Sleep is Painless?

[sdi]

I was following up on a reference I came across to Plutarch, a part of which reads, "therefore death is sometimes accompanied by pains, sleep always by pleasure."

Is it a common belief that sleep is free of pain? It is not my experience: some of the worst pain I have experienced has been in dreams; for example, of being shot by a firearm.

Comments

[k_a_nitz]

FWIW I've never had pain from sleep. I wouldn't say it is always accompanied by pleasure though.

[sdi]

Neither would I! Even if we take "pleasure" to simply mean a rest and respite, I often as not wake up just as exhausted as I was the night before!

[jprussell]

I wonder if Plutarch and other Greeks thought of "sleep" and "dreaming" as different, or if the word for "sleep" used here and in Plato's Apology (where he gives his famous "either/or" for what to expect from death and says either is preferable to living through shameful deeds) implies the not-dreaming part.

Cheers,
Jeff

[sdi]

Good question, but I don't think so; the context of this quote is natural philosophy (that is, what is the soul, what are it's properties, etc.). Patrocleas is saying that pain is a bodily sensation, but since the soul withdraws from the body when sleeping, pain is not possible and thus pleasure (at a minimum, relaxation and recuperation) results. (He uses this as an axiom to reason about the soul's properties after death, etc.)

He doesn't speak about dreams specifically, but my question follows from the argument (at least as I understand it—I could be wrong!).

[jprussell]

Ah, okay, that's helpful context. In that case, might he argue that the "pain" experienced in a dream is experienced not by your body but by your soul?

[sdi]

I think he would argue that what I experienced is impossible! :) Hence my question, is my experience unusual? I had assumed it to be pretty normal—don't people have nightmares of being embarrassed, torn to pieces by wild animals, etc.?

The Neoplatonic perspective, at least, is that the thing experiencing dreams is the "pneumatic vehicle" (what occultists call the astral body), which is not the soul itself but still a body of sorts (even if it's different from the physical body), and thus has sensory capacity. This, at least, fits my experiences!

[jprussell]

Ah, okay. Hmmm, I can't remember feeling physical pain in a dream, and in fact I've had some dreams where things seem to twist themselves so that the thing that obviously should have hurt me doesn't. I have felt embarrassment, grief, and other "negative" emotions in dreams, at times pretty strongly, though.