When we sleep and when we dream, our bodies rest. But the apparent inertia is deceptive, as body and brain perform thousands of processes and adjustments, our biochemistry changes, our brain waves change according to whether we are asleep or asleep-and-dreaming, and the brain executes a kind of file management, sorting experiences into cognitive “file cabinets” of long- or short-term memory, or in some instances to be essentially deposited in the “trash” bin. Most of our sleep time (about 75 percent), is spent in deep, non-REM [rapid eye movement] sleep; the rest is dreamtime. [In sleep,] metabolism slows; temperature, blood pressure, and breathing rate decrease; muscles relax and become inactive. While dreaming, all these functions sometimes speed up again to correspond with what is happening in the dream, but the overall trend is for rest.

When we are awake, our senses are alive; we experience people and things that we knew before we went to sleep, and they “reappear” more or less the same. We have a baseline sense of who and what we are and of objects and unfolding events in our awareness. These objects can be the apparently solid, concrete items apprehended by the senses, or they can be thoughts, memories, plans, or entirely imaginary phenomena.

There is always something taking our attention. In the waking state of consciousness, we are always identifying our awareness with something: an object, a thought, a feeling, a process; and all of our Self is caught up in experiencing these phenomena. You look at a flower, and it’s the flower which captures your consciousness. . . .The Observer is lost in the experience of objects as if the observer is obliterated, overshadowed, or annihilated by the experience of an object . . . The eighteenth-century Scottish philosopher David Hume poignantly described this condition:

“When I enter most intimately into what I call myself, I always stumble on some particular perception or other, of heat or cold, light or shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure. I never can catch myself at any time without a perception, and can never observe anything but the perception.” —David Hume

Because most people encounter exactly what Hume described when they look within themselves, the assumption has been made by most people that there is nothing else. This is a huge mistake. The mind is like an ocean, with thoughts as waves on its surface. The deeper you dive in the ocean of the mind, the quieter and more settled it becomes. The busy, object- and event-filled realm of the mind in the waking state is like swimming on the surface; far greater richness lies within. Nevertheless, what comments such as Hume’s effectively show us is that something different than just thinking needs to be done to experience Pure Consciousness.