The Destiny of the Body

Part Three

THE PROBLEM OF SLEEP AND FATIGUE

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Chapter I

The Problem of Sleep

A darkness stooping on the heaven-bird's wings

Sealed in her senses from external sight

And opened the stupendous depths of sleep.

(Savitri, Book IV, Canto III, p. 376)

Out of her Matter's stupor, her mind's dreams,

She woke, she looked upon God's unveiled face.

(Ibid., Book VI, Canto I, p. 418)

Sleep, in the sense of an intermittent condition of apparent inanimation and suspense of all surface activity, appears to be a concomitant of all embodied life. For a human being, on an average, almost a third of his life's total duration is caught up in the inert dormancy of the body. Hence it is but proper and natural that the phenomenon of sleep should engage our careful scrutiny.

For man, sleep may be defined as the periodic state of more or less complete unconsciousness, during which all voluntary activity remains suspended and the functioning of the senses and the cerebrum or brain proper appears to be naturally and temporarily held in abeyance.

The conditions generally recognized to be conducive to the onset of sleep are:

(1)the diminution of afferent nervous stimuli (i.e., the impulses entering the central nervous system, CNS);

(2)fatigue, because of its depressing effect on the power of the CNS to respond to stimuli.

Sleep and the inwardization of consciousness: The question of sleep becomes all the more insistent in the case of Sadhakas striving for a progressive inwardization of consciousness. For, in general, man's mind is turned outwards, active only or mainly on and from the surface (vikṣipta); the whole gaze of his consciousness is externally orientated (bahirāvṛttacakṣuḥ). And the habitual trend of the physical mind whenever it gets divorced

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from the immediate contact with physical things is to fall into the torpor of sleep. For, this is the only type of inner consciousness to which it is ordinarily accustomed.

Now, there cannot be any spiritual life unless and until the individual being goes inward, lives within and from within, and transfers the immediate source of his dynamic becoming from out inward. "In men, says the Upanishad, the Self-Existent has cut the doors of consciousness outward, but a few turn the eye inward and it is these who see and know the Spirit and develop the spiritual being."¹

Thus, in the course of his Sadhana, almost as an immediate necessity, when the aspirant seeks to reverse the gear, turn his gaze inward (antarāvṛtta-cakṣuḥ), enter into himself and live within, the mind, by the sheer force of its habit, takes it as a pressure to fall into slumber (līyate). Here lies the root-cause of the overwhelming sense of sleepiness, and often of an actual intervention of physical sleep, bogging the attempts at meditation in the case of spiritual novices who have not yet learnt how to get rid of this prejudicial habit of the mind and accustom it to a state of "ingathered wakefulness in which, though immersed in itself, it exercises all its powers."²

Sleep and the subconscient plunge: A far more encompassing and devastatingly injurious after-effect of sleep, from the point of view of the progress of Sadhana, is the general falling down of consciousness to a lower level, during the period of the body's sleep. It is due to its subconscient foundation that sleep brings about this lowering of consciousness. And this is so on the physiological plane and much more so on the psycho-spiritual plane.

The change in the activity of the nervous system during sleep manifests itself in the abolition, or at least depression, of what has been termed critical reactivity to external events. "In the waking state the impulses coming from the different sense organs to certain areas of the cerebral cortex are analysed in the light of the individual's previous experience, and appropriate responses (which include movement as well as refraining from overt muscular activity) are elaborated or integrated in other cortical areas. Identical afferent impulses from sense organs will not elicit the

¹ The Life Divine, p. 1027.

² The Synthesis of Yoga, p. 502.

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same response in different persons. This individuality of reaction is lost during sleep and is replaced by stereotyped predictable reflexes from the lower centres of the nervous system."¹

Hence it has been said: "Un homme qui dort est un homme privé de ses deux hémisphères, c'est un animal."

From the occult-spiritual point of view, it is to a state of dark inertia, heavy and unremembering, that one retires in the course of one's physical sleep whenever "one goes deeply and crassly into the subconscient; this subterranean plunge is very undesirable, obscuring, lowering, often fatiguing rather than restful."²

This type of heavy subconscient sleep is most damaging for the simple reason that it engulfs and washes away, so to say, almost all the results of the previous day's effort. "Thus is destroyed in a few hours of the night the fruit of many efforts made by our conscious thought during the day. This is one of the principal causes of the resistance which our will to progress often encounters in ourselves, of difficulties which at times appear insurmountable and which we are unable to explain, so integral does our goodwill seem to us."³

The Mother Herself has given the explanation of. this strange and depressing phenomenon associated with sleep. Thus, in the Conversations of the Mother we read:

"Some are very anxious to perfect themselves and make a great effort during the day. They go to sleep and, when they rise the next day, they find no trace of the gains of their previous day's effort; they have to go over the same ground once again. This means that the effort and whatever achievement there was belonged to the more superficial or wakeful parts of the being, but there were deeper and dormant parts that were not touched. In sleep you fell into the grip of these unconscious regions and they opened and swallowed all that you had laboriously built up in your conscious hours."⁴

Thus do we see that the Sadhaka has somehow to prevent this nightly fall into the clutches of obscure subconsient and inconscient movements and finally to bring in the transforming light and consciousness of the spirit even into the folds of these nether

¹ N. Kleitman, "Sleep" in The Encyclopaedia Britannica, Vol. 20, p. 792.

² Letters on Yoga, p. 1484.

³ The Mother, Words of Long Ago, p. 35.

⁴ Ibid., p. 26. (Italics ours)

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regions of his being. A proper knowledge and mastery of the phenomenon of sleep thus becomes essential for the progress and fulfilment of the spiritual pursuit and especially so for our Sadhana where the goal envisaged is a total transformation of nature leading to the establishment of a divinely awake dynamic existence.

Let us then start with the inquiry how sleep is actually brought about, what is the compulsion behind its onset and what is its raison d'être.

Theories of sleep: Many a hypothesis has been put forward by the biological scientists to account for the state of sleep in its purely phenomenal aspect. But it is well to remember that no proposed theory of sleep as regards its immediate causation has met with universal acceptance, since none has withstood the rigorous exigences of experimental verification. As Kenneth Walker has so bluntly stated: "Although there may be many theories, we are still uncertain as to the real nature and cause of sleep...it is better to confess that we do not understand the mechanism of sleep."¹

However, theories partial, general, and complete, have been suggested from time to time. Partial theories seek to explain the 'how' of sleep, general theories deal with the 'why' of the phenomenon without very much attention paid to the mode of its onset, while complete theories try to solve both the questions of 'how' and 'why'.

Some of the suggested hypotheses attribute sleep to a lessened flow of blood through the brain, others to the production of certain chemical changes in the body system; according to a few others, sleep comes about as a result of the cessation of the stream of afferent impulses which reach the brain from the outside world. In outline, some of the principal theories of sleep may be stated as follows:

Neural theories: The neural theory belongs to the category of what may be termed biophysical theories of sleep; for, it postulates a physical break, during the state of sleep, in the chains of nerve cells (or neurons) of the higher centres of the brain. According to this theory, it is the mutual retraction of neighbouring dendrons that is at the basis of physical slumber.

The dendron is the shorter branch given off from the end of a nerve cell. Some cells have several dendrons and these many-

¹ Kenneth Walker, Human Physiology, pp. 124-25.

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branched dendritic 'processes' serve to form physical connections with the dendrons of the neighbouring cells, thus providing uninterrupted pathways along which travel afferent nerve impulses, from neuron to neuron, to reach the cortical cells of the brain. This is what is called the waking state.

The neural theory of sleep is based on the assumption that these dendritic 'processes' are contractile in their physical constitution and get occasionally retracted for some reason or other. This retraction and consequent separation of the dendrons of neighbouring neurons constitute a mechanical break in the pathways of the inflowing nerve impulses, thus isolating the cortical cells from external stimuli. All mental processes are thus brought to rest and there sets in the unconsciousness of sleep.

Although ingenious in appearance, this theory cannot however be supported by any incontrovertible observational evidence. For, firstly, it is still an open question whether there exists actual continuity, or only contact, between the dendrons of neighbouring cells; secondly, no dendritic contraction has till this date been histologically demonstrated.

Theories such as inhibitory theories and de-afferentation theories that are based on the implied assumption that it is the proper functioning of the cerebral cortex that is somehow instrumental in bringing about sleep, have proved to be equally inadequate, because they fail to explain the fact that "decorticated animals and new-born infants (whose cerebral cortex is not yet functioning) can sleep."¹

Biochemical theories: It has been observed that during the body's sleep as compared with its period of wakefulness, the composition of the blood changes, the metabolic processes in the tissues are modified and possibly there occurs some variation in the activity of the glands of internal secretion.

Humoral and chemical theories stem from the assumption that, during the waking hours because of continued body metabolism, either there are produced some specific toxic substances inhibitory to the irritability in the nerve cells or on the contrary certain specific chemicals necessary for the maintenance of the waking state undergo transformations and get exhausted. In either case the unconsciousness of sleep ensues and it is in this period of sleep that the toxic substances are removed from the system or,

¹ N. Kleitman, op. cit., p. 793.

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in the alternative, the helpful products are synthesized and replenished.

However, a very evident lacuna in the biochemical theories is the fact that "alertness and efficiency of performance are not at their best at the time of getting up in the morning, nor at their worst at bedtime at night"¹, a result contrary to what we should naturally expect if these theories were all-sufficient by themselves.

Anaemia theories: This type of theories attributes the periodic onset of sleep to the rhythmical loss of tone in the vasomotor centre in the medulla of the brain, caused by the fatigue due to its continued activity during waking hours. The action of this fatigued centre on blood pressure becomes ultimately insufficient to maintain an adequate supply of blood through the brain, thus resulting in the loss of consciousness.²

Whatever may be the individual strong points of these different theories in the field, it is probable that several factors combine to produce the state of sleep. In any case, no proposed or yet to be advanced scientific theory of sleep can do more than account for the bare physiological 'how' of the phenomenon. In the very nature of its field of investigation and of the physiognomy of its formulation, it cannot but leave unexplained the essential 'why' of the state of sleep.

Especially disconcerting for the scientist is the strange spectacle of "the rapid onset, the almost simultaneous involvement of all the conscious areas of the brain, irrespective of their state of fatigue and the sudden return to consciousness of the whole brain."³ Biological theories have therefore come round to the view that "sleep is a positive act and not just a mere cessation of wakefulness: it is an instinct."⁴

Yes, sleep is a positive act, but not in the superficial sense of an instinct as some investigators would like us to believe. Sleep plays a much profounder role with far-reaching implication and importance.

It is, in fact, in its essential nature an act of response to the demand and need of individual consciousness to go inward, even in the commonalty of men devoid as yet of any spiritual awakening

¹ N. Kleitman, op. cit., p. 794.

^{2 3} Vide Everyman's Encyclopaedia, Vol. II, pp. 383-84.

⁴ N. Kleitman, op. cit., p. 793.

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or of the systematically developed occult capacity to withdraw at will and in full awareness from the darkened half-light of the surface existence.

Also, it is worth remembering that the body's sleep cannot and does not necessarily mean a state of blank and total unconsciousness. It is rather of the nature of a transference of wakefulness from outside to inside.

But before we come to an elaborate discussion of these points drawn from the occult-spiritual view of the phenomenon of sleep, we must first make sure what we mean by sleep and wakefulness. The question may appear at first view too simple to require any elucidation. But is it really so easy to define the borderline between these two states of our existence or even to offer an unequivocal criterion that will distinguish one from the other? On the contrary, a little circumspection is apt to reveal the surprising fact that most men are in reality always asleep, partially if not in full. Let us explain ourselves.

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