Swapna Yoga or Interpretation of Dreams

"Thus, this was the meaning of dream as revealed to Sri Gaudapadacharya. Freud used dreams to know what lies in the `unconscious' of human mind, Sri Gaudapad utilized dreams to understand the svarupa' (nature) of man and the world. By interpreting dreams Sigmund Freud wished to show that, 'man is a passionate being, full of desires and to give proper vent to these desires of sex and to gratify them in a proper way, is the aim of human life. In this alone, lies the fulfilment of human life.' By interpreting dreams Sri Gaudapad has shown that, 'man, by his nature is the ever-pure, ever-enlightened and ever-free blissful Atman. Terrible defects such as various passions, impurities and sins which are seen in him are due to the fact that he has forgotten his real nature. By purifying the heart with proper spiritual practices and realising the Truth that our life is the lila, the play of the Lord, that we are a part of Him, by our inherent nature we are that Sat-chit-ananda alone - this is the only aim of human life'. Sigmund Freud felt dream to be the key to open the lock of the 'unconscious' of human mind, while Sri Gaudapad found dream to be the guiding key to open the strange lock of `ignorance' which causes man to forget his real nature. By `Interpretation of Dreams' Sigmund Freud tried to peep into the dark `unconscious' of human beings whereas by 'penetration of dreams' Sri Gaudapadacharya revealed to us the brilliant, self-effulgent, self-luminous 'nature' of human-beings."

We are happy to present to the readers this unique book entitled "Swapna-Yoga or Interpretation of Dreams". This book was originally written in Marathi by Swami Shivatatvananda and published by Ramakrishna Math, Nagpur, in the year 1968.

Man is always very much curious and intrigued about dreams. Some get indication of future events in them while others come across the reflection of past events. Some feel like witnessing the lila or the play of the Lord through them while others aspire to penetrate through the dreams and go beyond mind. Thus man has studied dreams through various angles.

Modern western psychologists like Freud and others studied the dreams particularly of patients and analysed the function of mind and whatever they 'discovered' from their incomplete analysis, they presented before all, thinking them to be applicable to everybody. By these guessings and assump-tions' some patients may have been cured but due to this, an abnormal feeling about man was spread which led to, and is still leading to immense loss of mankind.

Contrary to this Indian philosophers, the life-experts deeply contemplated over the entire process of dream through the comparative study of dream and waking state, reached to the `bottom' of human mind and clearly revealed the real nature of man through the actual experience of Truth. These seekers of Truth, the Rishis and Bhagavan Sri Krishna and others studied human mind in a subtle way and showed to man the means for conquering the mind fully and thereby opened the path of eternal happiness.

In this way, a very lucid elucidation of the lacuna in the psychological analysis of the Western thinkers and the divine outlook about human mind given by Indian men of wisdom, the illumined souls, is presented in this book.

We are sure that the readers will get the divine light from this book and will find the path of liberation through it .

We are indebted to Mr. Bhagbat Chakraborti who has helped us in publishing this book and to the Malti Prints of Aurangabad for printing it.

**Contents and Sample Pages**