Even in sleep the brain shows a lot of activity. Quite a lot of the activity of the brain does not come into conscious awareness, but there are various ways of directing attention that allow more of that to be consciously experienced. The questions is is that activity already there and we just do not notice it. A common experience of looking at planets through a telescope is to see a small disk, but it appears blank. With repeated viewing and practice, that is, familiarity and training, details can be seen on the surface. It is not that the details were absent, just that the eye and mind had to be directed where and how to look.
Suppose we made up a fake and derivative religion, telling people that there is a field of force that we are immersed in, called 'Dada'. And we tell people it is possible to experience this field if we put all our attention on sensing it, day and night. We tell them that after some time one can experience, say, 'Dada stage 1', which is the experience of silence at night while asleep. Now it seems possible that some people will now report this after a time, that they experience silence at night. This might be the result of the shift of attention, but is also might be the result of a general placebo effect, you tell someone things are a certain way long enough and with enough emphasis, they may start to experience it. I have experienced internal witnessing episodes as the result of certain combinations of anti-histamines and decongestants. I know someone, a soldier in the Vietnam War, who told me he basically was aware all night in sleep, that he had this state of alertness where he had to be ready at any time for combat. So witnessing might come about through various ways the nervous system can function. There is research that indicates people practicing various kinds of meditation do experience changes in the way the brain is signally in sleep, that seems to correspond with the subjective experience of some awareness during sleep, and a similar kind of silent experience during waking The question is how significant is this? I think Lawson's Prozac episode is really interesting. After all witnessing is just seeing something. At any time we experience, we witness, and it does not matter what that experience is. The added sense of some 'extra' silence during an experience is basically a clue we are experience with a bit more detail than before, but it is not really more consciousness, it is a greater appreciation of the consciousness that is already there. Add to that the droning refrain 'this is a significant step towards enlightenment', and the mind becomes overjoyed that something good and expected is happening, when in fact not a whole lot more is really happening. Like Lawson, I have experience what for me would be a nightmare state while at the same time some continuity of witnessing was going on, because my mind and attention had been trained to notice it. Yet as Bhairitu pointed out, many do not seem to have these experiences even after many many years of practice. In the 1960s, M pointed out that consciousness does not expand, rather mind expands. That is just another way of saying the mind becomes more adept at noticing the content and quality of experience. Whatever practice you are doing, it is training the mind in some way when you are repeating the practice day after day. A state like CC is described in traditions other than TM; it is a rather common benchmark, yet all this 'state' is, is just noticing that there is silence along with activity. There is no requirement that the experiences themselves are good or bad, blissful or agony. I think M said contact with the absolute is blissful (for the sake of argument, assuming there is 'absolute'). When the mind relaxes and settles down, especially in the early days of a practice — if it is going well — the experience is comforting and has the sense of relief and mitigation of those slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. That is where bliss comes in, but once that experience has become familiar, the sense of blissfulness just becomes ordinary. If you experience yourself as silent, then contact with silence is no longer possible so there is no mitigation, no relief. A blissful shift from dread to silence does not occur, for now you experience dread along with silence. A lot a spiritual advertising is basically overemphasising the wonder of the sense of relief one gets when one starts out on a path of self realisation. That may get you into a practice, and it may help keep you at it for a while, but once the cracks the practice makes in your sense of reality starts letting in glimpses of reality as it is going to be experienced, as the mind notices more of what it going on in there, you may balk at proceeding further unless you can be convinced that what is happening is something necessary to go through. Some people are blissful, and some pretend to be blissful, and some go though hell. Once this point comes where the real knots in the system become evident, there is a need for more concrete information about transitions and the potential for dark as well as 'nice' experiences to be available, and 'sweet talk' about how grand it is going to be, when in fact what is happening is the mind's fantasies about reality are starting to crumble. 'Enlightenment' is going to strip away those fantasies, and the more clearly this is understood and presented to you, the better off you will be, if you happen to be one of those who has to go through hell to come to a just understanding of the nature of the world of experience. To me Lawson's experience sounds like classic CC, even with the effect of going accidentally cold turkey off a drug for which that should not be done, made the point salient. Transitions in this business can be trying or blissful, but the steady state of experience in general is not, it is just what is going on. I think J. Krishnamurti said it best: 'I don't mind what is happening'. When you have an interpretation of your experience that is out of alignment with what is happening, of course things are not going to be peachy. For myself, I found things got much better when my mind's tendency to anticipate a specific result began to dwindle. And that anticipation was the result of believing too strongly what others told should happen, rather than what really might happen, that is a range of various possibilities. So what Lawson said, 'I'd prefer to think that I'm not really in CC rather than CC being THIS useless as a "higher" state of consciousness', represents an unrealistic expectation. So, as Barry suggests, taking these moments with a grain of salt, and not being too focused on what you think should happen and what you think is supposed to be important helps a lot. New spiritual experiences are almost always enticing in some way, but once they are the norm, like owning a new car for example, the glow wears off and you are left with ordinary day to day experience, because that is all it is eventually. You just do not sweat it any more. But you never know, perhaps something really horrible will come along and throw you a nasty challenge, and you will have to accommodate this new trial, silently or otherwise. Lawson wrote: Like as not, a lot of people ARE in CC (whether via the practice of TM, or "just because") but don't see it as a big deal because, as MMY points out, it is "merely normal." Of course, the sine qua non of CC is that one has PC even during deep sleep, so perhaps that is lacking in many people... I have the opposite issue: "witnessing sleep" has been around almost continuously (except during a few life-threatening illnesses over the decades) within a few weeks that I first learned TM. It's the waking state integration that appears to be lacking, although... When I inadvertently went off prozac abruptly a few years ago, and had 12 hours of non-stop, viciously and horrifically violent suicidal ideation, I still had permanent presence of pure sense-of-self that was untouched by the rather Grade-Z horror movie continuously running through my mind, and I never felt an urge to act on any of that stuff. ...I'd prefer to think that I'm not really in CC rather than CC being THIS useless as a "higher" state of consciousness. Bhairitu wrote: "PC" becomes a screen on which all activity including mental is played. If I want just pure consciousness, these days I just look at it. The bigger question is after all these years of sadhana why doesn't everyone have that experience? s3raphita wrote: Can one be in CC (or in an expanded, higher state of awareness) if he also needs Prozac? Yes, I know it's not uncommon for spiritual aspirants to undergo a "dark night of the soul" as a purifying stage of growth but whatever happened to the bliss we were promised? Barry wrote: With all due respect, in pursuit of your "I prefer to think" fantasies, it seems to me that you're ignoring a third (and far more likely) possibility. Namely, that "witnessing sleep," which MMY made so much of, has *absolutely nothing to do with higher states of consciousness*. It's just something that happens. To people who meditate, and to people who don't. And it "means" nothing in terms of state of consciousness, in either group.
