The Destiny of the Body

Chapter IV

The Involutionary Sleep

"Is the material state an emptiness of consciousness, or is it not rather only a sleep of consciousness — even though from the point of view of evolution an original and not an intermediate sleep? And by sleep the human example teaches us that we mean not a suspension of consciousness, but its gathering inward away from conscious physical response to the impacts of external things. And is not this what all existence is that has not yet developed means of outward communication with the external physical world?"

(Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine p.86)

Sleep is in its widest and intrinsic sense a cosmic phenomenon, evolutionary in character. And man's psycho-spiritual sleep to which we have alluded in the foregoing chapter is but a phase of this great cosmic event. Indeed, a close but detached scrutiny of the terrestrial becoming shows unmistakably that this becoming represents the working out of an evolutionary process that is in its most fundamental aspect a progressive awakening of consciousness-force from its original status of a dense sleep in Matter. It has so far passed through the submental sense-awareness of the vegetable kingdom and lower animals to arrive at last at the somnambulist half-sleep of the mind of man. But the hold of sleep has not yet ended and the travail of the emerging consciousness has yet to continue till all becomes 'the Sun and the everlasting Day.'

This evolutionary aspect of sleep, — the fact that the state of sleep is indeed primordial while a progressively elaborated wakefulness in more and more advanced forms is a phenomenon of later development, —is borne out by evidences furnished by both its ontogenetic and phylogenetic manifestations, also by its grossly externalised form of the body's somnolence as well as by that of psycho-spiritual slumber of which the former is but a symbolic representation, phenomenally different but in essence the same. (We are concerned for the present with the phenomenon as it appears when viewed from outside; contemplated from inside

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the very same phenomenon takes upon itself the aspect of an eternal wakefulness with an exclusive and absorbed concentration on the surface. Did not the Rishis declare long ago that there is One that is awake for ever even in all that sleeps¹ and that its Eye oversees everything like the all-encompassing ether?²)

Let us then look at the phenomenon of sleep, first from the angle of the scientific theory of evolution, then against the background of the occult-spiritual account of the same process.

The Evolutionary Theory of Sleep:³ The evolutionary theory of sleep and wakefulness, as advanced by N. Kleitman and others, takes its clue from the manner in which the polyphasic sleep cycle gives way to the monophasic pattern 'as a function of both phylo-genetic and ontogenetic development.' Let us note in this connection that the pattern of the sleep-wakefulness rhythm of an organism is said to be polyphasic or monophasic according as the individual's total daily need of sleep is met at two or more separate times or in one uninterrupted sequence.

Now the evolutionary theory of sleep assumes that this transition from the polyphasic to the more advanced monophasic pattern is somehow dependent upon the progressive elaboration of the evolutionary process, especially on the side of the instrumental development. Thus, according to this theory, "sleep as a state of inactivity requires no explanation", for it is the basal state from which all evolution has started. It is rather the rarefaction and later modifications of this original sleep that need be investigated and accounted for.

As a matter of fact, anatomico-physiological studies have so far failed to locate any "sleep-centre" in the brain. No naturally occurring destruction in the brain stem or elsewhere in the nervous system has ever produced permanent insomnia (in other words, a state of permanent wakefulness), thus militating against the existence of a sleep-centre and, for that matter, against the possible assumption that the state of wakefulness might be the substratum on which the state of sleep is occasionally imposed.

¹ ya eṣa supteṣu jāgarti. (Katha Upanishad, V. 8)

² divīva cakṣurātatam.

³ Mainly based on the following articles:

(1)Prof. N. Kleitman, "Sleep" in Encyclopaedia Britannica, Vol. 20.

(2)Prof. R. A. M., "Sleep" in McGraw-Hill Encyclopaedia of Science and Technology, Vol. 12.

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On the other hand, pre-planned damages inflicted, through modern electro-coagulation procedures, on discreet and selected regions of the hypothalamus, without of course injuring the cerebral cortex at the same time, have invariably induced states of profound somnolence or frank sleep. A similar result has been observed in patients suffering from encephalitis or sleeping sickness in which the cerebral cortex remains uninjured but there are extensive lesions in the brain stem. All this points to the existence of a "wakefulness centre" in the hypothalamus, whose destruction is liable to bring the victim headlong down into the swoon of the basic sleep-state. Is it not significant that sufferers from sleeping sickness cannot maintain their wakefulness even if they are at times aroused?

Now, this hypothalamic centre and the cerebral cortex, the latter being a more recent instrumental development brought about by the process of organic evolution, play distinctly different roles in the maintenance of the waking state.

Thus wakefulness of the primitive type, associated with poly-phasic sleep cycles, as seen in animals at the bottom end of the evolutionary scale and in younger or decorticated (i.e., deprived of the cerebral cortex) members of the higher animal groups, is solely "designed to meet the minimum needs for keeping alive and for protoplasmic growth". Such short-term waking, which has been called "a wakefulness of necessity", is maintained by a subcortical, probably hypothalamic, mechanism which is in its turn activated by simple afferent sensory impulses arising in the viscera and the muscles, tendons and joints.

Contrastingly, the more advanced type of wakefulness — the longer-term one seen in monophasic sleepers like the adult specimens of all higher animals — with its attendant alertness, critical activity and wider interests, is a "wakefulness of choice". It is assumed to be a function of the cerebral cortex, a later product of evolution as we have already mentioned; as a result of acquired experience and adaptation, this cortex comes to exert some sort of control over the more primitive subcortical mechanism.

Thus the state of physical wakefulness has progressively risen on the scale of quality with the further march of the evolution of forms. And this is all that the scientific account of sleep, solely concerned with the outward aspect of instrumental elaboration, can reveal. For more, and indeed for the basic mystic rationale

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of the whole phenomenon, we have to turn to the occult-spiritual view of the great cosmic becoming whose other name is Evolution.

The Occult-Spiritual Account of the Involutionary Sleep

A progressive rarefaction of the sleep of consciousness, a gradual unclosing of the lids drooping over the orbs of the spirit dreaming in its body of Matter, resulting in the manifestation of growing intensities of self-awareness and world-awareness, — is this not what the process of evolution signifies in its most fundamental aspect?

As a matter of fact, if we look upon the world and consider the living physical forms appearing on the surface of our globe, we cannot but be struck by the wide variety of organisms in rising degrees of wakeful awareness, that have grown up in the course of the evolutionary march as a tapering superstructure upon the pyramidal base of apparently inanimate and viewless Matter. The last to come upon the scene has been

Man, sole awake in an unconscious world¹

who

Aspires...to change the cosmic dream.²

We have advisedly employed the word 'apparently' in order to denote the lifeless and inconscient state of Matter. For, contradicting our primary and superficial view of things, an integral spiritual vision affirms what even our enlightened Reason informed of the panoramic phenomenon of the emergence of consciousness may very well come to perceive: it is that there exists no form in the world which is altogether devoid of consciousness. For the Force that builds the universe and is at work in it, whatever be its appearance or particular poise of activity, is in essence Chit-Shakti, a conscious creative Force, and the Existence that is manifesting itself in this world of forms is conscious Being "that is awake in those who sleep".³

But what is then the difference between diverse forms in existence, between plants and animals and men, between inert and inanimate

^{1 2} Savitri, Book III, Canto IV, p. 336.

³ ya eṣa supteṣu jāgarti. (Katha Upanishad, V. 8)

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Matter, living physical bodies and a creature like man in whom the mind consciousness has emerged into the open to look around and wonder? The essential difference lies in "the more or less involved or more or less evolved condition of consciousness"¹ — quite involved and asleep in a state of self-oblivious absorption in inconscient Matter, "hesitating on the verge between involution and conscious evolution",² between a state of profound sleep and a dim unclosing of the eyes, in the first non-animal forms of life in matter, half-awake and somewhat consciously evolving in "mind housed in a living body"³, and destined to be fully evolved and awake "by the awakening of the Supermind in the embodied mental being and nature".⁴

Thus, what characterises Matter is not that it is bereft of all life or consciousness but that therein the involved consciousness is "in a full sleep"⁵ and has not developed any faculty or means of communication with the surface or the outside world. But it must be noted that this inconscience of matter is entirely superficial and phenomenal. It is no more real than the ignorance of exclusive concentration of man's waking mind or the inconscience or subconscience of his sleeping mind. Only, here, the self-limitation of consciousness and the "superficially exclusive self-forgetful concentration of Tapas, of the conscious energy of being in a particular line or section of its movement"⁶ has been so radical and total that the inconscience of Matter, although only phenomenal and not essentially real or integral, has been "the complete phenomenon."⁷ So complete is it that it is only by an impulsion of evolutionary consciousness emerging into other forms less imprisoned and less dormant that the involved consciousness can gradually come back to itself and recover its full and superficially conscious waking and working. Otherwise, "as in us, so in the atom, the metal, the plant, in every form of material Nature, in every energy of material Nature, there is...a secret soul, a secret will, a secret intelligence at work, other than the mute self-oblivious form, the Conscient — conscient even in unconscious things—of the Upanishad, without whose presence and informing conscious-force...no work of Nature could be done. What is inconscient is the Prakriti, the formal, the motional action of the energy absorbed in the working,

^{1 2 3 4} The Life Divine, p. 706.

⁵ Ibid., p. 185.

^{6 7} Ibid., p. 589.

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identified with it, to such an extent as to be bound in a sort of trance or swoon of concentration, unable to go back, while imprisoned in that form, to its real self, to the integral conscious being and the integral force of conscious being which it has put behind it, of which in its ecstatic trance of mere working and energy it has become oblivious. Prakriti, the executive Force, becomes unaware of Purusha, the Conscious Being, holds him hidden within herself and becomes again slowly aware only with the [evolutionary] emergence of consciousness from this swoon of the Inconscience."¹

But what is the sense and significance, the plan and order of this evolutionary awakening and ascension of consciousness from forms to higher forms, from intensity to greater intensity? To understand that, we have to take note of the fact that to the highest spiritual perception the supreme Reality of the Absolute reveals itself as a triune Sachchidananda (Sat-Cit-Ānanda), a Divine Existence-Consciousness-Bliss. This infinite and absolute Existence, infinite and absolute Consciousness, infinite and absolute Force and Will, infinite and absolute Delight of Being, this Sachchidananda, although a supracosmic and self-existent Reality, is also the secret truth underlying the whole manifestation, the origin and foundation of all truths, forces, powers and existences.

The universe is a self-creative process of the supreme Reality. But the present cosmic manifestation of which the evolving terrestrial cycle is a central and significant element, has for its secret goal the self-finding of Sachchidananda, of Existence-Consciousness-Bliss absolute, in other conditions than the supracosmic, indeed even in the apparent opposites of his being offered by the terms of an embodied material existence.

Thus, for Sachchidananda to trace the cycle of self-oblivion and self-discovery, the manifestation has taken the shape of a double movement, a prior involution of the spirit followed by a process of evolution. "Involution is the process of self-limitation or densification, by which the universal Consciousness-Force veils itself by stages until it assumes the appearance of a dense cosmic Inconscience".² Thus is reached the lowest stage of this downward plunge of the manifestation—a total involution of the manifested being of Sachchidananda into an apparent nescience of itself. But

¹ The Life Divine, p. 588.

² Sri Aurobindo, The Future Evolution of Man, p. 144.

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what is the essential nature of this nescience ? "The Inconscience is an inverse reproduction of the supreme superconscience: it has the same absoluteness of being and automatic action, but in a vast involved trance; it is being lost in itself, plunged in its own abyss of infinity. Instead of a luminous absorption in self-existence there is a tenebrous involution in it, the darkness veiled within darkness of the Rig Veda, tama āsit tamasā guḍham, which makes it look like Non-Existence; instead of a luminous inherent self-awareness there is a consciousness plunged into an abyss of self-oblivion, inherent in being but not awake in being."¹

Such then is the nadir point of the involutionary descent of the triune Reality, the 'divinity's lapse from its own splendours' into 'the Inconscient's boundless sleep', deliberately adopted for a great cosmic purpose: the dynamic manifestation of the divine Existence, Consciousness and Delight of Being here in the very mould of an apparently inconscient, insensible and viewless Matter.

¹ The Life Divine p. 550. (Italics ours)

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