Sūtra 1.10

Sanskrit text, Unicode transliteration and English translation of sūtra 1.10:

अभावप्रत्ययालम्बना वृत्तिर्निद्रा ॥ १.१० ॥

abhāvapratyayālambanā vṛttirnidrā || 1.10 ||

(10) Dreamless Sleep is the mental modification produced by condition of inertia as the state of vacuity or negation (of waking and dreaming).

Ancient and Modern interpretation:

Since we can remember when we wake up that we had been sleeping, sleep is called a mental modification^[1] as indicated in feelings such as ‘I slept well’or ‘I slept poorly’ etc. If during sleep there was no cognition of the inert state, then on waking one would not have remembered that experience. There also would not have been any recollection of the state in which the mind was in sleep. That is why sleep is regarded as a kind of mental state and should be shut out like other cognitions when concentration is practiced.

Osho says:

‘The modification of the mind which is based on absence of any content in it, is sleep’.^[2]

Sleep means unconsciousness as far as outward moving consciousness is concerned. Conscious activity has stopped. Sleep is non-functioning of the mind. Dream state is between wakeful and sleeping state. Mind is functioning during dream sleep means a totally content less state. Mind has been completely absorbed and relaxed. There is only one difference between sleep and Samādhi and that is in Samādhi state there is ‘awareness’ Patañjali says that the natural sleep is good for the body’s health and if you can become alert in the sleep it can become Samādhi. It can become a spiritual phenomenon. In the later sūtra (I.38) Patañjali says that the knowledge acquired in dream and sleep states can be used to purify the mind (cittaprasādana),explains Osho.^[3]

Footnotes and references:

[1]:

Āraṇya, op.cit., p.30

[2]:

Osho, op.cit., p. 258

[3]:

Ibid., p. 227