Asit K. Panja

By Asit K. Panja - Jan 15, 2012

The world of sleep and dreams has always fascinated the human mind. Apart from the fact that we spend nearly a third of our life in a state which we hardly know or have control upon, our sleep and dreams are doorways to mysterious worlds buried in realms that lie behind our waking state. The Upanishads speak of the fourfold Reality of which dream and sleep state are like two passages between and our waking self and the last doorway to the Beyond. It requires a deep occult and yogic knowledge to understand the deeper and subtler issues that these symbol worlds try to express. Meanwhile, we have a second-hand substitute for this now lost knowledge in a scientific understanding based on our material view of life and existence. In this regard, it is interesting to note what the ancient system of Āyurveda speaks upon the subject.