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Dreams


I dream a lot.  I mean the real dreams that visit us during our sleep.  Most of my dreams are neither sweet nor scary.  I don’t take them seriously either.  I don’t remember them in the morning.  Except very rarely when the dreams seem to be related to some problem I’m grappling with.

I had a dream last night too.  In the normal course of events this one too should have met with the fate of the others and vanished from my memory before I woke up in the morning.  But I chose to remember it because I wanted to write this blog.

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Three men robed in white, looking more like the Arabs than Catholic priests, came to me.  The place was not at all clear.  The conversation was.  They said they came to take me away because my time on the earth was over.  I said it was a surprise since I didn’t believe in a life beyond the earth.  “That’s not a problem. You can come with us.”  And I went.

I think that’s how it ended.  The end was really not so clear.  I got up as usual, drank some water from the bottle always kept near the bed and went back to sleep.  Peacefully.  The dream belongs to my category of ‘neither sweet nor scary’.

Dreams are closely associated with the deeper layers of our minds.  They may reflect our fears and anxieties, longings and aspirations, emotional conflicts, etc.  I don’t believe in life after death.  But I consider death as the inevitable end which is a welcome relief once you think you have had enough on the earth. 

There are billions of galaxies in the universe and each galaxy has billions of stars and their planets.  They are all held together by certain laws such as gravity.  They all came from the same origin in the beginning.  A singularity.  A point of extremely compressed matter with tremendous energy.  Unable to contain the energy any further, it exploded one day. And spread out forming stars and planets.  Not heavens and hells.  Any such place as heaven and hell would make the universe impossible.  The universe has its own laws which are contrary to the arbitrariness of a God, say, who will appear gloriously on a cloud one day and set us all (human beings) on his left and right and condemn us either to hell or to heaven according to his judgment of our lives.  The hell must have its own hilarious share of arbitrariness since it is inhabited by anarchists and iconoclasts.  No, the universe is too complex a system to be sustained by such arbitrariness.  Even the black hole has the decency to stick to the laws that sustain the universe unlike the gods and spirits in our myths and creeds.

Those three spirits in my dream came from my mind which was shaped partly by Christianity with its Arab-looking angels, Catholic priests who wear the same Arab robes (for reasons I have never understood) and later by my own experiences and understanding of life which found more meaning in stars and black holes than gods and devils.  The dream may point to some death wish which has caught my fancy recently.  It may also point to a lot of jokes which keep rising and falling in my conscious mind as I revisit in my reflections the innumerable ghosts that haunted my life.


PS. Written for Indispire Edition 152: #Dreams

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  1. UnknownJanuary 14, 2017 at 4:15 PM

    It's true sir. It's scientifically proved that we forget 90% of the dream, when we wake up.
    I too had a dream last night. And for me, it was a nightmare. I have this kind of dreams, least once in a week. And I am getting used to it.
    It was 4.10 in the morning, when I woke up crying. I don't really remember the dream fully , except the worst part. The part that made me woke up at once.

    I got up from bed, went to washroom and came back. I tried to sleep again, but couldn't. I didn't want the dream to resume. So I switched on my table lamp and opened the class 12 Physics text book. But I didn't feel like studying. So I stood up, tiptoed to my dad's book shelf.

    My father, who was a die hard fan of O.V Vijayan, has a collection of his books alone. I gone through the books and found my dad's all time favourite 'Gurusagaram'.

    Two-three years back, I had made an attempt to read it. But failed. I couldn't make out half of it. Then, my dad had told me that I would understand it better in a couple of years.
    Now that I have become a 16-year old grown up, I decided to give it a try again. And I started reading it.
    I realised how powerful his language was. I read and re-read each sentence slowly and cherished the feeling of them. The best thing about the novel is, the way story develops, it's beyond the current place,people and time. I fell in love with the language again.

    I only read two chapters of it today, since my mom scolded me for reading novel, when the exams are going on. I mentally thanked the dream I had.

    Because, if I haven't had that dream, I wouldn't have happened to read this novel.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalJanuary 14, 2017 at 6:39 PM

      I'm obliged for your sharing of such an intimately personal experience.

      O V Vijayan is a tough novelist and 'Gurusagaram' is perhaps the toughest. Yes, it's intensely spiritual and can inspire you in many ways. It teaches us the deepest respect for all that is...

      But your mother is right, I guess. The imminent exams require all the attention you can give. As I said in the post, our dreams originate from our deeper psyche and you may have to analyse that part to understand why you have disturbing dreams.

      Well, I don't want to sound like a counsellor here. I wish I could help you better.

      Delete
  2. sunaina sharmaJanuary 14, 2017 at 5:08 PM

    True- our mind affects what we dream about - and I have always been fascinated with the dream world....have had so many dreams in my life and I remember so may of them that it will be impossible to write one post on them....some were strange, some scary, some sweet - Death is something that I have often visited in dreams - people who have left have often come and visited me in my dreams.....The concept of Heaven and Hell is all man-made perhaps....who knows what exists beyond this world - we will only get know once we cross this place and reach the 'beyond'...

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalJanuary 14, 2017 at 6:44 PM

      There was a time when nightmares were my most loyal companions. Then I learnt to overcome them by looking inward and discovering and dealing with some of my futile clinging.

      I find it extremely difficult, almost impossible, to accept concepts that go against rational understanding. That's why heaven and hell and other such concepts will always remain beyond my reach. If I deceive myself and try to fit in religion somewhere within my understanding of life, I'll get new nightmares :)

      Delete
  3. Azzu shaikhJanuary 15, 2017 at 8:35 AM

    i totally enjoy my dreams sir.. i often dream those things which i want to achieve in life, dont know about reality,, whether i am gonna achieve them or not but i do feel good when i get a dream about achieving them :)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalJanuary 15, 2017 at 8:45 AM

      You are blessed. Very few people have such sweet dreams in life.

      Delete
    2. Azzu shaikhJanuary 16, 2017 at 8:52 AM

      Actually sir, i believe that dreams are something which are created in our minds. dreams are often those things which we kept thinking about.. whether they are good or bad...when we take something real serious and working hard to get over it, we get it as a nightmare or it haunts us in dreams.. so i never took anything to mind or heart whether it is good or bad, just believed that everything happens for a reason and i'll know the reason when time comes. pardon me sir if i am wrong :)

      Delete
    3. Tomichan MatheikalJanuary 16, 2017 at 9:33 AM

      OMG, please don't embarrass me. You are absolutely free to have your opinion and express it too.

      Delete
    4. Azzu shaikhJanuary 16, 2017 at 9:59 AM

      thank you sir :)

      Delete
  4. Durga Prasad DashJanuary 16, 2017 at 11:26 AM

    No doubt some dreams are scary. But without dreams life would be scarier.

    ReplyDelete

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