Question: Sometimes when I am meditating I fall asleep, not because I am tired, but because I feel that I am somehow trapped in my mind. I try to get into my heart, but I do not succeed; thoughts keep racing through my mind, and then I fall asleep.¹³⁸

Sri Chinmoy: You are having a terrible battle inside your mind and you are an unwitting victim. Your aspiration-world is fighting with your thought-world, and finally aspiration is giving way to thought. Take thought as a soldier and aspiration as another soldier. Aspiration is trying to go up and thought is trying to pull it down. They fight and you are the battlefield. When soldiers fight on the battlefield and one side wins, they win the field itself. In your case, they fight inside you. When the thought-world wins the fight, it takes you. Then, because you are tired from the battle, you fall asleep. At that time there is neither thought nor aspiration.

How can you prevent yourself from falling asleep? There are various ways. The simplest way is to repeat ‘Supreme’ or any other word you like as fast as possible. Imagine that you are an express train with only one destination. The driver of that train is constantly repeating God’s Name in order to derive energy, strength, stamina, encouragement, concern and all divine qualities. An express train stops only at the end of its journey, the goal; on the way it does not stop at all. Your goal is to reach a profound meditation. Always try to feel inside you a dynamic and progressive movement, but not an aggressive one. This movement will undoubtedly take you to your destination. If there is a dynamic and progressive movement, then you cannot fall asleep. If inside you the train is running, running towards the destination, and if you yourself are this very train, then you cannot fall asleep. Sometimes people feel that they are enjoying peace when they are fast asleep, but this is a lethargic peace. When you meditate you should try to create inside yourself a dynamic peace.