Meditation and Dreams: Share your experience

[sesame]

Read Sri Aurobindo's 10 upanishads. Nothing can be better than that. He was not only a good author but a Highly accomplished Yogi. He understood first hand what he was saying. Indians consider him as a Rishi, sage, seer; the same as the authors of the Upanishads.

Read the translation of Swami Sishya Samvad if you can find one. Dialogues between the Master and Disciple. The master being the great Yogi Swami Vivekananda and disciple Saratchandra Chakraborty. Its philosophy in motion and the language is just like me and you conversing! Its that simple! The english name is "Talks with Swami Vivekananda".

[ila]

Originally Posted by sesame

Read Sri Aurobindo's 10 upanishads.

Sesame, what are the upanishads? I have seen you mention them several times in the last few days. This is the first time I have ever seen the term and I would like to know more.

[sesame]

Upanishads are solid chunks of direct esoteric knowledge.
Straight from the Seer's mouth. No mediators! The most powerful Yogis of ancient India put down their feelings, hints and realizations about the Infinite Omnipresent Impersonal God in the Upanishads. You may consider Upanishads as the essence of all Vedic knowledge. There are 4 Vedas. The principal Upanishads are derived from the 4 vedas. Later Gists of Knowledge about various disciplines of philosophy such as Yoga, came to known as Upanishads. Like the Yoga-Sara-Upanishad, etc. But they are considered lesser to the eleven I have mentioned above.

Brihadaranyaka-Upanishad is the most significant and perhaps one of the Largest of the Upanishads. Brihath= Large, Aranyaka= Forest life (of the Yogis). Upanishad, the word needs clarification.

Upa + ni +sad.
Upa= nearness, or reaching somewhere or knowing about something.
Ni= with clarity, uncloudedness, certainty;
sad or sath= Truth, Unwavering, Unshakable, Everlasting. Sat is a root word synonymous to Om or Tath or That meaning God impersonal.

If we add them up, Upanishad means Clearly Knowing God.

Later on, Upanishads came to be regarded as the basis of pure Lore, collectively called the Vedanta philosophy.
Veda =To know, Anta= end. The end of Veda= the essence of Veda. It primarily includes Upanishads & Gita.

Indian Knowledge

Yogishwara ==> Veda (undifferentiated) ==> Upanishads ==> 4 Vedas ==> Ramayana, Mahabharata epics ==> 18 Puranas ( Bhagavat Purana = imp) ==> Tantras

Yogishwara = Yoga Adepts of unimaginable capacity
Yoga + Ishwara. Ishwara= supreme master or god.

[sesame]

Veda

Many thousands of years ago, the Vedas were in undifferentiated form. And it was verbally propagated from Master to Disciple. The master uttered it and the disciple memorised it. No written manuscripts were there. Everything was retained in memory, generation after generation. So vedas were also called Sruti= to listen.

Even earlier, it was not even uttered. The Guru directed the disciple to go through rigorous austerities and mental exercises. The student became aware of the Truth within himself. Truth is self evident!

In each veda, there were 4 parts: Samhita (for esoteric rituals), Brahmana, Aranyaka and Upanishad. The Knowledge part became the Upanishads. As the memory and retention power of human beings became poorer in later ages, Philosophers couldnt remember all of the veda. So, Sage Vyasa divided Veda into 4 parts. Rik, Sama, Yajuh and Atharva. The Atharva part was not counted among the Vedas by some of the Philosophers. So some called Veda as Tri-Vidya = Three Knowledges. Its interesting to note that Ayurveda and early Tantra originated from this neglected Atharva Veda. Yoga was always there in the Vedas and the Upanishads. Seer Patanjali, himself a Yoga Adept, organised and compiled it. He also left very insightful hints in it about Alchemy, Surya-siddhanta (Solar science) and molecular evolution. The time of Patanjali is exactly 1000 years before Adi Shankaracharya (805 AD).

Seer Vyasa cut out the 4 vedas, clearly compiled the Upanishads, wrote the epic Mahabharata and the historic-storyline-volumes called Puranas, packed with philosophy hidden behind stories. Vyasa came many thousands of years ago. Its very interesting to note, that Vyasa is one of the six immortal Yogis in Hindu philosophy. He was the grand master or most knowledgable sage of the Dvapara age. He is still alive, so they say! :D

[ila]

Thanks sesame. This is all very interesting. It would seem to me that there is more than a lifetime of study in all the Upanishads. This then leads me to the question of whether or not it is self study or do one have someone to guide him/her through all this learning? If so is it formal teaching as in classroom study or informal one on one teaching? There is so much to learn.

[sesame]

Hamsam Yatha Ksiram Iva Ambu Madhyath.

Just Like a swan picks up the essence from milk and the water is left behind!

The full poem goes like this:

Ananta shastram bahu veditavyam,

Unending are the scriptures, many things are fit to be learnt.

Swalpam Tathayur Vahavascha Vighnah

But human lifespan is so little, and there are so many distractions or hurdles.

Yat sara-bhutam tad-upasitavyam

So, pursue only the essence of all knowledge.

Hamsam Yathaksiram Ivambu Madhyat.

Just like a swan extracts milk from the watery emulsion.

i used to have a dream where all my teath fell out, it happened regularly but hasn't happened in ages now. in another recuring dream i have i be walking along and gravity seems to be getting weaker by the second and with each step i bound higher and higher and it gets harder and hader to land again, fucked up or what?

[jimnaseum]

Dreaming about broken teeth has sexual connotations I've heard. uh-oh.
for a sexual health yogi asana, exhale and try to touch your navel to your anus.
Here's my dream. It happened after I was prescribed some wild psychiatric drug. I'd woken up inside dreams, but never like this. I had to kind of lay back and let the dream take me where it wanted to go. I got to a basement hallway in an apartment building, and I could see outside that it was late afternoon. Beside the exit, was a laundry room with lots of washers and dryers, and a little bed and a couple of pieces of furniture, and this was my room. It was a complete mess, so I decided to clean it up. I started seperating clothes into piles and then I asked myself "do I really need to do laundry in a dream?" That shattered my dream and I woke up.