The Enigma of Deep Sleep – 7
We have been discussing several everyday examples to demonstrate that our sensory system and the mind constitute an apparatus that is not only very inefficacious but also misleading to be relied on to tell us what exactly is ‘out there.’ But these are the only mechanisms we have at our command in order to decipher the world in our wakeful state. We assume unquestioningly that what we perceive in the awake state is the reality, though it is only a convenient and conventional spatio-temporal framework evolved by us by common consent to facilitate our day to day functioning. The awake state does not have any intrinsic or absolute value to merit it to be used as a benchmark standard for assessing the other states.
We shall continue from where we left off in Part 6 with a few more examples on the nature of ‘time.’
ii) Let us take the case of a boatman sailing over the Pacific from Apia, the capital city of Samoa located on the central north coast of Upolu, (Samoa’s second largest island), to Alofi, the capital of the Pacific Ocean island nation of Niue – see the map in Fig. 9. The two island cities are located almost one below the other in a North-South direction. But if the time is, say, 2 P.M. on a Thursday in Apia, it is exactly 2 P.M. in Alofi on a Wednesday. This is due to the fact that the two cities happen to be on either side of the purely imaginary International Date Line (IDL). So if you leave by boat crossing the IDL on the Apia side today, you will reach the Alofi side yesterday! Standing on your boat in the midst of the glimmering vast sheet of waters of the expansive Pacific Ocean, when the Sun is brightly shining over your head at 2 PM, your left hand is in Wednesday while the right hand is in Thursday!
Fig. 9: On either side of the International Date Line the time changes by a whole day.
iii) A well known teacher of Non-duality in North America describes another intriguing scenario to drive home the fact that time is totally contextual and relative. The innocent question he poses is the very common and routine one – what time is it? But he is asking from the perspective of outer space. Let me state the problem in the words of that teacher himself:
“Imagine being an astronaut, way out in space.
As the astronaut, you look out of your spacecraft window upon what appears as a small sphere called earth.
At that moment, you know your spouse is home in Houston, Texas. Your son is attending a university in London. And your daughter is on a trip to Hong Kong.
What time is it?
Suppose you judged from the perspective of each of those family members.
Each is in a different city where the local clocks all show different numbers.
On this localized basis there seem to be three different times.
From your astronaut perspective, it is clear that all three cities appear to be in the same one place (earth), all “embraced” at once.
From this perspective, it is now for all three cities.
It is not three different times.
Notice that the sense of time depends entirely on perspective.
Suppose, as the astronaut, you look out at earth again twelve hours later according to the clock.
It appears the planet earth has rotated in relation to the sun.
Where it had appeared to be daytime in Houston and night in Hong Kong—now that’s reversed.
Yet from the all-embracing astronaut perspective, it is still the one now for all apparent places.
Notice that this now applies to all points on earth—not just those three cities.
Notice that this now does not change regardless of how earth appears to rotate.”
This example establishes how we go more by a convention to accept the element of time in our worldly transactions. We will come back to this issue again, however, for a more detailed examination after we discuss the Deep sleep state also.
6. No physicality or solidity in the objects we perceive:
No doubt that a chocolate tastes sweet and a hammer dropped on your foot hurts. We find things hot or cold, tall or short, light or heavy and so on. But do these qualities rest within the objects or do our senses project them to be so? Is there an inherent solidity and physicality to the objects we perceive in our awake state? We don’t consciously ever brood over this issue. But a deeper probe reveals a great surprise.
Say, you are right now enjoying the refreshing cup of your morning coffee. You take that the information you receive from the five sensory organs – the bright brown colored liquid seen with the eye, the nice warm touch to the palm, the slurping sound heard by the ear as the coffee enters the mouth, the invigorating aroma of the freshly brewed coffee detected by the nose, and the delicious taste experienced on the tongue – to be the percepts coming from a real entity, the coffee in the cup.
Take a minute to examine this experience a little more closely. Paraphrasing in the words of the teacher to whom I had already made a reference above, each of the five senses contributes its particular “aspect” of the coffee to the mind. As a result of all the sensations the mind experiences, it instantly says to itself, “Ah, a cup of coffee is here.” But look again.
“The entire and only basis on which the mind would say that coffee is present is by way of the senses. Absolutely everything the mind would know about the coffee is thanks to a visual sensation, a sensation of touch or feel, a sound, a taste and smell. The mind’s entire “evidence” is sensations.
Really stop a moment. Ask yourself what the coffee itself consists of, apart from those five sensations.
When you try to think of what the coffee is, entirely apart from those five sensations — what happens?
You can’t think of anything. And why can’t you think of anything besides the sensations?
Because there isn’t anything else.
There are only the sensations!
There are not the ‘sensations of the coffee’ and coffee! Sensations are the entire and only “substance.” There is no coffee that is a standalone physical object “out there,” with its own substance, in addition to the sensations experienced by the mind. The “coffee” would be entirely mental — consisting one hundred percent of sensations only.
Suppose you take away those five sensations. Then see if you still can come up with the “coffee.” Nope!
The “coffee” is non-existent. The “coffee” as a separate, physical object didn’t go anywhere. It never was out there as a separate object in the first place!
The mind’s experiencing of sensations results in what is called the coffee, but never is there a separate item “out there.” All there would be is a series of images, feelings, tastes, sounds and smells — experienced entirely by the mind.
There is nothing else there.”
Now question yourself. Do the sensations have solidity to them? Do they have any physical dimensionality of size, shape or color? Do they have any weight?
So all the objects that we take existing out there in our awake world to be rock solid are, in fact, as wooly wooly as the dream substances are.
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All these examples described thus far unequivocally demonstrate to us that the raw information from the sensory organs by itself has no inherent meaning and the meaning is what you attribute to it, whether it is the appearance like shapes and colors or solidity and physicality. What we experience is a figment of our imagination and our sensations and the mind do not necessarily reproduce the physical reality of the outside.
We will discuss the dream experience in the next part.
(To Continue …. Part 8)
