Name: Ivan
Location: Galicia
Dear Francis: Few weeks ago I read somewhere that you can have a “glimpse” of the Self just after waking up, and I said to myself “it would be good if can detect that very moment and linger there”… But I coudn`t even remember to do so and I just said: “OK that´s not for me”, I didn´t give much importance to the fact and I keep on doing my things. Some days ago being asked by my girlfriend how I was sleeping lately (because she is away and she coudn´t sleep very well in those days) I told her that in the past nights I kind of wake up in the middle of the night, not completely awake and stayed like that almost all night long (or at least what seemed to me a long time, though I can´t say it for sure), but on finally waking up I did not feel sleepy or drowsy, in fact I felt fine, I felt like having had a good night. It was not like dreaming, it was more like seeing myself dreaming. Hard to describe, hope you know hat I mean. Believe or not I didn´t see any connection between the two facts until recently. Now I am a little confused. Do you think that experience was awareness during dreaming-deep sleep or just some sort of “daydreaming”, some delusion nourished by this search of mine. Thanks a lot!
Dear Ivan,
As we become interested in the experience of pure consciousness, changes occur in the threes states. In particular, the dream state becomes step by step “lighter”, until we don’t sleep any longer. The body sleeps, the mind dreams, we remain awake. There might be a long delay (several years in my case) until we realize that we don’t sleep any longer. We then know this wakefulness has been going long for a long time, but we often cannot remember when it began. These are interesting signs, telling us we are on the right track, but the real benchmark of self realization is unshakable peace and causeless joy.
Love,
Francis
Index