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62 SPIRIT AND THE MIND
The dream shows the vitality and happiness gained by accepting transcendental love – and that this love does not diminish intellectual power.
SPIRITUAL APPROACH
Focusing on the same idea—that expanding consciousness and love can be realized by overcoming fears that hinder full awareness of the real self—non-dualistic spiritual systems carry this point to the limit, asserting that man must not only become aware of repressed childhood fears, feelings and experiences, and be able to fully re-enter childhood with all innocence—he must also overcome his sense of separateness from everything that is considered other. He must overcome the subject-object split: duality itself. To do this, one must fully face and transcend all fears—imaginary and REAL. With the innocent, spontaneous, sensitive, total openness of a child, one must face suffering, pain, death and mortal fear. The only force powerful enough to effect this transcendence is love.
Within this context, then, A.T.’s dream can represent the struggle between mind and spirit—the spirit’s yearning to transcend all limitations and separations, including duality and mind itself; and mind’s mortal fear of transcendence and its own possible non-being. The dream affirms that spiritual unconditional love can transcend all fears. Along these lines, one possible spiritual interpretation of the dream, based upon my own experience with Sathya Sai Baba, is as follows.
I have heard many Sai Baba dreams. They all seem to have the same quality, expressing humor, excitement and always his great compassion and warmth. I know of no other type of dream that leaves such a lasting glow of delight—even days afterwards. Sai Baba’s appearance in a dream seems to represent a teaching about how love protects and expands awareness == helping us overcome earthly fears, and the mortal fear of transcendence.