Thread: Exploring Delta Sleep

I recommend the book: Tibetan Yogas of Dream and Sleep by Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche, you can download it for free of the web, just google its PDF form.

The book has pretty much everything you need to know about what Sageous is talking about in this thread, it's what they call sleep yoga. Dream yoga is the lucid dreaming part, sleep yoga (which is far more difficult) is the practice of maintaing your awareness as you drift into the unconscious dream state. The ultimate goal of sleep yoga is to be aware of your own awareness and nothing more. There should be no thoughts, feelings, sensations, etc. you might be aware of it, but you should not be tied to any form. This is also most likely the reason you remember these experiences metaphysically, leaving it almost impossible to explain with thought form.

Thank you TheHomeBeef, if nothing else, you have prompted me to continue here with a few words
after I quote a few paragraphs from the recommended book:

"In the first moment of any experience, before a reaction occurs, there is only
pure perception. The prana involved in this pure experiencing is the primordial
wisdom prana, the energy that underlies experience prior to or free of grasping
or aversion. This pure experience does not leave a trace and is not the cause of
any dream. The wisdom prana moves in the central channel and is the energy of
rigpa. This moment is very brief, a flash of pure experience of which we are
usually unaware. It is our reaction to this moment, our grasping and aversion,
that we think of as our experience." (from above mentioned book)

and this:

"Clear light is defined in most texts as the unity of emptiness and clarity. It is
the pure, empty awareness that is the base of the individual. "Clear" refers to
emptiness, (...), the base, (...). "Light" refers to clarity, (...)
pure innate awareness. Clear light is direct realization of the unity of (light+clear), of awareness and emptiness.
Ignorance is compared to a dark room in which you sleep. Awareness is a
lamp in that room. No matter how long the room has been dark, an hour or a
million years, the moment the lamp of awareness is lit the entire room becomes
luminous. (...) You are that
luminosity. You are the clear light; it is not an object of your experience or a
mental state. When the luminous awareness in the darkness is blissful, clear,
unmoving, without reference, without judgment, without center or
circumference, that is rigpa. It is the nature of mind. (...)" (same)

+

"Liberation from ignorance and suffering occurs when we recognize and abide in
our true nature. That which recognizes is not the conceptual mind; it is the
fundamental mind, the nature of mind, rigpa. Our necessary task is to
distinguish, in practice, between the conceptual mind and the pure awareness of
the nature of mind." (same)


One main problem I have both with dream and / or sleep yogas is that in my experience, AWAKE yoga is what is and where "the catch 22" lies hidden. I've had both dream and sleep (I believe now that most if not all people do so practicaly every day, even if not aware of it) dynamics during awake. Now, it is my sincere understanding that only in a unity of the three (states: awake, dream and sleep) is what ultimately all seekers look for and endeavor to find. In any case, both dreams and sleep-state "leak" into our everyday awake life, not only the other way around. It is true that one can solve some things in dreams and LD's, some other in sleep and lucid-sleep, but it is what we bring HERE from there is what counts. Subjective mind (double, dream-consciousness or whatever) has intelligence of its own and does it's thing all the time. I see many who try to experience "it" (even I myself was one of those) as if it is a goal and an end in itself, but it is only the beginning. The realization that it is not not only "the end", but a real beginning, was for me completely unexpected and I dare say: shattering.

Even that thing called "liberation" is not lived during sleep nor dream, but in full everyday awakeness. Yoga does not end with samadhi, it starts with it. After that famous "eighth step" called sama+dhi (translated in english as something like "composure-ness", deep inner sobriety or clearness or clarity of intelligence (intelligence here seems more appropriate then overused "mind"-term), there is the 9th step and even 10th and not only both, but all eight previous steps relate to what is known as Dharma - the right way (of living one's life).

So, if anyone has delta-lucidity experience, one needs to know that delta can and must become the basis for everyday waking life, if one understands delta-lucidity as (not simply lucid nREM but) that "clear-light" awareness.

How easy it is to forget that even yoga itself rests on two first steps and those NEVER end. They are the only steps which show of the kind of unity (yoga) it is all about. And toward the end, they point to what samadhi is all about, not being merely "body asleep+mind awake" (which itself need not be delta-lucidity but may be a handfull of different things) state as some would put it a definition of "meditative state". What today goes as "meditation", few hundred years back was in the west called "contemplation". Since that term was linked in the West with some interesting christian practices (as waiting on God, sitting in silence, like in hesuhasm, quietism etc.), it was subsequently changed into its opposite (at that time) and so we today are left with a bit of confusion... Strange how easily words seem to change their meanings...

For me, that "clear-light" awareness is what delta-lucidity is all about. And same delta-lucidity may be experienced during lucid-sleeping, may be experienced during meditation (I read about the case when swami Rama was connected to EEG during his meditations and it showed some strong delta-waves as in deep healthy sleep), but it also may be experienced during most-lucid-awake. If one knows what to look for. And even than, its only for a moment or few moments, as it makes the link to subjective mind, or better said, subjective mind (clear light) links with objective (usual conceptual mind) here.

Some interesting things on delta waves can be read / for example / here:

Understanding The \"Delta\" Brainwave | 4 Mind 4 Life: Mental Health Tips


I can only hope that this post of mine was not to intense...