Namaste,
I won't post this is advaita because I am not an advaitists and I am not sure that my views will reflect that school, but I do have a lot of respect and have learned many things over the last year. Plus I am more in the mood of discussing things over a cup of tea in a relaxed way
While I was in India I was reading this
http://holybooks.lichtenbergpress.ne...nta.pdf?30f3d7
I didnt know if I got it right but recently it seemed as though the penny the dropped and I understood something about the four states. But I will write freely, although I know within advaita there are different views about Sushupti, I will give my initial understanding, which didnt come via intellectual study or any type of profound understand of Advaita Literature. I found a very good bridge here between certain aspects of Buddhism and how they describe consciousness that seems to be in line with the 4 states, or least 2 waking and dreaming, ultimate consciousness in Buddhism is in Pali as far as I know at this time viññanam anidassanam and a nice explaination of this can be found in the Kevatta Sutta.
Consciousness without feature,[1]
without end, luminous all around:
Here water, earth, fire, & wind
have no footing.
Here long & short
coarse & fine
fair & foul
name & form are all brought to an end.
With the cessation of [the activity of] consciousness
each is here brought to an end.'"
Note [1] Points to MN 49 and in a note in MN49 vinnanam anidassanam was explained.
This is note 9 from MN 49
Consciousness without surface (viññanam anidassanam): This term appears to be related to the following image from SN 12.64:
"Just as if there were a roofed house or a roofed hall having windows on the north, the south, or the east. When the sun rises, and a ray has entered by way of the window, where does it land?"
"On the western wall, lord."
"And if there is no western wall, where does it land?"
"On the ground, lord."
"And if there is no ground, where does it land?"
"On the water, lord."
"And if there is no water, where does it land?"
"It does not land, lord."
"In the same way, where there is no passion for the nutriment of physical food ... contact ... intellectual intention ... consciousness, where there is no delight, no craving, then consciousness does not land there or grow. Where consciousness does not land or grow, name-&-form does not alight. Where name-&-form does not alight, there is no growth of fabrications. Where there is no growth of fabrications, there is no production of renewed becoming in the future. Where there is no production of renewed becoming in the future, there is no future birth, aging, & death. That, I tell you, has no sorrow, affliction, or despair."
Its just me freelance writing and trying to put my thoughts onto paper so to speak, so please forgive me if it lacks scriptural references or any real structure.
As far as I understand this aspect of our being in deep sleep is while in that state we still exist, we have lost consciousness of all other states, waking, dreaming but we still exist. The reflection that I have on deep sleep is much more related to the 4th state, Turiya, Turiya is sometimes known as the witness, but in the deepest sense Turiya is the state of pure transcendence. What we experience in the 2 states is awareness of the conditioned state of mind, body and senses and what the deep sleep state represents ( as a reflection or contemplation ) is that we still exists even if we have no cognitive awareness of mind, body and senses. So what happens in the two other states of waking and dreaming is that the self or soul for want of a better word then becomes covered by mind, body and senses, so awareness is then distracted by these elements of compounded phenomena, so naturally we lose memory of the substratum of our natural state of awareness, waking and dreaming states are distractions, this is our bound up state our conditioning, this is where we enter into creation, in the deep sleep state there is no creation, no distraction just existence or pure awareness. This is why we consider the waking and dream states are the illusory state, and deep sleep is the closest state to our original nature, which has never left the 4th state Turiya, it only appears that we have. The 2 states of dreaming and waking will also fall inline with the Buddhist use of the word consciousness, where consciousness is only a dependent on the 5 khandas, so consciousness will at some point cease to exists, but existence itself will not. So while the word awareness gets thrown around all the time, the state of transcendence is awareness but with no awareness of compounded conditioned phenomena.
I understood what deep sleep state meant in terms of a reflection when I first read Sleep as a state of consciousness in Advaita Vedanta by Arvind Sharma, a free pdf version can be found in the above link. What I found most interesting was ramana maharshi conversations with a Muslim and others about the deep sleep state, and how to bring that into this normal waking state and be situated in the non dual state which is our true nature ( no duality in this context needs to be defined where awareness itself is not split, or divided within the mind, body and senses, which happens in the two states of dreaming and waking states). What the deep sleep state suggests through contemplation or meditation is the same as emptiness, or a state of being where there is no cognitive awareness of dreaming or being awake, as the book suggest its not that we want to go fully into a deep sleep state, as its another form of conditioned consciousness, but it is however an experience that we experience everyday and we have absolutely no recollection and to use that to understand the full meaning of Turiya or the 4th state which is ineffible and impossible to translate in our normal waking condition, at first this can totally freak us out because we will have nothing conceptual to grasp onto, but it will give us insights into our attachments and give us more of an idea for want of a better word what exactly we are all striving for. Most think enlightenment or awakening is some form of super consciousness that we experience in the waking state, but that would be more closer to heightened sensory perception like an LSD trip, although as Ramana Mahrshi says we need to bring that state of deep sleep into the normal waking state to abide in that state of non duality at all times.
What aided this understanding was something I learned on a Buddhist retreat and something I use on a regular basis, and that is to be aware of our very first state of mind when we wake up, even if we have a dream or have been in deep sleep the very first moment when we awake is very clear, bright and luminous even if it is momentary, but through practice one can extend this and use it as a place to focus as the center of our being, or our being itself. What I found interesting learning from this retreat and through experience is that what usually happens after that moment of clarity of pure awareness is at some point the creation of who we are conditioned to be slowly creeps in, the habitual conditioning of the mind takes over, we slowly remember who we are and what we need to do that day and the identification of the mind, body and senses sets in. Over the years of being aware of the first moments of waking up our conditioned state changes, it becomes a great insight in annata or no self, or seeing dependent arising and in the waking state we are not a fixed being, but awareness itself, and never changes, the only thing that changes is what we are aware of. It also helps in meditation to keep going back to that initial starting point of the day as our center, it can be a very powerful aid in meditation to understand self realization
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