01 Jun 2024
[Prof. JSR Prasad asked:- Swami, Shankara said that God is attained by deep sleep (Suṣuptyeka siddhaḥ). You say that the fundamental awareness disappears there since the brain-nervous system is fully taking rest without functioning. How do You resolve this contradiction?]
Swami replied:- In deep sleep, the world is not at all grasped due to the disappearance of fundamental awareness that is to be produced by the inert energy in a functioning brain-nervous system. Since this system is taking complete rest without function, the inert energy can’t be transformed into a new specific work form called awareness. Due to lack of awareness, the world or the worldly affairs stored in memory (cittam) are not grasped. In this state of total absence of any worldly information, the world does not exist for the person in deep sleep even though it exists for other souls. If you take this situation as the absence of creation, naturally God must be grasped since God alone exists as absolute reality in the absence of creation. There are only two items:- i) Unimaginable God or Parabrahman, which is the absolute reality ii) Imaginable creation, which is relative reality. In the absence of the second item, the first item shall be leftover. But, unfortunately, the first item is unimaginable and hence, cannot be grasped even if the awareness exists.
In the absence of awareness, we need not say at all that the unimaginable God is not grasped by the non-existing awareness. In the absence of the grasping of the world, there is total ignorance of the unimaginable God, which exists even if awareness exists without grasping the world as in the state of meditation. This total ignorance results only in deep sleep because in awaken and dream states, there is grasping of gross and subtle states of the world respectively. Therefore, based on this total ignorance of everything, Shankara told that unimaginable God exists in deep sleep. Unimaginable God Himself means total ignorance from the side of the soul (individual soul or awareness) because He can never be even imagined, be it in the presence of awareness or absence of awareness. Thus, the state of deep sleep suits to the statement saying that in deep sleep, unimaginable God is attained. Here attained means attainment of God, Who is not knowable at all!
i) Awaken State:- As expected, the unimaginable God is unknowable and total ignorance of the unimaginable God can be experienced because awareness exists. As far as the world is concerned, world is known and experienced. The total ignorance (ignorance about only the unimaginable God) is experienced by the awareness because the unimaginable God is beyond everything including awareness. (Hence, the unimaginable God is not experienced.)
ii) Dream State:- As expected, the unimaginable God is unknowable and total ignorance of the unimaginable God can be experienced because awareness exists. As far as the world is concerned, world is not known and is not experienced. But, the memories of the world stored in the faculty of memory (cittam) are experienced by the soul. The total ignorance (ignorance of the unimaginable God + ignorance of world) is experienced by the awareness because the unimaginable God is beyond everything including awareness. (Hence, the unimaginable God is not experienced.)
iii) State of Deep Sleep:- As expected, the unimaginable God is unknowable and total ignorance of the unimaginable God cannot be experienced because awareness doesn’t exist even by a trace. As far as the world and worldly memories are concerned, both are not known and the total ignorance is not at all experienced because awareness is totally absent due to the resting brain-nervous system. Here, the total ignorance (ignorance of the unimaginable God + ignorance of world and worldly memories) is not experienced because the awareness (experiencer) itself does not exist.
The Advaita philosophers say that the total ignorance in deep sleep is experienced by the awareness or individual soul (also called as soul loosely) and this is absurd because such experience does not exist in the deep sleep of even those Advaita philosophers!
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