Editor’s Note: In these passages the Mother explains that dreams are the fields of discovery where both the outer influences and one’s own formations can cause attacks. She advises to hold a perfect indifference, quietude and faith within oneself during any attack and also call for the Guru’s protection during sleep.
🌸 🌸 🌸
Outer influences are stronger in sleep
You live surrounded by people. These people themselves have desires, stray wishes, impulses which are expressed through them and have all kinds of causes, but take in their consciousness an individual form. For example, to put it in very practical terms: you have a father, a mother, brothers, sisters, friends, comrades; each one has his own way of feeling, willing, and all those with whom you are in relation expect something from you, even as you expect something from them.
That something they do not always express to you, but it is more or less conscious in their being, and it makes formations. These formations, according to each one’s capacity of thought and the strength of his vitality, are more or less powerful, but they have their own little strength which is usually much the same as yours; and so what those around you want, desire, hope or expect from you enters in this way in the form of suggestions very rarely expressed, but which you absorb without resistance and which suddenly awaken within you a similar desire, a similar will, a similar impulse. . .
This happens from morning to night, and again from night to morning, for these things don’t stop while you are sleeping, but on the contrary are very often intensified because your consciousness is no longer awake, watching and protecting you to some extent.
And this is quite common, so common that it is quite natural and so natural that you need special circumstances and most unusual occasions to become aware of it. Naturally, it goes without saying that your own responses, your own impulses, your own wishes have a similar influence on others, and that all this becomes a marvellous mixture in which might is always right!
– The Mother (CWM, Vol. 8, pp. 391-392)
🌸 🌸
Dreams are the fields of discovery
I have known many people who were far more active in their dreams than in their waking life and who would do things which they would have been incapable of doing in their waking life. For example, I have known people who used to be petrified with fear in their waking life but would express indomitable courage and accomplish truly heroic deeds in their dreams.
Sometimes too, if you dream of something unpleasant, instead of having a reaction, you say, “All this is only a dream, it is not true, it is impossible,” etc., and in this way the dream assumes another form. Of course, you must be aware that you are dreaming for this to happen.
It is a tremendous field of observation—there is no end to the discoveries you can make in your dreams.
But there is one important point: you must not go to sleep when you are very tired, for if you do, you fall into a sort of unconsciousness in which dreams do whatever they like with you, and you have no reaction.
Just as I said that you should not eat without having taken rest, I would advise everyone to rest before going to sleep. And for that, you must know how to rest.
– The Mother (CWM, Vol. 15, pp. 328-329)
🌸 🌸
Read:
How to Experience Real Rest
Reasons for the attacks in sleep
Question: When one meditates there are moments when one sees very unpleasant forms in front of himself for some days. It begins and later ends. What does it mean?
The Mother: Yes, it means probably that instead of meditating in a silent concentration, one has opened one’s consciousness either in a vital domain or in a not very pleasant mental domain. That’s what it means.
It can also mean—it depends on the degree of development one has reached—it can mean in certain cases, when one is master of one’s concentration and knows where one goes—still this already requires a fairly great discipline—it may be that it is a particular attack of adverse forces, of bad wills, coming either from certain beings or from certain domains; but it is not necessarily attacks; it can simply be that one has opened one’s consciousness in a place that’s not very desirable or else sometimes, often, that one had in himself a number of movements of the vital and the mind which were not very desirable, and when one enters the silence of meditation or that kind of passive attitude of expectation of something which is going to happen, all these vibrations which have gone out of him come back to him in their real appearance which is not very pleasant.
This happens often: one had bad feelings, not positively wicked but still things which are not desirable, bad thoughts, movements of dissatisfaction, revolt or impatience, or a lack of contentment or… you see, one may be angry with somebody, even in thought, no need of speaking… things like that. When one is quiet and tries to be still so as to have an experience, all these things come back to him in their true form, that is, not very pleasant forms: very ugly, forms which are at times very ugly.
. . . it’s something that happens frequently if you don’t control your thoughts and your vital reactions and if someone has displeased you for some reason or other, if that person has done or said something which you do not like, and you consider him hostile and so the spontaneous reaction is to want to punish him in some way or other or if one is still more primitive—if I may say so—to want to take vengeance or hope that something bad will happen to him.
However, it may even come very spontaneously, a violent reaction, like that, then you don’t think about it any more. But now, at night, when you are asleep, ninety-nine times out of a hundred, in a case like this, the person in question comes to you with an extreme violence, either to kill you or to make you ill, as though he wished you as much harm as possible, and then in your ignorance you say, “Well, I was quite right to be angry with him.”
But it is quite simply your own formation which returns to you, nothing else but that. The person has nothing to do with it—he is quite innocent in the affair.
This is a phenomenon which occurs very often, I mean for people who have movements of rancour or anger or violence; and they always see in a dream of this kind the justification of their movements—whereas it is only a very striking image of their own feeling. For the formation returns upon one in this way.
Perfect indifference, quietude and faith are the protection
Question: Then in these cases what should one do?
The Mother: What should one do?
First, never have bad thoughts to begin with; and then, secondly, never be afraid, even if you see extremely ugly things—not only have no fear but no disgust and no repulsion, simply a perfect quietude—and try to be as pure and calm as possible.
Then, whatever it may be, whether it be your own formation or it comes from others, whether it be an attack or a bad place—no matter what it is—everything will be all right. But above all, this: quiet, calm, naturally sheltered from every kind of possible fear, and without any disgust, without any recoiling, nothing; like that: a perfect indifference with a complete calm. Then nothing bad can happen, absolutely nothing.
Even if it is truly an enemy who comes to attack you, he becomes powerless.
In all cases, without exception, whatever may happen, calm and quietude and serene peace and an absolute faith in the divine Grace—if you have all this, nothing can happen to you. And you must have all this if you want to have experiences; because experiences without this—it’s not good; but with this, it’s excellent.
– The Mother (CWM, Vol. 7, pp. 80-82)
🌸
Call the Guru
People who have nightmares of this kind should always protect themselves occultly before going out of the body—it can be done in many ways.
The simplest way, one which needs no special knowledge is to call the Guru or, if one knows somebody who has the knowledge, to call him in thought or spirit; or to protect oneself by making a kind of wall of protection around oneself (one can do many things, can’t one?); this can prevent such beings from entering.
If you have a disposition for exteriorisation and if you follow a yoga, you are always asked to protect your sleep: by some contemplation, a mental movement, any movement—there are many ways of protecting oneself.
But I think there is no such danger for you; perhaps not for everybody, but still one would have to be terribly ambitious, terribly insincere for such a thing to happen; one would have to be in relation with truly wicked entities, for, a being who lives in orderliness and truth will never rush into the body of another, that is an act of disorder and it is not done.
The Mother (CWM, Vol. 4, p. 129)
🌸 🌸 🌸
Also Read:
Preparing for Conscious Sleep
~ Design: Raamkumar
