Ramana Maharshi Says Mukti Has To Be Gained In Full Awareness (Waking State)

15th April, 1937

A frequent visitor to the Ashram is cogitating over the problem of Maya and its relation to the waking and dream states.

V. Is there any genuine difference between the experience of jagrat and that of dreams?

Bh. None, except that jagrat appears to be more enduring than the other to the person who is in jagrat, though not so to the dreamer himself. The person in jagrat
relates his dream to have sometimes covered hundreds of years, hence he calls it transitory, whereas actually there is not the slightest difference between the nature
of the two states.

V. There is this difference: each time we return to jagrat, we come to the same place, same people, same activities and interests, which is not the case with going to the svapna state.

Bh. This is because things move very rapidly in dreams, as they appear now to you in jagrat. But each time you go to the dream world do you feel being a stranger in it? Do you not feel thoroughly at home with the people and places as you do here? Don’t you sometimes dream of being a minister, or meeting your father who had died in jagrat long ago, or seeing God seated on a throne,etc., without noticing any incongruity in it? The dream is as real then to you as jagrat is now. Where is the
difference? If you call the dream illusion, why do you not do so to jagrat also?

C. I suppose efforts have to be made in the waking state, which implies that moksha can be gained only in jagrat.

Bh. Quite so, awareness is necessary for mind control; otherwise who is to make the effort? You cannot make it in sleep or under the influence of drugs. Also mukti has to be gained in full awareness, because the Reality itself is pure awareness.

MoreOver Micheal James in his "Happiness And Art Of Living" book says,

Since our illusory imagination that we are a body in dream is so easily dissolved by even a superficial self-attention, it is difficult for us to attend to ourself deeply and keenly in dream.Therefore it is only in the present waking state that we can seriously make an effort to attend to ourself deeply – that is, to attend wholly and exclusively to our essential self-consciousness ‘I am’.

V. Arjuna saw the Divine Form of Sri Krishna. Was that vision true?

Bh. Sri Krishna started the discourse in Chapter II of the Bhagavad Gita with: “I have no form,” etc., but in Chapter XI, He said: “I transcend the three worlds . . . ,” yet Arjuna saw these in Him.

Again Sri Krishna said: “I am Time.” Does time have a form? If the universe is His form, should it not be uniform and changeless, He being the Changeless One?

The solution to these apparent contradictions lies in His statement to Arjuna: “See in Me all you desire to see. . . ,” which means that His form varies according to the desires and conceptions of the seer.

Men speak of divine visions, yet paint them differently with the seer himself in the scene. Even hypnotists can make one see strange scenes and phenomena, which you condemn as tricks and jugglery,whereas the former you extol as Divine. Why is this difference?

The fact is that all sights are unreal, whether they come from the senses or the mind as pure concepts.THIS IS THE TRUTH.

Source: GURU RAMANA MEMORIES AND NOTES By S. S. COHEN