Every experience on the physical, astral or mental plane is just a dream before the soul.
Hazrat Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan
Related Material by Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan
Compiled by Wahiduddin Richard Shelquist – wahiduddin.net
The soul in itself alone is not other than Consciousness, which is all pervading. But when the same consciousness is caught in a limitation through being surrounded by elements, in that state of captivity, it is called soul. … Every experience on the physical or astral plane is just a dream before the soul. It is ignorance when it takes this experience to be real. It does so because it cannot see itself; as the eye sees all things, but not itself. Therefore, the soul identifies itself with all things that it sees, and changes its own identity with the change of its constantly changing vision.
The soul has no birth, no death, no beginning, and no end. Sin cannot touch it, nor can virtue exalt it. Wisdom cannot open it up, nor can ignorance darken it. It has been always and always it will be. This is the very being of humanity, and all else is its cover, like a globe on the Light. The soul’s unfoldment comes from its own power, which ends in its breaking through the ties of the lower planes. It is free by nature, and looks for freedom during its captivity. All the holy beings of the world have become so by freeing the soul, its freedom being the only object there is in Life.
Commentary by Murshid S.A.M. (Sufi Ahmed Murad)
Samuel L. Lewis
For in the experience of these planes the experience is not of our Self. It may arise from thought of Self, but the experience is not our Self — actor and action are two, not one. What is this world? What are these thoughts, these sensations, these habits, these longings, these desires? They are the externalizations of the inmost spirit taking form in the matter-stuff and mind-stuff of the universe. Without that Supreme Self dominating the whole scene of creation, there would be no experiences, and it is because of the God in us, which is our very essence, that we do have experiences, but they are still fantasies of a mighty Being which the finite mind cannot comprehend.