Vemuri Ramesam, Wednesday, August 19, 2015 8:16 am

The Enigma of Deep Sleep – 3

In finding out the appropriate answers to the questions at the end of Part 2, we shall follow the same policy that we had set for ourselves in Part 1.  We said there:

“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.”

Accordingly, let me begin with two stories that should help us in firming up our ideas.

Story 1:  Peter Smith is a noted actor for his roles in Shakespearian dramas. He has a happy family, reasonable means of living and a contented life.  He plays the character of Antonio in The Merchant of Venice.  The drama opens with these lines of Antonio (Act I, Scene I):

“In sooth, I know not why I am so sad:
It wearies me; you say it wearies you;….”

Further on he tells his friend, Gratiano:

“I hold the world but as the world, Gratiano;
A stage where every man must play a part,
And mine a sad one.”

Antonio appears suitably with distraught face, shorn looks, disheartened gait in a period costume.

Now ask yourself. Who is sad? Is it Peter Smith? No, not at all. The sadness and the above lines memorized by him belong to Antonio.

Where is Peter Smith when Antonio is on the stage reciting all the lines which he learnt by heart about the regretful state of the world he is in? Is there an Antonio different from Peter Smith with a reality of his own?

As soon as Peter Smith throws the costume and goes backstage and happily relaxes in his chair playing with his child, does he continue the sadness and the misery of the costume Antonio? Has Peter Smith ever forgotten who he truly was, even while he is enacting the role of Antonio?  Whatever may be the trials and tribulations of the costume having the name Antonio, whatever may be the memorized dialogs which seem to flow without effort when he is on stage, Peter Smith stays unaffected. He never forgot himself.

When Peter Smith wears the costume again in the Scene III, he lives in the role of Antonio, going through the misery and excitement, but never ever losing his own happy life (unless he gets trapped emotionally with the role and is deluded to believe that he is Antonio). Peter Smith is always there – when Antonio appears on the stage, exits from the stage and whether Antonio exists or not.

Under normal circumstances, Peter Smith does not have to make any effort to remember who he is and re-cognizes his true self with no need of any prompting. His recognition of his true self which is unforgettable and ever-there does not need special coaching. He knows himself spontaneously and immediately because it is never ever lost.

Peter Smith appeared as Antonio in Scene I and again in Scene III. Is it the same Antonio who appeared in Scene I reappearing in Scene III? How is the character in Scene I related to the character in Scene III? Or are there two separate Antonio-s and a third entity Peter Smith as common thread running in all the three men? (Hint:  Carry out the analysis suggested here looking at the different appearances as independent characters without bringing in the background story which you know).

Next think of Peter Smith playing the role of Hamlet at a different place in another Shakespeare drama. Hamlet also has multiple appearances in different scenes in several emotional phases. What is the relationship between Antonio and Hamlet played by Peter Smith?

Story 2:  Suppose you had a dream last night. You see yourself in the dream walking along with your, say, Grandson on a hilly track. You see rows and rows of colorful flowers and running waters. As both of you move along, you find suddenly a flock of birds flying in formation towards the fresh water lake in the middle of the hill range.

Just stop there. Who has laid out all this dream scenario for you as you dreamt it? Obviously, your mind did.  How long did it take the mind to create the entire scene? Did the mind create you first and then you waited to grow to be 60-70 years (on the dream scale of time) and then your grandson came along in the dream?  How about the mountains? How many years older was the mountain range? Did they not all get created simultaneously in the dream? Was there any relative time difference in the creation of the various objects within the dream? If, in your dream creation, when you and your Grandson appeared at the same time and so also the mountains, did time really exist at all? Could it be that the total perception of each moment as a whole is created at one stroke like a snapshot, and the relative time periods for various elements within the perception were assigned as a subjective later superimposition? Is it possible that the daytime perception too does happen in the same way and we arrange these snapshots on a linear time dimension just as a story called our life?

Recall the dream you had a few days earlier. Maybe you saw yourself in that dream in a market or having a spat with another person. Ask yourself the relationship between the dream-you of last night’s dream with the dream-you who appeared in the market and where was that grandson who would appear in a later dream.

An analysis of the above two stories and unbiased answers to the questions posed within them will lead us to the following inference:

1.  The character Antonio appearing in each Scene is discrete and bears no relation to or continuity with the character appearing in any of the previous or prospective scenes. Only a story externally superimposed on the characters establishes a link connecting these different appearances. What really stays unchanging behind the various appearances is Peter Smith who is totally unaffected by the feelings and actions of the different appearances. Each time Peter comes on stage, he comes with a freshly created Antonio who ends the moment the costume is dropped by him at the end of that scene.

2.  The True “You” are like that Peter Smith – always there, never not knowing yourself irrespective of the costume you wear – that of Antonio or Hamlet.

3.  At the end of each scene as the actor retires to the backstage, Peter Smith shines through. This is like the deep sleep stage. With each scene, a fresh Antonio is born, like a new you raising up anew next morning. (Again it should be noted that the idea of a “next morning” is wrong.  We shall deal with this separately in subsequent Parts of this Series).

4.  Time is a mental construct and a later story superimposed on our perception. The diverse elements within our single perception are all created at one time and experienced by us as a single unitary experience.  But we assign relative ages to the different elements by breaking the one perception into various segments and considering each segment to be different from  one another. (I know it is difficult to accept this interpretation. The mind is habituated to one particular type of thinking and resists to concur with this idea.  So I suggest that while you may not take this idea as proven, please consider this as a possibility. Examine things in this new light and see where it leads you to).

I would like to leave you here to your imagination before taking up an in-depth analysis of the two stories narrated above and any of the holes in the logic that you may like to point out.

(To be Continued …. Part 4)

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