The deep sleep state in consciousness:
The deep sleep state takes the inquiry into consciousness much farther. Deep sleep, by definition, would
have to be a thoughtless state. Flow of thought is mental activity and signifies wakefulness and awareness.
I, as a person cease to be in deep sleep. 'I fell fast asleep. I know nothing' is your quote and mine.
This is said by us on waking up, not sensed by us while in deep sleep. The continuing identity of the same
I-person is not questioned. Without the physical body, without even the subtle mental-body, where was this
'I'? He surely was, for he returned. Thought is to Total Consciousness what a wave is to the ocean. Flow of
thought is what we call 'the mind'. Total consciousness manifests as individualized mind through one brain,
just as Total Electricity manifests as light through one bulb. When switched off, electricity goes into the
unmanifest mode. And the room goes into darkness. Deep sleep ism the switching off, when the relative
consciousness becomes unmanifest and the person knows nothing. 'I knew nothing' he says. You and I
have said it But the I-ness, the insignia of consciousness, has continued through waking, dream, and deep
sleep states. The brain was not essential for the existence of consciousness, it was only essential for its
manifestation as the mind. The switched off bulb will light up again. The sleeping man will wake up.
But when the bulb has fused it cannot lit again. That is death. The body dies when the contact with the
consciousness current is destroyed, when the circuit is broken permanently. The bulb goes into the dust
bin; survivors take the corpse to the graveyard or the crematorium.
Total Consciousness is seamless, shoreless. Is it not my mind that knows time and space? Time and space
are contents of my consciousness. How then can they be the container of my consciousness? If my brain
matter is producing consciousness, then of course I am in time, but if in reality the reverse is true, then time
is in me. It means that I am coeval with time. I am as eternal as time is. Bodies are born, grow and die
but the Consciousness that is reflected in the experiencer, the ego or the psyche or the I-ness of the individual
cannot cease to be. Death is only a changed state of consciousness. An anonymous poem says it perfectly:
Do not stand at my grace, and cry,
I am not there, I did not die.
contd.,
Arunachala Siva.