A serendipitous illusion

So, we finally ventured to get out, leaving both kids at home for the very first time, for a late night movie show - the INCEPTION. It was two weeks after its release and we had the whole theatre for ourselves. Heard so much about it and wanted to check out what it was all about, especially since it talks about the 'dream state'. Any Vedantic student will be quite intrigued by the promos (may be).

The concept about dream within a dream within another dream was quite interesting. As much as most of the movie didn't make much intellectual sense, I have to give it up for the director (Chris Nolan). It was quite impressive to see how he was able to transform a very lucid idea into a 2.5 hr long movie. Inception was based on the notion of "exploring the idea of people sharing a dream space — entering a dream space and sharing a dream. That gives you the ability to access somebody’s unconscious mind".

The great revelation I had from this movie was the time factor as it relates to the different levels of dream and it's compounding effects. I'm by no means a movie critic nor do I want to call myself a movie buff (my last movie in theatre was X-men when I was on a trip to LA, that shows how current I am). Anyway, the concept was quite interesting.

In Vedanta, we learn a lot about the three states of consciousness. The waking, dream and deep sleep states. Each state is subtler than the former in the same order. The time factor between these states is quite exponential. To draw a parallel (table below) with this concept, the movie portrays three states of dream where the time essentially multiplies from one to another. Minutes of real time can encompass years in dreams. The way to get out of that particular dream state is to 'wake up' with a shocking experience. 

Here is a quick analytical comparision:
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Inception                                                                      Vedanta
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Dream Level 1 > 10-hr flight                                     Waking State > Gross Reality 
Dream Level 2 > Kidnapping at the Hotel                   Dream State > Subtle Reality
Dream level 3 > Snowy Mountain Fortress                  Deep sleep State > Causal Reality
Level 4 > Unconscious Mind                                      Thuriya State > Transcendence - 'Existence'
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This happens to all of us, sleep for an hour and you probably covered a week-long road trip or a college year (in your dream). In this state, your mind is active and so is your intellect. If you go into a deep sleep state, all become subtle including time but 'you' still exist. Vedanta helps you identify that existence which supports these different states. Unknowingly, we all admit that there is some thing deep that illumines everything, we just can't put our finger on it.


According to our main scriptures, Bhagavatam - many of our life spans roll up into Bhagwan's one day. Since 'He' is Real and the world we are in is un-real or an illusion, this starts to make some sense. An excerpt from our Holy Bhagavad Gita -"The unreal has no existence and the real has no non-existence. The real is imperishable and no one can bring about the destruction of this immutable principle".


One day, when we wake up from this dream - we merge into Him (Aham Brahmasmi). The current compounding time factor makes perfect sense. When we realize that Infinite Truth, there is no concept of time. It is beyond all that.