Transcription
What if I was to tell you that life is literally a dream? Would you believe me? Well, I want to explain to you one of the most important stories in all of Hinduism to illustrate this dream in which we live.
Now, what is this dream and story? This is known as Vishnu's dream. Now, this is one of the most ancient theories about the nature of reality. In the modern day, we hear a lot about simulation theory, quantum physics, have an interpretation of the universe and so forth and so on. And there are obviously other creation stories from other religions. But this theory and story about Vishnu's dream is one of the most mind-boggling stories you'll ever hear. One of the most mind-boggling interpretations of the world that we can conceive of.
Now before we get into what the dream actually represents to us, we have to set the scene about this story. Right now I want to show you one of the most ancient images and explain to you what this image actually means in relation to Vishnu's dream.
Now first you'll see in this image you'll see Vishnu resting on a serpent bed. Now the serpent bed is known as ananta or it can be known as shesha or more correctly we should call it ananta shesha. Now ananta literally means without end. Now what does this serpent represent? This serpent represents the eternal nature of time.
Now, as you'll see in the image, the serpent Anantesha is floating on the cosmic ocean or the cosmic waters or in other descriptions, it'll be a ocean of milk, right? So, it's either an ocean of water or an ocean of milk, whichever way you want to go. But this cosmic ocean is known as Kishira Sagara, which is actually not a physical ocean obviously, but a representation of the cosmos itself. And so we don't want to think just in the terms of a sort of a literal cosmos, but rather it's a symbolic space where the universe exists in a potential unmanifest form before being brought into being. So it's where all of the potentiality of the universe comes from this symbolic space, this ocean of Kishara Sagara. And so the manifest world or whatever we want to call this if you want to call it an illusion or or whatever we are experiencing here is thought to be made of this ocean of potential. And so in Hinduism when people see this ocean in this image it is considered the waters of creation. Right? So this is where all of the energy of the world comes into being and we are the waters of creation so to speak. And you'll hear in other religions and mythologies the idea of the infinite waters and a lot of them come from actually this ancient image of Vishnu dreaming.
And so next in this image we see Brahma is born of a lotus out of Vishnu's naval right and so Brahma the creative principle of the universe not Brahman the ultimate reality but Brahma is the creative principle of the universe. Now Vishnu here is a representation of Brahman the ultimate reality. Remember this image comes from the Vishnava tradition of Hinduism. Not the Shya tradition but the Vashnava where Vishnu is the ultimate representation of Brahman. And you know in Shyism Shiva is the ultimate representation of Brahman. But here Vishnu as Brahman is the ultimate reality and Brahma the creative principle of the universe is born of a lotus out of Vishnu's navl. And you'll see also in this image Vishnu's consort Lakshmi is massaging Vishnu's feet and legs right and so you have the feminine principle there as well in this divine realm. And to get back to Brahma, Brahma comes out of the naval and uses all of the energy and substance of that primordial realm to bring creation into being. Right? So we talked about the cosmic ocean, the anantesha, the serpent bed and Vishnu himself, right?
And so what happens here is as Vishnu is sleeping and as he dreams, Brahma is born out of the navl as I said comes into being this creative principle and opens his eyes and brings all of this manifest world into creation based on the unmanifest nature of Vishnu right as a representation of Brahman. Remember in this sense Vishnu is a representation of Nouna Brahman. Nguna Brahman here is Brahman without qualities. And as Brahma opens his eyes he brings the Saguna Brahman realm into reality. Saguna Brahman is Brahman with qualities. And so in this sense this is Vishnu in the manifest world, the world that we experience, right? And so that's the scene of creation that I've set for you, right? based on that image. This is the scene based on Vishnu dreaming.
Now what does that mean? Vishnu is dreaming the world into existence. Now it's not as simple as that and I'll explain why it's not that simple, right? But what we have here as Brahma opens his eyes. He brings the world in creation, right? And so the universe itself goes through a process of creation, preservation and destruction. Now this is the heart of the trimeerty of gods in Hinduism, right? Brahma the creative principle, Vishnu the sustainer or the preserver of the universe and Shiva as the destroyer. Now so we go through this passage of time where at the moment we are in the age of Vishnu so to speak where the world is in a stage of preservation right but it will eventually go into a stage of destruction. Now this is mapped through the world age doctrine of the yugas.
Now the yugas are based on two kalpas right? Now two kalpas are basically a day and night of Brahma right the creative principle brah remember Brahma opens his eyes right and so one day of Brahma is 4.32 billion years now a whole day and night of Brahma is 8.64 64 billion years which is mindboggling to think about right that sort of length of time you know we only get if we're lucky 100 years in this world and now we're talking about a day of Brahma being 8.64 64 billion years which is a long long time. And so we look where we are in correspondence to that yuga system of the two kalpas. We are still spiraling up in this process of the yugas right and so our existence is spiraling out. And so we're moving out and this is you know in relation to this they often call it the breath of brahma too right? So Brahma breathes out and breathes universe back in. So there's this expansion and then the contraction of the universe, right? And so that's why in when we look at time, our life appears to be sort of in this linear fashion. We're moving out, we're getting older and then we die and then we'll be reborn again into another life and the universe seems to be going in this direction.
Now one of the mind-boggling aspects of this theory of time according to this story is that when it begins to contract when we go into a night of Brahma that life begins to go backwards or in reverse which is kind of hard for us to understand in a sense because we are of the opinion that we are born and then we go to death. Right? So this is a real interesting way of looking at it when we look at it from this because we become almost like Benjamin Button if you know the movie where Benjamin Button's life is in reverse. He he he starts at old age and then he goes back into birth. Now from this understanding when the life begins to contract we'll begin to live our lives our lives that we have in reverse but it will appear to be completely normal which is kind of an insane way of thinking right so death will be birth and birth will be death so to speak and so which if we look at it from sort of a metaphorical perspective we're going back into the womb of existence right and so that's what a lot of people postulate will happen when we step happened to a night of Brahma. Now that may not happen. It's just a theory, but it's related to the story of Vishnu's dream.
But that's not the higher perspective that I even want to talk about. Even though that reversal of time is very interesting to think about and may also relate to that this life is a dream, right? But when we look at it from a grand perspective, we are living in Vishnu's dreamscape. Right? If we take this story as real, Vishnu has dreamed this into being. And so Brahma comes out of Vishnu's navl, opens his eyes, brings the world into existence, breathes the world into existence, and then it begins to retract and then Vishnu wakes up only to go back to sleep and another universe is born again. We go through the process of the yugas and then there will be a different universe that comes into existence.
Now what does it mean to us personally? Well, what it means is is that we are Vishnu dreaming itself. Think about that, right? Think about your own life and a lot of miraculous things that happen in your life, right? And it's hard to quantify what those things happen. Sometimes a lot of miracles in people's lives. Sometimes the suffering that we experience leads to some sort of greater growth and so to speak, right? And there's all of these different aspects of our lives that have a real divine quality to them which is very similar to what happens to us in our own personal dreams. Right? And so this understanding of the world through Vishnu's dream is that we are Vishnu dreaming itself.
And what does that mean for us on a spiritual level? Well, that means that we need to realize that we are Vishnu dreaming itself and wake up. This is the deeper aspect of this story. That's what it means to literally wake up, right? To become awake, you need to wake up that you are Brahman itself. Remember, Vishnu is a representation of the ultimate reality of Brahman. And that is why we have the atman within all of us. The atman is the undifferiated consciousness which is identical with Brahman. And why is that? Because we are Vishnu dreaming itself. And then we believe we are this part of the dream, this localization of the dream, but we forget we are Vishnu itself. Right? And so this is the deeper understanding and why it's one of the most mind-boggling interpretations of the universe and our own self. Right? And so we are Vishnu dreaming itself. And we need to wake up to that fact. And when we begin to wake up to that fact, that's when we make our own personal journey towards Vishnu. We make the first step towards the ultimate reality. We metaphorically go through our own contraction of the universe but within our own hearts. Right? We begin to peel the layers of our identity away and we begin to merge and marinate our soul in the essence of the world which is Vishnu because we are beginning to wake up from the collective dream of Vishnu. And so as a spiritual aspirant that's the essence of the spiritual path when we look at this story.
Now I believe that this story of Vishnu's dream is one of the inspirations behind a lot of simulation theory quantum physics and so forth and so on because when you look at quantum physics right quantum physics say there's not really physical matter per se right and so when we look at it from Vishnu's dream obviously reality is not real in a sense because it is Vishnu's dream the reason why magical things happen in our lives is because it's actually a dream. It's not real per se. And so I believe like scientific disciplines like quantum physics and even people who postulate simulation theory comes from this interpretation of the universe because when you look at it in the sense of a dream and a dreamcape. It's like a collective lucid dream where when we begin to wake up, we gain a certain control over this dream and begin to make our path back to Vishnu, back to the ultimate reality of Brahman. But we need to wake up that it's sort of a collective lucid dream. And we can begin to wake up and wake others up. And the more we continue to wake people up from this collective dream, the more we will bring harmony and peace into the world because we will be going through our own personal retraction, our own personal inhalation of Brahma instead of exhalation, our own personal inhalation. We begin to close our eyes and go through our own personal destruction, our own personal path of Shiva. Here the path of Shiva is the deconstruction of the identity and the persona system which allows us to abide as that as the ultimate reality of Brahman which is Vishnu. But we have to wake up from Vishnu's dream to realize that we are that.