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Q. I have dreams at night with sages from the past. I am wondering if these are just dreams or if the dead can make communication through dreams.
A. First, please see the section on visions in the question-and-answer material, because what applies to visions mostly applies to dreams. Ramana Maharshi’s caution about getting involved with vision and dreams is most important and trustworthy.
It is extremely hard trying to figure out whether a dream is “real” or “true.” Yogananda said that if we dream of a saint and they look exactly like their photographs, then the dream is real, for the subconscious mind cannot reproduce the form of a realized Master. I have found that this is an extremely valuable principle, for a lot of the time our mind is just fooling around or even trying to trick us.
But even if the dream proves to be “real” is it completely trustworthy? For often a dream has both superconscious and subconscious elements mixed together. It is not uncommon for the mind to splice in subconscious “footage” even if the basic part of the dream is real. I have known for dreams to start out real and end up fantasy. How can the difference be detected?
It is best to just take note of what is dreamed but to go no further than that. In time life itself will reveal the truth or falsehood of the dream, as well as its value or worthlessness.
Masters never die, but live forever, and they can communicate with us. It has been my experience that such communication is always backed up with more objective elements, that the communications are more a pointing out than a stand-alone kind of teaching.
There is no substitute for the intuition developed by meditation–not even visitations from saints and angels.
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