The Enigma of Deep Sleep – 1
Deep Sleep is quite relaxing, peaceful and energizing. We not only forget ourselves totally but also lose sense of our body and the world in deep sleep. We feel refreshed and happy after even a few minutes of deep sleep. It feels heavenly and calm. Every student of advaita is as fascinated by the taunting question of “What is Deep Sleep?” as the more popular haunting question of “Who am I?” with which any philosophical inquiry begins.
In fact a clear answer to the question on “What is deep sleep?” is a sure key to understand the deeply mystifying question on “Who am I?” But a beginner’s difficulty in deciphering deep sleep is often confounded by two contradicting answers provided by the Non-dual teachers. One school holds that the deep sleep is a passing state like that of the wakeful or dream states and urges the seeker to find out what lies behind (or beyond) these three states of being awake, dreaming and deep sleep in order to know who you truly are. In contrast, there is another school of Non-dual teachers who tell us that deep sleep is beyond (or prior to) space and time and that everyone gets a taste of who s/he truly is in deep sleep.
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Closely associated with the question on deep sleep are two other equally puzzling phenomena we like to know about: 1. How come that I wake up to be the same person that went to sleep? And 2. Why do I return to the wakeful world instead of continuing in the happiness of deep sleep?
We shall try to answer these questions in as simple terms as possible without resorting to any authorities or obtuse quotations or appeal to unverifiable dicta. We shall go only by a close and critical examination of our own day to day experience without invoking fanciful theories and ethereal constructs.
The best place to start our inquiry is from where you are right now. You are awake right now and there is hardly any need for an external verification of this fact. (If you are not awake, you will not be reading this on the computer). While you are awake, you cannot be asleep or be dreaming at the same time. That means, each of the states of awake, dreaming and deep sleep are exclusive. You cannot experience more than one state at any point of time.
In other words, when I am awake, what I know now is what is in my immediate experience – the sights appearing to my vision, the sounds I hear, the pressure of the seat where I am sitting, the smells and tastes, if any and so on. In addition, I am also aware of the different passing thoughts in my mind. Expressed differently, what I know now are the thoughts and images in the mind, sensations in the body and the perceptions of the world.
Strictly speaking, if you observe carefully, there is no separate container called mind in which thoughts and images appear. You do not experience two things – a mind and thoughts within it. Similarly, there are no two things – a body and sensations (of touch etc.). Likewise, there are no two things – perceptions and a separate world. Hence, what we call mind is none other than the thoughts and images; what we call body is the sum of the sensations we experience; and what we call the world is all our perceptions put together.
So right now, as you stay awake, you cannot have within your experience anything about dream state or deep sleep. You can at the best have now a “thought” or a “concept” of what dream or deep sleep would be like. Thus you have now in your experience “knowledge of a ‘thought’ about deep sleep”, but you do not have “the knowledge of deep sleep.”
We have seen that the mind is nothing but the current thought. By definition, thoughts and hence mind is absent during deep sleep. Then on what basis can our mind tell us about a situation where it was not present? Suppose, you are right now awake and sitting before your computer in your home in London. When you look through your window, you may see clear sky. Can you tell me what your friend sitting before his computer in his home in New York would be looking at through his window? You may surmise that he would be seeing rain or snow based on TV news or weather report but you cannot have the direct experience of what s/he sees. Or suppose, you have entered your drawing room just now. Can you say who was there about an hour ago? There maybe a thought about who could be there an hour ago. But “the actuality of one hour ago” is not there now in your direct experience. Hence, being in the wakeful state, you can never experientially know anything about deep sleep when the mind itself was absent at that time.
All of us know that what we call as mind has four functional aspects. The four functional aspects as per the Indian philosophical system are: thoughts and counter thoughts (manas), memory (citta), intellect (buddhi) and I-consciousness or ego (ahankAra). At the time of deep sleep, all the four faculties disappear. What exactly is there then? There is obviously no way for the mind to know. Whatever IS there, THAT Is. That nameless THAT is what you truly are. It is something that cannot be experienced because, there are no two things – an experiencer and something to be experienced in deep sleep. Further, there is no time duration for deep sleep. Because for time to emerge, mind has to be present (as thoughts). You may say later after you come out of deep sleep that you had sound sleep from 2:00 AM to 2:20 AM. But this duration is what is being told by the mind to explain away its own absence. In fact deep sleep happened in NO time. There was no time duration to it.
Then the question how do I know that I was present during deep sleep arises. Before answering this question, we have to look carefully who is this “I” that is asking. If it is the limited I-consciousness or ahankAra, well, the answer is simple. You, the little “i”, the limited consciousness that thinks that it is limited to and confined within the body-mind, was not present. Full stop. What was present then? It is the unlimited infinite Awareness which was present, which is present and which is eternally present. That which is eternally present is Present-ness or Presence. It is this Presence that illumines the knowledge of the limited “i”. Because It is ever present, we never experience our own ‘absence.’ Just ask your self, did you ever feel in your experience your own absence? The answer would be obvious.
Now, we shall take up the more crucial question: How come that I wake up to be the same person that went to sleep? Where did my mind (with its specific memory, knowledge, decision-making characteristics and typical behavioral pattern) disappear into during deep sleep and wherefrom it had returned? The answer is simple but difficult to digest! It is NOT the EXACT same you that went to bed that is now awake? You are a new creation all the time. In fact, you are being created and dissolved from moment to moment. It is only a matter of convention and general belief system we have developed for transactional convenience to say that it is the same person who wakes up as that one who goes to bed.
That sounds pretty nonsensical. Do I not recognize my own professional skills, do I not recognize my relatives and other people? Did I not go to bed on the same mattress and in the same house? It may look to be so. But at a microscopic cellular level, the body that gets up is not in the exact sameness of what went to sleep. Even the memories inside the brain are recreated every moment they are recalled. And at the cosmic level too, the positions of the heavenly bodies and the planets and stars have changed.
But what about my autobiography? My ability to recognize?
If it becomes too hard to accept the ever new creation each moment, yes, we can bring in the parameter of ‘re-cognition.’ Our ancients called it ‘pratyabhignya.’ In order to accommodate it, they gave a different model. They said that the ‘mind’ just folds up during deep sleep but does not dissolve totally. On waking up, the mind unfolds along with all its four components and places us into the same familiar world so that we feel secure. But this model hardly explains where the mind gets folded into and its form when it is folded up. Further, the model requires the existence of two entities during deep sleep – whatever Is there plus the folded mind. Because there would be more than One thing during deep sleep, deep sleep cannot be the True Oneness. So it becomes a state – a passing stage in order to accommodate pratyabhignya according to this model.
(To be Continued …. )
