[Advaita-l] States of waking, dream and deep sleep

[Sujal Upadhyay]

Namaste,

These kind of questions cannot be properly explained, nor quotes from
shAstra-s is going to give you satisfaction if there is an inner urge to
experience it, but you still do not know what exactly is 'it'.

Some doubts are naturally and spontaneously clarified when you will
experience detachment others only after having first glimpse of samAdhi.
When you will see yourself different from the body, just like you have put
a camera on your top, but  little back side and you see your self, first
question you will ask, 'I' am meditating, but then who is the one seeing me
as meditating. Then the state itself will clarify that 'I' am seeing. Then
who is the one who is meditating, you will see it as a lifeless, robotic
body. Even though it may be breathing, you do not feel any life in it.
Everything seems mechanical and then you realise a sloka, 'yantrAruDhAni
mAyayA' - everything is mechanical. When you experience that your own body
is operating mechanically and you are 'clearly different' than this body,
that day will be the best day of your life.

Unless and until you experience detachment, you never know that your were
attached. Only after this experience, many ghuDha sloka-s will make sense.

Similar is the case with all the 3 states - waking, dream and deep sleep.

When you experience detachment, that state itself will answer your question
- from where does the state of waking is experienced.
Similar understanding happens in dream after waking up. Later on, time
period of dream reduces as one progress spiritual and have less thoughts
and desires.

Deep sleep is difficult to explain. Only after you wake up, you can
conclude deep state, as unlike dreams, there is no memory, or dreams or
emotions and thoughts involved in deep sleep.

Only when you get first glimpse of samAdhi, and then come out of it, you
will realise deep peace and deep bliss, and freshness which is much greater
in intensity than you experience in meditation or in deep sleep. The
freshness experienced is greater than you experience after waking from deep
sleep or dream state or simply from sleep. The effect of deep meditation is
that one keeps experiencing the bliss and deep peace throughout the day,
even when one is working in office.

You will realise that your infinite nature the real 'I', once again gets
trapped in different bodies and then to manomaya kosha and finally to
annamaya kosha. It is in contact with manomaya kosha or any other kosha
that the play of duality exists and once again all the drama starts ...
life drama, thoughts, tension, unfinished work, etc, etc.

So, do you meditate? By meditation, I mean, you you do japa or any mantra
or on OM (only if your guru has initiated you) or do neti-neti (only if
your guru has initiated you). OM and neti-neti is not for everybody.

Similarly, to your second query, IMHO, you do not experience one state
merging into another. You experience passing from one state into another.
Next moment you are simply in a deep state, just like it happens in day
dreaming or visualising. When you come out, where does all the characters,
emotions and thoughts go?, they simply vanish, disappear. You experience
during meditation that it is you who creates a scene, try to convince your
friend in an argument that you had earlier and later on when your friend is
convinced, the scene ends and everything gets pulled back into you. Here
'you' is 'mind'. Mind creates characters, scene, thoughts and emotions.
Even you are one of the characters. You experience yourself. There are many
characters, there are emotions, there is argument and so thoughts. the
whole scene is erected in a flash. After some time it vanishes. The whole
time, there were no 'others' present, it was only you, yet you experienced
many. Same is the case with all the states - creation, preservation and
destruction happens in mind, your mind experiences them and then moves on
or say transcends them. This is explained by 'diving deep within'. When one
is completely detached with no thoughts, by grace of god and guru
(shivakrupa), one can experience samAdhi, even though one feels one is not
capable of reaching that state. After one dives deep within to some depth,
then you, as an individual has no further role in it (the process or
meditation), someone or something is already waiting for you. After that,
it takes care of situation and then whatever is to be done is done by that
thing and you, as an individual, have no role in it. Sri Ramana Maharshi
also says the same thing (read somewhere). That is why Guru's grace is
extremely important and so great importance is given to gurudev. He is
equated to deva - God. Gurupurnima is nearing and so we all must try our
best to present ourselves with the purified mind (shuddha-chitta). That, I
think, is the best gift to our beloved and compassionate gurudev.

Let u always remain surrendered to our guru. Let us always feel this
humility which arises out of samarpaNa. Let us always remember who, in
reality, does all the work, those power flows through us, whose grace flows
through us. It is the sunlight that blossoms flowers. We are such flowers
who out of guru's warmth, his caring nature, due to his infinite compassion
makes us blossom and our petals unfold step by step, until the flower fully
blossoms. Let us remain surrendered to our beloved gurudev, who always
stands by us at all times and may we never get separated from his and his
grace and his teachings. Never ever even for a moment does our ego rise
against him, but always remained humbled by his compassion and benevolence
until our ego will cease to exist.  Only then guru will be born inside his
shishya (disciple).

|| Gurur brahmA gurur viShNu, guru devo maheshvara, guru sAkshAt
parabrahma, asmaishrI guruve namaH ||

|| OM Sri Gurubhyo namaH ||

|| Shi Guru Sharanam ||

|| HariH OM ||

"To disconnect from the self and to become Aware of anything else is
nothing but unhappiness" - Bhagawan Ramana Maharshi

He who has faith has all
He who lacks faith, lacks all
It is the faith int he name of lord that works wonders
FAITH IS LIFE, DOUBT IS DEATH - Sri Ramakrishna


On Fri, Jul 20, 2018 at 6:45 PM sreenivasa murthy via Advaita-l <
advaita-l at lists.advaita-vedanta.org> wrote:

> Dear friends,
> From where do the the states of waking, dream and deep sleep , experienced
> by human beings, come from and where do they
> merge back when one state is present?
> I request the scholarly friends of this august group to clarify
> the above doubts of mine in a non-technical way.
> For this kind and generous act I will be deeply indebted to the memberswho
> respond to this posting of mine.
> With respectful namasakars,Sreenivasa Murthy.
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