Beware of such modern spiritual superstitions || Acharya Prashant (2019)

Questioner (Q): Acharya Ji, pranam. Raman Maharishi talks about three states: waking state, dreaming state and deep sleep. Thoughts appear in the dreaming and waking state. For the realized one, there are no differences between these three states because they can consciously sleep, consciously dream and are conscious during their waking state.

In the west, there is an important movement on lucid dreams: people that are aware that they are dreaming and sometimes have even control over their dreams. Are lucid dreams a higher level of consciousness, the result of a mind that is converting sleep into meditation?

Acharya Prashant (AP): Tremendous stupidity! We are extremely capable people. We can turn anything into stupid. Raman Maharishi says the three states: waking state, dreaming state and deep sleep, are one because they all belong to ahankara (ego), because they all happen with the ‘I’ at their centre, because in all the three states I-ness remains, otherwise they are very, very distinct. Even the names of the ‘I’ in the three states have been categorically and definitely stated as different by the scriptures, the same scriptures that Raman Maharishi swore by. And here is someone saying that one can have one state of consciousness within another state of consciousness.

What do you mean by conscious sleep? Sleep itself is consciousness. The entire idea has gone wrong when you talk of this lucid dreaming and everything. When you say, “I sleep consciously,” you do not even understand what sleep is. Sleep itself is consciousness. When you are dreaming, do you feel that you are dreaming? When you are dreaming, then in your own world, aren’t you conscious? Aren’t dreams real to the dreamer? Even in the waking state, you might be looking at a mirage, but isn’t the mirage real to the one who is looking at it? You are already conscious. It’s just that it is a flawed consciousness. All states of consciousness are flawed. Not only in the dream state, but even in the waking state, the consciousness is in an illusion. Because in all three states, at the centre of your conscious world sits an ‘I’. It’s just that the ‘I’ has changed and, therefore, the nature of the universe perceived by the ‘I’ has changed.