Dialogues At The End Of The Search
"Deep Sleep" (Chapter 62)
Wayne: There is a moment just before you drop off into sleep that you disappear. The “you” I am speaking about is the mind-defined you. This you is the one that defines you as a woman or man, race, age, health, desires, etc. This is the conditioning that you are identified with.
We have spoken in the past about this whole “Leela” or “God’s Play” is one of mistaken identification, meaning that you are identifying with the body as opposed to Peace. It is not my intention to get into this here except to point out that the moment just before you drift off is one of Self Realization.
Remember how as a little kid you tried to catch yourself falling asleep and you could never do it? Maybe you still try, but as you know it can’t be done. It is kind of like attempting to catch the moment you die. You’re either dead or alive and you can’t be both. :)) That moment when you go from bodily identification to Peace is a moment that is beyond experience - but an understanding of it will deepen your Realization.
The reason you cannot catch the moment is because there is no “you” to catch it. If you can catch it you are still an ego-identified you but when ego or you dissolve - You Are Peace. Peace, being Pure and Pristine, has no qualities what so ever. An experience depends upon something having qualities. Qualities are sort of like hooks or handles that the mind grabs onto. The mind needs an object to have qualities in order for the mind to identify it. If it doesn’t have qualities the mind can’t see it or experience it, and this is why the mind cannot experience Peace. Peace is outside the domain of the mind.
Peace can be Known, but not in the way the mind knows things. Just knowing this is enough to deepen your Realization.
EM: Just to clarify: when you refer to “deep sleep,” this is not REM sleep, correct? REM is that part of the sleep cycle in which dreams occur, right? Because it is quite clear that ego-mind is very much present in dreams.
Wayne: Correct. The dream state is still ego-mind. In deep sleep there is no ego mind and there is no “state.”
If you’re like me, you didn’t catch the exact instant you dropped into sleep last night. You turned off the light, shifted position and the alarm went off. (There may have been one or two interruptions.)
Each night we die and then awaken. We descend through dream sleep into the deep sleep, where there is no conscious awareness, and yet there is Awareness. This Awareness beyond the dream state is similar to, and indeed is, Peace. There is no one there aware, as an individual, and yet there is Awareness.
Often I hear someone ask “Well if I am not aware in the deep sleep state, how can there be awareness?” and on the surface that seems to be a logical question. What the person is saying is that he is the determiner of whether awareness is present or not. In other words, this is just another way for ego-mind to say that if it isn’t aware, or if it doesn’t understand, then there is no awareness or understanding.
To put it another way: anything that doesn’t involve the ego-mind “doesn’t exist,” being unusable and useless (anything that can’t be used or understood by the individual (ego-mind) is, by its very definition, “useless”). It is a circular concept but it is the concept that rules the world. And it is the concept that rules religious/spiritual paths. All paths have at their core a very significant basis and a sliver of Truth pointing, and almost all say in one way or another that you can look forever, but you won’t find anything. Yet the followers continue to search, discuss, argue, and attack one another.
In deep sleep there is Awareness. This can easily be proven by the very fact that you are aware after the fact that you had a deep sleep during the night. This confuses many. They say, “Yes, I am aware after the fact that I had a deep sleep last night, but I was not aware during the fact, and so there was no awareness then.” And this seems logical until one points out to them that in order to be aware after the fact, they must have been aware during the fact. In other words, they could have had no knowledge after the fact, unless there is Awareness (though not ego-mind awareness) during the fact. But they are dependent upon “I,” which is ego-mind, to tell them the truth; and since the ego-mind was not aware, they think they were not aware - and as an individual this is so but not as Awareness itSelf.
Even when this is explained, many are still confused (as many of you reading may be) because of the habitual patterns of the mind. But if you
will just look at this, you will see that it is so, and in this seeing you will begin to see the difference between Awareness (capital “A”), which is
Peace, and awareness (small “a”), which is of the individual and, as such, comes and goes.
Awareness, or Peace, is constant and not dependent upon an individual awareness. But since the individual has no access through the senses to Awareness/Peace the mind says it doesn’t exist. The individual who has not had the experience of Peace/Awareness (that passes understanding), will form a concept of what is. This is the beginning of the search, which by its very nature cannot succeed. It cannot succeed because what the egomind is looking for cannot be experienced by the ego-mind (ego-mind can only experience that which it creates); therefore there can be no end to the search.
Deep down in the human Heart, Truth is forever Present. But there is only false searching for the lazy seeker who wants everything given to him. Rather than commune with the Heart, the seeker attempts to find a path that can tell him how to do it, which he can then discuss and argue with others about. Unfortunately, there are thousands of paths and false teachers that do this. Since many of these paths have the weight of years of acceptance around them, the seeker thinks that they must be true to have lasted so long - Christianity and Buddhism being but two examples. No one has ever found Peace following a path. Not one.
As one of my early Teachers, Krishnamurti, pointed out: “Truth is a pathless land, and you cannot approach it by any path whatsoever, by any religion, by any sect ...” He further said in reference to beliefs, “You must not organize it. If you do, it becomes dead, crystallized; it becomes a creed, a sect, a religion, to be imposed on others.”
As I have said before, none of what I say, or what Krishnamurti said or others say, should be taken as a belief by you and followed. You must see for yourself.
You are all alone, but you are surrounded by all the help you need.
EM: When conceptualization is absent, the individual is no longer a separate entity.
Wayne: Yes. When I am in deep sleep there is no conceptualization going on, and there is no Wayne there. It is only when the body arises out of deep sleep that I arise, and with the arising of the “I” (Wayne) there
arises the conceptual world. The conceptual world depends upon a separate “Wayne” in order to exist. If there is no conceptual Wayne, there cannot be a conceptual world. One of the ways I become distracted, is to ask whether there is a world for everyone else even though there may not be one for me; in other words, is the world there, when I am not?
Throughout this life I have pondered the meaning of death, never being convinced it was what it seemed to be. I spent more time perhaps than the average individual thinking about death and visiting cemeteries, looking at old grave stones and wondering whether that body lying below had had the same concerns and joys as I experience. My answer to that question was always - yes they did, although the specific circumstances differed.
As my understanding deepened, I began to question whether there was anything at all outside of me. I began to ask and wonder whether this whole universe came into existence when I did on the day of my apparent birth, and whether it would blink out and cease to exist when I died. I began to ponder on whether or not there was even anyone “in” the bodies I seemed to be speaking to and interacting with in this world. I wondered whether perhaps I was the one giving meaning to everything, including to the apparent people “out there.”
And then the gift returned - “Who am I?” - and with the return of the gift the questions were once again seen as my distractions from Seeing mySelf.
So I continue to conceptualize. I see a world and people in it. I feel the body I inhabit. I feel emotions, and yet, mysteriously, I cannot find the one seeing and feeling. Yet even more mysteriously, I Know. And with this Knowing, the body erupts into tears and uncontrollability. I must control the sacred glimpses or I will cease to exist, and I am not ready for that yet. Perhaps I will never be ready - I don’t know - but as it is True that everything is within me, then Ramana, and Jesus, and Buddha live within me and I can only say, what a lucky life.
Finally I Heard. It was Heard.
Everywhere I look, I See the face of God.
I Am That.
