This presentation explores the intersection of heart, deep sleep, and dream states as transformative spaces in philosophical and artistic inquiry. Drawing from Kashmir Shaivism, Aurobindian thought, Merleau-Ponty, Jean-Luc Nancy, and others, it situates these states as key loci for embodied and trans-immanent transformation. The heart emerges as a dynamic locus bridging waking, dreaming, and deep sleep, between singularity and ontological interconnectedness.
The heart, as conceptualized in the Shiva Sutras, is a "hidden chamber" where subjective awareness withdraws into broader fields of consciousness. Nancy's idea of sleep as the "presence of an absence" complements this view, showing deep sleep (suṣhupti) reconfigures being. Deep sleep merges consciousness with ānanda maya kośha, a blissful sheath. Aurobindo links this state to the latent potential of mūlaprakṛti and unmanifest energies. Dyczkowski highlights how deep sleep dissolves subjectivity, merging the self with higher consciousness, awakening the unmanifest.
Dreams, as Nietzsche observed, are liminal spaces where identity and form fluctuate. In Aurobindo's integral yoga, they bridge lower and higher consciousness, animating latent vibhūtis (powers). This aligns with Arno Böhler's model of involution and evolution, where spirit descends into matter as latent consciousness ascends. Nancy and Merleau-Ponty describe sleep as holding singularities and dualities in tension, mediating individuality and interconnectedness.
The heart becomes an artistic expression of an integrative "un-sleeping" of waking consciousness, opening an ontological space as the realm of virtual mattering. This is imagined as a performative act, awakening latent potentials and embodying a cosmic rhythm of transformation. Entering sleep enacts a process of de-subjectivating consciousness, opening a trans-immanent dimension of the self, hidden in the moment before expression—a transformative bridge between the visible and invisible.