Here is this morning’s dream

The dream opens in a kind of school assembly hall with a stage and parquet flooring. The stage has theatre stye floor to ceiling curtains. In the main body of the hall are several people milling around. It is a kind of “spiritual” gathering. Marshalling them is a young man who is tall with a white granddad collarless shirt buttoned at the neck. He has long shiny jet black hair and is of a slightly tanned complexion. Each person is sharing their story of how they came to be upon a spiritual journey. I am talking with a young man about his start and it was via martial arts. I explain to him that I first started Zen meditation is karate class sat in seiza.

The man with the hair says, “what shall we call this gathering and that which is to follow?”

I say the Bagvaan {phonetically} Institute. In the dream I know that the spelling has an H also and is Bhag-van. I know that it is a term used in some Buddhist texts.

He thinks that the term refers to us and the society / institutions to follow. I know in the dream that Bhagavān refers to me. The reason that people will come is for me. He does not yet understand that it is I who will organise and bring life.

In the audience / gathering is a younger woman perhaps early forties. She is expensively dressed with dark hair and her bare stocking feet look incongruous against her business suit. She comes over to me and says, “I am so pleased to have finally found you.” She starts to tear up. I reach out to hug her. She withdraws. I explain that I wish to protect her because that is what we elephants do. She lets me hug her and she sobs into my shoulder. The sobs are considerable. She calms. She reminds me of an Australian Southerly Stalker I once knew.

The scene changes and we are in her car driving into North London. The gathering has been in the home counties. We have given another member of the gathering, a man, a lift and will drop him off at a tube station, Wembley Central. On the radio there is a talk programme in which I am mentioned in connection with the growing Bhagavān Institute(s) popping up all over. This is followed by a song in which Bhagavān is the theme.

We get to the tube station and I go in with the man to ensure he knows how to use the ticket machines. He is not British. I show him how to use the machine by putting some coins in and pressing a button. Out of the ticket hole a series of introduction / business cards starts to rapidly pile up like cards in a casino card dispenser shoe. They come out of the machine to make a deck of business cards with my name on and Bhagavān Institute address details. The song from the car is playing over the tube station loudspeaker address system.

The dream ends.

• I am unsure as to whether to publish the dream or to keep it back. In the end I decide to publish it to go with the flow and see what might happen. I am aware of possible consequences. Where did that come from? Out of the blue.

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Bhagavān, nominative singular of the adjective Bhagavat, literally means “fortunate”, “blessed” (from the noun bhaga, meaning “fortune”, “wealth”), and hence “illustrious”, “divine”, “venerable”, “holy”, etc. Bhagavān is related to the root Bhaj (भज्, “to revere”, “adore”), and implies someone “glorious”, “illustrious”, “revered”, “venerable”, “divine”, “holy” (an epithet applied to gods, holy or respectable personages). The root Bhaj also means “share with”, “partake of”, “aportion”.

The Vishnu Purana defines Bhagavān as follows,

He who understands the creation and dissolution, the appearance and disappearance of beings, the wisdom and ignorance, should be called Bhagavān.

— Vishnu Purana, VI.5.78