Dreamless Sleep

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"Witnessing in deep sleep or ... dreamless sleep was described ... as ... a feeling of infinite expansion and bliss"[1]. Among "witnessings" during sleep is included "witnessed dreamless sleep, a sort of expansive awareness, often described as "bliss."" We may "regard witnessed dreamless sleep as enlightened".[2] "Then there is dreamless sleep, persistent through all sleep stages and different from mere dreamlessness because it is recallably conscious. ... It begins with an awareness that I am not dreaming, and I know that I am not awake. I become aware of a whirlpool of vast energy and sound -- rising and falling -- oscillating within itself. I experience it as a natural part of myself ..., and at this point I have a strange awareness ... that this vast field of energy is who I really am. Through all this I don't forget who I am as a person, or the fact that I know I am not dreaming."[3] "In Tibetan Buddhism, "dreamless sleep is described in term of a series of eight visual experiences, consisting only of light and darkness." [4]

  • "[... 1] ... an apparent lake in the desert"
  • "[2] ... smoke"
  • "[3] ... sparks"
  • "[4] ... sputtering light"
  • "[5] ... night sky"
  • "[6] ... glaring ... sky"
  • "[7] complete darkness"
  • "[8] ... very bright lasting light"

"The fullness of light is an intense, vibrant white light filling the visual field ... It is accompanied by uncontrollable joy and devotion".[5] "The expansiveness is one of light -- like the light of awareness."[6]


[edit] References

  1. ^ Lucid Dreaming Is Only the Beginning
  2. ^ Shafton (1995), p. 476
  3. ^ Shafton (1995), p. 477
  4. ^ Shafton (1995), p. 478
  5. ^ loc. cit.
  6. ^ Go to A Continuum of Consciousness in Sleep


[edit] Bibliography

  • Anthony Shafton : Dream Reader : Contemporary Approaches to the Study of Dreams. Albany : State University of New York Press, 1995.


[edit] External links