If you want to understand the dream analogy...
 

...from the perspective of Advaita. https://youtu.be/YKqPa-o2ri4?t=2934

It's about 7 or 8 minutes from that point of the talk "Jnana Yoga – The Path of Inquiry".

Now consider a lucid dream where the actual nature of the dream is realized. It's an actual experience, not a concept. From my experience it can be exactly like that in a waking equivalent.

That's been my experience, also. You find yourself as the Dreamer.

''Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakens.” -- Carl Jung

That video link to Swami Sarvapriyananda is an excellent overview ... particularly the part on lucid dreams. I actually had that conversation face-to-face with him in NYC before the pandemic as I used to love to go to the Vedanta Society events in NYC.

You probably recall that I have practiced conscious sleep for many years of which lucid dreaming could be considered a subset. I agree completely with you that "from my experience it (lucid dream) can be exactly like that in a waking equivalent".

In lucid dreaming, one can directly observe the creation of the dream universe and come to the same conclusion as Ramana Maharshi and Swami Sarvapriyananda. Ramana explicitly stated (and I concur) that the "Light" projects the brain and the impressions in the brain manifest as the body and the world. I sometimes wonder whether people actually realize this or are just saying it. The experience is important (at least it was to me) and I use the dream analogy often.

There is a thread on "is time real" which is okay. I would love to hear your comments about the emergence of "time" as in a lucid dream and then in its waking equivalent.

My experience with lucid dreaming is using the MILD technique so I gain lucidity in an already formed dream. I am not lucid at dream formation so I never witness time emerging. It's already unfolding when lucidity is attained.

As for what I call the waking equivalent I experienced I never witnessed any transition between formless and form either. That's probably a tad further along the continuum than I "touched". Let's just say I dipped my toes in the water for a few weeks. :wink: Still, the "knowing" was profound, powerful and unambiguous.

Here's what I can say about time (awareness really) from my own experience. Every so often I have one of those amazingly fruitful sittings in effortless meditation where the timer goes off seemingly just after I start. No thought, no memory, no space, no time and yet I "know" I am aware the entire time. It's what Swami Sarvapriyananda sometimes refers to as "not an absence of experience but an experience of absence". It's being aware of being aware and nothing else.

It's That "knowing" that's beyond space, time and causality. It's right here and right now but we mostly don't notice because we're looking elsewhere. Actually it's that we're looking period. It's the Looker looking for the Looker. In another thread I describe it as "looking for me behind me" and I'll never find me there. LOL!

Lucid living.

QUOTE 4 EXCERPT: Thank you for your great and timely response. :thumbsup:

I was fortunate to have discussed this subject BRIEFLY with Swami Sarvapriyananda personally at lunch at the Vedanta Society in NYC ... but I had discussed it in greater depth with my own spiritual mentor. "Time" is indeed an intriguing topic.

Ask a photon about time (or space or mass!) and it'll shrug its little photon shoulders and say "I don't know what you're talking about.". LOL!

I take that deep meditative state to be akin to the causal body/deep sleeper. Unlike deep sleep where that state is interspersed with light sleep and REM sleep, meditation has a direct continuity of awareness across waking, deep meditation and waking. At first it might be subtle but eventually it's beyond obvious. It's not even that timeless and silent "space" in deep meditation that's interesting. It's That which is aware that's really interesting. :wink:

Sorry, could you explain how to be aware without any object to be aware of?
Thanks!

This is more difficult to explain than it seems. LOL!

Using the meditation example there's a short and contiguous span going from waking to meditative to waking mind states. If one does reach the true meditative state (no thought, no memory, no space, no time) there seems to still be awareness, even if it's of absence of experience. Why? Because I "know" I was in that state even if not knowing anything about it from the perspective of mind. To me the perception is a continuity of awareness regardless of its contents or lack thereof.

If awareness goes away with mind it seems to me the waking-meditative-waking experience would be waking-meditation warmup-waking.

Advaita uses the same example with deep and dreamless sleep, though I think the waters are a little more murky with REM & light sleep thrown in the mix as well as any wake-ups. An interesting experiment would be examining experience upon waking in the night, and one trick I learned from lucid dreaming for enhancing dream recall is upon waking remain still with eyes closed and mind at ease. Granted that last bit is for exercising dream recall but keeping the mind at rest is helpful for subtle examination of experience.

Advaita posits that's the very same "knowing" pervading/illumining all three states of mind - waking, dreaming and deep sleep. The "knowing" without which there would be no knowing.

QUOTE 7 EXCERPT: I'm not sure if it was an omission regarding "meditation has a direct continuity of awareness across, waking, deep meditation, and waking" ... but meditation ALSO has a direct continuity across deep sleep, dream formation, and the so-called waking state as well.

In any case, it's "THAT" which is aware that's really interesting. :wink: One's attention eventually shifts to "THAT". :thumbsup: :wink: