The Dream, the Dreamer, and the Surrender of Will
El sueño, el soñador y la rendición de la voluntad
A wide-ranging dialogue that begins with the Hindu dream analogy of God dreaming all of existence, moves through the nature of seeking and enlightenment, addresses a student's struggle with intellectual understanding and effortful practice, and culminates in a teaching on radical trust, surrender, and following one's deepest wanting.
The Dream, the Dreamer, and the Surrender of Will
A wide-ranging dialogue that begins with the Hindu dream analogy of God dreaming all of existence, moves through the nature of seeking and enlightenment, addresses a student's struggle with intellectual understanding and effortful practice, and culminates in a teaching on radical trust, surrender, and following one's deepest wanting.
The dream analogy in Hinduism works something like this. God, the consciousness, the source, is dreaming all of this: seven billion people, all the animals, all the plants, all the objects, the entire universe. We are characters in this dream. So when I am speaking to the teacher, in fact it is God speaking to me. It seems like the teacher is thinking and giving an answer, but it's nothing like that. God, through the teacher, is asking the question and giving the answer.
This is a classic joke.
It is. And it's fun. To make it seem real, what God does is this: suppose I raise my hand. First a thought appears in my mind, "raise a hand." Then the muscle contracts, and it is God that contracts the muscle, and the hand is raised. Now when I observe this, I notice that I had the thought of raising the hand and I see the hand up. So there is another thought: "I have raised my hand." God is doing all of that to make it appear real. Otherwise, if there were no juice, it would be like robots.
No juice. It wouldn't be fun.
It wouldn't be fun.
You need to dream and forget you're dreaming.
The divine costume
Exactly. So another analogy: it is as if God takes the form of seven billion people. Suppose God takes the form of a dictator, a criminal. God must forget that he is God. He must take on the characteristics of a criminal. He's playing with himself, but he must forget that he is God, must take on the characteristics of the individual. Otherwise there can't be a movie. It won't feel real.
And in my experience, the point of that is to dream all kinds of dreams, to experience all flavors, imagine new flavors. Never-ending dreaming and forgetting of the dream so that the dream is experienced in its full intensity. And then, at some points, in some places, there is the lucid dreaming, the realization that it is a dream. You could call that awakening.
The dream metaphor in Hinduism is very much a description of a way in which awakening happens for some people. It is very specific in that way: to see "I am the source and I am dreaming all of existence."
You know how you wake up from a dream. You realize there is a shift in a dimension of reality, and some shifts are known to be more towards the real. They are felt to be more true, more real. And that is what can happen. It is very known, and it is incomprehensible why. There is no cause, but it is known what is more real.
And so it is known that the person is the dream, but it doesn't mean the person is not real. It's just that the reality of the person isn't the person itself. Everything that is happening is real. Everything that is, is real. But the reality of what it is isn't what it appears to be.
Everything is divine
From there, you can experientially know that everything being experienced is divine, is sacred, is source. Everything is divine.
Sir, all the rape, the violence, the torture, the corruption, all of that?
All is divine. All is perfect. It is a very dangerous thing to say, but I am saying it here. God's play, God's lila. Without war, how can we appreciate peace? Without suffering, how can we appreciate happiness? But also, without war, how can you appreciate the pain of war? It is inevitable. Both must exist simultaneously. And also, God can learn as an artist, as a dreamer, like a movie maker. Whatever experiences we are having, God is having them, because there is only one.
So for me, I have been searching for forty years. I have been doing it intensely three times, but recently, maybe five years ago, all the seeking for enlightenment dropped. I no longer seek enlightenment. And it just dropped by itself.
Beautiful. Not seeking. You can't make it happen. It goes when it comes.
So now, what resonates for me is not wishing for things to be other than what they are. Not minding what happens. Being okay with whatever is. And not complaining. But when I say this, I mean effortlessly. It goes by itself. There is no effort in that. You just notice that it has come. Surrendering, accepting everything as God's will. This is basically it. Everything is God's will.
Your joy is very palpable. Many teachers say the same. I think now, if anything, you could just keep clarifying more deeply. What you brought up about "the observer is the observed" is a very beautiful koan, a very beautiful paradox. Just playfully explore it, because there is infinite depth and it is playful.
There is one thing I would love to share. I have two or three teachers who say that when we die, this is enlightenment. The ego vanishes. So death is the same as enlightenment.
I don't know what happens when we die, and I don't disagree with that. But I would say it is better to know that while alive.
Yes, but this is impossible. One teacher calculated the percentage of people who realize this. It is a tiny percentage.
It is. Maybe it's growing. Maybe it's a virus that spreads like COVID. You never know. And either way, it's beautiful.
It is God's grace to be enlightened. It is not in our hands.
And God's choice also. And you, as that, can trust that. You are choosing to play hide and seek.
For me, it is like this: even if I have been searching for forty years, now whether I get enlightened or not, I don't care. It is enough to have good health and to be financially okay. I'm not after it. If it comes, okay. If it doesn't come, that is okay as well. And there is so much lightness in that.
The two steps
That's all it is. And then deeper and deeper and more clear. Before the meditation, I mentioned two steps. One is to see that what we are looking for is already here. When you stopped seeking, I think you are referring to the end of seeking for something in the future to happen, for enlightenment in the future to happen. That means there has been a very big shift in that first step. And that can become a lot more obvious and clear. What you are calling enlightenment is that deeper knowing that this is really it, and it can't be any other way. It is so deeply clear and so deeply known that it just becomes more refined. The second step I was referring to is this love and joy for what is, and that is already very present with you. I think everybody can feel your joy. It is very beautiful. And the question you brought in the beginning is a very subtle question, very refined, very pointed. It speaks to a later stage.
Question (second student): On the intellectual level, as far as I can go: realizing that all is this, all is here, and sitting on that understanding amounts to having an assumption. An assumption that it's all just this. And I just hold it as an assumption.
Can you say that a little differently? I'm trying to follow.
You get to a point where you can't go any further. Noticing thought is just noticing thought, and that's it. So it's like coming back to a point of no longer being interested in getting more understanding of nonduality or reality. Just making it an assumption: just this.
I'm not sure what you're referring to when you say "an assumption of just this."
Because I can't make it happen.
So let me see if I understand. Are you saying you have an intellectual understanding that it is "just this," and you're making that assumption? That is how you are relating to it?
Yes. I just don't know what to do about it.
The back and forth
And what is your experience with this? What are your feelings, your sensations?
I still feel triggered by what's happening, and it feels like an effort to just notice what's going on. Life situations can sometimes be heavy. For example, I'm having job interviews and I feel some stress. But I know it's about feeling it fully. The stress is life, and the point is feeling it, feeling the sensation, whatever comes up. In terms of understanding about seeing reality, it goes as far as just noticing. There's no further than that. And yes, there is a sense of disappointment that there's nothing I can do about reality, about what is really real. No words can describe it. I'm not trying to describe "no distance" or "no time." I do sometimes experience no time when I concentrate on something. That gives me some contrast between what no-time feels like and when time seems to be dragging. I know the contrasting is also thought-made.
That kind of contrast helps to see. It is the contrast of different experiences, and you could say it happens in mind, but it helps to see that there is a back and forth. You get immersed in the reality of thoughts, and then you come out to some degree. So you are describing this back and forth: being more fully immersed in the thoughts, the reality of thought, the triggers, fears, difficult sensations, and time, and then more out, and then back again. You also referred to effort, that it still feels like effort. There is nothing wrong with effort. We should effort until the efforting is, in a sense, seen through, and the effort becomes effortless.
Yes. Effort is still effort. At the bottom of it, there is just a happy sensation. But the experience itself is just dislike.
Seeing the thought-like nature of experience
That is where you can keep bringing more clarity. Not intellectual clarity, but the experience of looking directly at that experience and seeing the thought-like nature of it. In all kinds of meditation traditions, there is the practice of looking at thought. It has become very popular with mindfulness: observing thought. That alone is not going to go very far, but without it, we are not going to go very far either. Even if we have had a lot of progress in seeing through that, we still need to keep clarifying. Even after doing a lot of that kind of work, there are points where identification and contraction happen. And that is precisely where it is most valuable and powerful: in those moments, to see through that.
In the moments of more difficult sensation, be with them and see through thought. If we are only able to do that when sensations are not intense, when contraction is not intense, then we are not, in a sense, deepening. On a deeper level, there is still an activity of identification. It has been seen through significantly, but it still has its grips. It is still actively functioning. We have learned to disidentify more, but what we identify with is still very much alive. The belief is still very much there. We can only see through it when it is activated more strongly: when you feel triggered, when you feel contracted, when you are immersed in stress. See those moments as opportunities.
Even playfully, you could consider it this way: "I'm having an interview tomorrow and I know it's going to be stressful." Then you could celebrate the opportunity. You are having this roller coaster of a stressful interview where you can see more through what is happening.
At some point, we are dissolving a belief that has many legs. Some are getting fully dissolved, some less. But eventually there is going to be one last grip, one last attachment. And it is only going to appear when we feel a challenge, a suffering, a contraction, something difficult. We might not notice it, but that one, too, can be seen through. Until then, it sometimes feels like there is no progress.
When it's triggered, the seeing at that point is to fully see how thought is complaining, to see this identification, this belief of identity. To really see through that it's just a belief or identification when you get triggered at that critical point. What I'm trying to describe is that truly seeing is just recognizing: this is relating, functioning, thought processing.
Yes. To see the nature of it: it is only thought. Nothing more. There are going to be sensations, there are going to be perceptions, and the sensations could be intense. But the thing that is actually the trouble is only made of thought.
Yes. This is how it can happen. To really see the thought all the way through is how the belief dissolves.
Choosing to believe
There is also noticing how a choice is happening: the choice of believing that. Let me describe it more precisely. It is like you are looking at a movie and you feel it's real. You really want it to be real. You are invested in that being real, even if it's difficult. And that is the belief: "This is real, and I'm wanting it to be real." It is going to be real until you realize you are choosing for it to be real. And then you are going to realize it was just a thought that you were believing.
Okay. I think my belief is that at a certain point, I choose not to associate with thought. So I make it real. I make it real because I thought that the belief of identity is something real.
Let me use a different metaphor. You are in a desert. There is a mirage; it looks like an oasis of water in front of you. You are walking towards it and you are very invested in that being water. You keep walking and keep walking, but you never get close. Yet you are convinced it is water. Then at some point, you can see it's just a mirage. Physics tells us it is a reflection of the sky, caused by the heat creating a physical effect where the sky is reflected on the sand. Then you can see: this is just an optical illusion. And that is where you realize you kind of knew it was, but you were wanting it to be water.
We are very invested in the reality of that dream. That is the attachment: this deep investment, this hope that says, "This is going to get me somewhere. This is going to get me away from this desert," away from the sensation, the stress, the pain. But in a sense, the wanting itself is actually creating the suffering, because the wanting is for things not to be as they are. There is a whole thing happening there.
My point is: at first it appears to be real, that there is water. Then you see it's not water, but you are still wanting it to be water. You still go back. "No, it must be water. I'll keep looking. I'll keep walking."
The automatic habit
Yes. I think there is that tendency, and I think it's based on a habit. Automatically, it turns into something, and I cannot stop it. It's a natural mechanism. Naturally, it just turns things into something. Even when there are some glimpses, at the intellectual level it will just naturally turn back into a belief.
You can't stop it because you are still not seeing that you are choosing it. You are still not seeing the attachment to it. It is like my hand is in a tight fist and I hold it for a few hours. Then it is going to be hard to stop, and I am going to forget that I am the one contracting. Then I am going to go to the doctor and say, "Please help me relax my hand." And the doctor is going to say, "Well, just relax your hand." And I say, "I can't." I have forgotten. The whole muscle memory has taken over. But then I can start to pay attention and realize, "Oh, actually, I do remember that. It was me. I can actually do that."
Yes. I can clearly see that this is what my mind does. It just makes things real, turns them into a solid thing, a subject. That's as far as I can see. I can't really see that I am the one doing it. Sometimes it feels like it's me, and sometimes it just seems like it's happening.
Very specifically, try to recognize that you are choosing that. I completely understand that at times it is going to feel like it's happening to you. At those moments, try to see: this is a whole universe of thoughts that I am invoking, that I am requesting of my mind for it to create this narrative. And then I am very attached to believing it.
Yes. Just to really see the attachment.
And then to see that you are very attached, and that the attachment feeds the reality of it.
Yes. I was going to say: I feel like trying to surrender to this attachment that is so strong, I must leave it alone. That's why I was feeling a bit like giving up.
When tools become obstacles
Something relates to what was discussed earlier about the observer and the observed, and what you mentioned last time about tools that at a certain point stop being useful.
The other day I had a kind of realization. I was doing self-inquiry, and I suddenly realized that within it there was an implicit assumption that something needed to change or be different. I saw the thought structure of it, the ridiculousness of it, in a sense. Since then, it's as if most of what I do as a tool, as self-inquiry, or as meditation, carries a kind of aggression, something that can only take me away from what I already am. Meditation still helps, and the space to sit down still happens, but it resonates more now to just say, "Okay, I'm sitting, I've made this place to sit down, and I don't know what needs to happen or not happen." Just not do anything. But not intentionally not do anything. Just sit down. And if there is curiosity, there is curiosity.
But it also seems as if willfulness is sometimes a kind of aggression. This week I was feeling quite a lot of dark or negative feelings, one particular feeling I can't identify well. And the will to force myself to sit down with it felt like a kind of aggression, a kind of rejection, in a sense. That meant that sometimes I would escape it for a while, watch a TV show. It was creating a conflict. Then maybe I would escape for a while, or for the whole day, and at a point I'd say, "Okay, I'm fed up of escaping. That's worthless as well." So I just lie down and the feeling happens. And that gets better. But am I thinking about this wrongly, this thing about the will?
No, I don't think so. It sounds very right, but it is the kind of thing that is right at specific times. In this process, it could be wrong for you at another point, but my sense is that it is right now. My sense is that what is needed now for you is to really ask yourself what you want at every moment. If you want to meditate, you meditate. If not, don't.
There is a different level here, a deeper level of risk and trust.
But it's also very scary. It's scary because I can extend that to work as well. A lot of the time, I choose when or how much I work. Sometimes I just don't work.
Radical trust
Okay, if you don't want to work, don't work. But I said "risk." It is not that simple. You could say, "I don't want to work," and you don't work. But actually, you do want to work because you want to make money. So do you want to work or not? And then follow the deepest wanting.
At every moment, it is radical trust. When I say "what does the universe, as you, want right now?" I mean it.
But it's really like letting go of everything and putting everything in the hands of the universe.
Yes, but that universe is you. And this is creating the opportunity for you to realize that. But there is a process. This should not be done too prematurely. If this teaching is taken too early on, one will just indulge in all kinds of very primitive conditioning, and life will become a mess. But at a different stage, when you have a lot more clarity about your thoughts and emotions (which I think you have), then this is needed. You have adopted many techniques, systems, structures, and teachings for how to be. But it has all, in a sense, come to an end, where you are still chasing something and avoiding something.
Yes. That resonates.
And so the deep, deep trust is: just do whatever you want. But because you have the clarity now to start exploring more, you can notice the subtle wants. What are the subtle wants that are not the deepest, that are just mental and emotional conditioning? As you said, and as I said, it is risky. It takes more risk and really committing to trust.
You gave a very easy example: "I don't want to work, so I don't work." But that is a problem. Do you really never want to work? Try it. Let's see in two weeks how your life starts going. Then maybe you'll change your mind, maybe not.
No, it happens that I work too.
So it's not that simple. But then it becomes very radical. What do I want right now, without any prior rules, conditionings, or techniques? What is the deepest movement of love for this moment? What do I most deeply want to do right now? And it's an exploration. It is going to be, at this stage, like learning to surf all over again, falling on your face.
Because I see there's a lot of conditioning, maybe in everybody. What you're saying sounds like big trust. It's as if we're conditioned most of the time to think in terms of survival.
Exactly. Survival of the idea of you. Which is the survival of your relationship, the survival of your form of being you, what people think of you, what you think of yourself, keeping life as it is. But now I feel like you are being called to a deeper trust. In a sense, it is also a surrender: the surrender of the false self to the true self. Or the self to the no-self, however you want to put it.
My will is thy will
"My will is thy will." That is a more religious pointing, but it is basically saying: what I believe to be my will, I see no longer as mine. It is thy will, divine universal will. But the only way I could believe in "my will" is by creating it, by imagining it. My innate personal will.
And we need, in a sense, to develop that will until it becomes the problem. That is what I mean about depending on the stage. If this is done too early in somebody's process, the ego-will can't be surrendered too soon. In a sense, we need a will that can obey. So at first it obeys a process of teaching, a practice. And then it obeys whatever the universe is speaking right now. In a sense, ultimate freedom is ultimate obeying. That is the surrender.
But I know this is really specific to you. For some people it might resonate and be appropriate, yes. But for someone else, the direct opposite could be the right thing.
One of the fears that comes up is: why would the universe will for my personal thriving?
When I say "what the universe wants," it can never be what I truly don't want, because what I am referring to as "I" and the universe is the same thing. But it can be that what my mental conditioning believes I want is not what the universe wants. What I truly, deeply want is the same thing as what the universe wants. That is the real realization. At first, it is a trust, an exploration. In a sense, you practice exploring that, and then it can be realized: my will is thy will. There are not two wills. What I thought was my will is thy will. And so now I am always in service, in service to myself, to my deepest wanting. But it is not a wanting in service to body, mind, and the personal identity. Yet it is not against it either. At times it might not be in its favor, and that can create extreme situations. But it must be that the survival of the body-mind identity can never be the priority.
Yes.
Because then that would be identification. And this is really tricky. All of what I'm speaking to can be misunderstood in a million ways. But it is also a core of the Christ teaching. Even if it is taken as a myth or a metaphor, Jesus' life and the crucifixion are pointing to this. But it is really tricky, and this might need to be put into many more words to clarify all the ways it can be confusing or misinterpreted.
An open field with no rules
For you, I feel it is appropriate to start exploring this: at every moment, any option is a valid option, and you don't know what it is. So then, what do you want? Maybe it's work, maybe it's play, maybe it's doing something, maybe it's doing nothing. Everything is available. There are no rules, no teachings, no structures, no techniques, nobody telling you what to do. All of that is past. You have practiced. You have learned structure. You have developed a will that can obey something other than its selfish wants. And now it is time to listen to what Rumi would call the whispering of the heart. What is the whisper? The whisper is always, at every moment, very subtle, very quiet: the wanting. And it's not that simple. It's not as easy as "I don't want to work, so I'm not going to work." Very quickly, that idea, that belief, that thought is going to be seen as not true, not real. So we need to have that clarity.
I just brought it up as one of the things that come up that are scary.
And even not meditating can be scary, because you have learned that you need to meditate in order to wake up, that it's the only thing that matters, that it's what's going to save you. And all of that, at some point, is running away from something.
I think it's very helpful to hear.
And it is ultimate responsibility as well. You are your own boss. No teacher before you has the truth for you. Are you willing to step up?