What About Deep Sleep?

Sri Ramana Maharshi

Q: Please help me realize Atma-Paramatma-Satchidananda.

M: Atma-Paramatma-Satchidananda mean one and the same thing - the Self. The Self is eternally realized. Otherwise there will be no pleasure in it. If it is not eternal it must have a beginning; what begins will also end; so that it is only transient. There is no use seeking for a temporary state of affairs. The fact is that it is the state of effortless, ever alert Peace. Effortlessness while remaining aware is the state of Bliss, and that is Realization.

Q: I do not want intellectual answers. I want them to be practical.

M: Yes. Direct knowledge does not require intellectual discourses. Everyone says I AM. Is there anything more to realze?

It is not clear to me.

You exist. You say I AM. That means existence.

But I am not sure of it, i.e., my existence.

Oh! Who then is speaking now?

I surely. But whether I exist or not, I am not sure. Moreover, admitting my existence leads me nowhere.

There must be one even to deny the existence. If you do not exist, there is no questioner, and no question can arise.

Let us take it that I exist.

How do you know that you exist?

Because I think, I feel, I see etc.

So you mean that your existence is inferred from these. Furthermore, there is no feeling, thinking etc. in sleep and yet there is the being.

But no. I cannot say that I was in deep sleep.

Do you deny your existence in sleep?

I may be or may not be in sleep. God knows.

When you wake up from sleep, you remember what you did before falling asleep.

I can say that I was before and after sleep but I cannot say if I was in sleep.

Do you now say that you were asleep?

Yes.

How do you know unless you remember the state of sleep?

It does not follow that I existed in sleep. Admission of such existence leads nowhere.

Do you mean to say that a man dies every time that sleep overtakes him and that he resuscitates while waking?

Maybe. God alone knows.

Then let God come and find the solution for these riddles. If one were to die in sleep, one will be afraid of sleep, just as one fears death. On the other hand one courts sleep. Why should sleep be courted unless there is pleasure in it?

(To be continued)