The Enigma of Deep Sleep – 10
Deep Sleep Happens in Eternal “Now”:
The important characteristic that distinguishes the upper and lower quadrants of the Four Outcomes Model is ‘Time’ as noted in the last part (Part – 9). The two lower quadrants are “beyond the domain of time.”
We know that the mind is absent (= inactive) in the two lower quadrants. “Absence of mind means absence of time” is a marvelously simple and logical statement. But what does that actually imply? Actions after all do take place in the lower quadrants. How can any action come to pass in the absence of time? How do we understand the implication of ‘timelessness’ especially in the Fourth quadrant? We should first know what is ‘timelessness’ to be able to answer these questions.
Let us begin with the third quarter. ‘Timelessness’ in deep sleep would mean that deep sleep does not happen in time. Say that you slept from 10 P.M. to 6 A.M. the next morning. Out of it let us suppose that you had one episode of dreamless deep sleep from 2 A.M. till 2:22 A.M. You calculate that you had deep sleep for 22 minutes. You would feel then it is legitimate to ask the question: “What does it mean to say that deep sleep doesn’t happen in time?” Before we answer this question, let us examine what is being measured as the lapse of 22 minutes.
Measurement of time duration is like measuring the separation between two points. Suppose you want to know the distance of separation between the points P and Q in the Fig. 1.
Fig. 1: Measurement of separation.
You take the measuring tape, hold one end with the left hand at P and hold the other end of the tape with the right hand at the point Q. The length (l) of the tape between the two hands gives the distance of separation.
In order to measure the elapsed time too, you need to hold in your experience both the points together and read off the separation with the measuring rod. Can you do it?
For example, can you measure the separation between now – you sitting here before the computer reading this document and the breakfast you had in the morning. The current experience you have is the sensation of sitting with the computer in front of you. Where is the sensation of eating the breakfast? The “eating-the-breakfast” is in the memory now. It is recalled as a thought at the current moment. There is no actual experience of “eating-the-breakfast” now. So what is available in the now is only one point of reference – the current experience of the sensations of a thought of breakfast along with the sensation of sitting before the computer. Where is the second point of reference in your experience? There is none! With only one point of reference, what separation can you measure?
So the lapse of time is never an actual experience. You always have ONLY the current experience in the Now. “Now” is not a sharp line or a sliver of separation that exists between a beginningless past and an infinite future. Now does not come from a future, appear momentarily in the present and move on to become the past. What we experience is only Now. In fact, the past and the future are never experienced by us! It is “Now” that is there forever. It cannot not be Now. You can never get rid of Now; nor can you move away from Now. Now is the Eternal.
What then is this time lapse of 22 minutes that you claim to have noticed in the clock? In order to be able to answer this question, let us go back to the Fig. 2 of the Part – 9. Let us map the awake state thinking onto this figure.
Fig. 2: Thought is a modulation of Consciousness.
Let the straight line in the figure represent Consciousness instead of Peter Smith, and let the appearances of Antonio in different scenes be the succession of thoughts arising after you got up from sleep. Thought 1 takes place, lasts for, say, 5 seconds and ends. Then there is a gap when only Consciousness exists. Thought 2 arises and lasts maybe for 4 seconds and ends. And so on it goes with the sequence of the thoughts. It is Thought 3 that says “There is a gap of 22 minutes.” Then next Thought 4 says “Awareness was absent for 22 minutes.”
If you see the figure, it is evident that it is the ‘thought’ which appears intermittently and Consciousness was actually never absent. (Remember, Peter Smith was never absent; the appearance of Antonio was only a modulation of himself temporarily veiling his true nature). Therefore, the 22 minutes is actually the period when the mind is absent. The awake mind imagines deep sleep to be a finite object. The mind thinks that it (the mind) itself has been present continuously and Consciousness (= Awareness) appears and disappears intermittently. The mind, thus, wrongfully attributes its own absence to Awareness during deep sleep.
The above analysis (and the Fig. 3), incidentally, explains the difference between Knowledge (upper case ‘K’) and knowledge (lower case ‘k’) and also helps us in solving the riddle of the two types of memories we talked about in Parts 1 and 2 of our Series. The straight line in the figure can be taken to represent the fundamental Knowledge (K) of who and what we are actually. The acquired ‘knowledge’ is like the humps. The first hump may be the knowledge “I am a man”; the second hump may be “I am a professional”; the third hump may be “I am a father”; the next hump may be “I live in London” and so on. All such acquired or learnt knowledge is superimposed on the ‘Knowledge.’ The Knowledge which is what or who we are, is intrinsic and unchanging. It is never lost.
If the Knowledge of who I am is never lost, a new question arises: “Why am “I” not aware during deep sleep?”
When we try to formulate an answer to the above question, we find our language to be inadequate. This is because all languages have developed essentially for transactional purposes in a dualistic world (i.e. awake state). Language cannot explain the deep sleep state. Some of the limitations of a language as a medium of communication are described below.
We often come across situations where a given language lacks appropriate words to convey a concept from another language. For examples it is difficult to convey in English: (i) the concept of ‘engili’ in Telugu (jhUTha in Hindi) which points to leftover food in a plate or things that are touched by lips/tongue; (ii) the practice of ‘maDi’ in Telugu that refers to a pious code of conduct to be maintained with respect to the cleanliness of the body, dress worn etc. mandatorily required in carrying out a holy activity. It is no wonder that many Western students struggle to wrap their mind around some of the concepts in Vedanta because their mother tongues do not have equivalent words.
People speaking certain languages can make perfect sense of an action even in the absence of ‘doer’ being specified. But agentative languages like the English require that the “agent” of action is spelt out clearly. A statement like “the vase broke” may be okay for a Japanese or Spanish speaking person, but it sounds incomplete to an Englishman.
Fig. 4: Temporal and Spatial basis of a language.
A much less realized fact is that the language you speak influences how you think! In other words, your very ability to visualize a concept depends to a large extent on your language. The following example explains the point.
There are three panels A, B, and C shown in the Fig. 4. Let us ask which two pictures out of the three (i.e. A, B, and C) are more related to one another?
Most of us would answer A and C. We reason in our mind that the pictures A and C show the players who are about to kick a football into the goal post. The ball would need time to reach the goal after it is kicked. So B cannot be linked to A as it shows an event that happens after a time lapse. We, thus, subconsciously differentiate A and C from B based on a temporal scale of events, because the language we are habituated to is grounded on tense – the present, past and future. Suppose, instead, the structure of our language is based on spatial relations. We would have argued in our mind that when a ball is kicked, it has to reach the goal and therefore, we would have said that A and B are more related to each other. This is not a hypothetical example. There does exist such a language which is based on spatial relations spoken by the natives of one of the islands in Indonesia.
(To Continue … Part 11)
