A Constructive Survey of Upanishadic Philosophy c6.s2.13

c6.s2.13

that sleep occurs when the soul goes to rest in the ‘space’ inside the heart. In order to prove this to Gārgya an experimental inquiry was undertaken by Ajātaśatru. He took Gārgya by the hand and came to a place where a man was sleeping. He then called out to him by these names, “Thou, Great one, clad in white raiment, Soma, King of all”, and (yet) he did not rise. Then he rubbed him with his hand, (struck him with a stick—Kau.,) and he got up. Then said Ajātaśatru “when this man was asleep, where then was this Person full of intelligence, and from whence did he return?” Gārgya did not know the answer. Thereupon, Ajātaśatru said “when this man was asleep, then the Person full of intelligence (i.e. the Soul) lay in the space which is in the heart.” (S. II. f). The last explanation offered of the phenomenon of sleep is the very curious explanation, that, in deep sleep, the Soul is at one with Brahman! This is like saying that when one has no explanation to give, one might excuse himself with the Absolute! A passage from the Praśna Upanishad, again, tells us that in deep sleep “the mind, which is the sacrificer, is carried every day to Brahman,” which is corroborated by another passage from the Chhāndogya, which says “when a man sleeps, then, my dear son, he becomes united with the True, he is gone to his own (Self). Therefore they say, ‘svapiti’, he sleeps, because he is gone (apīta) to his own (sva).” (S. II. g). The idea was that in deep sleep the Soul was at one with Brahman, and thus deep sleep was likened to the state of ecstasy. There is, in fact, as much likeness, or as little, between sleep and ecstasy, as there is, as Spinoza would have said, between God and Dog : the same letters, but what an important difference! It seems that this difference was later appreciated even in the Upanishads when it was said that even though the soul was at one with Brahman in deep sleep, it still did not know this, was not cognisant of it: "as people, who do not know a field, walk again and again over a golden treasure that is hidden somewhere in the earth, and yet are not able to discover it, thus do all these creatures day after day become merged in Brahman, and yet do not discover it, because they are carried away by untruth." (S. 11. h).