Sleep and the Work

[Buddy]

Hi Ryan. Thanks for that post. It seems to have jogged a vague memory of having read something similar to that; especially the part on page 2.2 "The Function of Sleep Hypotheses" where it attempts to explain why the brain has to wait for the sleep state in order to encode and transfer information to long-term memory. It would have been ok by me if they had indicated what physical components (cellular or whatever) contain the encodings, though. :)

 

[Beau]

I will post quotes from Gurdjieff to illustrate what I paraphrased when I have more time. Again, I am limited because I have no cut and paste function and must type the quote direct from the book, "ISOTM." The old fashioned way.

Maybe just post, with the excerpt, the chapter and page number you are quoting from, for reference purposes.

 

[Beau]

After reading Meetings with Remarkable Men, I was amazed at Gurdjieff's ability to function on such little sleep (such as his time during the institute). Perhaps when one is that far along in the Work as he was, sleeping becomes even secondary to one's aim? I can't see being as sleep deprived as he was is a positive thing for the average person though.

I think in G's case, he was someone who had a very strong and active moving center, so he was able to withstand some very difficult living situations over his life. I think he even remarked about this at one point in his writings, though I can't recall where at the moment. I don't know if putting one's body through such difficulties is to be strived for or not. I know I feel a lot more functional after 7 hours of sleep than I do after 3!

 

[Johnno]

I've read somewhere Gurdjieff took years to learn how to sleep properly, can't find it.

However there's this. Quote from Views from the Real World. There's a chapter Energy and sleep Pages 115 -120.

So there are many degrees of sleep and waking. Active state is a state when the thinking faculty and the senses work at their full capacity and pressure. We must be interested both in the objective, that is, the genuine, waking state, and in objec- tive sleep. "Objective" means active or passive in actual fact. (It is better not to strive to be but to understand.) Anyway, everyone must understand that the purpose of sleep is achieved only when all the connections between the centers are broken. Only then can the machine produce what sleep is meant to produce. So the word "sleep" should mean a state when all the links are disconnected. Deep sleep is a state when we have no dreams or sensations. If people have dreams it means that one of their connections is not broken, since memory, observation, sensation is nothing more than one center observing another. Thus when you see and remember what is happening in you, it means that one center observes another. And if it can observe it follows that there is something through which to observe. And if there is something through which to observe—the connection is not broken.

I couldn't find a quote in ISOTM, I trawled through that using sleep and dreams as search terms.

 

[shijing]

After reading Meetings with Remarkable Men, I was amazed at Gurdjieff's ability to function on such little sleep (such as his time during the institute). Perhaps when one is that far along in the Work as he was, sleeping becomes even secondary to one's aim? I can't see being as sleep deprived as he was is a positive thing for the average person though.

I think in G's case, he was someone who had a very strong and active moving center, so he was able to withstand some very difficult living situations over his life. I think he even remarked about this at one point in his writings, though I can't recall where at the moment. I don't know if putting one's body through such difficulties is to be strived for or not. I know I feel a lot more functional after 7 hours of sleep than I do after 3!

I agree. I just finished reading The Struggle of the Magicians, and there is a part where it describes life at the Prieure, where everyone would go to bed at midnight and be up at 4:00 in the morning for another day of hard, strenuous work. I had to think about that for awhile, because I also can't imagine functioning long-term on that sleep schedule -- the only thing I could come up with was that perhaps the environment was so much less toxic at that time than it is now, but that still doesn't explain being able to get by and that little sleep I don't think.

Coincidentally, my cousin (who, I just learned recently, has done a lot of her own dietary research and come to quite similar conclusions as those promoted here) recently recommended the following book to me as quite important:

Lights Out: Sleep, Sugar, and Survival (by T.S. Wiley and Bent Formby)

I am going to try to get a copy of it, and if I think it's worth it I'll post something in either the Books or Diet and Health section.

 

[Bar Kochba]

Thanks Johnno, you posted what I was referring to. My bad, it was in "Views from the Real World" and not ISOTM. Here is more from page 119 of VFTRW: "What we call 'sleep' when we sleep for 7 - 10 hours or God knows how long, is not sleep. The greater part of that time is spent not in sleep but in these transitional states - these unecessary half-dream states. Some people need many hours to go to sleep and later many hours to come to themselves. If we could fall asleep at once, & as quickly pass from sleep to waking, we could spend on this transition 1/3 or 1/4 of the time we are wasting now." btw, I dont think i said that Gurdjieff didnt think much of sleep itself; it was daydreaming that he thought was useless, especially morbid daydreaming.