The Destiny of the Body

Chapter III

The Sleep and the Waking

"The status he reaches is the Brahmic condition; he gets to firm standing in the Brahman, brahmi sthiti. It is a reversal of the whole view, experience, knowledge, values, seeings of earth-bound creatures. This life of the dualities which is to them their day, their waking, their consciousness, their bright condition of activity and knowledge, is to him a night, a troubled sleep and darkness of the soul; that higher being which is to them a night, a sleep in which all knowledge and will cease, is to the self-mastering sage his waking, his luminous day of true being, knowledge and power."

(Sri Aurobindo, Essays on the Gita, p. 140)

A psychological self-investigation far transcending its present artificial bounds, an occult-spiritual exploration of the total field of our being, reveals to us, as we have had occasion to point out before (Part Two, Chapter III), the truth that "we are not only what we know of ourselves but an immense more which we do not know; our momentary personality is only a bubble on the ocean of our existence." ¹

As a matter of fact, there are, broadly speaking, four clear and distinct elements in the totality of our being: (i) the waking consciousness, (ii) the subconscient, (iii) the intraconscient and circumconscient subliminal, and finally (iv) the superconscient. Apart from a very small and restricted part of our waking individual consciousness, we are normally perfectly ignorant of the whole of the rest of our being — so appalling indeed is the extent and intensity of our psychological sleep!

The waking consciousness: Our ordinary waking consciousness is a limping and cabined surface consciousness that is shut up in the body limitation and within the confines of the little bit of personal mind. In this part of our being, we receive consciously only the outer touches, know things in ourselves and in our surroundings only or mainly by the intellect and the outer mind and senses, and

¹ The Life Divine, p. 555.

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become aware of the cosmic forces and movements, ceaselessly playing through and around us, primarily by their outward manifestations and only secondarily — and that too in a highly insecure way — through inferences drawn from these data. The ordinary man is aware only of this surface self and quite unaware of all that functions from behind the surface. And yet "what is on the surface, what we know or think we know of ourselves and even believe that that is all we are, is only a small part of our being"¹ and by far the larger part of which our waking consciousness is no more than a wave or series of waves, lies hidden "behind the frontal consciousness, behind the veil, occult and known only by an occult knowledge."²

The subconscient: The subconscient part of our being represents an obscure unconsciousness or half-consciousness submerged below and inferior in its movements to our organised waking awareness. The true subconscious is "the Inconscient vibrating on the borders of consciousness, sending up its motions to be changed into conscious stuff, swallowing into its depths impressions of past experience as seeds of unconscious habit and returning them constantly but often chaotically to the surface consciousness, missioning upwards much futile or perilous stuff of which the origin is obscure to us, in dream, in mechanical repetitions of all kinds, in untraceable impulṣions and motives, in mental, vital, physical perturbations and upheavals, in dumb automatic necessities of our obscurest parts of nature."³

This subconscient evolutionary basis of our being is the root cause why things and movements one hoped to have got rid of for ever come back again and again at the least opportunity and lay siege to the waking consciousness so much so that it has given rise to the adage that character cannot be changed.⁴ "All seeds are there and all Samskaras of the mind, vital and body, — it is the main support of death and disease and the last fortress (seemingly impregnable) of the Ignorance. All too that is suppressed without being wholly got rid of sinks down there and remains as seed ready to surge up or sprout up at any moment."⁵

^{1 2} Letters on Yoga, p. 348.

³ The Life Divine, p. 559.

⁴ Cf. aṅgāraḥ śatadhautena malinatvaṁ na muñcati ("A piece of coal cannot forego its black even when it is washed a hundred times").

⁵ Letters on Yoga, p. 355.

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The subliminal: The subliminal proper in us comprises our inner being, that is to say, our inner mind and inner life and inner physical with the soul or psychic entity supporting them. It is of the nature of a secret intraconscient and circumconscient awareness, only sub-conscious in the specific sense that it functions behind the veil and does not bring most of itself to the surface of our being. Otherwise, it is not at all of the subconscious character as depicted a little before. Rather, it is in full possession of a brilliant mind, a limpid life-force and a clear subtle-physical sense of things. It has "a consciousness much wider, more luminous, more in possession of itself and things than that which wakes upon our surface and is the percipient of our daily hours."¹

This concealed self and consciousness is in fact our inner being, our real or whole being, of which the outer waking existence is no more than an instrumental part and a phenomenon, a selective formation for a specific and delimited surface use. "Our waking mind and ego are only a superimposition upon a submerged, a subliminal self, — for so that self appears to us, — or, more accurately, an inner being, with a much vaster capacity of experience; our mind and ego are like the crown and dome of a temple jutting out from the waves while the great body of the building is submerged under the surface of the waters."²

It is really this subliminal element of our being, along with the lower subconscient end, that provides the whole material of our apparent being and "our perceptions, our memories, our effectuations of will and intelligence are only a selection from its perceptions, memories, activities and relations of will and intelligence; our very ego is only a minor and superficial formulation of its self-consciousness and self-experience. It is as it were the urgent sea out of which the waves of our conscious becoming arise."³

The superconscient: All that we have said so far as regards the total constitution of our being does not suffice to give an adequate account of what we really are. For, a whole line of supramental spiritual experiences testifies beyond any pale of doubt to the existence of a range of being superconscient to all the three elements we have so far spoken of. The subliminal proper is no more than the inner being, no doubt luminous, powerful and extended

¹ The Life Divine, p. 557.

² Ibid., p. 556.

³ The Life Divine, p. 557.

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in capacity but yet on the level of the Knowledge-Ignorance. Thus, "there is not only something deep within behind our normal self-awareness, but something also high above it: that too is ourselves, other than our surface mental personality, but not outside our true self; that too is a country of our spirit." ¹

Also, "if the subliminal and subconscient may be compared to a sea which throws up the waves of our surface mental existence, the superconscience may be compared to an ether which constitutes, contains, overroofs, inhabits and determines the movements of the sea and its waves. It is there in this higher ether that we are inherently and intrinsically conscious of our self and spirit, not as here below by a reflection in silent mind or by acquisition of the knowledge of a hidden Being within us; it is through it, through that ether of superconscience, that we can pass to a supreme status, knowledge, experience." ²

Whose sleep and whose waking?—Apart from our circumscribed waking existence, these then are the three great areas of our being and consciousness, the three occult sources of our actions and movements: the superconscient, the subliminal and the subconscient. But alas, in our so-called waking state, we are not even aware of any of these, not to speak of having any conscious control over them.

But aware or not, we cannot deny the fact of occult experience that all that we 'become and do and bear' in the physical life is prepared behind the veil within us. For it is a mistake to imagine that we live physically only, with the outer mind and life alone. As a matter of fact, "we are all the time living and acting on other planes of consciousness, meeting others there and acting upon them, and what we do and feel and think there, the forces we gather, the results we prepare have an incalculable importance and effect, unknown to us, upon our outer life."³

It follows then that our waking existence is no better than a state of immense and all-forgetting somnambulist sleep and it is a mere euphemism to call it 'waking'.

Indeed, one of the fundamental objects of all spiritual discipline is to cancel this sleep of the so-called waking status of man and

¹The Life Divine, p. 560.

²Ibid., p. 561.

³ Letters on Yoga, p. 993. (Italics ours)

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instead wake up more and more on the deeper and higher planes of our existence.

Yes, it is truly an 'awakening' into the superior and sublimer states (uttara-dhāma); for, after all, is not the normal run of our waking life whose essential badge is an ignorant and externalised turn of consciousness, verily a state of sleep for the illumined (prabuddha), just as the superior planes are but planes of sleep to our ignorant physical mind which is not at all at home in these planes ?¹

As a matter of fact, our apparent waking from a physical slumber is not a true waking at all; it is merely a full emergence into a gross external and objective sense of reality of the apparently stable but yet transient structures of the physical consciousness. According to a powerful and well-established line of spiritual Sadhana, the real and true waking should signify no less than a total "withdrawal from both objective and subjective consciousness...into the superconscience superior to all consciousness; for all consciousness and unconsciousness is Maya."²

Thus, it is asserted that with the progress of Sadhana the Sadhaka withdraws more and more from the defiling jagad-bhāva or the consciousness of the world of dualities and illusory appearances and retires as it were into a progressively deepening sleep-status vis-à-vis his awareness of the phenomenal world, although at the same time he acquires a greater awakening with regard to the reality of his self-existence.

It has even been suggested that one can very well categorize the stages of progress in Sadhana not in terms of the spiritual awakening, jāgaraṇa, but in terms of nidrā or the profundity of sleep attained in jagad-bhāva.

Thus we find in Yoga-Vāsiṣṭha Rāmāyaṇa, a well-known treatise on Advaita Vedanta, that the great sage Vasishtha has delineated an ascending sequence of seven statuses of consciousness (saptadhā jñānabhūmi), beginning with that of a spiritual seeker who has just set out on the path of spiritual ascension and reaching up to the highest turyagā status. These seven levels of consciousness in their ascending order are called: śubhecchā, vicāraṇā, tanumāna-sā, sattāpatti, asaṁsakti, padārthābhāvinī and finally turyagā.

¹ Cf. Gita: yā niśā sarvabhūtānāṁ tasyāṁ jāgarti saṁyamī,

yasyāṁ jāgrati bhūtani sā niśā paśyato maneh.

2 The Life Divine, p. 45

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Vasishtha groups the first three statuses under the generic name jāgrat or 'awake', since, while in these states, the seeker as yet in his sādhaka status perceives the world of dualities and the mental structures of the universe to be very much real to his consciousness (bhedasatyatva-buddhi).¹

Arriving at the fourth status of sattāpatti, the lowest level of siddha consciousness, the seeker (now called by Vasishtha brahmavid) still perceives the world of duality but is not any longer deceived by the appearances, since he knows these to be unreal and illusory (bhedamithyātva-buddhi). That is why Vasishtha has named this status svapna or 'dream-consciousness'.²

The last three levels having turyagā for their crown are variants of siddha-jīvanmukta status in an ascending degree of perfection. The seekers attaining to these stations, all being stations of suṣupti or sleep vis-à-vis the world and its illusory appearances, have been conferred by Vasishtha the respective designations of brahmavidvara, brahmavidvarīyān and brahmavidvarīṣṭha. What distinguishes these three states among themselves is that in the fifth station of asaṁsakti, a status of oscillation, the Siddha comes out occasionally, and of himself (svayaṁ vyutthita), from the condition of suṣupti into that of 'dream-consciousness'; arrived at the next station of padārthābhāvinī, a status of gāḍhasu ṣupti (deep sleep), the siddha can indeed be pulled out from this state of nonduality but only through the violent efforts of people around him (pārsvaśthajanavyutthāpita). But from the last status of turyagā, a status of pragādha-prasupti (intensely profound sleep), there is no return to the awareness of the world of appearances either by oneself or through the efforts of others (vyutthāna-rahita).

It is worth remembering in this connection that the terms 'dream-status' and 'sleep-status' are sometimes supposed to connote much more than their figurative symbolic senses. For, it is often asserted that with the progressive withdrawal from the status of the divisive external consciousness the Sadhaka may very

¹bhūmikātritayaṁ tvetad rāma jāgraditi sthitam yathāvadbhedabuddhyedaṁ jagajjāgrati drśyate

(Yoga- Vāsiṣṭha Rāmāyaṇa, nirvāṇaprakaraṇa, 126.52)

²advaite sthairyamāyāte dvaite praśamamāgate paśyanti svapnavallokaṁ caturthīṁ bhūmikāmitaḥ.

(Yoga-Vāsiṣṭha Rāmāyaṇa, nirvāṇaprakaraṇa,126.60)

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well lose his hold over his dynamic becoming and his action upon the world around him. Thus, Vasishtha points out that the Siddha Yogi comes to abide always in a state of drowsiness, not merely in its figurative aspect but in a very much real and tangible way (nityaṁ nidrāluriva lakṣyate). And has not, in our own time, Sri Ramakrishna declared that the vital-physical demeanour of a Paramahansa becomes like that of an immature child (vālavat) or of a madman (unmattavat) or of a demon (piśācavat) or, in the extreme case, he may even be totally inert (jaḍavat).

Evidently, this sort of spiritual realisation, luminous inside and disjointed outside, cannot be compatible with the goal of the Integral Yoga which seeks to objectivise the inner spirituality in a divine and dynamic world-action. For that purpose, it is certainly not a laudable achievement to cancel the siege of sleep in one part of our being, only to court instead the siege of the same sleep in another part. The Sadhaka of the Yoga of Transformation must be "awake to all the states of being together in a harmonised and unified experience and...see the Reality everywhere."¹

We have already dealt with this topic while discussing the spiritual possibilities of the waking state of man; but, for the moment, what we would like to stress is the other fact that in a very deep and real sense we in our present natural state are in the grip of a profound sleep as to our inner and higher existence, so much so that we have been sometimes called 'gambhīrabhedī'² elephants vis-à-vis the whole truth of our self and nature.

Hence it is that throughout the ages the exhortation has gone forth to the somnolent souls to arise and awake (uttiṣṭhata jāgrata), for the heavenly dawn has come upon the scene with the opulent splendours of her spiritual light (uṭho jāgo, musāphir, bhora bhoil). It does not behove to sleep any longer (Dādū, aceta na hoiye) and the soul must bestir itself to awaken the mind in torpor (manuāṁ sūtā nīṁd bhori sāiṁ saṇg jagai).

But are we not digressing and becoming irrelevant? When the problem in hand is the problem of the physical conquest of sleep, why have we brought in the question of psycho-spiritual slumber?

¹The Life Divine, p. 453. (Italics owrs)

²In popular parlance an elephant is said to be of the gambhīrabhedī type if it cannot be aroused from its sleep even by piercing its epidermis or by cutting its flesh and shedding its blood.

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The reason is indeed threefold. For we shall see in the course of our study that

(i)the state of physical sleep is but a symbolic outer projection of what we have termed the Universal Sleep;

(ii)no conquest over this physical state of sleep is ever feasible unless and until the psycho-spiritual somnambulism is cancelled and replaced by a luminous wakefulness;

(iii)So long as lasts the psycho-spiritual slumber, the body's sleep is, or can be, when enlightened and transformed, the only available means of escaping, even if for brief periods, the sway of this slumber over our instrumental existence, and entering the inner and higher reaches of our being.

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