20. Sleeping with Awareness is Samadhi🔗

The next modification of the mind: Sleep.

Patanjali says, sleep can lead you to joy or suffering, anguish or non-anguish. Almost one-third of your life is spent in sleeping. So, if you understand the right technique for sleeping, you can spend one third of your life in samadhi! See, the only difference between your sleep state and samadhi state, the ultimate enlightened state, is this: samadhi minus awareness is your sleep; your sleep plus awareness is samadhi. Enlightenment is nothing but being aware when you are asleep, that's all. When you are in deep sleep, there are no samskaras, engrams, which are active; there are no memories which are active; you are completely silent, relaxed, settled. You are in the state of samadhi, but with one difference - you are not aware. See, in the deep sleep, you are entering into the same state in which Buddha is living, in which Sri Ramakrishna is living, in which Mira is dancing, in which Chaitanya is singing! You are entering into the same space in which they are all living. Only one difference: you are not aware. Patanjali is aware, Chaitanya is aware, Krishna is aware, Buddha is aware, Mira is aware. They are alive. In that space, if you know how to be alive, if you learn how to be aware, you have done everything. Nothing else needs to be done. All you need to do is – learn how to be alive when you are asleep, learn how to be aware when you are asleep. But now, our problem is: forget about how to be aware when we are asleep, how to be aware when we are awake? How to be alive when we are awake? That itself is a big problem!

Today, we will practice a technique to convert your sleep into samadhi. Please understand, when I say, 'being aware during your sleep', I don't mean 'sleeplessness.' I am not telling you to be sleepless; no. That is sleep disorder. That is a disease. I'm not talking about being sleepless or having a sleep disorder. You will be sleeping, but your whole awareness will be alive - means, there will be no engrams, there will be no thoughts, there will be no memories, but the pure 'I' will be alive. That will be radiating. That will exist. There is a very powerful technique called yoga nidra - falling asleep consciously, falling into the deep sleep state with awareness. If you can drop into that state with awareness and come back, suddenly your whole system will be new, your whole system will be different, your whole system will respond to the world in a completely different way.

Listen: if you sleep very deeply, if you have a good sleep and come out, your system will be fresh, it will respond to the world in a different way. If you are stuck in the dream state and come out, your system will be different, and it will not respond properly to life, to the day. If you fall into samadhi and come out, if you fall into the state deeper than deep sleep and come out, you will eternally respond to the world only through joy, only through bliss. That is why we call that state as eternal bliss. If you experience that state and come out, you will see that you are radiating eternal bliss, eternal joy.

Usually you don't sleep for more than twenty or twenty-five minutes continuously. Then you come back, continue to dream, play in the dream world, then fall asleep again; after twenty or twenty-five minutes, you come back and move in the dream state, have some dreams, then again fall asleep! That is why, when you wake up in the morning, you don't feel as if you had a good rest - because you never rested; you were continuously playing the game. Your body might have been resting, your body might have been relaxing, but you were not in a relaxed mood, you were not aware, you were not in peace.

Sleep can be used for suffering or joy. This state can be manipulated to reach samadhi state, or to be in the suffering. Human being is the only animal who is tired after resting! Any other animal, when he wakes up in the morning, will be fresh, jumping, active, very alive. Human being is the only animal, when he wakes up in the morning, just rolls over and pulls the blanket over himself; he is tired of resting! I have seen people using sleep to lead to suffering. Either they oversleep or they continue to suffer without sleep. Sleeplessness or oversleeping. If they don't sleep in the night, the chronic fatigue will be there in their body. It will continue to disturb their creativity. The whole day, they will be constantly disturbed; creativity will not express in them. Or, if they sleep the whole day, there is no time for creativity, there is no possibility for creativity. Sometimes, people wake up only when the sun comes in through the window - unfortunately, it is the window which is facing west!

So much can be said about sleep! Today, let us have the technique at the end of the session. A very powerful technique: how to relax with awareness, how to go into the deepest states of sleep with awareness.

(Yoga Nidra meditation follows)

ACTIVITY

Tonight, try to be aware as you fall asleep.