Life is suffering / World and its sufferings

[Guest guest]

Hallo Barney,

If you are still here, let me see if I can shed a little light on

the matter.

The sleep analogy is not unique to Ramana, its an old way of talking

in Jnana yoga circles. Youfll find it used a lot in the Yoga

Vasishta for example.

 

To understand it, you have to look at sleep, waking from a vedantic

rather than western angle. In Vedanta the Self is called the Fourth.

Its said: there are the three relative states of consciousness of

Waking, Dreaming Sleeping. While these states are constantly

shifting and arising and ceasing in cycles everyday there is a

gfourthh absolute state of conscious which is the self awareness

that witnesses the three relative states. Sleep is defined as the

state of least awareness, yet where the mind is almost entirely

dormant. Therefore itfs a state of low awareness but tremendous

stillness. Waking is defined as the most aware of the three states

but is also the state most dominated by activity and thus the mind

(and therefore the ego) is in the state of greatest activity. In the

fourth state we know the pure awareness of the Self, a gstateh of

awareness uncovered by the activity of the mind. The cognition of

that pure awareness renders the mind entirely quiescent. Thus the

mind is as if asleep while the awareness is established in its own

wakefulness.

 

When one contacts this pure awareness repeatedly it gradually

becomes more accessible in and out of formal meditation. When a

person while in activity finds that the mind remains entirely

quiescent and he or she is firmly established in Self awareness,

that person is said to be asleep while awake. If the mindfs

impressions subside completely then the world which the mind

formally projected outwards as a real, separate entity subsides with

it and the practitioner experiences all objects to be of the same

nature of existence-awareness. It is said in the language of Vedanta

that the world no longer exists for that person.

 

Is this at all a helpful hint for you?

 

Try not to blow a gasket in any case, it sounds painful

 

N