The absence of evidence – “I have not found any beaming saucers or flattened foliage in my backyard” – can be considered as evidence of absence – “Therefore, there can never be an alien living in my backyard” – only until the moment I see a green man slow-walking from behind a shrub for the first time – “Holy crap! There is an alien living in my backyard!”
The absence of evidence will remain as evidence of absence only until a new perspective challenges the existing assumption. We chalk up all of our living experiences to the neural impulses of the brain and the subsequent manifestations of the mind. Almost everything is explained away in a manner that conforms to the logical bent of the mind. But when it comes to a twilight concept like deep sleep, for which the intellectual mind cannot find any evidence of a logical explanation, it is best to assume the adage “Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence” because sooner or later, the spiritual path we are on will cut through the forest of Paradigm Shift where perspectives will be challenged and evidence will be foreshadowed.
Our mind’s take on deep sleep is that it is a state where our consciousness just up and disappears on us for an uncertain amount of time and then magically reappears like it is none of our business. Deep sleep is a period of blankness. Ironically, it is not like the mind observed the ‘nothingness’ of deep sleep and reported back in earnest, rather the mind that was absent in deep sleep looked back in retrospect and made an inference that deep sleep was a period of nothingness. Mind says, “I recall falling asleep and when I came back to my senses, the clock showed that X amount of time had passed. Since I remember nothing of the elapsed time period, I must’ve been in a deep sleep.” And we accept this perspective without a question simply because there is no better explanation that appeals to our logical mind.
On the other hand, we have meditation masters who tell quite a different story. Of the many side effects that practiced meditators experience, the one I find the oddest yet fascinating is their ability to watch themselves sleep. By ‘watching’, I don’t mean paying attention to the slow drift into sweet slumber or weaving in and out of half-sleep where the conscious mind remembers snatches of broken wakeful moments. Neither is this along the lines of the bizarre astral projection phenomenon where the soul floats above the body. It is literally ‘watching’ or being aware of oneself in the dreamless deep sleep.
The mind is not privy to deep sleep. Deep sleep and mind are mutually exclusive and the absence of the mind is what makes it deep sleep. But without the mind, we have no way of learning anything about anything. If you are caught in this paradox of the mind’s claim that deep sleep is an absolute nothingness versus it being a whole other experience that the mind cannot penetrate to report about, there is a simple, self-evaluation question for you from the great teachers of the Direct Path –
“When you awaken out of the deep sleep you say that you were happy (that you slept deeply and peacefully). How would it be possible to claim this if you had not been aware of that happiness that you experienced during deep sleep?”
Atmananda Krishna Menon
Some of the mind-blowing answers in life come in transparent packaging.
When we wake up from a deep sleep we know intuitively that we slept peacefully. We don’t have to verify it with the mind’s inference tools like ambient lighting or the hands on a clock to confirm, but the visceral satisfaction with which we woke up is sufficient to inform us of undisturbed, blissful sleep. It is the reason why we would give anything for a good night’s sleep because we are able to intuit that deep sleep is pure joy. If we believe the mind’s claim that deep sleep is nothingness, we would dread falling asleep for we wouldn’t want to knowingly walk into an unperceivable abyss every night. Even though we cannot remember the period of deep sleep as a memory, we are ‘aware’ of it as an experience, even if only vaguely.
This self-evaluation begs the question of what else is present within our experience that we unwittingly overlook because of the mind’s propensity to skim past hard questions.
“Time, in the waking and dreaming states, is an illusion. In deep sleep, it is a presumption.”
Rupert Spira
We always find that the moment of falling into a deep sleep and the moment of waking up seem to occur immediately following one another. The mind upon recollection will say there was a considerable stretch of time between those two points but deep sleep in our direct experience feels timeless. But this timelessness is not limited to deep sleep alone. Calling it ‘deep sleep’ may have misrepresented it as a nightly appearance but it is actually more than that. The timelessness of deep sleep is the backdrop of every moment of our reality. It is present after the end of a thought and before the beginning of the next, even if infinitesimally small. This gap is what makes one thought different from the next, one perception separate from the other, because if not for the gap, we will be living a single everlasting thought for all of our life. It is the pause between the breath that goes in and the breath that comes out. It is the silence between the musical notes where our appreciation for the art takes place. It is the quietness before expression in which understanding happens.
The timelessness of deep sleep is the Awareness with which we live every moment of our reality. It is not a periodic phenomenon that interjects itself between activities of the mind, rather it is the continuous backdrop upon which activities of the mind come and go. It is not a nightly peculiarity that eludes our reach, but an everlasting experience infused within our every moment.
It is easy to spot this timelessness and it is waiting to blow our minds away if we can still ourselves long enough to notice it.
“Awareness is not to be found in the gaps between objects; rather, objects are imagined in the apparent gaps in the ever-present, infinite reality of pure awareness.”
Rupert Spira
