The Impermanent I

The Impermanent I

Scientific research has revealed that we each have several periods of dreaming while we slumber each night. Interspersed, we also have periods of a deeper state of sleep in which dreams are absent. In this condition, were it not for the autonomic and metabolic systems which direct such functions as heartbeat, respiration, etc., our unconscious state would simply be a coma resulting in death. However much our organism requires this period of comatose deep sleep daily, the body could not survive an endless interim of it; we need, at the very least, to actively feed ourself, replenish and expel liquids, employ the muscles, and so on. From this mindless, unconscious condition of deep sleep, our cognitive “thinking mind” arises, expressing itself consciously in the figurative activity of a dreaming episode. Once the cognitive process arises and stabilizes itself, wakened consciousness presides. We attend to our quotidian duties required for the organism’s survival; retire nightly for rest from our wakened excursions; relax the cognitive consciousness into a state of its inactivity; and the inert deep sleep condition prevails as the normative state again. The significance of this process (of the sleep cycle) is threefold: that of the un-consciousness; the pre-wakened consciousness; and then wakened, active consciousness. Identification of (or with) the organism as “myself” is only a phenomenon of the latter two categories. Anyone whose sleep has been unbroken for a matter of several hours has experienced self-identification, or self

awareness, present in a portion of that period, as recognized in dreaming. But for some period of time, unaccounted for by dreaming, there was an un-conscious, mindless interlude: it was a state of being that was absent of self-identification.

While, as previously stated, a body cannot survive an indefinite period of un-conscious, comatose inactivity, it becomes clear that the organism can continue to function, hour by hour, without cognitive self-identification. And, because there are no conscious conceptions or images in deep sleep, there is also no possibility for illusions. By contrast, in the dreaming state there are appearances and images which are entirely fantasy and illusion. In the dreaming state, there is self-identification with the central dream figure, or at least the implied perceiver of the dream experiences. What is perceived by this dream “self” are objects, forms or images which are not—that is, are other than—this imagined, self identified, “person.” In the deep sleep state, there are no images, or even illusions, which occur in mind-less consciousness; there is not even a conception of ‘I’ as a “person,” or even as a dream figure. As an agent to direct the activities of the body, such a self-identified entity is unneeded, since the autonomic and metabolic systems are in direct control. The self-designation, as ‘I’, only begins to formulate in the dreaming “mind” as the cognitive process emerges in preparation for the wakened state. It is a fantasy entity which directs, or appears to react to, the projections in the dream.

Once the cognitive, “thinking” mind has stabilized itself by enacting the illusive developments in a dream, the subjective perceiver of the dream state (the person self-identified as ‘I’) begins to merge into the awakened, active state. During the awake period, the ‘I’ serves its role of directing activities as the agent, or “self,” of the “person” who was conceived in the dreaming state. Once the relative and necessary activities of our waking day are completed, we rest the body; the I-identification reverts to identification with a fantasy dream figure; and dis-appears entirely upon the onset of re-emergent deep sleep. The ‘I’, or self identification, is a temporary superimposition for functional relationship, both in the precognitive dream state and the wakened, cognitive and active, state. It originates, each day, out of a pre-awakening illusory condition, and dissolves each night back into an illusory condition. We have no control over the arising or the disappearance of this temporary agency, or phantasm. Its purpose is to permit us to relate to and manipulate the material world, for the physical survival of the organism. That it is not a necessary fixture during hours of our life is instructive: there is no substantive or sustained ‘I’ which is any more our fundamental identity than is empty presence which exists in the portion of our life that is free of “self” interest; dream-less sleep. In other words, that “you” are not is at least as real as that you are.

“You experience the world due to your waking and sleep states. When you know the ‘why and how’ of these states, it is an end of all your search for knowledge.”

– Nisargadatta