The verse and its meaning · Spanda Karikas · Spanda Karikas — The Pulse of Consciousness

The Giver of Wishes

Spanda Karika 3.1

यथेच्छाभ्यर्थितो धाता जाग्रतोऽर्थान् हृदि स्थितान् सोमसूर्योदयं कृत्वा सम्पादयति देहिनः ॥ तथा स्वप्नेऽप्यभीष्टार्थान् प्रणयस्यानतिक्रमात् । नित्यं स्फुटतरं मध्ये स्थितोऽवश्यं प्रकाशयेत्

Meaning · English

As the giver, when asked by a wish, makes the sun and moon rise and so fulfils for embodied beings the things that rest in the heart while they are awake, so in dream too he grants the longed-for things, because he does not go beyond the asker's loving request. Always, standing in the middle, he is bound to reveal them, and more clearly.

Three words carry this. Dhata, the giver, comes from dha, to place or hold: the one who sets things where they belong. The commentators take him to be the inner Self, not a god apart. Pranaya, the loving request, is a leaning-toward, an asking from closeness, not a demand. Madhya, the middle, is the centre where the Self stands, between outer and inner. The verse has two halves. In waking, whatever sits in the heart is brought into reach, as if the giver made the sun and moon rise so that things can be seen and had. In dream, the same giver grants the longed-for things. He stays within the asker's request and gives what was asked, no more and no less. Then the last line: standing in the middle, always, he shows these things, and more clearly. The Spanda Karikas teach this to answer a question: who is behind what appears in the mind, awake or asleep? The answer given is that one inner centre is at work in both states, and it answers the heart's own asking. The listener is asked to see waking and dream as one unbroken giving, and to notice what the heart actually asks for.

A mother stands in the middle of the house. At noon a child calls for water and she brings it. At midnight the child calls again, half asleep, and the same hand brings the same cup. The day and the night differ; the one who gives does not. So the inner giver answers the heart's asking, awake or dreaming.

1. Tonight, before sleep, take one quiet minute to name the one thing your heart keeps returning to. 2. On waking, lie still for a minute before reaching for your phone. Catch any scrap of dream, an image or a feeling. 3. Write one line about it on paper. 4. At the end of the week, read the lines together and notice whether they echo what you named at night. Do not force a match.

A man wakes before dawn from a dream in which his late father is sitting at the kitchen table, saying nothing, just drinking tea. His chest is tight. His first thought is to push it away and get on with the day. The verse offers another way to take it. In its teaching, what rests in the heart is answered in dream as it is in waking, and shown more clearly there. So he stays a minute longer. He sees that the dream gave him no message, only the plain wish to sit beside his father once more. He names that wish to himself. Later he phones his sister and asks to hear a story about their father. Ordinary experience agrees on one small point: what we carry in the day often turns up in our dreams at night. The verse does not promise that the dead return, and it does not lift grief. It says only that the heart's asking is heard and shown, and that is something a person can act on, gently, in daylight.

अर्थ · हिन्दी

In this book

• Before: Oneness With the Meditated · Spanda Karika 2.6
• Next: When the World Seems Separate · Spanda Karika 3.3
• All of Spanda Karikas · Ask Krishna about it

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