The Paradox(es) of Sleep
And the overwhelming strangeness of life
Imagine yourself in that vast in-between, the lobby of existence. You just spent an eternity as a rock, slowly accruing karma, until you were smashed to bits by an odious simian. You think you might become a mountain this time — with one sneeze you will flatten the upstart ape who was so intolerably inconsiderate.
Now imagine a spiritual salesman trying to get you to spend your hard-won karma on a mortal, human life, “You know, it’s a pretty sweet deal. You get to pilot an organic anthropoid vessel, fully equipped with all the latest evolutionary biotechnology. You got a large cranium, opposable thumbs, stereoscopic vision, the works. There’s only one catch — don’t worry, it’s minor though. For around eight hours a day, you must cede your consciousness, the most precious gift of life, suspending all normal functions in favour of a vegetative state. You pretty much always wake up — but you might not. You’d just never know. Oh yes, and one more thing, sometimes your memories and imagination cook up these hallucinations called nightmares. You’re completely defenseless against them. Side effects include terror, anxiety, and existential dread. As I said, it’s a pretty sweet deal. Did I mention our cost-effective installment plan…” Sleep is one of those Ts&Cs they put in fine print on the 71st page of the contract.
(And don’t get me started on sleepwalking. The subconscious just taking the body for a spin out in the world? It’s like letting a teenager drive your Mercedes while you’re out cold in the back. Yeah… no thanks.)
Sleep is one of the great frontiers of our existence. It promises so much insight into the human condition — yet it is so difficult to study, especially from a subjective perspective, because it deactivates the very tool we must use to probe its depths (namely, our consciousness). It is as if coded into life there is something fundamentally unknownable, a hidden chaos or madness that no light can penetrate. It reminds me of the conclusion drawn from Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle: an inherent uncertainty within the universe, not because of limitations in technique or equipment, but because of a fundamental contradiction or paradox. Both hint at a mystery deeper than the intellect.
Not only is sleep itself strange; falling asleep is downright paradoxical. We describe it as an action (“I’m going to sleep”) when it is the opposite, a sagelike act of surrender. You do not fall asleep; sleep overtakes you. The more you exert yourself, the less you will accomplish. These statements can read like Daoist mantras because, in a superficial sense, they capture the same paradox of “actionless action”. Sleep affirms how little control we have over the outcome of our lives — that ‘trying harder’ is often futile, even counterproductive — that our consciousness is but a melting slab of ice, drifting atop a black sea.
We must also consider the strangeness of sleep from an evolutionary perspective. It is, on the surface, a major disadvantage — several hours each day that an organism is totally vulnerable, and cannot gather food, find shelter, or reproduce. And yet, nearly all living things ‘sleep’ (that is, they have a rest/activity cycle based on a circadian rhythm). It follows that sleep, the apparent suspension of life, is a fundamental component of life — we are living on borrowed time, which must be replenished every night. The mouth of life sucks at the teat of death: it is her gall which sustains and destroys us. A paradox indeed.
Sleep is a contradiction at the heart of our existence. It should be terrifying, yet we welcome it. It drains our life, but also restores it. It is ultimately unknowable. Sleep is one of those great paradoxes which, while thwarting our attempts to understand it, reflects a glimmer of the great beyond: the familiar, intimate yet infinitely strange mystery which is all we are; the vast unknown which pulls us ever deeper into life, like an ocean of stars.
