Suddenly I was in the room, sitting in front of a large jukebox looking radio set, which was connected to three teachers who were out to sea (don’t ask me…). So the teachers asked me if I had any questions for them, and I sat struggling trying to figure out what to ask. Everything that came to mind seemed irrelevant, and like all thoughts, was spontaneously released. As I sat there struggling to figure out a question to ask, and seeing that any possible question was irrelevant, several other students crowded behind me and started asking, what seemed at the time like, trivial questions. Their voices were whiny and their demeanors somewhat complacent. Still trying to see if there was any useful questions I could ask, and as the dream began to fade, I realized that I had no questions.

On Going Nowhere

Upon waking (no pun intended) I realized that indeed I don’t have any questions about the spiritual path. It all seems so radically obvious—though not in some way that makes me feel special for seeing it—that every moment of seeking, of wanting to know, of trying to find some final answer, is all the same. And it leads nowhere. Of course, it’s taken quite some time to come to this, and so I wouldn’t say it’s been here all the time, though the position of “non-seeking” of having no more questions, of having surrendered to reality, seems to be a very simple position to come to and inevitable when looking at how things have unfolded. I’m not claiming it is done though, just that at this point, there aren’t any questions.

That being said, if I were trying to learn certain meditative states (like the levels of shamatha that Alan Wallace teaches) I would definitely need to ask questions. So, I’m not saying that with all kinds of meditation practices I would have no questions, just that in the realm of “insight practice” it seems crystal clear what the practice is, and that the practice is doing itself.

Pomp & Circumstance

Another thing that I was left reflecting on, after the dream, was how much pomp and circumstance there seemed to be in the retreat center I was hanging out in. The gaurds who watched the door, the whiny students, and the far-removed teachers all seemed to contribute to an overall ethos of the spiritual path being something that is distant, only realized by a few, and something to be coveted rather than realized. Certainly I’ve seen some of this attitude and I think a big part of that comes from having poor models of awakening. The various models of enlightenment, that my friend and teacher Daniel Ingram talks about apply big time, and the more accurate, down-to-earth models people have the more empowered they are about practice, and the more humble and pragmatic they seem to be.

And actually, a synonym for “down-to-earth” is “matter-of-fact” and one of the things I appreciate most about having a model of enlightenment that only tries to understand enlightenment as the dissolution of the center-point and the end of falsely imputing duality in this conflux of causes and conditions, is that I can speak with a growing sense of confidence and matter-of-factness about what I’ve come to find out in this regard. I don’t have to pretend that I’m perfect in any way, that I’m a more loving person, have quit experiencing difficult emotions like fear and anger, or that the growing understanding of non-duality does anything particularly special to Vince and his human experience. Of course, I will have to deal with other people’s perceptions, but that’s ok, because their perceptions and misperceptions are all that is keeping them from realizing what I’ve come to know. And I’m willing to take the hits, and help spread a little more realism in a world where we all want to do away with one-half of our human experience. Me included.

The recollection had to do with an experience I had while on the 6-week retreat, somewhere around the mid-way point of the retreat. Without going into the specifics, cause in the end I don’t think they matter that much, when I woke up I suddenly remembered an obscure detail in Daniel’s book, and realized that the experience I’d had correlated exactly what with he’d described. I’d had the intuition before that this was the case, and had it indirectly confirmed by another teacher, but this morning things suddenly “clicked into place” for me on another level.

The result was that I suddenly knew that given time & patience my path would unfold accordingly, and I would “enter the stream,” as they say in the Theravadin Buddhist tradition. I suddenly became confident beyond any shadow of a doubt, that I would know the fruit of my practice. I guess you could call it faith, although in the Theravadin lineage they call this particular kind of faith, “verified faith,” because its faith based on experience, not on belief.

My new plan is to continue with the naps every 3.5 hours during the day, and add an extra nap in during that hard stretch from 2-6 AM. As I no longer have my personal wake up partner, I’m going to have to stage back up alarms in the event I do not awake. For whatever strange combinations of reasons, I am deeply committed to seeing this experiment all the way through to the end. Failure does not exist to me.

Best of luck my friend!

Update: After a good 3 week run at it, and having adapted pretty well to the polyphasic schedule, Lyon recently fell off the bandwagon. He said that he’ll probably start back sometime in the summer, when he has a bit more time. Word, brother!

polyphasic, integral singularity, sleep

1. I can get up, shower, and sit for an hour, all before 8am. This will really be helpful when I start going back to school next month, as many of my classes start at 9am.
2. I feel more productive and alert in the mornings, so extending that time seemed to make a lot of sense.
3. I get an extra hour or two a day of waking time. I had been waking up between 7-8 prior to this, but find that I actually don’t need that much sleep. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if I was oversleeping, and that was having a negative impact on my energy level.
4. Since I spend an average of one month each year on retreat, and during retreats generally wake up pretty early (usually at 5am), this schedule gives me a leg up on transitioning into the retreat rhythm.

It’s amazing how such a simple change can have such a helpful effect. I’ll follow up on this in a few weeks, and let you know if there are any other changes I notice as a result of getting up a bit early, especially as it relates to my meditation practice and energy level.

early riser, self-development

In any case, what I ended up being most struck by was not the increase in productivity that Steve experienced (an extra 30-40 hours per week of waking time), or the total weirdness of being on a different schedule than everyone else, but rather the semi-mystical nature of his experience. At one point (around day 22) he began commenting on the way that his sense of time had become totally altered, since there was no longer any clear deliniation between day and night. He had this to say about the nature of that experience:

This is strangely becoming a transcendent, almost spiritual experience for me. I had gotten so accustomed to a certain sense of the passing of time, and now that sense has been stretched beyond repair. I may eventually develop a new sense of time based on my polyphasic sleep schedule, but for right now I have a more timeless feeling. Although I can perceive the passing of days and nights by watching environmental cues, internally I feel more like a timeless observer who’s no longer bound to that system.

And this is coming from a guy who’s primary interest isn’t in transcendence, but in self-actualization. Here’s another interesting by-product (?) of his polyphasic sleeping experiment, which he noted on day 21:

I used to mentally verbalize my thoughts by thinking in words, but now my mind isn’t doing that anymore. Apparently I’m now thinking without subvocalizing each thought, which is a lot faster because my mind can jump from one thought to the next without turning them into sentences or phrases. … I’m still getting used to this sensation, but I believe it to be a positive change. Now when I sit down to work, I feel as if I’m working with deeper focus, clarity, and speed of thought than ever before. I wonder if these were benefits Da Vinci experienced from polyphasic sleep as well.

There are many other benefits that Steve noticed from his new polyphasic sleeping schedule, but these were among the most noticable to myself. The first thought I had about this sleeping schedule was what a perfect fit it would be for someone on intensive retreat. On the vipassana retreats I attend, we’re asked to sleep only 4-6 hours in any case, but imagine being able to sleep only 2-3 instead. Much more time for practice!

Now, there are two things I should mention, before any of you rush into this experiment. One is that there isn’t much (if any) research on the long-term effects of this kind of sleeping pattern. One is clearly not going to experience some of the other stages of sleep that are normally experienced during an 8 hour sleeping session (what Steve starts calling hibernation), so there really is no way of knowing how this would effect one’s mind and body in the long-term. Secondly, there is an initial period of adaptation, the first week or so when one switches to this new sleeping schedule, which is very challenging. The first several days are characterized by a huge drop in mental clarity and physical energy, probably due to the fact that initially you are being totally deprived of REM sleep. This period is said to be one where the mind and body are being trained to enter REM very quickly during a short (20-30 minute) nap. But before that happens you’re completely miserable—or so I’ve read. There are many other bloggers who have done similar experiments, and failed miserably because they didn’t make it through this adaptation phase. Steve seems to be a special case for several reasons, but primarily because he’s a super-driven & disciplined mad-man.

All the same, I’m totally intrigued by the Polyphasic sleeping now, and plan on doing some more research. If you know anymore about it, or come across any cool resources, please drop a comment on this post. And props to Duff for turning me onto this!

polyphasic, sleeping, self-development, self-actualization, discipline