Feeling Sleepy? A Deep Sleep Analysis
Feeling sleepy? Is it really that boring to read this? Well…perhaps! But sleep is very much a natural state of experience we all go through on a daily basis. Every night we experience deep (dreamless) sleep in which we get some much needed rest. In deep sleep (Sushupti Avastha) your mind is totally dormant. If your mind (antahkarana) is temporarily not there (it is unmanifest/seed form) in deep sleep then there are no thoughts possible, no dreams (no memory), no understanding (no intellect), no concept of I (no ego), no perception of any particular object (no organs of perception), no regrets about the past, no anxiety about the future, no problems, no cause for sorrow (therefore you feel happy in sleep), no world….no nothing! Literally, there is nothing experienced and that is definition of deep sleep – “an experience of nothingness”. But are YOU there in deep sleep? Are you present in the experience of deep sleep? Yes! Else how would you know you were asleep. You know you slept because you WERE there. Therefore you can say “I slept and I woke up”. You do NOT say “HE slept well and I woke up”. Why? Because it is the SAME “I” who slept, who wakes, who dreams. Deep sleep IS an experience because you, the experiencer, are there. You are one and the same “I” who is the experiencer of all 3 states of experience (waking, dream, deep sleep). This is told in tattvabodha: “avastha-traya sakshi atma”. I am the witness of all 3 states of experience. And a witness is always conscious, it is never an inert thing like a stone. So I am a conscious being, an experiencer, who is present in deep sleep, even when my MIND is not there. This is a VERY significant fact. Why? It means you exist in deep sleep, even when you don’t have a mind. Means what? It means, you are NOT your mind. You may have a mind, but that does not mean you ARE the mind. Just like you HAVE a car, but that does not mean you ARE the car. You use the car as an instrument to achieve whatever you need to do. You take care of your car, you keep it clean, you service it, you use it to get things done. Fine. So to, you have a mind therefore you must take care of it, keep it clean (by thinking good thoughts), service it (by absorbing your mind in your work, tapas, prayer, meditation, etc) and use it as best you can (using your intelligence to make the best decision in life, perform your job using your full mind, cultivate loving thoughts, inquire into the nature of your Self). So even if the mind is not there, are YOU there? Yes. Deep Sleep experience proves this point. Therefore Mandukya Upanishad (and the great non-dual commentator Gaudapadacharya in his Karika) brilliantly analyses this state of experience to prove you are not the mind (inspite of you ‘having’ a mind), you are consciousness which is of the nature of unchanging happiness (nitya-ananda). You are Atma. This is Self-Knowledge.
Om Tat Sat.
Aditya.
