The Destiny of the Body

Chapter II

The Universal sleep

The soul must soar sovereign above the form

And climb to summits beyond mind's half-sleep.

(Savitri, Book II, Canto V, p. 171)

What distinguishes the state of wakefulness from that of sleep? Is it the execution of some purposeful movements, or the making of a coherent speech, or the capability of engaging in a meaningful conversation, or the successful completion of some delicate and hazardous physical undertaking, or at the least a tolerably good functioning of the organs of cognition?

As we shall presently see, none of these criteria nor for that matter any other ordinarily cited distinctive mark of the waking hours of men can adequately settle the question we have started with. Leaving aside the states of coma, general anaesthesia, alcoholic stupor and hibernant torpidity, that bear in certain respects a manifest resemblance to the state of natural sleep, let us only consider the conditions of semi-wakefulness such as somnambulism, postepileptic automatism and hypnotic trances, that are intermediate in character, possessing features both of sleep and of wakefulness. Indeed, it has been suggested that some of these states may have their physiological explanation in the fact of "different degrees of sleep in different parts of the cerebro-spinal nervous system."¹ Even a cursory survey of the characteristic traits exhibited by the states of somnambulism, hypnosis and psychomotor seizure in epilepsy is enough to establish the point that it is sometimes exceedingly difficult to decide whether a person is conventionally asleep or awake.

Postepileptic automatism: Epilepsy is a chronic clinical disorder involving the loss or impairment of consciousness, of varying degrees and duration, with or without a succession of tonic or clonic muscular spasms.

The epileptic seizures are of four types: (i) grand mal, or generalized seizures; (ii) local, or Jacksonian, seizures; (iii) petit

¹ The New Gresham Encyclopaedia, Vol. X, p. 2.

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mal characterized by a momentary loss of consciousness and of muscular tone; (iv) psychomotor attack.

This last type of seizure with its peculiar traits is very much germane to the topic under discussion. For, firstly, its onset is characterized by a "loss of consciousness with involuntary, apparently purposeful movements, such as chewing, swallowing, or expectorating, or with movements of the extremities."¹ Secondly, — and this is the most curious and illuminating part of the phenomenon, — the attacks are often followed by amnesia, mental clouding and fugue states, extending over hours or even days, during which the patient is seemingly conscious of his behaviour, but afterwards has no conscious recollection of what happened or what he did during this period of amnesia. In this state "the patient without provocation may wander from home or school, become destructive or negativistic, go into temper tantrums unexpectedly, become loquacious, apathetic or sullen. The victim may suddenly break into an aimless run up and down stairs or in a straight line and as suddenly stop with a return of consciousness."²

The tragedy of this seemingly wakeful but in reality 'sleepy' state of consciousness is that "misconduct of varying degrees of seriousness is at times attributable to this comparatively uncommon type of epileptic reaction."³

Dream consciousness⁴: Traditionally, dreams have been defined as 'states of consciousness taking place during sleep'. But, as Prof. D. B. Klein has pointed out, this definition proves to be inadequate in the light of critical reflection. For, sleep in the conventional sense of the term is not invariably necessary for the production of the dream consciousness. "An essential characteristic of the dream is...a manifest discrepancy between dream images and external reality. In other words, dreams are illusory or hallucinatory experiences... [but] such experiences can take

¹ The McGraw-Hill Encyclopaedia of Science and Technology, Vol: 5, p. 40. (Italics ours)

² Irvine McQuarrie, "Epilepsy and Epileptic Fit" in Encyclopaedia Britannica, Vol. 8, p. 654. (Italics ours)

³ Ibid., p. 654.

⁴ We propose to come back, for a fuller discussion, to this question of dream-consciousness and dream-world, while dealing with the occult-spiritual view of sleep.

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place in the absence of ordinary sleep."¹

Cases are not rare where people, apparently awake, live in fact in the world of dreams and, what is all the more revealing, they 'act out their daydreams'.

Somnambulism: This is a particular state of consciousness in which the ideas and happenings of the dream-world dynamically impinge upon the organs of movement and produce various types of resultant action.

There are different degrees of somnambulism. Thus, depending on the case, there may occur:

(i)Speaking without acting, commonly observed in children of irritable nervous systems, who get disturbed in their sleep, cry and weep, comprehend the sense of the words of consolation addressed to them, even open their eyes and recognize persons present, but cannot for all that be easily pulled out from the grip of the tormenting dream of the moment;²

(ii)Acting without speaking, the most common type, in which a person, while still asleep, leaves his bed, walks hither and thither (hence the term 'somnambulism' from Latin somnus sleep and ambulare walk), and returns to bed, but has no recollection of any of these occurrences when he comes back to the fully awake state. Sometimes the activities performed in this somnambulist condition are very complex in character or involve situations extremely hazardous for the safety of the body (e.g., walking along dangerous paths like the cornices of lofty buildings), but all these delicate movements are executed with skill and precision, while the person is still in the state of sleep.³

(iii)Acting and speaking, with the auditory, visual and tactile sense organs properly functioning. This last type, evidently of the greatest interest to our present discussion, merges into the phenomenon of hypnotism to the consideration of which we now propose to turn.

Hypnotic phenomena⁴: Hypnosis is a special psychological state with certain physiological attributes resembling sleep.

¹ D. B. Klein, "Dreams" in Encyclopaedia Britannica. Vol. 7, p. 638. (Italics ours)

²³ Dictionnaire Encyclopédique Quillet, p. 4452.

⁴This section is based on Prof. M. H. Erickson's article "Hypnotism" in Encyclopaedia Britannica, Vol. 12, pp. 23-24.

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When hypnotized, or in the hypnotic trance, the subject "can think, act and behave as adequately and often better than he can in the ordinary state of psychological awareness."¹ As a matter of fact, while in this state, the individual is persuaded to withdraw his interest in external events and "function at a level of awareness other than the ordinary state, a level of awareness termed, for convenience in conceptualization, unconscious or subconscious awareness."²

Hypnotic phenomena differ from one subject to another and from one trance to the next, depending upon the depth of the trance state, but always exhibit certain basic manifestations like rapport, suggestibility, catalepsy, amnesia and hypermnesia, regression, etc.

The rapport is the limitation of the subject's awareness to what is included in the hypnotic situation, usually directed by the hypnotist.

Catalepsy is a peculiar state of muscle tonus and balance which permits the subject to maintain, on suggestion, postures and positions, for unusually long periods of time, without appreciable fatigue response.

Suggestibility is a remarkable manifestation of the hypnotic state. "By the acceptance of suggestions, and acting upon them, the subject can become deaf, dumb, blind, hallucinated, disoriented or anaesthetized, or he can manifest any type of behaviour regarded by the subject as reasonable and desirable in the given situation."³

Amnesia signifies the loss of memory vis-à-vis certain things or happenings; hypermnesia is the converse phenomenon of the acquisition of an ability to remember, far transcending the everyday capability of remembering the past. Regression denotes the process of return to earlier and simpler patterns of behaviour.

In hypnosis there occurs an amnesia of an extensive character, whose experienced utilization along with that of regression may result, on the part of the subject, in the effective forgetting of "all experiences and learning subsequent to a chosen age level and the revivification of the actual patterns of behaviour, responses and understandings of the selected age level."⁴

^{1 2 3} Prof. M. H. Erickson's article "Hypnotism" in Encyclopaedia Britannica, Vol. 12, p. 24. (Italics Ours)

⁴ Ibid., p. 23.

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Through the converse process of hypermnesia, the subject in his trance state may be induced to "remember vividly long-forgotten, even deeply repressed experiences, recount them fully and still have a complete amnesia for them when aroused from the trance state."¹

A most fascinating phenomenon is that of the posthypnotic behaviour. By this is meant the execution, at some later date, of instructions and suggestions given during a hypnotic trance. Thus, for example "the subject may be instructed to read a certain chapter in a chosen book at a specified later time, hours, days, months and even years later, and at that time he performs the act without really understanding consciously why he does so."² Well, in this type of situation, should we say that the person is awake, executing some purposeful action, or on the contrary decide that he is in a state of sleep?

A phenomenon of profound interest from the point of view of our present discussion is that of hypnotic somnambulism. While in this state "the subject, seemingly awake in a state of ordinary awareness, behaves, within reasonable limitations, as if he were not hypnotized, but actually he is in a deep trance and capable of manifesting any desired hypnotic behaviour within his personal capabilities. Experience and training are often required even to recognize the somnambulist state."³

All the aforesaid behaviour patterns tending to obliterate the borderline between the states of sleep and wakefulness can be explained on the assumption — and this is not merely a conjectural assumption, it is a fact of occult-spiritual experience — that there is not just one unique level of awareness, that of the ordinarily understood waking hours of a man, but that there are many levels. And unless and until all these are mastered and integrated in one's consciousness, the person concerned, while seemingly awake on one of them is liable to be in a state of sleep in relation to the others. It is also possible that different parts of the being of one and the same person may be awake at the same time on different levels of awareness and thus be mutually ignorant each of the others' movements and experiences. In some other

^{1 2} Prof. M. H. Erickson's article "Hypnotism" in Encylopaedia Britannica, Vol. 12, pp. 23-24.

³ Ibid., pp. 23-24. (Italics ours)

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instances, a part of the being functioning at a higher level of awareness may dominate and direct the movements of another part wakeful only at a relatively lower level and hence in a state of sleep vis-à-vis the movements of the higher part.

Here at this point we may recall with profit what the Mother has said in one of her class-talks on the subject of somnambulism and the exteriorization of consciousness:

"When you leave one part of your being (for example, when you enter fully conscious into the vital world), your body...may go into trance.... It is what one calls a lethargic or cataleptic state. When it is at its maximum, it is a cataleptic state, because the part of the being which animates the body has gone out of it; then the body is half dead, that is to say, its life is diminished to that extent and its functions are almost abolished: the heart is slowed down and is hardly felt, the respiration hardly perceptible ....But you yourself during the time are fully conscious in the vital world. And even, by a discipline which is besides neither easy nor without danger, you can see to it that the body remains conscious independently with the minimum of forces that you leave in it. By a wholly methodical training, you can make the body keep its autonomy of movement even when you have totally exteriorised yourself. Thus in a state of almost complete trance, you can speak and narrate what is seen and done by the exteriorised part....

"There are examples, spontaneous and involuntary, of a state which is not altogether this but something analogous: such are the states of somnambulism. That is to say when you are in deep sleep, when you have gone out of your body and when the body obeys automatically the will and the action of the vital part which has gone out. Only because it is not the result of willed action, a regulated and progressive education, such a state is not desirable, for it may lead to disorders in the being. But this is an illustration of what I have just said, of a body that can, while three-fourths of it remains asleep, obey the part of the being which is itself fully awake and altogether conscious."¹

It is said that in the land of the blind everyone is credited with sight! In a similar way, since most men ordinarily function only at a particular level of awareness, the level of the so-called waking hours, we are apt to think that all of us are really and truly awake

¹ The Mother in Bulletin of Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education, Vol. XIV, No. 3, pp. 45-47. (Italics ours)

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while in this state. But this is nothing but a most serious error of perspective.

In fact, a consideration of the facts that have been adduced above and other facts of an allied nature leads us to make a far greater and profounder generalisation and formulate the query whether our so-called "waking state" can verily be considered a condition of wakefulness. Are we not after all profoundly asleep, even while we are in this state, as regards the total range and truth of our own self-being as well as that of world existence, of which only an insignificant little comes ordinarily into our ken and action, "the rest [remaining] hidden behind in subliminal reaches of being which descend into the profoundest depths of the subconscient and rise to highest peaks of superconscience, or which surround the little field of our waking self with a wide circumconscient existence of which our mind and sense catch only a few indications."¹

Is it then any wonder that we act and think and move about as so many veritable somnambulists, blissfully ignorant all the time of the greater and more meaningful part of our being? Is it not drowsy creatures like us, the seemingly awake but in truth sleeping souls in the Ignorance, whom the Upanishad has in view when it declares:

"They who dwell in the ignorance, within it, are wise in their own wit and deem themselves very learned, [but] men bewildered are they who wander about stumbling round and round helplessly like blind men led by the blind."²

But wherein lies the explanation for this sleep universal, what are its extent and essential character and ultimate destiny?

¹Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis of Yoga, pp. 498-99.

²Kaṭha Upaniṣad, I.2.5. (Adapted from Sri Aurobindo's translation.)

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