Sri Aurobindo

Letters of Sri Aurobindo

Volume 1. 1933-34

Fragment ID: 16655

1933-34

I am told by S that the people we see in our dreams are sometimes parts of our own being, and that the mind gives them the forms of men or women, with whom we are acquainted on the physical plane. Is it true?

It is not parts of our own real “being” usually. It is different forces and forms of nature – whether of general nature or of our own nature, also ideas, impulses etc., the formations of our outer personality, or mind, vital etc.

These dreams on the vital plane are often very mixed owing to the intrusion of figures and details from the subconscient.

These are dreams on the vital plane or excursions into the vital world of which the happenings are rendered in terms familiar to the physical mind – e.g. shopkeeper, police etc. though arranged in a different way from the physical. I cannot say they are clear and precise in significance as the mental dreams are.

The dream is a seeing of things that have their truth on the vital plane.

You do not know that you live on other planes as well as on the physical and that what happens there need not be the same as what happens on the physical. If you meet the Mother on the vital and certain things happen they can have their truth on the vital plane but it does not mean that they happened here in the physical world.

Things do happen on the vital plane – but they are not more important than what happens here because it is here we have to realise and what happens on the vital is only a help.

Subconscient dreams and lower vital dreams are usually incoherent. Higher vital dreams are usually and mental dreams are always coherent.

It was a sexual formation probably rising from the subconscient vital. Instead of allowing yourself to be disturbed by it, you should dismiss it from your mind altogether.