Dreamless Sleep

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Samadhi "is lucid dreamless sleep." (Anthony Shafton : Dream Reader : Contemporary Approaches to the Study of Dreams. Albany : State University of New York Press, 1995. p. 476) http://books.google.com/books?id=90Vh8wUThAgC&pg=PA476&lpg=PA476&dq=%22lucid+dreamless+sleep%22&source=bl&ots=xAxpMz0Gcx&sig=YcQsrxxmdKlR8864dvDfGTk_HjY&hl=en&ei=9_f3S4jBI8P98AbtxLmVDg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2&ved=0CBkQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=%22lucid%20dreamless%20sleep%22&f=false

"Then there is dreamless sleep, persistent through all sleep stages and different from mere dreamlessness because it is recallably conscious. ... It begins with an awareness that I am not dreaming, and I know that I am not awake. I become aware of a whirlpool of vast energy and sound -- rising and falling -- oscillating within itself. I experience it as a natural part of myself ..., and at this point I have a strange awareness ... that this vast field of energy is who I really am. Through all this I don't forget who I am as a person, or the fact that I know I am not dreaming." (Ibid., p. 477)

The 8 successive "stages of dreamless sleep" are (according to Tibetan lore) :

1. haziness

2. smoke

3. sparks

4. sputtering light

5. moonlit night sky {cf. "full moon charm"}

6. glaring, sunny day

7. complete darkness

8. very bright lasting light (Ibid., p. 478)

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WHIRLPOOL :- "Svayambhu in His Linga-form,

beautiful like molten gold, with His Head downwards. He is revealed

by Knowledge and Meditation, and is of the shape and colour of a new

leaf. As the cool rays ot lightning and of the full moon charm, so

does His beauty. The Deva who resides happily here as in Kas`i is in

forms like a whirlpool." (S.at.-cakra Ni-rupan.a 9)

{"His Head downwards" could indeed imply a whirlpool, having a downward flux.

"His Head downwards" may also refer to a [Jaina] arhant, reckoned as suspended upside-down like as bat. But, it was the A-jivika-s, rather the Jaina-s, who were involved in yoga – so that this text may be an instance of A-jivika religious scripture.}

VAST ENERGY AND SOUND = humming sound :- "Over it shines the sleeping Kundalini, fine as the fibre of the lotus-stalk. She is the world-bewilderer, gently covering the mouth of Brahma-dvara by Her own. Like the spiral of the conch-shell, Her shining snake-like form goes three and a half times round Siva, and Her lustre is as that of a strong flash of young strong lightening. Her sweet murmur is like the indistinct hum of swarms of love-mad bees. She produces melodious poetry and Bandha" (S.at.-cakra Ni-rupan.a 10-11) (SCN)

"Bandha = type of literary composition in which the verse is arranged in a diagram or picture." (SCN1) {Bandha is an <arabi^ pictorial style.}

S`ri Kriyananda saieth in his 14 Steps to Joy, "Right attitude keeps the whirlpool of self-realization expanding outward to infinity". "Each chakra has a certain number of petals. In the ordinary person whose mind is operating in the lower centres or planes of consciousness, these petals are turned downwards, their rays of energy flowing out toward the senses. The yogi, through ... right attitude turns the petals upward, pointing toward the brain, creating an upward flow of energy to the higher chakras."

{A vortex with "upward flow" would be a whirlwind, rather than a whirlpool!}

SCN = http://www.lightmind.com/jung/seminar/kundalini.html

SCN1 = http://www.realization.org/page/namedoc0/scn/scn_1.htm

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"Lucid Dreaming, Lucid Dreamless Sleep"

Experiences of the "Causal" Plane :-

"I fell through a door which I opened inside a dream. Then suddenly, for the first time in my entire life, I consciously experienced what it is like in dreamless sleep. There was utter nothing, emptiness, spaciousness--there was only the witnessing consciousness and some somatic energy flowing in the Vast Abyss. ... I thought that death must be similar to what it was like. Meditation and sleep are chances for us to practicing preparing for death. Those who fear death are really afraid of life. ...

An event similar to this happened once before in my life, I was lucid in a dream episode for a long time ..., but as I tried to stay lucid the dreams simply evaporated into a cauldron of bubbles and beyond it was pitch darkness." http://www.facebook.com/topic.php?uid=2209995635&topic=4640 {cf. Tibetan 7th stage of dreamless sleep}

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turiya fish

In Yoruba and in Norse myth, a god caught with his hand a fish.

This fish may be the one which originated in the blending of the 2 "clear lights" (namely, the "light-of-sleep", experienced during dreamless sleep; and the "light-of-the-path", attained as a waking-state adjunct to the "light-of-sleep"), a blending to be effectuated apparently during the transition-interval between waking and sleeping.

The god is To`rr (in other episodes carrying the lightning-hammer Mjo,lnir); the fish is Loki.

This may suggest that the process is dominated by a dream-of-lightning, which is of major interest in S^uar shamanhood. That the Bodish system itself is known as "Vajra-yana" (‘thunderbolt career’), which is in turn a modification of the Taoist thunder-magic, would tend to confirm this.

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