Question: If we don't drink coffee or tea, what can we do if we start feeling drowsy while driving late at night, or if we get little sleep and find it difficult to get up in the morning?

Sri Chinmoy: You say that sometimes you feel drowsy while driving. Now, why should coffee or tea have to come to your rescue? There are spiritual methods, which have infinitely more power than coffee or tea, that can help you at that time. If you are tired while driving, stop your car and breathe in deeply a few times. Do the alternate nostril breathing (described in the section of this book on Pranayama). This will give you immediate energy. Then, with the power of your concentration, try consciously to breathe in divine energy. When you breathe in, try to feel that you are breathing in not only through your nose, but also through your eyes, ears, forehead, head, shoulders. Feel that energy is coming from all quarters and entering into you from various doors. If you are conscious of this stream of energy entering into you, naturally you will not be sleepy. When you begin meditating well, you are drawing in energy consciously or unconsciously. Naturally, the more energy you can draw into you, the higher your meditation will be. And where does this energy come from? It comes from the Universal Consciousness.

Another thing you can do when you are tired is repeat the name of the Supreme or your Guru very rapidly. If you do so, immediately their names will enter into your own inner consciousness, and you will get boundless energy.

The number of hours that you sleep is not the important thing, but rather how well you sleep. If you find that it is difficult to get up in the morning, you have to know that during eight hours of sleep perhaps you have not had even one hour of good sleep. There is a kind of sleep called yogic sleep. In one second of yogic sleep we can get the equivalent of fifteen minutes or a half hour of ordinary rest. Now, how can you get that kind of rest? Early in the morning when you find it difficult to get up, try to feel that your entire body, from head to foot, represents a sea of peace. Feel that you have become peace itself, that you embody peace within and without. Try to feel your physical frame consciously, but at the same time feel that you are an infinite expanse of peace. When you can consciously feel this expanse of peace, you will see that your physical body, flesh, blood and bones, has totally merged and disappeared into that sea of peace.

Peace can act like dynamic strength. You feel that when the body is active and moving to and fro, you have strength; but real strength exists in inner peace, not in outer action. When you possess peace in infinite measure, you possess the source of ordinary dynamic energy. If you call upon dynamic energy, which is inside you in the form of peace, then you can get up easily.

Also, when you go to bed, just try to feel that you are going to sleep for twenty-four hours. Then, even though the clock will say that you have slept only three or four hours, your very first thought as soon as you wake up should be that you have slept for twenty-four hours. The mind can convince the outer consciousness, and immediately you will believe it. This is not self-deception; it is proper use of the conscious mind. The figure twenty-four has enormous strength. It immediately gives us a sense of comfort, relief, pleasure, fulfilment.

From:Sri Chinmoy,The body, humanity’s fortress, Agni Press, 1974
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