Do you think we are conscious during deep sleep? After all we wake up and say "I slept well" or "I slept like a log". How do we know that, if we aren't conscious during deep sleep? Is it just an inference, we infer we slept deeply because we feel rested when we wake up? Or is it more like direct knowledge, we know we slept deeply because we were conscious during deep sleep? If anybody answer "yes" to the question in the title of this thread, was is that consciousness that knows, apart from the sleeping mind?
Interesting question. However, from what I’ve learned, we are not conscious during sleep. It is the subconscious mind that takes over then. It keeps our heart beating, blood flowing, and lungs breathing due to the fact that we are not conscious. There’s also lucid dreaming, which implies the ability to be conscious in a dream, which I guess in a way is sleep. Yes, I believe the amount of rest we get dictates whether we slept well or not. If you were half conscious and half asleep, then that would be when someone says they didn’t sleep well, simply because one knows they didn’t get enough rest.
Interesting, so what I am hearing you say is that the body itself by the amount it has benefited from sleep tells us upon waking whether we slept well or not. So knowing we slept well is something we know from the mediation of the body, not the mind. I meant deep sleep, not the REM cycle when we dream. Dreaming, of course, is being conscious during sleep, but is there consciousness during that period of sleep when we do not dream?
REM actually means deep sleep. The time you get actual rest is during REM sleep, which is when dreaming happens. I’ve heard that when people don’t dream it is a good sign that you didn’t get the rest you needed, but then again there’s people who don’t dream or remember their dreams at all, so that could be misleading. Edit: It does not means deep sleep, but does mean that you’ve entered deep sleep.
The mind rests as well, though. I think it’s primarily the mind, but of course, physical rest is just as essential.
