Meditation and Sleep and Death
Three Amigos
Meditation is a cognitive technology. Sleep is a biological necessity.
There are many forms of meditation. What they all have in common is noticing what our attention is doing and, usually, keeping it on a predetermined object or returning it to that object when we notice it has wandered.
Mysteries
While meditation has been shown to have many benefits, it is not clear how they are achieved.
Sleep is a bigger mystery. It is not clear why we need it, what it does, or how it does it.
There is some kind of a relationship between these two activities. Studies have shown that meditation improves sleep, but not why, or through what mechanism of action.
Techniques
There may be as many techniques for falling asleep as there are techniques for meditating. It is easy, especially in meditation, to focus on the technique itself and its potentially important details than the overall experience.
Some believe there are absolute stages of progress in meditation with techniques appropriate to the specific stage. Others believe that the whole notion of progress and stages is antithetical to the true idea of meditative practice. Nevertheless, most meditators become very accustomed to a particular technique which they rarely improvise on or change.
Similarly, most people have a fairly fixed approach to sleep. If any element of the approach is removed, sleep may not come. No one likes it when sleep does not come, which is why it is easy to fixate on the pieces of the individual sleep success formula.
When sleep does not come, people can get nervous, even panicky. If we can push through the initial fear that we will never fall asleep, setting aside our normal technique is one way to develop a greater understanding of what it means to go to sleep.
Noticing
When all the surrounding technical elements are removed, I believe we find that sleep and meditation are deeply similar and also exactly opposite in a crucial way.
The essence of meditation is noticing, just noticing without getting entangled in what we notice. It is a constant effortless, non-judgmental, surveillance of everything inside and outside of us. We don’t try to make our attention do anything. We just notice what is present.
Not-trying is also a hallmark of falling asleep. We have to let it happen to us. But we have to let it happen to us unnoticed.
The precursors of sleep can be noticed. We can sense its coming, its closeness. But if we continue actively noticing, sleep will not come. Sleep’s successful takeover of our brain cannot be witnessed. We slip into sleep unnoticed. A definition of sleep might even be, ‘not-noticing any more.’
Sometimes noticing returns during dreams, especially during lucid dreaming. But sleep comes first and sleep will only take over when it is unobserved.
A Little Death
Sleep and Death are frequently compared. in Greek mythology, Thanatos (Death) and Hypnos (Sleep) are twin brothers. The way they come upon us, however, is profoundly different.
Sleep takes no effort. Effort prevents sleep. Sleep is like a gift we simply receive and accept.
When Death comes, it is irresistible. Our effortlessness is not a precondition. We may be able to cling to life for some period of time but the ending is unavoidable. Death doesn’t care if we notice it or not or what our state of mind is.
Death is more of a mystery than meditation and sleep put together. The death that doesn’t care about our state of mind is the physical aspect of bodily function ceasing, which some say is the totality of death.
Others believe there is more to us than our physical body and thus more to death as well. From this perspective, the way we notice death and react with or without judgment or resistance can have profound consequences.
In some cultural traditions, death is a gift — if we choose to accept it. The moment of death is the supreme opportunity to realize that our apparently separate existence in separate bodies is an illusion. To be free of this illusion is seen as the highest spiritual attainment.
Whether we share this view of ourselves or not, the idea of sleep as a rehearsal for death can help improve the quality of life while we are awake, asleep or dying.
Fear of Death
According to the prevailing idea of death in western culture today, best expressed in Terror Management Theory, we are ‘hardwired’ to fear death. There is nothing we can do about this situation so we spend our lives denying the inevitable and compensating through ‘immortality projects.’
On the other hand, Socrates, through Plato, suggests we examine the truths of our life and most of all that we prepare for dying. But how are we supposed to do this if we are born to fear?
Maybe we are more flexible than Terror Management Theory stipulates. Maybe by facing and learning to accept our mortality we can overcome what might simply be culturally conditioned responses to death. Maybe by exposure to death, we can normalize and even appreciate mortality.
Looking at Sleep as a rehearsal for death can be part of the exposure therapy.
Three Amigos
I think we mislead ourselves when we use the phrase, ‘go to sleep.’ We do not actually go to someplace called, ‘sleep.’ Sleep comes to us and puts us in a different mental state than we are in while awake.
If sleep is a rehearsal for death, then meditation might be seen, among other things, as a rehearsal for sleep. A daily practice of meditation helps train us to not-try and to notice. It helps to notice when sleep is coming and it helps to not-try to stay awake or to let sleep take us.
Then, the moment of sleep becomes like the moment of death. We can be open to it without knowing what will happen. Death happens. Without trying, its mystery can be revealed.
Tom writes about new media technologies and other topics he has little if any standing to write about. He maintains a daily practice of meditation and serves as a Session Leader for Tripp.
He holds a Black Belt in Learning and loves writing. More here.
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