Question – Many people feel sometimes that you come in their dreams, so what to think about such dreams?
Osho – They are not of the same type. It depends on you. Sometimes it may be just the first type of dream I call rubbish. Because you listen to me so attentively, an imprint is left in the mind. And you listen to me continuously every day and you meditate, and an imprint is left in the mind. It can become heavy. Sometimes the mind has to release it; it is rubbish.
But it can be of the second type also: that you would like me to be more closer. And I have created so many barriers; you are not allowed to be so much closer. In the morning you can see me; that too, from a distance. In the evening you can come, and that too with difficulty. So you have to suppress. That suppression can cause the second type of dream. You may dream that I have come to you, or you have come to me and you are talking to me.
It can be of a third type: it may be a communication from the unconscious. If it is of the third type, then it is meaningful. It simply shows to you that you are trying to escape from me. Come closer. The unconscious is simply saying that, “Don’t try to escape and don’t remain on the periphery; come closer.”
It can be of the fourth type: something from your past life, because many of you have lived with me; it may be a fragment of the past. Your mind is moving on the past track.
It can be of the fifth type also: a possibility of the future. All types are possible. These are five types of dreams. It can be a vision also, which is also a type of dream. I didn’t talk about it because it has a different quality. It has the quality of the waking life; that too is a dream. The waking life is too a vast dream. But vision has the quality of the waking life. Sometimes I come to you, but rarely, because you have to earn it. If you see me a hundred times, ninety-nine times it will be something of the five types of dreams. But the hundredth time, I come to you when you have earned it. Then it is a vision.
But by and by, you will have to become aware what is what. Right now I cannot give you criteria how to judge what is what. You will have to taste them yourself. So first become aware while you are awake, in the day. Gather more and more energy of awareness. Make it such an overflowing stream that when you fall asleep, your body falls asleep, your mind falls asleep, but the energy, the current of awareness is so forceful it continues. Then you will be able to make distinctions. And when one becomes able to make distinctions in dreams, it is a great achievement.
And then, by and by, rubbish drops. First type of dream disappears, because a man of awareness lives so completely in the day that he doesn’t gather rubbish. Rubbish is incomplete experiences. You were eating; the food was delicious, but you couldn’t eat it too much because you were a guest — what would people think? Incomplete experience has become rubbish now. Now, in the night you will again eat. You will have to complete the experience, otherwise the mind will go on and on.
Something incomplete mind does not like. The mind is a perfectionist: anything incomplete it doesn’t like. Your one tooth falls, and then the tongue goes again and again there because something is incomplete. Now the mind continuously… absurd, because just by touching by the tongue nothing is going to happen, but the mind again and again… it never tried before when the tooth was there. Now something is incomplete.
Psychologists say that even monkeys — because they also have minds just like you — if you draw a half circle and leave the chalk there, they will complete it. Monkeys! — because they cannot tolerate an incomplete circle, they will complete it immediately.
Mind always trying to complete things… First type of dream disappears when you become aware. You live life so completely there is no need. And then, the second type of dream disappears by and by, because you don’t live in desires. A man who is aware lives in needs, not in desires, so there is no need to wish-fulfill anything. He has nothing, so he never becomes a president of a country in the dream. He has no desires, no ambitions. He lives very ordinarily. The natural flow of life is enough. Eating food, feeling satiated, drinking water, feeling satiated, getting a good sleep — it is enough. More is not asked.
Then the third type of dream disappears. With the disappearance of the first two types, the conscious and unconscious have come so closer there is no need to communicate anything in the dream. In fact, the unconscious starts communicating while you are fully awake. Then things become simple, communication becomes exact. Then the fourth type of dream disappears. When you are so at ease with your life, aware perfectly satiated, the past drops completely. There is no need for it to go into the past. You live in the moment; the past disappears, and then the fifth type of dream disappears. You live so totally in the moment, so aware, so utterly aware, there is no future for you. And when all the five types of dream disappear, the unreality has disappeared, the illusion has disappeared. Now for the first time, you attain to the realization of the real, the brahma.
Source – Osho Book “Yoga: The Alpha and the Omega, Vol 3”