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Savita, whether you are dreaming or not dreaming, you are dreaming. Whether you are dreaming with closed eyes or open eyes makes no difference. You dream in the night, you dream in the day. There are night dreams and there are daydreams. You simply go on changing from one dream to another dream, one kind of dream to another kind of dream.

Listen. You dream in the night, and then abruptly the sleep is broken, then you feel horror – that too is a dream. Now you are dreaming of horror, of vulnerability, fear. Then you fall asleep again and you start dreaming. And in the morning you open your eyes and you start dreaming with open eyes. Dreams are a continuum. Your mind is made of dreams, your mind consists of dreams.

Remember the one who is seeing the dreams. Awake to that witness. Don’t pay much attention to the dreams. That is where the East and West differ. The Western psychology is too much addicted to dreams, dream analysis; one has to go deep into dreams.

Savita is a therapist, a psychoanalyst, so obviously she must be feeling offended when I put down or play down your dream-life. Don’t feel offended; this is a totally different approach. By analyzing dreams you will never come to end them. By analyzing dreams you may become a little more understanding about dreams, but awareness is not going to happen through it. By analyzing dreams you may even start dreaming better dreams, but better dreams are just dreams all the same. By analyzing dreams you may start feeling your motivations hidden behind the dreams, your repressed desires, your ambitions, but you will never come to know who you are. How can one come to know who one is by analyzing dreams?Dreams are objects and you are the subject. You have to take a parāvṛtti – a conversion; you have to move a hundred and eighty degrees. You have to stop paying attention to the dreams; you have to pay attention to the one who has been dreaming.

The East is concerned with the witness, not with what it witnesses. You may be seeing a real tree or you may be seeing a dream tree – it makes no difference. For the Eastern approach it makes no difference whether the tree is real or just a dream tree. In both cases it is the object, in both cases you are not it. So what difference does it make whether it is there really or you have just imagined it?

The only thing that makes any difference is the one, the mirror, in which the tree is reflected. True or untrue, that is irrelevant, but the pool of pure water in you where it is reflected – pay attention, emphasize the witness, go deeper into the witness. And that’s my purpose here: in order to help you, not to analyze your dreams. That you can do in the West in a far more scientific way. The West has become very, very skillful in analyzing dreams. But the East was never worried because the East says all is dream so what is the point of analyzing?

And there is no end. If you go on analyzing and the source that creates the dreams is there, it will go on creating new dreams. They will be coming and coming and coming. That’s why nobody is ever totally psychoanalyzed; there exists not a single person on the earth who is really and totally psychoanalyzed, because the goal of total psychoanalysis is that dreams should disappear. That does not happen. It didn’t happen even to Freud or Jung. They continued to dream. That means they continued to remain suppressed; that means they continued to remain the same as they were before. Dreams were still coming, because the source had not been radically changed.

The projector is working and you go on analyzing the film on the screen, and you go on thinking how to analyze it. And then you differ, your analysis differs; and then there are schools of psychoanalysis. Freud says something, Jung says another thing, Adler another, and so on and so forth. Now there are as many psychoanalyses as there are psychoanalysts, and everybody has his own opinion, and nobody can really be refuted, because all is dream work.

Whatsoever you say, if you can say it loudly, convincingly, with authority, with argument, with logic, it appeals to people, it must be true. And they all seem to be true. All those interpretations seem to be true, because no interpretation is of any worth. All interpretations are wrong.

The East has a totally different kind of approach: witness, don’t analyze. In analysis you become too much interested, focused, on the dream. Forget the dream: just look at the watcher. That watcher is constant. In the night it sees dreams; in the day it sees dreams. First you see the dream, and then you are awakened abruptly, and you see horror. Then you fall asleep again and you may see a sweet dream, a beautiful dream, a happy dream – or a nightmare again – and this goes on and on. One thing is constant: the seer, the watcher, the witness.

Turn upon the witness. And that’s what I am trying to say to you: while you are dreaming in the day and when you are dreaming in the night. Only one good point about dreams is that you say: [“Your presence is in my dream-consciousness without fail, every dream since I have been here.”] That’s good. At least one thing is constantly there which will help you to fall upon yourself. Emphasize that presence.

Gurdjieff used to say to his disciples, “Make one thing constant in your dreams and sooner or later you will get rid of dreams.” And he used to give small things, small techniques, devices – and they worked. To one person he said, “Whenever you dream, just in the dream see that you are raising your hands above your head. And in the daytime also, practice this many times so you become very accustomed and habituated to it, so it becomes almost mechanical, so even in dreams you can raise your hand above your head.” And the man said, “What will happen?” Gurdjieff said, When you have become capable, come and tell me.”

Three months passed and the man continued, day in, day out, walking, eating, whenever he would remember, he would raise his hand, and would remember also, “Tonight I am going to raise my hand in the dream.” And then, after three months, it happened: one night he was dreaming that he was walking on a road and there was much traffic and noise, and suddenly he realized, and he raised his hand above his head – and the dream was broken. And in that moment of broken dream, he suddenly saw himself for the first time – the turning, the conversion. It was in the middle of the night. He danced, he was so joyous. And since that day, dreams disappeared.

And when dreams disappear, reality comes closer and closer every day. It is the dreams that are hindering you from seeing that which is. When he came in the morning to see Gurdjieff, before he had said anything, Gurdjieff said, “So it has happened – because I see your eyes have a different shine, a different light. They have clarity. That dream stuff that used to move behind your eyes is no longer there. So it has happened! So you were capable of raising the hand! Now don’t be worried: whenever it comes, raise the hand again. Every possibility is that it may not come again, because at least you have done one thing consciously. Even in your dream, just a small thing of raising your hand, you remembered a small thing. It was very small, but remembrance is great. You remembered, even in your dream. So the witness has reached there – now no need to worry.”

I would like to say to Savita: Invite me more and more in your dreams. Let me also enjoy your dreams. Go every night with a very conscious feeling that I will be there in your dreams. Make it an alert effort, deliberate, and one day it is going to happen. It will not be just a dreamlike phenomenon. I will be really as present as I am now, or even more, because right now I can see there are dreams in Savita’s eyes. If in your dream you can see me as I am even for a single moment, all dreaming will disappear.

Analysis has no point. Dreams have to go. When dreams are gone, reality comes in. By one door, dreams go out; from another door the reality enters in. And reality is silent, quiet, peaceful, blissful…