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The Separation of States of Awareness Between the Waking State, the Sleep State and the Spiritual Realms · Sri Aurobindo Studies

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  When we sleep, we are generally oblivious to our waking state of
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  consciousness, and conversely, when we are awake we are
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  oblivious to what takes place during the sleep state.
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  We sometimes get a few glimpses when we are in that twilight
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  condition between sleep and waking, or when we are aware of
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  our dreams, but otherwise what takes place during deep sleep
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  remains very much a mystery. People do not generally reflect
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  on this and they just take sleep for granted without exploring
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  the consciousness active at that time.
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  However, technological instruments are able to measure
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  brain wave activity during sleep, and it is quite certain
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  that such activity takes place without our awareness of the
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  content of that activity. Similarly, there are stages of
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  meditation, as well as various experiences of the spiritual
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  planes where the awareness goes there.
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  But when the individual returns to the waking consciousness, he
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  does not have a clear conception of what happened during that
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  other state of consciousness. Sometimes, as with our
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  occasional awareness of elements of the sleep state, we bring
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  back a feeling, a glimpse, or an idea from that other realm of
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  consciousness. For the most part, however,
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  there are generally partial transcriptions, but not a full
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  understanding and awareness of the status on the other side of
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  the border beyond the waking state.
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  Mostly this turns out to be a lack of experience or a lack of
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  language to describe something that is not part of the usual
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  pattern of life. If the experiences repeat
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  themselves and the person becomes habituated to
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  transitioning between the two statuses, it actually becomes
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  possible to bring the power and understanding of that experience
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  into the waking consciousness, Srioro Bindo notes quote.
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  The entire oblivion of the experience means merely that
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  there is no sufficient bridge between the inner consciousness,
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  which has the experience in a kind of samati, and the exterior
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  waking consciousness. It is when the higher
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  consciousness has made the bridge between them that the
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  outer also begins to remember. End Quote.
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  Reference Sri Aurobindo, Bases of Yoga, Chapter 3 in
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  difficulty, page 48.