[Advaita-l] Collection of Citations on Deep Sleep and Self

[Michael Chandra Cohen]

*DEEP SLEEP quotes*

   - “With a view to show that it is in dreamless sleep alone that we find
   the Self in its form as a deity, liberated from its condition as an
   individual soul, the argument proceeds further” (ChU Bh. 6.8.1)
   - “that form of the Self which is directly perceived in dreamless sleep,
   and which is devoid of Ignorance, desire, merit and demerit, is the subject
   of the discourse here' (Brhad. Bh. 4.3.22)
   - the self has been spoken of as going from the waking to the dream
   state, and thence to the state of profound sleep, which is the illustration
   for liberation. Brb h 4.3.34
   - Therefore, in suṣupti, jīva joins its own svarūpa - say the
   Brahmajñānis. ChUbh6.8.1
   - “At that time (i.e. in dreamless sleep) cause and effect resulting
   from Ignorance desire, merit and demerit cease” PrUbh4.6.
   - But as there is the absence of both the mind and its functions in deep
   sleep, I am Pure Consciousness, all pervading and changeless. US11.3

·        ‘Now it is a settled conclusion of the Upanisads that the
individual soul becomes unified with the supreme Self in sleep, and that
the universe, inclusive of the organs etc., issues from the supreme Self.
So it is to be understood that the entity in which this individual being
has an absence of particularized knowledge, in which it has its deep sleep,
consisting in the absence of the defect of perturbation, in which it has
its real nature of freedom from particularized knowledge caused by limiting
adjuncts, from which occurs its emergence, consisting in a break in that
state-that entity is the supreme Self, taught here as the thing to be known.
”BSbh1.4.18

   - “Where Ignorance, desire and action are absent … This is the form of
   the Self where it is beyond fear and danger …For Ignorance, which sets up
   the idea of otherness, is absent.” (BrUbh 4.3.21)
   - Those things that caused the particular visions (of the waking and
   dream states), namely the mind, the eyes and forms, were all presented by
   Ignorance as something different from the Self.” (Brhad. Bh. 4.3.23)
   - How does such a man attain liberation? This is being stated: He who
   sees the Self, as in the state of profound sleep, as undifferentiated, one
   without a second, and as the constant light of Pure Intelligence-only this
   disinterested man has no work and consequently no cause for transmigration
   Brbh 4.4.6
   - “But when in dreamless sleep that nescience which sets up the
   appearance of beings other than the Self has ceased, there is no (apparent)
   entity separated from oneself as another. Then with what could one see,
   smell or understand what? The One is embraced by one’s own Self as
   intelligence (prajna), of the nature of self-luminous light. One is then
   all serene, with one’s desires attained, transparent as water, and all one
   on account of the absence of any second. For, if a second thing is
   distinguished, it is distinguished through nescience, and as that has now
   ceased, what is left is all one.
   //… In the same way, my dear one, because they had no knowledge when
   they mingled with pure Being, all these creatures likewise, the tiger and
   so forth, have no knowledge of the fact when they have returned from pure
   Being. They are not aware, ‘I have returned from pure Being’. Chand. Bh.
   Vl.ix.l”
   - 'Nor can you retort that the apparent nonperception of another in
   dreamless sleep is due to the mind being engrossed in something different
   from oneself but changeless, (on the analogy of the arrow-maker so
   engrossed in the arrow that he is making that he is unaware of anything
   else). For non-perception in dream is total (in that the sense-organs are
   withdrawn from the objects of the waking world). Nor can you say that
   because an ‘other’ is perceived in waking and dream it must be real, for
   these two states are set up by Ignorance. That "perception-of-another"
   which characterizes waking and dream is the work of Ignorance~ for it does
   not occur except in the presence of Ignorance (of the infinitude of the
   Self). Perhaps you will say that the non-perception characteristic of
   dreamless sleep is also the work of Ignorance. But this would be wrong as
   it is the essential nature of the Self” (Taitt.Bh. 2.5.8)
   - See also: BrahmaSutra Bhasya BSBh 1.1.9; 1.3.20; 3.2.7; and also BrUBh
   2.1.7 (291)