WhileWeAreAsleepweAreAllEqual

Sleep is a mighty leveller, an equaliser. During hours of sleep, all are alike, the duke and the dustman, the chooser and the beggar, the high and the low, the victor and the vanquished. None is in a position to thunder at others, to mock at others; all stand clothed in a uniform garb of calmness, rest and repose. None is found to be assertive, bossy, domineering and dictatorial in import or attitude. Sleep is a state without vanity, pride, haughtiness impertinence and high-handedness. It gives an equal and the same treatment to the master as well as the servant. In the lap of sleep, all feel relaxed, dead for the time being, to the surroundings. None fumes or frets; all feverishness vanishes. All loud protestations, boastings, shoutings, grumblings are silenced for the time being. Passivity seizes everybody and it is in this sheer inactivity and immobility that all are one. None dare encroach upon the rights of others. It is only when one awakens from sleep that one, forthwith, becomes aware of one’s distinct, separate and superior status in society and thus rises to an inevitable sense of inequality and difference. Sleep has been spiritualized and symbolized as equality in poetry of all lands. Whitman is one such poet who has sung of the spirituality of sleep. Only sleep is not problematic, controversial, ambiguous.