Altair said:
Could you please specify in which Book G. mentioned that sleep is a progressive removing of the connections between centers? Was it from ISOTM?
In the book "Views From The Real World" (VFTRW) which contains excepts from talks given by Gurdjieff there is a chapter titled "Energy and Sleep" which elaborates on this theme.
[quote author=VFTRW]
A man's sleep is nothing else than interrupted connections between centers. A man's centers never sleep. Since associations are their life, their movement, they never cease, they never stop. A stoppage of associations means death. The movement of associations never stops for an instant in any center, they flow on even in the deepest sleep.
If a man in a waking state sees, hears, senses his thoughts, in half-sleep he also sees, hears, senses his thoughts and he calls this state sleep. Even when he thinks that he absolutely ceases to see or hear, which he also calls sleep, associations go on.
The only difference is in the strength of connections between one center and another.
Memory, attention, observation is nothing more than observation of one center by another, or one center listening to another. Consequently the centers themselves do not need to stop and sleep. Sleep brings the centers neither harm nor profit. So sleep, as it is called, is not meant to give centers a rest. As I have said already, deep sleep comes when the connections between centers are broken. And indeed, deep sleep, complete rest for the machine, is considered to be that sleep when all links, all connections cease to function....
What characterizes our waking state is that all these connections are intact. But if one of them is broken or ceases to function we are neither asleep nor awake.
One link is disconnected—we are no longer awake, neither are we asleep. If two are broken, we are still less awake—but again we are not asleep. If one more is disconnected we are not awake and still not properly asleep, and so on.
Consequently there are different degrees between our waking state and sleep.
.....
Consequently we have not two states, one of sleep and the other of waking, as we think, but several states. Between the most active and intensive state anyone can have and the most passive (somnambulistic sleep) there are definite gradations. If one of the links breaks it is not yet evident on the surface and is unnoticeable to others. There are people whose capacity to move, to walk, to live, stops only when all the connections are broken, and there are other people in whom it is enough to break two connections for them to fall asleep. If we take the range between sleep and waking with seven connections, then there are people who go on living, talking, walking in the third degree of sleep.
Deep states of sleep are the same for all, but intermediate degrees are often subjective.
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 objective 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, singe 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.
Consequently, if the machine is in good order, it needs very little time to manufacture that quantity of matter for which sleep is intended; at any rate much less time than we are accustomed to sleep. What we call "sleep" when we sleep for seven to ten 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 unnecessary 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, and as quickly pass from sleep to waking, we would spend on this transition a third or a quarter of the time we are wasting now. But we don't know how to break these connections by ourselves—with us they are broken and reestablished mechanically.
We are slaves of this mechanism. When "it" so pleases, we can pass into another state; when not, we have to lie and wait till "it" gives us leave to rest.
This mechanicalness, this unnecessary slavery and undesirable dependence, has several causes. One of the causes is the chronic state of tension we spoke of in the beginning and which is one of the many causes of the leakage of our reserve energy. So you see how liberation from this chronic tension would serve a double purpose. First, we would save much energy and, second, we would dispense with the useless lying and waiting for sleep.
So you see what a simple thing it is, how easy to attain and how necessary. To free oneself from this tenseness is of tremendous value.
Later I shall give you several exercises for this purpose. I advise you to pay very serious attention to this and to try as hard as you can to get what each of these exercises is expected to give.'
It is necessary to learn at all costs not to be tense when tension is not needed. When you sit doing nothing, let the body sleep. When you sleep, sleep in such a way that the whole of you sleeps.
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