Today I fell in love in a dream. I’ve met a girl and we had what they call “chemistry”. It wasn’t about lust, well, not entirely, because lust is not one of those things that can be absent from man-woman relationships, it was about chemistry.
This is what I’m afraid of now – falling in love. You know that warm fuzzy feeling that makes your legs soft and resistance futile, when you are overwhelmingly drawn to the object of your affection, when no matter what you do or think it always ends up as a step on the way to your “soulmate”. Lust can be beaten back, and we have marriages to placate it, but nothing protects us from falling head over heels over some girl for no particular reason.
The lesson I learned, however, was about something bigger.
Anyway, even in a dream where I didn’t recognize any surroundings or any people I had a presence of mind to declare myself unavailable, which is a flashback from my real life, and I also had a presence of mind to think to myself that this is all wrong, that it’s ruinous to my Krishna consciousness.
As soon as I woke up I tried to shake that lovesick feeling, I went to the bathroom to splash some water on my face and I tried to calm my nerves, it’s not real, I told to myself. And then I realized – what is real anyway?
All my life I’ve been trying to maintain some sort of equilibrium, keep my wits about me, not panic and generally be cool. Why? Why is it any more real than the topsy turvy ride of my dream? Why is it so important to keep myself always in check?
I’ve noticed we all do it at all times. Lose a job – what will happen to me? Lose a wife or a girlfriend – what will happen to me? My life has ended, it makes no sense now.
When we are in our “normal” state we figure everything out – this is what I do for Krishna, these is what I have to do, this is what I will never do, this is what I want to do, and it all fits perfectly, by Krishna’s mercy, we think, and so we become protective about our status just as anyone else.
Krishna consciousness, however, is parallel to all our mental tribulations. We know we can be Krishna conscious when we are out of work, or when we are left by our family members. We know we can be Krishna conscious even when we lose our arm or a leg, so why can’t we be Krishna conscious when we lose our minds?
Clearly it’s because we are being on a mental platform. We think that we can serve Krishna only when we have all our screws tight in our heads and we don’t do anything stupid.
Well, Alzheimer’s is always around the corner, or we can fall in love with about the same effect on our mental faculties. It’s all still external. Chemistry does not affect the soul, it only affects our minds, even though it goes very very deep into the very essence of our being.
I was pleased to discover that it can’t go deeper than Krishna consciousness. Maybe not in my case yet but now I know that love is external. Irresistible for the body but still external. Krishna is above and beyond it, or to the side, if it makes more spatial sense.
It sucks to have your mind and intelligence affected by chemistry, or by Alzheimer’s, or by some hungry ghosts, but it’s external, Krishna can still be remembered and one day I hope I’ll discover that heart of hearts where He resides blissful and detached from all the tribulations of my material existence. This is where I want to be, too, and I can be there even if my mind is completely gone and all “reality” is completely screwed up.
Btw, about dreams, I once heard that for devotees dreams could be a way to discharge accumulated karma. I don’t know if it’s true but every time I have a bad one, about falling down, being chased, or being trapped, I look at it as a better way to relieve my accumulated reactions that having to go through it for real. Dreams about love used to be considered as pleasant but now I’m afraid of them just the same – it all has to go, better at night when I’m sleeping and there’s no danger of ruining my family.
On the other hand – what does it matter? What is real anyway?
Krishna lives elsewhere.
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