The Manas in a Dream

When asleep and dreaming, only the seventh consciousness and the eighth consciousness exist, without the first six consciousnesses. If you can realize the eighth consciousness in this state, you can pass through the final barrier (the heavy pass) and gain the ability to escape birth and death. Both when dreaming and when sleepwalking, the sixth consciousness is present. To understand what the state of sleepwalking is all about, one must first awaken to the true mind and possess profound Yogācāra wisdom. Only when the dharma of the manas can also be realized, and the operation of the manas can also be observed, can one gradually sort out what sleepwalking is really about.

Sleepwalking and dreaming are both directly related to the manas. When walking in a dream, the manas, by controlling the back of the brain and controlling the mind consciousness, can control the entire body; therefore, during sleepwalking, the hands, feet, and body can all move. When we were children, we often searched for the toilet in dreams and ended up wetting the bed—all of this is a matter of the manas. The manas discerns the condition within the body and knows there is urine; when there is an urge to urinate, it wants to go to the toilet to relieve it, so it produces a dream, letting the mind consciousness handle it; if no dream occurs, it is relieved directly in bed.

Before waking up, the manas discerns the mental sense-objects, though not clearly; then the mind consciousness discerns them again, and they gradually become clear, and we wake up. The mind consciousness in a dream is the solitary mental consciousness, while the mind consciousness after waking is the mental consciousness accompanying the five sense consciousnesses; the states they discern are different, so the mind consciousness after waking does not necessarily know the states experienced in the dream. Sleepwalking belongs to this kind of situation.