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continued from Part 1)

-------------------------------------------------------


Why do we sleep?


There are times when a rare awareness about Sleep
suddenly dawns on us; and when it does we seem
convinced: 


n Sleep is indeed a fascinating and complex
experience, and more than a mere biological act we are
programmed to carry out as daily, mechanical routine; 


n Sleep is not just a "physiological response" of our
body which medical science might explain away as
nothing but a "nature call"; 


n Sleep is such a wondrous, near-mystic experience it
moves even poets to reflect upon it -- as Wordsworth
did calling it "blessed barrier between day and
day"... 


When such awareness dawns, it then occurs to us to ask
some deeply philosophical questions:


(1) Why do we sleep? What happens to us during sleep? 


(2) What is it really that we experience in sleep
which enables us to awaken fully re-energized? 


(3) What is this mysterious state of sleep we all pass
through every night almost half our lifetimes
("...pAdhi-yUmm urangipOgum ninradir padhinai-Andu..",
said saint Tondaradip-podi referring to slumbering
humanity)... and yet seem to know almost nothing about
its real nature or cause?


(4) Why should the source of so much of our vitality
and wellbeing be Sleep? If sleep is a reservoir of
energy to be used daily in "re-charging" ourselves,
wherefrom does the reservoir itself draw its kinetic
supply?


(5) Might there perhaps be another state-of-being
beyond Sleep somewhere? Someplace where one might
discover Sleep's own fountainhead: a primal
well-spring of mysterious life-energy from which much
more could possibly be drawn than what we know we now
do, in fits and starts, through our daily ration of
5-6 hours sleep? 


(6) Where might Sleep's own power-source lie? Is it
possible to directly tap into that original
powerhouse, if there should be one? 


It is these and other profound questions that get
aroused in our minds when we read the great Upanishad
called ...the "mAndUkya".



The Mandukya Upanishad


The "mAndukya" is the pithiest of ten principal
Upanishads which in our Vedantic tradition are
collectively known as "dasOpanishad". It belongs to
the Atharvana Veda. It contains only 12 brief
"mantrA-s". Scholars both past and present have
regarded this Upanishad to be brilliant but the most
inscrutable. Nonetheless, all the great Vedantic
'achAryA-s', from VyAsa and Gaudapada to Adi
Shankara, RamanujAchArya and Ranga-ramanuja-muni, have
all alluded, either directly or indirectly, to this
Upanishad in their respective commentaries. Shankara,
it is said, once declared that if a person could only
study a single Upanishad in a lifetime it should be
this one. In another less known, minor Upanishad
called "Muktika" (Deliverance), there is an account,
it is said, of Rama appearing before a devotee and
saying "the Mandukya alone is sufficient for the
deliverance of the spiritual aspirant", though less
eager devotees will have to read the 'dasOpanishad',
or thirty-two or even all one hundred and eight. "In
its succinctness the Mandukya distills essentials of
mystical insight", wrote a contemporary scholar, Sri
Eknath Eswaran. 


No Upanishad study is recommended without the guidance
and supervision of a personal and qualified teacher.
The Mandukya is no exception. The Mandukya's terse
description of the experience of Sleep as
"sUshUpta-sthAna" (literally, a "place of Sleep") and
as "truteeyah: pAdah:" (the third state of human
experience) is extremely difficult to comprehend in
layman terms. Only a Vedantic guru can illumine a
student on the truth of the Mandukya passages.
However, even in the absence of a proper teacher, and
even when left to his own means, a serious student
placing his trust in God and doggedly pursuing the
Upanishad, can still expect to grasp at least the
outlines of the central theme of the sacred text, if
he diligently and whole-heartedly applies his mind to
the task. The task begins, firstly, in being able to
imagine Sleep to be a journey into the night Man
undertakes --- a journey with three stops along the
way... 


Let us follow it.

*****************


(to be continued)


dAsan,

Sudarshan



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