Sub-consciousness provides us an instinct. No amount of thoughts is required to drag the finger away from fire if it is put accidentally into it. The unexpected appearance of an old acquaintance fills the body with thrill and happiness. A thorn stuck in the foot sends the sensation of pain. No training no education is required to feel an instinct. Its scope is very limited and it can't help us to understand the intricacies of life.

There is consciousness which gives us the intellect. It is used to make the progress, make inventions and explore the mysteries of nature and the universe. Its dimensions are much more than the instinct but its scope is limited as well in this universe – of limitless planets and stars.

This earth is a small planet of this universe. The sun is sixty thousand times bigger than the earth. A ray of the sun takes ten minutes to reach the earth at the speed of one hundred eighty six thousand miles per second. There are other stars, the rays of which take four years, hundred years and two hundred years. There are stars the rays of which have not yet reached the earth. So how can we understand the vastness of the universe with our small intellect?

Once Newton was asked how much knowledge he had attained. He was standing on the sea-shore where sand was scattered all around. He picked up a particle of sand and said - the value of my knowledge to the vast knowledge of the universe is as much as the value of this particle of sand to the vast amount of sand spread all around.

Many of you remember the thrill of joy with which in your childhood, you saw glorious rising sun; all of you, sometimes in your life, stand and gaze upon the glorious setting sun, and at least in imagination, try to pierce through the beyond. This in fact, is at the bottom of the whole universe – this, rising from and this setting into the beyond. This whole universe coming out of the unknown and going back into unknown, crawling in as a child out of darkness and crawling out again as an old man into darkness.

This universe of ours, the universe of the senses, the rational and intellectual is bounded on both sides by the illimitable, the unknowable and the ever unknown. It is beyond all reasoning and not the planet that comes within the scope of intellect.

Beyond consciousness is super-consciousness which gives an inspiration, a plunge into the unknown and unknowable making unknowable more that is known because it can never be known. To all external appearance super-consciousness and unconsciousness are the same but they differ as a lamp of gold from lamp of clay. In the state of super-consciousness, all the mysteries of the universe are unfolded and truth is revealed to us.

We are living in a trance that the life we are leading is a true life. It is ever-lasting and everything is real. We suffer for this life. In fact this life is nothing but a dream, nothing but a play and not real. If we look back at the happenings of our lives in the past – good or bad, they would appear to us nothing but the happenings of a dream or a play or film which have no existence at all. They had no truth, no permanent existence. They were nothing but a dream.

In china Chavangtse was a saint who had a shining and smiling face. People had never seen him with a long face. One morning people found him sitting depressed outside his cottage. They asked him the reason and he replied that he saw a dream last night that he was changed into a butterfly which was hovering from flower to flower. “What is in that to be sad? It is only a dream. Man can take any shape in a dream.”

Chavangtse said, “I was watching the dream that I had been changed into the butterfly and the feeling of 'I' was lost. After awakening, I wonder whether the butterfly is watching this dream of 'I' and the feeling of butterfly is lost.”

In fact both are dreams, one we see with closed eyes and the other with open eyes. We can lead a peaceful life and get rid of many worries and woes if we consider life as a dream or play which is not real and true. Someone has said about life that:-

“Life is a master novel, written by God and man would go crazy if he tried to understand by reason alone. That is why I tell you to meditate more.”

The meditation will provide you the peace, tranquility, bliss and awareness. It will take you to the state of super-consciousness which provides you an inspiration to understand the mysteries of life. Gurudev Shri Ji asks Man to wake up from the deep slumber of ignorance in pursuit of worldly affairs by devoting some time to meditation which will definitely reduce your stress and strain and when followed continuously and regularly will provide you complete awareness about REALITY.