Sleep: death's little sister

Introduction

Questions and answers

Question: I read before I go to bed. How can I maintain a certain level of consciousness during my sleep?

Question: When I wake up to meditate in the morning I am still sleepy is that all right, or should I try to be fully awake?

Question: Why does my body tell me that I need more sleep than I really need?

Question: Often I wake up during the night. Why is this?

Question: If we are tired or sick, should we sleep more?

Question: Why is it that you appear in our dreams?

Question: How can I be punctual in my morning meditation even if I haven't had enough sleep?

Question: What happens to our soul while we are sleeping? What does sleep do to our soul?

Question: How do I continue my aspiration in my sleep?

Question: Does our consciousness manifest itself during deep sleep?

Question: When I am sleeping, even loud noises don't wake me. Does this mean that my soul is far from the physical plane?

Question: Do dreams have any significance in our spiritual life?

Question: When I am asleep I feel I am falling off a cliff, and that immediately wakes me up. What does this mean?

Question: When we are sleeping does our soul ever go to you? Is there any way we can know about it?

Question: Is it true that you actually become more tired if you sleep longer than five or six hours?

Question: Sometimes in my sleep I feel that I am half awake and I experience a force that seems to keep me from awakening completely.

Question: How can we achieve immediate alertness once we wake up so that we can meditate well?

Question: I feel we are trying to meditate but we are not succeeding because we are trying in the wrong way.

Question: When you look at the disciples, do you see that a lot of them are falling asleep or are they awake but just meditating badly?

First you have to empty the inner vessel. If you start meditating without emptying the vessel, naturally those undivine qualities will come to the fore. The best thing is to think before your meditation that you have to throw them out of your system. You don't have to do it here. You can do it on your way, or you can do it at home. Then, when you come to the meditation Centre you will come with purity. Think of it like this — every day you are drinking nectar, which is meditation. Also every day you are drinking poison, which comes in the form of doubt, fear, jealousy, insecurity and emotional vital life. When you drink poison, what is it that saves you, what is the antidote? This antidote is faith — faith in your spiritual life, faith in your spiritual parents, faith in the Supreme. If you have no faith, it is useless. God Himself will not be able to make you realise God. When He comes and stands in front of you, you will doubt Him. If God stands in front of you in a physical form and tells you, "I am God," you won't believe it, because in your mind you have established an image of God according to your sweet fancy, and God is not going to come to you to fulfil your sweet fancy. He will come to you in His own Way, whatever He feels is the right way for your soul.

Question: Guru, what happens if you are really tired after you meditate?

Question: Can we start sleeping very little and still function?

I am your spiritual Master, and since I sleep very little, I give you permission to sleep for me. But if it is more than eight hours, I take away the permission. No disciple, no sincere aspirant, should sleep more than eight hours. Seven, six, five-and-a-half hours is sufficient for almost everybody. But if that seems impossible, I say eight hours is the maximum. If you sleep more than eight hours, then you are taking those extra hours away from God and giving them to death.

If you sleep for eight hours, you are getting hardly more than half an hour or fifteen minutes of real sleep, soothing and fulfilling sleep. You don't get real rest; you are just in the world of inconscience. The other day at Columbia University a lady told me that just because she meditates more she has to sleep more. This is absurd. If you meditate more, you will receive boundless inner energy and you will develop the spiritual capacity to conquer sleep.

I had a cousin who used to meditate while lying down on her bed. She would look at the moon and try to meditate for about five minutes. Then she would fall asleep. The following day she would say she had meditated all night while gazing at the moon. She was fast asleep the whole time, but she was under the impression that she had been meditating. When you develop spiritual power you will be able to meditate while lying down. You will even be able to sleep and meditate at the same time. But this is not for beginners. True spiritual Masters allow the body to sleep and separate the soul from it. Their body is sleeping, but their consciousness is absolutely alert. While the body is resting they may be doing many things in the inner world.

Question: When I practise sports, I don't give as much time to meditation as I would like to, as I need the time for practising. Also, I wonder if I should be getting more sleep?

Question: How can we be more active in daily life?

Question: Guru, what can we do if we feel sleepy and don't feel any inspiration? How can we wake up and be alert for meditation?

Please feel that six o'clock is the time for the race to begin. So if you can get up at five-thirty and spend at least half an hour doing preliminary spiritual exercises before you start to meditate then you will raise your inspiration and aspiration to a satisfactory point and you will be ready to run at six o'clock. Otherwise you will feel inertia and for fifteen minutes or half an hour after you start you will still be half asleep. Then when the referee blows the whistle at the end of the race, you will still be staggering.

Question: I feel that I don't meditate well in the morning and my body is both tired and restless. Is it very important for me to come to early morning meditation, or should I just try to meditate at another time?

If you feel that you are not fully awake and alert, you can try breathing deeply a few times and practise conscious awareness. If you feel that you are falling asleep and enjoying the pleasure of sleep, at that time say, "No, let me enjoy the bliss of meditation instead." When you are falling asleep, you are entering into other worlds, unconscious worlds. Instead, you have to remain in this world and in the world of divine consciousness. There is a very subtle, peaceful movement in meditation. There is life in it; the life that lifts us up towards the goal. But that life is not in the world of sleep.

Question: It seems that during our group meditations, especially the early morning meditations, everyone is falling asleep instead of meditating. Why do we have so much trouble staying awake, even if we have had five, six or seven hours of sleep?

Question: Sometimes I wake up very early. Is it a good idea to get up and meditate even if it is not my usual meditation time?

Question: In the morning is it a good idea to get out of bed immediately when you wake up?

Question: Sometimes when I'm going to be up really late and I've only had five hours of sleep I feel I should rest further.

Question: If we are up very late and we feel that if we get up to meditate at our usual time, we will not be able to get by the next day with that much sleep, should we meditate later or should we meditate at the usual time and go back to sleep after our meditation?

Question: Guru, my hours are a little erratic. Sometimes when I get in late I feel fine, so I have my morning meditation then, at three-thirty, or four, depending on the time I get home from work. Then I go to sleep afterwards.

Question: From what I understand about ashrams, they go to bed early. But because of our activities, we go to bed at twelve or one o'clock. So, how can we be expected to get up early and meditate?

Question: You say that if we are sick or exhausted we should sleep. What if we wake up and our body says that we are really exhausted and need sleep?

Question: Usually after six-thirty I get the feeling that my meditation is over and I don't know what to do next. Should I just go back to sleep?

Question: Can I get up early to meditate and then take a nap later on in the day?

Question: What happens if we aren't regular in our meditation?

Question: Does it influence the vibration if someone sleeps in the meditation room?

Question: When I meditate after six-thirty in the morning, I don't feel that it's as rewarding as when I meditate earlier.

Question: How is it possible to have a good meditation in the morning when we have gone to bed in a very bad consciousness?

Question: What should we do when we become very tired? I know we are not supposed to drink coffee or tea. Are there any spiritual methods for waking ourselves up or for getting more effective sleep?

I have said that seven or eight hours of sleep is necessary for beginners. But there is a yogic method of getting rest. In one second you can take the rest of fifteen minutes, half an hour or even more. How can you get that kind of rest? When you go to sleep at night, feel that your whole body from head to foot has become a sea of peace. You have become peace itself. Consciously try to feel that you are not the body, but an infinite expanse of peace. When you can consciously feel this peace, you will see that your physical body has merged with it and totally disappeared in the sea of peace. If you can do this exercise effectively, you will need very little sleep.

It is not the number of hours you sleep that is important. During eight hours of sleep you do not get even one hour of sound sleep, and perhaps you don't get even a couple of minutes. Since you know how to meditate and concentrate, what is necessary is to feel the infinite expanse of peace and to embody peace inside yourself. We feel that when the body is active, dynamic, we have strength. But the real strength is in inner peace, not in outer action. When we have peace in infinite measure then automatically dynamic energy comes from there. In the outer field of manifestation we become dynamic energy, while inside we are all peace.

Indian tradition says that at night if you sleep on your left side, you get better sleep. During the day it is best to sleep on your right side. Never sleep on your chest. There is truth in all these things. The sages also say never to sleep with your hands on your chest, or you will have nightmares. Many people do have nightmares unnecessarily because of this.

What you can do if you feel that even eight hours of sleep is not enough for you, or if you are unable to get to bed at your usual hour on a certain night is this: try to imagine that you are going to sleep for twenty-four hours. Try to feel that you will have a sound sleep for twenty-four hours. Then as soon as you wake up in the morning, try to feel that you have slept for twenty-four hours. Never think that you have slept for only three hours or four hours. It is the mind that convinces the outer consciousness. The conscious mind alone can satisfy you. If your conscious mind tells you that you have slept for twenty-four hours, then you will believe it. This is not self-deception. It is self-control in the conscious mind. We say that we have slept for twenty-four hours because the figure twenty-four gives us the feeling that we have had a considerable amount of rest, a more than adequate amount of rest. This figure has enormous strength. We may not sleep for even four hours, but the figure twenty-four immediately gives us a sense of satisfaction, relief and fulfilment. In this way we can get up early in the morning.

Poems from the first edition