Question: If we slept for 2 or 3 and a half hours at night and got up for a half hour and read your books or meditated and prayed and then went back to sleep, would that be better?

Sri Chinmoy: Unfortunately, it may happen that only after three hours you enter into a deeper part of sleep. For the first three hours you have not slept properly at all, and then you are entering into a very nourishing and refreshing type of sleep, but mechanically you have set the alarm for three hours and you are getting up when you are just about to get the sleep that in five minutes will strengthen your nerves. At that moment if you get up, it is not good. You have to train the body in such a way that as soon as you go to bed, in five minutes or ten minutes you will fall asleep, before the mind starts thinking of incidents and events. Just think one sweet thought of me — that I gave you a smile one day, or something else. That smile you remember and swim in the sea of that smile as you go to sleep.

The disciples whom I see every day should not remember today’s bark, but yesterday’s smile. Anything that gives you joy from me, that very thing you remember. If you can remember that joy for five minutes as you go to sleep, from that joy peace will enter into you. Joy gives you peace. That is the easiest way. Even if you went to bed after quarrelling and fighting, or if unfortunate things have taken place at your job or with your friends, think of my smile, or of how I appreciated you once. You should write these things down so that if they don’t come to your mind when you are upset, you can just look and refresh your memory. These sweet memories have so much power that they will immediately swallow all the bitter feelings you have that will prevent you from getting proper sleep.