Sleep
cannot be replaced, but it can be changed; for you can become
conscious in sleep. If you are thus conscious, then the
night can be utilised for a higher working—provided
the body gets its due rest; for the object of sleep is the
body's rest and the renewal of the vital-physical force.
It is a mistake to deny to the body food and sleep, as some
from an ascetic idea or impulse want to do—that only
wears out the physical support and although either the yogic
or the vital energy can long keep at work an overstrained
or declining physical system, a time comes when this drawing
is no longer so easy nor perhaps possible. The body should
be given what it needs for its own efficient working. Moderate
but sufficient food (without greed or desire), sufficient
sleep, but not of the heavy tamasic kind, this should be
the rule.
There
is no reason at all why intensity of sadhana should bring
insufficient sleep.
Sadhana can go on in the dream or sleep state as well as
in the waking.
All
dream or sleep consciousness cannot be converted at once
into conscious sadhana. That has to be done progressively.
But your power of conscious samadhi must increase before
this can be done.
The
sleep consciousness can be effectively dealt with only when
the waking mind has made a certain amount of progress.
It
is usually only if there is much activity of sadhana in
the day that it extends also into the sleep-state.
Once
one is in full sadhana, sleep becomes as much a part of
it as waking.
That
is all right. It shows that the sadhana is becoming continuous
and that you are being conscious and using a conscious will
in sleep as well as in waking. This is a very important
stage forward in the sadhana.
At
night when one sinks into the subconscient after being in
a good state of consciousness we find that state gone and
we have to labour to get it back again. On the other hand,
if the sleep is of the better kind one may wake up in a
good condition. Of course, it is better to be conscious
in sleep, if one can.
The
gap made by the night and waking with the ordinary consciousness
is the case with everybody almost (of course, the “ordinary”
consciousness differs according to the progress); but it
is no use wanting to be conscious in sleep; you have to
get the habit of getting back the thread of the progress
as soon as may be and for that there must be some concentration
after rising.
You
need not meditate at once [after waking in the morning]—but
for a few moments take a concentrated attitude calling the
Mother's presence for the day.
At night, you have to pass into sleep in the concentration—you
must be able to concentrate with the eyes closed, lying
down and the concentration must deepen into sleep—that
is to say, sleep must become a concentrated going inside
away from the outer waking state. If you find it necessary
to sit for a time you may do so, but afterwards lie down
keeping the concentration till this happens.
[To
be conscious in sleep:] You have to start by concentrating
before you sleep always with a specific will or aspiration.
The will or aspiration may take time to reach the subconscient,
but if it is sincere, strong and steady, it does reach after
a time—so that an automatic consciousness and will
are established in the sleep itself which will do what is
necessary.
It
was not half sleep or quarter sleep or even one-sixteenth
sleep that you had; it was a going inside of the consciousness,
which in that state remains conscious but shut to outer
things and open only to inner experience. You must distinguish
clearly between these two quite different conditions, one
is nidrä, the other, the beginning at least of samädhi
(not nirvikalpa, of course!). This drawing inside is necessary
because the active mind of the human being is at first too
much turned to outward things; it has to go inside altogether
in order to live in the inner being (inner mind, inner vital,
inner physical, psychic). But with training one can arrive
at a point when one remains outwardly conscious and yet
lives in the inner being and has at will the indrawn or
the outpoured condition; you can then have the same dense
immobility and the same inpouring of a greater and purer
consciousness in the waking state as in that which you erroneously
call sleep.
You are more conscious in your sleep than in your waking
condition. This is because of the physical consciousness
which is not yet sufficiently open; it is only just beginning
to open. In your sleep the inner being is active and the
psychic there can influence more actively the mind and vital.
When the physical consciousness is spiritually awake, you
will no longer feel the trouble and obstruction you now
have and will be as open in the waking consciousness as
in sleep.
This
is the right attitude to have faith and not mind the difficulties.
Difficulties—and serious ones—there cannot fail
to be in the path of yoga, because it is not easy to change
all at once the ignorant human consciousness and make it
a spiritual consciousness open to the Divine. But with faith
one need not mind the difficulties; the Divine Force is
there and will overcome them.
The
sleep you describe in which there is a luminous silence
or else the sleep in which there is Ananda in the cells,
these are obviously the best states. The other hours, those
of which you are unconscious, may be spells of a deep slumber
in which you have got out of the physical into the mental,
vital or other planes. You say you were unconscious, but
it may simply be that you do not remember what happened;
for in coming back there is a sort of turning over of the
consciousness, a transition or reversal, in which everything
experienced in sleep except perhaps the last happening of
all or else one that was very impressive, recedes from the
physical consciousness and all becomes as if a blank. There
is another blank state, a state of inertia, not only blank,
but heavy and unremembering; but that is when one goes deeply
and crassly into the subconscient; this subterranean plunge
is very undesirable, obscuring, lowering, often fatiguing
rather than restful, the reverse of the luminous silence.
In
sleep one very commonly passes from consciousness to deeper
consciousness in a long succession until one reaches the
psychic and rests there or else from higher to higher consciousness
until one reaches rest in some silence and peace. The few
minutes one passes in this rest are the real sleep which
restores,—if one does not get it, there is only a half
rest. It is when you come near to either of these domains
of rest that you begin to see these higher kinds of dreams.
According
to a recent medical theory one passes in sleep through many
phases until one arrives at a state in which there is absolute
rest and silence—it lasts only for ten minutes, the
rest of the time is taken up by travelling to that and travelling
back again to the waking state. I suppose the ten minutes
sleep can be called susupti in the Brahman or Brahmaloka,
the rest is svapna or passage through other worlds (planes
or states of conscious existence). It is these ten minutes
that restore the energies of the being, and without it sleep
is not refreshing.
According
to the Mother's experience and knowledge one passes from
waking through a succession of states of sleep consciousness
which are in fact anentry and passage into so many worlds
and arrives at a pure Sachchidananda state of complete rest,
light and silence,—afterwards one retraces one's way
till onereaches the waking physical state. It is this Sachchidananda
period that gives sleep all its restorative value. These
two accounts, the scientific and the occult-spiritual, are
practically identical with each other. But the former is
only a recent discovery of what the occult-spiritual knowledge
knew long ago.
People's ideas of sound sleep are absolutely erroneous.
What they call sound sleep is merely a plunge of the outer
consciousness into a complete subconscience. They call that
a dreamless sleep; but it is only a state in which the surface
sleep consciousness which is a subtle prolongation of the
outer still left active in sleep itself is unable to record
the dreams and transmit them to the physical mind. As a
matter of fact the whole sleep is full of dreams. It is
only during the brief time in which one is in the Brahmaloka
that the dreams cease.
A
long unbroken sleep is necessary because there are just
ten minutes of the whole into which one enters into a true
rest—a sort of Sachchidananda immobility of consciousness—and
that it is which really restores the system. The rest of
the time is spent first in travelling through various states
of consciousness towards that and then coming out of it
back towards the waking state. This fact of the ten minutes
true rest has been noted by medical men, but of course they
know nothing about Sachchidananda!
-
Sri Aurobindo
