Meet sri madhava ashish who ran an ashram for many years in the himalayas teaching a blend of meditation, seva, dream work and self-inquiry

- by Rajeev Tandan and Pervin Mahoney

Understanding Our Dreams

The subject of dreams and what they mean is of ine hau-stible inter- est to all of us. We disc- ern that these shadowy nightly visitations are imp-ortant mess- engers, but few agree of what or from where. Are dreams the royal road to the unconscious as Freud maintained, or signs from the Collective Unconscious as CG Jung said or merely the psyche's attempts to make sense of the jumbled impressions of the day? For Sri Madhava Ashish, dreams are an open window into the inner kingdom of the Soul. Dreams are clues that help the dreamer unlock and resolve his inner dilemmas, complexes and traumas, eventually healing him of all that comes in the way of Self-realisation.

This book is directed at the seeker, and although he advocates making use of Freudian and Jungian dream interpretations, the attempt, as he makes clear, is not the limited motivation favoured by schools of psychology to equip a person to fit into society and achieve success, but to help him transcend the developmental tasks of the psyche to attain to the ultimate goal of human life – enlightenment. Thus he displays a refreshing ability to weld together psychology and spirituality, both so necessary for anyone to understand them completely.

In this erudite and penetrating work, Sri Ashish sets forth his views, insights and experiences of dreams and why they are so important. It is an original vision, stated with no-nonsense matter of factness, as when he dismisses the concept of chakras as illusory. He exudes a deep understanding and compassion for the almost inhumanly difficult task that seekers are engaged in – which he calls the process of becoming completely human.

In the chapter on traumas, he talks about how sensitive the newly born infant is to the manner of his reception, and unless received with love and care, can be inhibited from forming a relationship with its parents, or indeed from anyone.

The book delineates various kinds of dreams – the ones that refer to social conditioning, trauma, anxiety, out-of-body, and reincarnation. Of particular interest to the seeker is the chapter on Big Dreams which refer to dreams that have spiritual intent and whose purpose may be to illumine the larger purpose of life. All of us dream of having such dreams but as he rightly points out, they may only occur to curb our ego, not to add to it.

There clearly is no getting away from the fact that dreams are too important to ignore. So read this book and let it illumine this part of your life, even though the compressed style may make the reading heavy going.

- Suma Varughese