What is that stillness when you wake up? Are you awake during deep sleep?

Q.  

Gary -

Namaste.  

Lately when "waking" from dreams, the transition is very long...like going from one dream into this "other dream" we call daily life.  This is new.

I have heard that those who are fully awakened are still awake even during deep sleep.  Is this your experience? 

G.

The transition when one wakes up and before the ego/dream kicks in to the '"other dream' we call daily life" is a great window into what "stillness" really is.  

If you watch very carefully when you wake up, naturally, as opposed to suddenly by an alarm clock, you will have a very still and clear window during the transition to "daily life" w/all of its thoughts, plans and activities.  This may be very brief, but it is always there.  It is "what is".  It is That.

you can lengthen this "what is/That" period by telling yourself before you go to sleep that you are going to watch for it the next morning and that it is important that you do so.  If you do this every night, you will eventually find yourself watching carefully as the transition happens the next morning, and one morning, there IT is.   

The more times you do this, the more accessible, and more sustained it is.  It will end as/when the ego comes charging in with its stories, problems, challenges, etc. This is also a great lesson demonstrating that the ego is "the thief who has been pretending to be a policeman but has been robbing you all along" of this deep stillness that is your True Nature.    

This space is also accessible when you are transitioning from "daily life" into sleep in the evening.  However, most of us are so sleep-deprived and drained of energy that we pass through it so fast that is just isn't detectable.  

The being "awake during deep sleep" question has taken on a lot of importance in some folks' minds, although it is hard to understand why.  Some folk are attempting to use it to "prove" they are awakened, because most folk don't/can't do it.  

There are two issues with attaching any significance to this "apparent" phenomena.  i say apparent because it is really impossible to verify it conclusively by personal experience, particularly if you are "awakened".  i have had a long discussion with one of the well known teachers who is currently living in southeast Asia on this very issue.

If you are really awakened, you are living in "now, now, now" and there is really no storage, no memory of what really took place even 5 minutes ago, unless it had some strong emotional content or perceived importance (which is rare).  you are fully present "now", and there is just no interest in storing what just happened for some record, as the present is so luminous, Present and astonishingly expansive.

The memory of the recent past just doesn't "measure up" in a Skinner box way, i.e. you would never keep pressing the memory lever to keep recording the past, or keep stepping on the electrified grid of "normal life", if you had a food dispenser with unimaginably tasty food continuously available.

i recall that i gave a talk yesterday on Thiruvannamali and Ramana's life, but recall few details.  i recall that i skyped with a professor from the National University of Singapore who wanted to write an article from my perspective on managing organizations w/o thoughts, but recall only his image.  Even that is fading as about a day has passed, which is the typical limit of "short term memory", and it was not useful to "permanently" store it.  The intervening time is similar.  When what is happening right now is so perfectly unimaginably "superior", why bother with storing a "dead" memory?

Similarly, with recalling that i was continuously aware of my mental state during "sleep".  i have no conceivable way of proving, even to myself, that i had a certain mind state for the last 8 hours, awake or asleep.  It is just impossible if you are really "awakened".  i have had many experiences of just having been aware during sleep, as far as i can ascertain, when i was awakened, but not startingly, by something like rain falling or the wind blowing.  i cannot assert that i was that way for 8 hours, however.

There is also the "measurement problem", akin to quantum physics.  The very act of forcing the observation changes the situation so that there is no way of knowing what the original situation really was.   Waking someone up suddenly, as is done in some experiments, as opposed to the slow waking up described above, unavoidably disrupts the situation; you are jerked from wherever you were into "the world".  Who could convincingly assert on a "scientific basis", that the disruption didn't perturb their recollection of what their original state really was?

i suggested to my southeast Asian collaborator that he just go to a sleep clinic in a nearby large city and have them monitor him throughout the night.  we have decades of research on the different EEG states in different stages of sleep.  It should be very easy for them to tell him if he was in the same EEG state all night.  he never did this as far as i know.

i also asked him if he has thoughts throughout the day.  he said that he had them basically continuously.  Interesting that he is concerned about whether he is aware when he is asleep, but not when he is "awake".