Sleep

[Peels]

What's the purpose of sleep?

Question: What is sleep?

Maharishi: How can you know sleep when you are awake? The answer is to go to sleep and find out what it is.

Question: But I cannot know it in this way.

Maharishi: This question must be raised in sleep.

Question: But I cannot raise the question then.

Maharishi: So that is sleep.

---Sri Ramana Maharishi

[Aardvark]

Question: What is sleep?

Maharishi: How can you know sleep when you are awake? The answer is to go to sleep and find out what it is.

Question: But I cannot know it in this way.

Maharishi: This question must be raised in sleep.

Question: But I cannot raise the question then.

Maharishi: So that is sleep.

---Sri Ramana Maharishi

 

And people look to Eastern philosophies for enlightenment?

[reverse]

Sleep.

 

A few months back I read everything I could get hold of about sleep.

 

I was interested in this different state of consciousness, comparing it to awake and other states of consciousness.

 

as you are aware there are several depths or layers of sleep, characterised by different wave forms.

 

children do not have the same forms as adults and the lengths of the cycles alter as we age.

 

I found myself speculating on the unusual concept that sleep is actually "proto awareness" and what our evolutionary ancestors considered to be a state of awake.

we may require this to complete some forms of thought not directly connected to reason.

[Peels]

Based on my understanding, our consciousness are always functioning from birth until death. Some people are suspicious of this continuation, and believe that we are not conscious while asleep. I think that this feeling is caused by "amnesia", since our brain could not "burn" any new memory that happened during sleep.

 

Well, from the consciousness point of view, the only difference between awake and asleep is that we remember what happened while awake and forget what happened while asleep. That's only my opinion.

 

As to the question of "what is sleep?", I like the theory that I found from the Journal of Theoretics (vol.6-6): to process memory.

[Sayonara]

And people look to Eastern philosophies for enlightenment?

The problem with that particular argument is that the entire premise is wrong. Fun, isn't it?

 

I suppose some people are quite happy to stop thinking once they get that 'answer'.

[Peels]

The problem with that particular argument is that the entire premise is wrong. Fun' date=' isn't it?

[/quote']

I agree with you.

The purpose of that Q/A was posted, is to add some spices to the forum. I personally believe that the puzzle of "what is sleep?" can only be answered while awake.