Nothingness Is All There Is: An Exploration of Objectless Awareness During Sleep

Abstract

Recent years have seen a heightened focus on the study of minimal forms of awareness during sleep to advance the study of consciousness and understand what makes a state conscious. This focus draws on an increased interest in anecdotical descriptions made by classic Indian philosophical traditions about unusual forms of awareness during sleep. For instance, in the so-called state of witnessing-sleep or luminosity sleep, one is said to reach a state that goes beyond ordinary dreaming and abide in a state of just awareness, a state in which one is not aware of anything else other than one’s own awareness. Moreover, for these traditions, this state is taken to be the essence or background of consciousness. Reports on such a state opens the door to exciting new lines of research in the study of consciousness, such as inquiry into the so-called objectless awareness during sleep—states of awareness that lack an ordinary object of awareness. In this two-staged research project, we attempted to find the phenomenological blueprints of such forms of awareness during sleep in 18 participants by conducting phenomenological interviews, informed by a novel tool in qualitative research, the micro-phenomenological interview (MPI) method. Following a phenomenological analysis, we isolated a similar phase across 12 reported experiences labeled as “nothingness phase” since it described what participants took to be an experience of “nothingness.” This common phase was characterized by minimal sense of self—a bodiless self, yet experienced as being “somewhere”—, the presence of non-modal sensations, relatively pleasant emotions, an absence of visual experience, wide and unfocused attention, and an awareness of the state as it unfolded.

Is Lucid Dreamless Sleep Really Lucid?

“…Here I claim that such states of 'void' or 'clear light dreams' could be understood as per the technical notion of lucidity if such states are regarded as perceptual states; states in which I'm aware that I'm in a state that lacks a dream environment. This claim would be supported by recent phenomenological reports of those experiences collected by empirical work (see Alcaraz-Sánchez 2021;Alcaraz-Sánchez et al 2022). Those reports point to an experience that in some cases seems to involve a certain 'distinct' object of awareness, like the awareness of one's location in the 'void' or one's self-experience in such a state (ibid).…”

“…For now, I'll focus on examining the state of the clear light sleep characterised as a state of non-duality, a state that lacks the subjectother distinction of ordinary conscious states and that is taken by Tibetan Buddhist traditions to be an objectless state; it's said to lack an object-directed awareness inasmuch as it lacks a distinctive object of awareness from the mind itself (cf. Alcaraz-Sánchez 2021; Alcaraz-Sánchez et al 2022).…”

Moving beyond the lab: investigating empathy through the Empirical 5E approach

“…Phenomenological methods have been used in cognitive science reports as a single source of information. Thus far, several studies have shown that the description of lived experience can be accurate and also very detailed, allowing for a better understanding of phenomena such as meditative states ( Berkovich-Ohana et al, 2013 ; Nave et al, 2021 ), awareness in sleep ( Alcaraz-Sánchez et al, 2022 ), temporal variation of emotional state ( Depraz et al, 2017 ), and visual attention ( Lachaux et al, 2000 ), among others (for a review see Berkovich-Ohana et al, 2020 ).…”

“I am feeling tension in my whole body”: An experimental phenomenological study of empathy for pain

“…Since its incorporation into the field of cognitive science, phenomenology has exhibited accuracy and high utility in understanding phenomena such as meditative states ( Silva-Mack et al, 2018 ; Nave et al, 2021 ), contemplative training ( Przyrembel and Singer, 2018 ), epilepsy ( Le Van Quyen and Petitmengin, 2002 ), fibromyalgia ( Valenzuela-Moguillansky, 2013 ), and chronic pain ( Smrdu, 2022 ). In addition, analysis of subjective experience captures very subtle descriptions of embodied experiential microdynamics, such as approach and avoidance behaviors ( Baquedano and Fabar, 2017 ), exploration of awareness during sleep ( Alcaraz-Sánchez et al, 2022 ), adjustments of attention ( Lachaux et al, 2000 ), variation of emotional state ( Depraz et al, 2017 ), and movement intention ( Jo et al, 2014 ).…”