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WRITINGS BY THE MOTHER
© Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust

Symbolic dreams

26 May 1954

Sweet Mother, when we see you in a dream, is it always a symbolic dream?

No, not necessarily. It can be a fact. This means that instead of seeing physically, one sees in the subtle physical or the vital or the mind. But one sees something of me: for instance, if I send out a force or a thought or a movement, an action to someone, in his atmosphere this takes my form, in his mental consciousness it takes my form. So he sees it. It is a fact. I send something and he sees it. It is not my whole being (there the interpretation goes wrong most of the time), but it is something of myself.

But this always has some significance, Mother, hasn't it?

Certainly it has a significance. It has mostly even a very precise aim: either it is that I want to do something or to say something to someone, or it is that I want to change something in that person or give him some needed knowledge or else I want to put someone on his guard against something--put him on his guard, tell him to be careful--or else I come to answer a question at times.

Symbolic dreams... symbolic dreams are usually very coherent, one remembers everything, to the least detail; it is more living, more real, more intense than the material life, and it is fairly rare. When one returns from a symbolic dream, one remembers everything, all the details, and feels that one has lived for those moments a much intenser and truer life than the physical [old p. 143]one. And it leaves a very deep impression upon you. [new p. 143]This does not happen very often, you know. Usually it comes when it is very necessary.

[...]

(The first child) Sweet Mother, you did not give the explanation of my dream.

There is no explanation, my child. You saw something of which you are not conscious in your physical being, that's all. The Forces are always there, full of tender affection, love, help, of... but one is not aware of this because one lives in too narrow, too small a consciousness. There is no need of any explanation, these things are not explained. It is a fact. If you like, there is an experience, a fact, something happens--there is also its translation in your brain. When you wake up it is a sort of interpretation of your dream which you remember. It is very rarely that one is conscious at the time the experience occurs and conscious of the experience as it really is. For that one must be very wakeful during the night, quite awake in one's sleep. Usually this is not the case. There is one part of the being which has an experience; when that part of the being which had gone out of the body re-enters it, brings back the experience, the brain receives a contact with this experience, translates it by images, words, ideas, impressions, feelings, and when one wakes up one catches something of this, and with that makes a "dream". But it is only a transcription of something that has happened--which has an analogy, a similarity, but which wasn't exactly what one receives as a dream.

In your experience of the night which produced the dream, you entered into contact with these Forces which always envelop, help, sustain, and... you understand, don't you?--which [old p. 148]are full of love and tenderness, which help and welcome all those [new p. 148]who come--which, in fact, are there, everywhere at work all the time. So you became aware of that. When you woke up, this was translated through images you know, that is, that you come to see me, receive blessings, and then as there was a new feeling--that of contact with this Force which envelops and helps--this gave you the impression that I was taking you in my arms and embracing you. It was translated in this way. The fact is there; the translation is that of your brain.

Some people make me do very funny things at night! I have heard all kinds of extraordinary stories. But it is always the same thing: there is a fact behind, they entered into contact either with an emanation or with a force or an action, as I was saying just now, but then, in their brain it was translated by images which at times are very astonishing! But that, of course, is their translation. As for me, when they tell me all that, it gives me the exact picture of the state of their mental, vital and physical consciousness. Just the deformation in the translation suffices for me to know what the state of their mind is. And I cannot tell them, "It was not I", for it was I! Only they have changed this in their own way, which is at times quite surprising! Still, in the present instance, the image is very fine.