So, in the Suttas, sleep and ayatana immersions are treated as two different experiences. However, I haven’t come across any suttas that actually explain sleep in detail (aside from indulgence in it being frowned upon).
Is there any suttas, commentaries or abhidhamma treaties that explain their difference, and why cessation of feeling and perception is not analogous to sleep? Why is one instance of absence of sensory experience is treated differently than another?
If anyone has authoritative sources on this, it would be much appreciated!
‘Under two conditions, O king, is the mind inactive though the body is there—when a man being in deep sleep the mind has returned into itself [~bhavanga], and when the man has fallen into a trance [~nirodha].
Cessation of perception and feeling is synonymous with the cessation of consciousness. Sleep isn’t, consciousness is present in this or that way, that I am not sure how to describe it. Perhaps some clue are reports about patients in anesthetic state who could describe precisely what was going on during operation.
Nevertheless that consciousness is present in deep sleep is obvious since sufficient noisy sound or shaking the body are able to wake up the sleepers.
After emerging from the base of noth-ingness the meditator then makes four resolutions: (1) that any requisites he has belonging to others should not be destroyed during the attainment (his own requisites are automatically protected by the attainment itself);
(2) that he should emerge if his services are needed by the Sangha;
(3) that he should emerge if he is summoned by the Buddha (during the Buddha’s lifetime); and (4) that he is not bound to die within seven days.
After making these resolutions, he enters the fourth immaterial jhāna, which occurs for two moments of javana. Immediately after, he attains cessation, wherein the stream of consciousness is temporarily suspended.
Since resultants are produced from the maturing of kamma, they are not active but passive and quiescent. Thus in the mind of a person in deep sleep, the resultant bhavanga consciousness arises and passes away in constant succession, yet during this time no efforts are made for action by body, speech, or mind, and there is not even distinct aware-ness of an object.
This is not from a very authoritative source; something that has happened to me several times is falling asleep but remaining aware while sleeping. Not through the whole night, but like a 10-20 minute nap.
This in some ways like an immersion state (your awareness is “absorbed” in the mind, no awareness of your body) – but the awareness is very weak also. Your awareness isn’t energized, it’s dim, so you can’t really tell what’s going on. When you wake up you it’s like “that was odd” but there’s not much room for insight because you couldn’t really see what was happening.
Extrapolating from this, I would assume that the difference between turning off consciousness based on the fourth jhana, and going to sleep like we usually do, is the the hyper-aware hyper-energized-yet-completely-still state of awareness that comes with the fourth jhana (as described by e.g. Ajahn Brahm).
In the latter, presumably, one is able to really see the impermanence of consciousness; it turning on and off. With ordinary sleep, awareness is just too dim for insight probably.
Sounds like lucid dreaming. Or in between sleep and wakefulness.
4th Jhāna for deep Jhāna, absorption model is that there’s just awareness of the object of meditation. The mind is one-pointed.
Normal sleep cycles between rem and non-rem sleep. REM sleep is where one dreams and the body is paralysed to avoid acting out the dream. non-rem sleep is more of deep restful sleep, where the body is not paralyzed, so people who suffer from sleep walking does it during this phase of sleep. We get more non-rem sleep in the beginning of our sleep and more REM sleep at the end of our sleep.
There’s good book on sleep that can be read. I am reading why we sleep.
It’s not lucid dreaming though, lucid dreaming is a very different experience IMO (speaking only for myself, not sure how it is for others when they lucid dream)
It’s like sleeping but with some weak mindfulness/awareness present. It’s odd, like half-meditation-half-sleep, but in any case it doesn’t seem it’s a state that’s very conducive to insight.
My point is just the strength of awareness as a determining factor. Even if deep sleep and the fourth immaterial were the same in terms of consciousness turning off, they’d be different in the strength of awareness. Like an extremely dim light turning on and off, vs. having stadium lights in your living room and turning them on and off.
That’s just how I’d extrapolate based on this much lesser experience.
As far as dependent arising goes, when this is - this is, perception and feeling determines consciousness. These things go together, so when this is not - this is not.
