Source]
Sushumna is in ordinary persons closed up at the lower extremity; no action comes through it. The Yogi proposes a practice by which it can be opened, and the nerve currents made to travel through. When a sensation is carried to a centre, the centre reacts. This reaction, in the case of automatic centres, is followed by motion; in the case of conscious centres it is followed first by perception, and secondly by motion. All perception is the reaction to action from outside. How, then, do perceptions in dreams arise? There is then no action from outside. The sensory motions, therefore, are coiled up somewhere. For instance, I see a city; the perception of that city is from the reaction to the sensations brought from outside objects comprising that city. That is to say, a certain motion in the brain molecules has been set up by the motion in the incarrying nerves, which again are set in motion by external objects in the city. Now, even after a long time I can remember the city. This memory is exactly the same phenomenon, only it is in a milder form. But whence is the action that sets up even the milder form of similar vibrations in the brain? Not certainly from the primary sensations. Therefore it must be that the sensations are coiled up somewhere, and they, by their acting, bring out the mild reaction which we call dream perception.

This page was last updated on: 16 January 2014, 4:59 pm  IST (UTC+5:30 hours)
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