Vemuri Ramesam, Wednesday, August 19, 2015 6:31 am

Significance of Deep Sleep in JnAnayOga

Swami Iswarananda of Ramakrishna Mission, Vilangan, Trichur district, Kerala authored a short monograph of about 125 pages titled “Talks on JnAnayOga” which was published for the first time nearly six decades ago.  The second edition of it was brought out with a change in the title as “God Realization Through Reason” in 1959.

It is a superb piece of work explaining the rationale behind the Vedantic teaching of Self-realization in simple terms. The argument advanced by the Swami JI strictly follows reason and logic without a need for invoking any inexplicable authority or appeal to some faith-based belief structures or meekly hiding behind unverifiable obscure dogma. 

I feel a person trained in the modern analytical educational system will find this small book a compelling read. In order to satisfy a more traditionally minded reader, the author provides a Part II comprising the quotes from five major Upanishads and Sankara bhAshyas to further back up his arguments developed in the first part.   

I quote below liberally Extracts from the first half of the book which explicates the significance of understanding Deep Sleep because this forms the bedrock of approach in jnAnayOga.

*****

There are two Upanishadic traditions: (i) Theological and Mystical and (ii) Rational.

Swami Vivekananda followed “rational” approach up to a point and advocated mysticism and yOga for the final step.

Rationalist Tradition of the ancient Rshis stuck to the reason of conscious state to the very end for the highest realization. This book follows this method.

This is about ordinary everyday experience of all. This is ‘Brahmavidya’ shorn of mystical and theological accretions.

It is a remarkable thing that Upanishadic Rshis imparted Brahmavidya not to Pundits but to young men who had to unlearn what they had learnt.

Very often the gleam of light is denied to the sincere seeker by the over-solicitous anxiety of well-meaning but confirmed believers in and champions of mysticism who, in the name of JnAnayOga, the path of philosophy, have reduced it to the art of seeing visions, hearing voices and getting realizations by repetitions of formulas and by the suppression of mental functioning in Samadhi. Whatever may be the value and utility of such practices, they do not form the essence of JnAnayOga which is pre-eminently the path of vicara or reason and which has been blazoned by the Knowers of Brahman.

JnAna yOga is the path of straightforward thinking, the shortest way to the realization of the ultimate Reaity and the easiest of all yOgas.

The goal of JnAnayOga is the realization of the ultimate Reality knowing which everything becomes known,

yajjnatva sarvam  idam vijanatam bhavati.

The starting point for JnAnayOga are the Questions: “What is this world and who am I?”

“I” and “this”, the two categories in our experience are the objects of investigation. Nothing more remains to be known; for, these are the only contents of our experience – ‘I’, the Knower and ‘this’, the known.

I know I am not this paper – I am convinced of this fact because the paper is an object of experience. It is known to the Knower, “I”. For the same reason, I am compelled to conclude that I am not the body, the senses, the mind …..  Because all these are known to me. The fact that I talk of my body, my mind implies that these are other than myself and which I can possess as I possess my umbrella or my shoe.

In this way, all our world of experience can be divided into Self and not-Self following our present cognition of ‘I and this’ and pushing it to the ultimate logical possibility. This is the first step in Vedantic reasoning and ends in the discovery of the real “I”, the Self as Pure Consciousness or cit, the essence of Knowledge.

We come to startling conclusions by the process of dRg-dRsya-viveka, discrimination between the Self and the non-Self, the seer and the seen.  “He shining, everything else shines.  All these are revealed by his self-effulgence” –

tam eva bhAntam anubhAti sarvam, tasya bhAsA sarvam idam vibhAti ( Mundaka Up., II.ii.11).

The multiplicity gets reduced to duality of the Self and the non-Self thus. This is the point Sankhya system climbed up to, but there it stopped.

Vedanta does not stop there. Of what use is this knowledge of duality of the Self and the body, asks Vedanta.

Hence, the second process of reasoning known as anvaya (synthetic), by which we come to the knowledge that all this is the Self,

Atmai ‘ ve ‘ dam sarvam.”

That which was first rejected as non-Self, the world of dRsya, is known at the end of this process as nothing other than Self.

Sankara says in AparokshAnubhUti (138): By analytic reasoning one reaches the ultimate cause of the universe and by synthetic reasoning that very same cause is seen in the effect –

kAraNam vyatirekeNa pumAn Adau vilokayet; anvayena punastad hi kArye nityam prapasyati.”

The Rshis of old, the Seers of the Upanishads, considered Dreamless Sleep experience as a treasure of gold over which we pass up and down every day of our life without ever suspecting the existence of an invaluable treasure under our feet (Chand Up. VIII.3.).  For the Rshis, the experience had been of great philosophical significance, and on this has been grounded the Truth of Advaita.

My existence as Consciousness in deep sleep could not be doubted  –

na hi vijnAtur vijnAter viparilopo vidyate (Br. U.).

Suppose I did not see a lion in the morning but reminded of this fact in the evening.  I do not say that I ‘inferred’ that I had not seen the lion in the morning. It was a fact of experience. But then, I existed in the morning and I know it from memory. So now I can vouch for the fact that I did not then see the lion, though I had not the idea then that I was not seeing the lion; (for to have such an experience, no idea is necessary). It is that Consciousness that is now bearing witness to the fact that this world was not experienced.

If ignorance invaded Consciousness, I must have witnessed ignorance during deep sleep. But there was no second entity. If I knew a second entity, I must have been waking or dreaming. In these states we experience ignorance but certainly not in deep sleep in which no object, gross or subtle, dark or white, is experienced, as different from the Self.

What happened to the world then?  Was it remaining in some subtle form like a tree in a seed? But Consciousness did not witness any such thing.

Therefore, the fact that nothing other than the Self existed in sushupti is an incontrovertible conclusion. There the seer alone existed, one without a second, like one mass of water –

salila eko drashTA advaito bhavati (Br.  U., IV.iii.32). 

Where was this world then? The Seers of the Upanishads say that the world existed as non-different from the Self.  If then the world was not seen by the Self, that was because the world remained as the Self. This reasoning is known as anvaya or synthetic process.

But all this is Brahman. 

Atmai’ ve’ dam sarvam;

sarvam khalvidam brahma; 

neha nAnAsti kincana;

ekam evAdvitIyam brahma.

The entire universe, therefore, is nothing but pure Consciousness, cit, the Self that ‘I am’. The realization of this sarvAtmabhAva is the supreme goal of Vedantic investigation and attainment, the highest state of freedom, fearlessness and happiness. This is realization of Brahman.

The world of the waking state is a mirage which disappears for a time and this gap in our experience of the waking and dream states is sushupti. But the implication of this experience, the truth of the non-dual existence, could not be realized in that state by the very nature of the experience; for in the absence of the thinking instrument, the mind, as a separate entity from the Self, no thought in the form, ‘All this is the Self’ is possible. The realization of this truth is possible only on reflection in the waking state when the mind is present (or in dream state which is fundamentally not different from the waking state).

All this is Brahman, nehanAnAsti kincana etc. are forms of thought, they are vRtti jnAna. VRtti is possible only in the waking state. Therefore brahmajnAna is possible in the waking state and brhmAnubhava is what obtains in deep sleep.

The srutis themselves declare that this dualistic universe is but a delusion, and that in reality it is non-dual. This is directly experienced in dreamless sleep.

mAyAmAtram idam dvaitam advaitam paramArthatah iti brute srutih sAkshAt susuptAnubhUyate (Viveka 405).

In fact, the absence of any thought about the universe of the waking state is a matter of experience, which is called deep sleep and this is remembered in the waking state by contrast. Deep sleep is thus total forgetfulness (sarva vismRti) of all objects including the mind and its vRttis. The conclusion of Vedanta that ‘The Self alone exists without a second’ is a statement of bare experience and it is pointing out to this Witness which is present even in the waking state that the Upanishad teaches ‘tat tvam asi’.

*****

Trust the above Extracts serve as appetizers to delve deeper into Deep Sleep with the Swami Ji’s book as a guide.

Recent Blogs