Page 16 - NAMAH-Oct-2024

Dreams and Sadhana

Lopa Mukherjee

Abstract
The Mother said that dreamtime is the night-school of sadhana. We can use dreams in our spiritual
a
a
quest and they are important for our psychological health. Dreams have been used by oracles from
the beginning of civilisations to solve problems, predict the future, heal deep-seated wounds and
create new possibilities. This paper explores how dreams can help our inner growth if we open
ourselves to their subtle touch.

partner to wish for. I would say the word
‘dream’ has a magical quality to it because
in the collective experience of mankind,
night-time dreams have inspired people to
strive for a future that is grand and fantasy-
like, almost ungraspable. Songs, speeches,
poems and stories that have become cultural
treasures abound in dreams, such as Alice in
Wonderland. In many myths a dream ushers
Introduction in a big change; it marks the turning-point
in a person’s life. Coleridge’s Kubla Khan, a
It is interesting that in many languages the poem descended in a dream, has retained its
word for night-time dreams is the same dreamlike quality. Mary Shelley dreamt of
as aspiration for a better future, and the the Frankenstein story, which is a warning
culmination of a perfect situation. There are for all of humanity from the collective
many other words for a positive outcome, unconscious. The chemist, Kekulé dreamt
such as utopia, hope, fantasy, imagination, of the structure of benzene (1).
wish; but none of them are as charged
as the word ‘dream’. Martin Luther King The Mother encouraged everyone to pay
Jr.’s speech, “I have a dream”, will inspire attention to dreams and she used to ask
people forever. There will be a dream job, them to recount the dreams they had seen.
a dream team, a dream house, a dream As for herself she calls her dreams, “dream

16