In a dream you can be anywhere: on the moon, on Mars. You can choose any planet, it is your game. In a d ream you can be anywhere, there is only one place you cannot be — that is where you are. This is the first thing to be understood about the dreaming consciousness. If you are where you are, then the dream cannot exist, because then there is no point in the dream, then there is no meaning in the dream.
If you are exactly where you are and you are exactly what you are, then how can the dream exist? The dream can exist only if you go away from you. You may be a poor man and you dream about being an emperor. You may be an ordinary man and you dream about yourself being extraordinary. You walk on the earth and you dream that you fly in the sky. The dream has to be a falsification of reality; the dream has to be something else than reality.
In reality there is no dreaming, so those who want to know the real have to stop dreaming.
In India we have divided human consciousness into four stages. We call the first stage the ordinary waking consciousness. Right now you are in the ordinary waking consciousness. What is an ordinary waking consciousness? You appear to be awake but you are not. You are a little bit awake, but that little bit is so small that it doesn't make much difference.
You can walk to your home, you can recognise your wife or your husband, you can drive your car…that little bit is only enough for this. It gives you a sort of efficiency — that's all. But it is a very small consciousness, exhausted very easily, lost very easily. If somebody insults you it is lost, it is exhausted. If somebody insults you, you become angry. You are no longer conscious.
That's why after anger many people say, 'Why did I do it? How did I do it? How could I do it? It happened in spite of me.' Yes, they are right — it happened in spite of you because you lost your consciousness. In anger, in violent rage, people are possessed; they do things they would never do if they were a little aware. They can kill, they can destroy; they can even destroy themselves.
The ordinary waking consciousness is only 'waking' for name's sake — deep down dreams continue. Just a small tip of the iceberg is alert — most of the thing is underneath, in darkness. Watch it sometimes. Just anywhere close your eyes and look within: you will see dreams floating like clouds surrounding you. You can sit on the chair any moment of the day, close your eyes, relax, and suddenly you see that the dreams have started.
In fact they have not started, they were continuing — just as during the day stars disappear from the sky. They don't really disappear, they are there, but because of the light of the sun you don't see them. If you go into a deep well, a very deep, dark well, from the dark well you can look at the sky and you will be able to recognise a few stars — even at midday. The stars are there; when night Comes they don't reappear, they have always been there, all twenty-four hours. They don't go anywhere, the sunlight just hides them.
Exactly the same is the case with your dreaming: it is just below the surface, just underground it continues. On the top of it is a little layer of awareness, underneath are a thousand and one dreams. Close your eyes any time and you will find yourself dreaming.
'That's why people are in great difficulty when they start meditating. They come to me and they say, 'This is something funny, strange. We never thought that there were so many thoughts.' They have never closed their eyes, they have never sat in a relaxed posture, they have never gone in to see what was happening there because they were too engaged in the outside world, they were too occupied.
Because of that occupation they never became aware of this constant activity inside.
In India, the ordinary waking consciousness is called the first state. The second state is that of dreaming. Any time you close your eyes you are in it. At night you are continuously in it, almost continuously. Whether you remember your dream in the morning or not is not of much importance, you go on dreaming. There are at least eight cycles of dreaming during the night.
One cycle continues for many minutes — fifteen, twenty minutes; then there is a gap; then there is another cycle; then there is a gap; then again there is a cycle.
Throughout the whole night you are continuously dreaming and dreaming and dreaming. This is the second state of consciousness.
This parable is concerned with the second state of consciousness. Ordinarily all desires exist in the second state of consciousness, the dreaming state. Desire is a dream and to work for a dream is doomed from the very beginning, because a dream can never become real. Even if sometimes you feel it has become almost real, it never becomes real — a dream by nature is empty. It has no substance in it.
The third state is sleep, deep sleep, SUSHUPTI. In it all dreaming disappears — but all consciousness also. While you are awake there is a little awareness, very little; when you are dreaming, even that little awareness disappears. But still there is an iota of awareness — that's why you can remember in the morning that you had a dream, such and such a dream. But in deep sleep even that disappears. It is as if you have completely disappeared. Nothing remains. A nothingness surrounds you.
These are the three ordinary states. The fourth state is called TURIYA. The fourth is simply called 'the fourth'. TURIYA means 'the fourth'. The fourth state is that of a Buddha. It is almost like dreamless sleep with one difference — that difference is very great. It is as peaceful as deep sleep, as without dreams as deep sleep, but it is absolutely alert, aware.
Krishna says in his Gita that a real yogi never sleeps. That does not mean that a real yogi simply sits awake in his room the whole night. There are a few foolish people who are doing that. That a real yogi never sleeps means that while he is asleep he remains aware, alert.
Ananda lived with Buddha for forty years. He asked Buddha one day, 'One thing surprises me very much; I am intrigued. You will have to answer me. This is just out of curiosity but I cannot contain it anymore. When you sleep at night I have watched you many times, for hours together, and you sleep in such a way that it seems as if you are awake. You sleep in such a graceful way; your face, your body — everything is so graceful. I have seen many other people sleeping, and they start mumbling, their faces go through contortions, their bodies lose all grace, their faces become ugly, they don't look beautiful any more….' All beauty has to be managed, controlled, practised; in deep sleep it disappears. 'And, one thing more,' Ananda said. 'You never change your posture you remain in the same posture. Wherever you put your hand in the beginning, you keep it there the whole night. You never change it. It seems that deep down you are keeping absolutely alert.' Buddha said, 'You are right. That happens when meditation is perfect.'
Then awareness penetrates your being so deeply that you are aware in all of the four states. When you are aware in all four states dreaming absolutely disappears, because in an alert mind a dream cannot exist. And the ordinary waking state becomes an extraordinary waking state — what Gurdjieff calls self-remembering. One remembers oneself absolutely, each moment. There is no gap. The remembrance is a continuity. Then one becomes a luminous being.
And deep sleep is there but its quality changes completely. The body is asleep but the soul is awake and alert, watchful. The whole body is deep in darkness but the lamp of inner consciousness burns bright.
OSHO
