All of us are clear that the past really happened because we remember it. But you only have to ask two people about a given event to get very different accounts.
Sometimes because
- they don’t want to “admit the truth”
- they actually experience the event differently from different vantage points
- they use different words to represent the same experience of a given event.
What has happened is at least as much in your head as it is out there in the past.
No one is clear about “what happens next” and a lot of us are anxious about it. Am I going to get what I desire, lose what I like – eg my life, my mind, my love, my health, my wealth, my reputation? As a result a lot of brain activity is centered around what is going to happen and what we can do to influence what happens. Since most human problems are similar many human dreams and nightmares are similar.
My Veda Guru, is pretty relaxed about most things because she is pretty certain that everything is predecided at birth and we just play out our roles, learning what God plans to teach us in this life and then passing his tests.
Everyone else that I know personally, including myself, is egoistic – they accept doer-ship and spend a lot of time wondering what they should do.
They seek the advice of elders and well wishers on what course of action they should take, they consult astrologers on whether it is a good time to do what they are planning to do, they seek the help of God to succeed in their endeavours and then they embark on their ventures.
A few people also pay attention to their dreams.
There are the frightening nightmares that accompany low blood sugar and anxiety and the rosy dreams of wish fulfilment. We dismiss most of these as just a dream.
Then there are the brilliant idea dreams of music and electronics designs and solutions to all of humanity’s problems, which are so silly on waking up.
Amidst all this incessant brain activity, we get a few dreams that actually “happen later” or are “meaningful even on waking”. Sometimes these also occur like “visions” or “ideas” in meditation. Sometimes they occur like Deja Vu. Sometimes you just know what people are going to do or say next. You have a flash about what they are thinking. You know about their past just taking a look at them. You “know”!
Knowing, understanding, recognising is about Cognition. Doing this before something happens is pre-cognition.
My previous guru used to say all these are siddhis that attend spiritual practice and if you stay at that leverl perfecting these skills you miss the opportunity for Bhagavad Sakshatkara – God Realisaton. His advice about dreams was write them down in your diary and the forget about them.
My veda guru said that spiritual practices in her case destroyed her memory to the extent that she did not recognise her brother for days and she forgets stuff very easily.
The only time I have seen her sad is when she did a “chakra” reading of me. She said that I took some unneccessary decisions in my life, but now that I was on the Vedic Path all would be well. Not wishing to distress her any more, I have not asked her to look into me again. She is so blissful practicing, “Isa vasyam idam sarvam” – “everything should be covered by a blanket called Isa (the Lord)”.
I firmly believe that human minds are mucky and do not like looking into them. My previous guru said that his guruji used to clean peoples’ hearts spiritually and that once he came up gasping for all the blackness he saw. That gentle old person used to complain, “I clean them everytime I meet them, but they muck it up again and they don’t keep their minds and hearts clean. How will they progress, if they spend all their time getting dirty again?” 
While most humans have rather bad memories, almost everyone has no pre-cognition at all. I wonder whether the spiritual practice that helps you see the future, kind of helps you forget the past. And whether the ability to see “into” people, goes with losing your ability to handle them or deal with them at the usual layer.
On the whole my dreams have guided and helped me. They have given me hints of diagnoses before the doctors figured it out, they have told me what would happen next if I went down one of two alternate paths, and showed me how things would get better when they looked like they were going bad. They also showed me what my life would be like, and what I could not change. I rely on my dreams to help me make major decisions.
I have read books on dream interpretations and sought the help of people who said they understood dreams. And I have used them to understand myself and improve myself and my life.
Clearly I believe that future ‘certainly’ and the past ‘probably’ can be changed. I think it’s like you can choose which path-of-time you can go down, just as much as you can choose which turning you will take on a road. And clearly I believe that you can discuss with divinity (through prayer) what you desire and fear and them make a dRDha sankalpa (firm will) that this is the path you will take.
A few dreams I want to share, you might have use for them :
- In a recent dream Sri Shirdi Sai Baba appeared and gave me a message. While I revere him when I visit his temples, I am not an ardent devotee the way for example Radhika, my student is. He was telling me that all action and decision is only from paramAtma. When I wasn’t getting it, he showed me a sanskrit text that said, “viSNuh eva Is’varah”, Vishnu alone is Is’vara (the Lord), and the dream ended. I thought it was important that I write this dream down. I have never read any of this Baba’s books and know about him only in an ambient sort of way.
- Another one is a rather old one. It showed me enter a place, take a left turn, six times to enter terrible hellish experiences which dissolved only when I chanted the name of Sri Rama श्री राम and the seventh time, I turned right and there was Rama seated on a small dias with lamps around him and a few people sitting peacefully around me. I found a place to sit at the back of the well-lit room and there I was happy for eternity. The dream ended there!
Authorship and Copyright Notice : All Rights Reserved : Satya Sarada Kandula
“Oh Rama, give me the post of your servant, destroy my enemies like my arrogance etc, and give me a grand armour that is horripilation, a badge that says that I am your devotee, a sword that is the Rama nama, and then will I shine, says Thyagaraja.” (Rough translation).
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Ancient Indians has crossed 7000 places today!
