What role does sleep play on the spiritual path?

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
What role does sleep play in the spiritual path? Sleep is a bodily function, which at one level is simply a need of the body, that the body needs to get rested and rejuvenated. So Krishna says that in 5.16, 17, 18, he talks about how if we sleep too much, in 6.16, 17, 18, if we sleep too much or sleep too little, we cannot perform yoga. If we sleep too much, that makes us lethargic.
If we sleep too less, that just makes us distracted, we can’t focus. He said that if you sleep too much, you become lazy. If you sleep too less, you become crazy.
So we need a balance. That’s the first point. At a second level, sleep is a pointer to higher levels of consciousness.
How? Because even if you say that the body needs rest, yes, the body needs rest, that’s true. But why does the consciousness need to switch off when the body needs rest? In evolution or whatever scientific explanations, the body being a machine which needs rest is easily understood. But the switching off of the consciousness, why is that needed? That is something which is very difficult to explain.
Couldn’t we just get rest without the switching off of our consciousness? We just lie down and we get rest. But we don’t feel rested that way. There is a particular point of time when we sleep and the consciousness switches off.
That’s when we actually go to sleep. Those who have insomnia, they may lie down physically, but that switching off of the consciousness, this doesn’t happen. From the philosophical perspective, this is actually meant to give us some food for contemplation that the reality that we experience right now, it is not the only reality.
This can be understood in two ways. One is that I consider that I am the body. That’s what most people think.
But then if I am the body and I am the experiencer, then at night when I’m sleeping, the body is not experiencing anything. Body is just lying in bed. But I’m experiencing maybe a tiger is chasing me.
I’m experiencing my car is going off-road. I’m experiencing going to a hill station. Whatever.
So many things I experience. And for me, those experiences are in a sense real. Because say, I’m being chased by a tiger in a dream.
I suddenly wake up with a start. I find that my heart may be pounding. I may be sweating.
So, if you consider that something is real only when it has effects at a physical level, then there is an effect on the physical level also that is manifest. So, contemplating on the phenomena of sleeping can help us understand that the experiencer is not the body. So, normally when we are awake, the experiencer experiences through the body.
Say right now when I’m sitting here, if I’m feeling cold, I experience cold through the body. But when I’m dreaming, there also I may experience cold. Although my body may not be cold actually.
So, that means the experiencer is different from the body. So, that itself can be a spiritual prompter that there is some reality beyond the reality that I experienced during my waking state. So, there are four states of consciousness.
There is Jagruti, which is what we are in right now. Then there is Swapna, which is a dream state. Then there is Sushupti, which is deep dreamless state.
And there is Turiya or Samadhi. So, I explained about a soul, mind and body. Soul, software, hardware.
So, in the soul, consciousness comes out through the mind, through the body to the outer world. That is the Jagruti stage. When the soul’s consciousness comes to the mind, it doesn’t come to the body.
That is the Swapna stage. When the soul’s consciousness is withdrawn itself, that is the deep dreamless state, that is called Samadhi. Sorry, Sushupti.
And the soul’s consciousness is tuned to the spiritual level, that is Turiya or the Samadhi or the spiritual state of consciousness. So, basically, the Swapna or the dream state, which we experience when we are asleep, that gives us experience of a reality different from the physical reality that we are experiencing right now. Now, we may say it’s just a dream, it’s not real.
It’s just a dream. But then, as I said, it has real consequences on us, whatever we dream. So, in that sense, we can’t say that it is completely unreal.
Yes, it is temporary. In that sense, you can say it is unreal. But while it is experienced, it is real also.
So, the sleep and dream, so Baldev Udhayamushin is a prominent Acharya. He explains that just as we experience different things in the waking state, so some people may experience disease, some people may experience financial loss, different people may experience different things in the waking state, and that is a result of their past karma. Past bad karma, we get some bad reactions sometimes.
Similarly, some minor karmas that we may have done in the past, their results we experience at the level of the dreams. So, some people often have bad dreams. That is because certain bad karma, the reaction to that is coming to them at the level of the dreams.
So, sometimes people experience good dreams. That’s a result of good karma. But the soul is different from both the dreaming consciousness and the waking consciousness.
So, basically sleep is a biological necessity which we need to regulate. But the experience of dreams during sleep points to the reality that the experiencer is not the body, and thus it can prompt us towards more exploration of consciousness.