Are There Five Sense Consciousnesses in Dreams?

If the five sense consciousnesses are to arise, there must be the five sense objects; without the five sense objects, the five consciousnesses cannot be born. The realms in dreams are all Image-Only Objects of mental sense-objects, lacking the relatively more substantial real sense objects of the five dusts, so there are no five consciousnesses. Because the five sense objects are lacking, the Image-Only Object is incomplete, and the mental sense-objects discerned by the solitary mental consciousness alone are not very clear—they are roughly illusory and unreal. Therefore, the mind consciousness and the manas do not necessarily discern the dream realm very clearly; errors are inevitable, and sometimes the errors are quite large, often mixing up one thing with another. In dreams, the manas's discernment is dominant; for unfamiliar realms, the manas's discerning wisdom is not strong and lacks accurate judgment, so what it discerns is unclear. Only when the manas possesses meditative concentration and wisdom, or when the realm is very familiar, can it discern things fairly accurately.

If there were the five sense objects in a dream, the five consciousnesses would participate in discernment, and then there would be no difference from the waking state, and there would be no such thing as dreams or sleep. In a dream, one sees blood flowing like a river and feels that the blood is red. Ordinarily, it should be the eye consciousness that discerns the color red, but in a dream there is no eye consciousness—so who knows it is red? The Śūraṅgama Sūtra says that when one cultivates to a certain level, the manas can substitute for the functions of the six consciousnesses. Generally, in dreams the manas can also substitute for the functions of the five consciousnesses, so the five sense objects that the five consciousnesses should discern are also taken as object by the manas, which has some rough discernment, knowing that what flows is red blood. But for some people, the manas in dreams does not know that blood or fire is red. Sometimes the manas knows what the five sense objects are, and sometimes it does not; sometimes there seems to be color in a dream, such as red firelight, and sometimes there is no color—clearly it should be a dream with very vivid colors, yet in the dream there is no color.

All beings in the human realm have supreme faculties (rūpa-prasāda); beings in the animal realm also have supreme faculties. The physical bodies of animals, like those of humans, are flesh bodies constituted of real seeds of the four great elements; they have brains and supreme faculties. When the supreme faculty develops pathological changes, animals can also become schizophrenic or mad. Because of karmic obstructions, the supreme faculties of animals are inferior to those of humans; they have great illusions in seeing people and things, and do not see dharmas as they truly are. But all kinds of animals have special strengths belonging to their own kind: for example, some animals have keen vision and can see at night, some have keen hearing, some have keen smell, some have keen taste, and some have keen touch. However, animals generally have very poor thinking power in their mind consciousness, and even less capacity for logical analysis; they mostly rely on the intuitive power of the manas, so they appear rather simple-minded. Apart from the killing karma committed for the sake of filling their bellies and surviving, they almost never use their minds to create other evil karma; they are beings that purely undergo retribution.

The beings of the four formless heavens of the formless realm, because their living environment is formless, have no material form or five sense objects, and no physical body; therefore they have no supreme faculty, no inner five sense objects or inner mental sense objects, and no five consciousnesses. But they do have the mind consciousness, the manas, and the eighth consciousness. Their eighth consciousness and manas exist forever without perishing, and their mind consciousness also exists forever without perishing. What their mind consciousness discerns is the Image-Only Object within meditative concentration; there are no external mental sense objects, only the Image-Only Object. If the mind consciousness were to cease, only the eighth consciousness and the manas would remain—that would belong to the state of the cessation attainment. Therefore, the mind consciousness of the formless-realm devas also exists forever without perishing; there is no distinction between day and night, they need no sleep or rest, and they are forever in meditative concentration, facing the Image-Only Object.