SLEEP DEPRIVATION: ASCETICISM, RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE AND NEUROLOGICAL QUANDARIES1 Núria M. Farré-i-Barril The purpose of this chapter is to analyze a rather puzzling and seem- ingly irrational ascetic practice, one that can be found in the most diverse religious traditions, but that so far has not received much attention from social scientists and religious scholars. I wish to look at sleep depriva- tion as a form of religious experience in the way it has been, and still is, practiced in different religions, with special reference to Christianity. My objective is to compare and contrast the cultural meanings associated with sleep deprivation in religious traditions with current neurological and neuropsychiatric researches on the effects of this condition on con- temporary Western individuals, and to use this comparison / contrast to advance some hypotheses concerning the status of religion as a human experience and the ways we can approach this experience from both a cultural-historical and natural-scientific point of view. Asceticism is normally associated with the deprivation of whatever is seen as vital, such as food, shelter, sex or, as we shall see in some detail in what follows, sleep. Behind all these practices there is usually, as a principal motive, the will to keep the body under control, to submit the body to the rule of the spirit and to bring the soul toward divinity. The explanations of sleep deprivation provided by religious traditions are very diverse, but most of them are related to notions of ascetic practice and corporal discipline as means of spiritual purification. In the majority of cases sleep deprivation is part of a set of ascetic activities equally focused on the principle of discipline and self-mortification, such as fasting, sex- ual abstinence and other kinds of physical exertions. What gives sleep deprivation a more specific significance, however, lies in its associated notions of wakefulness, alertness, as a desirable condition of the soul, in opposition to the passive state that is related to sleep. Furthermore, due consideration should also be given to hallucinatory states and more gen- eral cognitive dysfunctions and alterations brought forward by long term 1 I would like to thank the editors of this book, Rebecca Norris and David Cave, for the insightful comments on an earlier draft of this chapter. © Núria M. Farré-i-Barril, 2011 | doi:10.1163/9789004225343_012 This is an open access chapter distributed under the terms of the CC BY-NC 4.0 license.Núria M. Farré-i-Barril - 9789004225343 Downloaded from Brill.com10/02/2021 01:59:37AM via free access 218 núria m. farré-i-barril sleep deprivation and, in particular, to the cultural-religious meanings attributed to them. Sleep Deprivation in World Religions I shall begin with a brief outlook at the ways in which some of the most important religious traditions have taken sleep deprivation as a form of asceticism. Information provided in this section will be very general since the extant literature for any one of the most important world religions is far too large and detailed to be included here. But for the purpose of this chapter a broad outlook will suffice. Perhaps one of the oldest religious traditions where sleep deprivation figures prominently among its ascetic practices is Taoism. Taoists have always been suspicious of sleep because dreams cause a loss of control over oneself. Within the Quanzhen monastic order (twelfth century), such a fear induced ascetical practices of sleep deprivation and motivated col- lective meditation at night. In this context appeared, during the Jin and Yuan periods, the so-called “Poems of the Five Night Watches,” which contain descriptions of night-time meditation. Like soldiers, Taoists must fight against sleep and keep their inner citadel free from intruders. The five watches are marked within the monasteries by drum strikes, hence they become a very sensitive reality for the religious communities. The main purpose of these watches seems to have been the fight against the temptation of dreams. Especially feared were erotic dreams and the pos- sible nocturnal emissions that they might provoke.2 It was understood as well by several Taoist practitioners that a sleep- less night would bring them nearer the Truth. The spirit (shen) should be the master of the organism, both during the day and at night. Together with erotic dreams, sleep was also supposed to make the person vulner- able to the attacks perpetrated by demons, devilish hallucinations and evil spirits (shuimo). Control over sleep should be obtained gradually, night after night. No fast results should be expected, and the need to sleep should disappear ‘naturally.’ The night should be devoted to meditation, and that seems to have been the main purpose of the Poems of the Five 2 Cf. Stewart, Charles. “Erotic Dreams and Nightmares from Antiquity to the Present.” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 8, no. 2 (2002), 279–309; Farré-i-Barril, Núria M. “Interpenetrations of Nature and Morality: The Case of Nocturnal Seminal Emissions in Medieval Theological Thought.” Quaderns-e 12, http://www.raco.cat/index.php/ QuadernseICA/article/view/124412/172392. Núria M. Farré-i-Barril - 9789004225343 Downloaded from Brill.com10/02/2021 01:59:37AM via free access sleep deprivation 219 Night Watches.3 For Taoists, therefore, sleep weakens the soul by mak- ing it vulnerable to evil supernatural attacks in the form of dreams. This association between malign attacks and dreams will be repeated in other religions as well. I shall propose later on a possible explanation for this nearly universal recurrence. Another religious tradition where sleep deprivation has been widely practiced is Hinduism. The Punjabi word jagrātā means all-night vigil, usu- ally to worship a deity with song and ritual. Such all-night vigils are found throughout the Indian subcontinent in a variety of religious contexts. In fact, the concept of waking or wakefulness, as in many religious traditions, is central to Hinduism. It could even be called a root metaphor for the Hindu religious experience—as well as other religious traditions such as Christianity and Buddhism, as we will see below. The state of enlighten- ment, for example, is often compared to being awake as opposed to being asleep or deluded. Deities who are active in the world, as opposed to being otiose, are said to be ‘awake’ ( jāgrit). Both in Hinduism and Buddhism, all-night vigils of one kind or another are seen as part of an intensive spiritual discipline. Gautama the Buddha (which means ‘the awakened one’) himself attained enlightenment during the night, and his medita- tive experiences during the several watches of the night are an important part of his spiritual biography. Besides being a denial of sleep, wakefulness itself is a positive quality, being associated with such attributes as wisdom and lucidity of mind.4 One question that arises is why enlightenment should be attained in this manner. A very similar relationship between wakefulness and wis- dom or righteousness is seen in some parts of Islam. For instance, vig- ils and sleep deprivation were quite common in traditional Sufism. The origins of Sufism are in the days of the Prophet, in a group called ahl al-suffa, which means ‘people of the bench,’ for they had the habit of remaining in the mosque and spending days and nights in pious devo- tion. Sufism developed into a full-fledged mysticism in the late eighth and ninth centuries (ce), but the asceticism of the early Sufis remained an integral part of Sufi life. After the initial confession of sin and repentance from all deeds that would compromise the journey to God, the dervish’s major preoccupation is with crushing one’s passions, fighting, as the Sufis 3 Goossaert, Vincent. “Taoist Poems of the Five Night Watches.” Études chinoises XIX, no. 1–2 (2000), 249–270. 4 Erndl, Kathleen M. “The Devi Jagrātā in Contemporary Panjabi Hinduism.” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 59, no. 2 (1991), 339–360. Núria M. Farré-i-Barril - 9789004225343 Downloaded from Brill.com10/02/2021 01:59:37AM via free access 220 núria m. farré-i-barril say, against one’s own soul. A time-honoured method of training the soul is to resist its desires through fasting and other forms of asceticism. The earliest Sufis practiced almost incredible feats of self-denial, shunning all forms of luxury and avoiding sleep (which was seen as a mark of ‘heedless- ness’), spending their nights in devotion and self-examination. A famous representative of early Sufism, Ibrāhīm ibn Adham (d. 776 or 790) said that one must embrace hardship, self-abasement, strenuous effort, sleep- lessness, and poverty, ever anticipating death and judgment, in order to attain righteousness.5 In Judaism, on the other hand, the natural desire for sleep was disci- plined in the service of the community. One of the Jews’ self-imposed tasks was the observance of continuous worship. The Law was to be studied continually, day and night, as the members undertook in turns to perform this service. The implication is that sleep is a withdrawal from the service of God. Once again, it is as if sleep would push us away from the right path, which consequently can only be remedied by the state of wakefulness. The religious person needs to be a transformed human being, radically changed from within by his discipline. Such discipline was not so much directed at the control of self-indulgence as at the denial of satisfactions that would have been considered normal. Unrestrained sexual desire, the need for food and sleep, the need for emotional release, for material secu- rity, and for independence of thought, should be all strictly subjugated, as if the faithful were trying to be superhuman, destroying the power of all human drives that could become a source of sin.