You may wonder, ‘How is it that every day when I come back to the waking state, I see the same world but every night when I go back to the dream state, I don’t see the same world? This question forms the basis of your idea that the waking state is a permanent reality.

Let us analyze one night’s dream. For example, let us say that you go to sleep on the night of the fourteenth, and on the morning of the fifteenth, you wake up. You sleep for around ten hours. I am sure many of you have had experiences of having lived around ten to twenty years of your life in one night’s dream, in just ten hours. Perhaps the dream starts in your college days and moves slowly, step by step, up to your marriage, your having a son, your son’s marriage, etc. In this way, you live even twenty years of your life in just one night’s dream, am I right? If you have experienced this at least once, you can follow very closely what I am going to present now.

You see, while sleeping, we go through the dream state and the deep sleep state. Maybe for half an hour, you fall into the deep sleep state. Then you go to the dream state and have some dreams. Again you fall back into the deep sleep state for perhaps twenty minutes, and then once again, you come back to the dream state. In this way you keep moving from the dream state to the deep sleep state and back.
In one night, you dream that you have lived twenty years of your life. In the first episode of your dream, you are in college. In the second episode, when you come back to the dream state after a time of deep sleep, you are getting married. In the third dream episode, you have a son. Maybe in the fourth episode, you see your son getting married.

An important thing you need to understand is when you fall into the deep sleep state and then come back to the dream state, and then repeat this process, in these different episodes, you do see the same world even in your dream state. Am I right? Sometimes you do see the same world even in the dream state.

Understand, it is a very subtle point, a very subtle understanding; if you can catch this, it will lead to very great clarity, which can really revolutionize the way in which you think about your life, the way in which you try to solve the problems of your life.

The ultimate truth is the stuff out of which your dream world is made is the same as
the stuff out of which this waking world is also made.

Imagine a man is dreaming. In the dream he sees a tiger chasing him and he starts shouting, ‘Oh, a tiger is chasing me! Save me, save me!’ His wife is sleeping next to him. She wakes up and sees the husband shouting! The wife is confused, ‘What am I supposed to do?’ She just needs to tell him, ‘Hey, wake up!’ Instead of that, if she tries to supply some weapon to kill the tiger in the dream, what will happen? He may kill himself or he may kill her! Any other solution she may try to find will only lead to more problems, more difficulties. All the husband needs to do is wake up.
If you understand these basic things, suddenly you will see that your very decision-making is revolutionized. The cognitive shift happens in you. The way in which you think and the way in which you make decisions, the way in which you find solutions for your problems, will be entirely different. You will start working towards the right solutions.

When you go beyond the frequency of this waking state, it will also look like one more dream. This is the first step in spirituality. This is the first step in psychological revolution.

When you are dreaming, in a span of ten hours, you can easily live twenty years. You fall into deep sleep and come back to the dream state many times. Whenever you come back to the dream state from deep sleep, even though there was a break from the last dream, you see the same world. So you have to understand clearly that just seeing the same world after the break in the dream state cannot be the quality to define it as reality. Only when you wake up from sleep, do you realize you have ‘lived’ twenty years of your life in a mere ten hours.

In the same way, only when you wake up from this ‘waking dream’ in which you are living now, suddenly you will realize you have dreamt maybe ninety years of your life in a few hours! This life in the waking state may be another long dream!

When you are in a dream, you think the dream is reality. Where you are, that is reality for that moment. There is no other scale. In the dream you can never imagine, ‘It is a dream.’ In the reality, you can never think, ‘It is one more dream.’ When you come out of the dream, the dream looks like a dream. But when you are in the dream itself, it will not look like a dream. In the dream, even if you remember about your real life, you think it is a dream. In the reality, even if you remember about the dream, you think it is a dream. So it just depends on the frequency in which you are. There is no other scale to explain which is reality or dream.

Realizing and understanding there is a possibility that this very waking state could be one more long dream will turn much of your attention and awareness to the center, to the consciousness, to the ultimate reality. When you go beyond the frequency of this waking state, it will also look like one more dream. This is the first step in spirituality. This is the first step in psychological revolution. Again and again, your suffering gives you a clear statement, you are not living in reality.

Many times I am asked another question along the same lines, ‘Not only am I seeing this world, even the people who are living around me are seeing the same world. How can you say it is a dream?’ Understand, in a dream if you are seeing a particular city, and if in that dream you are going to that city with your whole family, then not only you, but the family with you inside your dream, will also see the same city, because they are also projections of your mind! So, just because the people around you see the same scene as you do, it does not mean that the scene is reality. Those people around you might be a projection of the same scene!

The ultimate truth is the stuff out of which your dream world is made is the same as
the stuff out of which this waking world is also made. If your attention is centered on the stuff, naturally the inner healing cannot happen. If your attention is equally distributed on the consciousness and the stuff, that is what I call healthy life, balanced life. You will have physical health, mental health and a vibrant life.
If your attention is totally centered on the consciousness, not on the stuff with which these worlds are made, that is what I call ‘living enlightenment’ or jeevan mukti.

Whether you want jeevan mukti or not, whether you want enlightenment or not, is secondary. But if you can turn a little bit of your attention towards the ‘I’ consciousness, towards the Truth, towards the center, suddenly you will see that a tremendous inner healing happens. For example, if you are facing some big difficulty or depression, if you realize very clearly and consciously that this whole thing is a dream, you will experience such a relaxed feeling or the inner healing happening in you. That inner healing is what I call meditation. That restful awareness that happens in you is what I call satori, the first glimpse of samadhi. A basic cognitive shift or a basic psychological revolution, with the simple understanding that what you are seeing may not be reality as you think, can bring tremendous inner healing inside you, can bring a great restful awareness inside you.

source: Living Enlightenment