The fourth is sleep. Sleep means unconsciousness as far as your outward-moving consciousness is concerned. It has gone deep into itself. Activity has stopped; conscious activity has stopped. Mind is not functioning. Sleep is a non-functioning of the mind. If you are dreaming, then it is not sleep. You are just in the middle, in the waking and the sleep. You have left the waking, and you have not entered sleep. You are just in the middle.
Sleep means a totally contentless state – no activity, no movement in the mind. Mind has completely been absorbed, relaxed. This sleep is beautiful; it is life-giving. You can use it. And this sleep, if you know how to use it, can become samadhi. Because samadhi and sleep are not very different. Only one difference is there that in samadhi you will be aware. Everything else will be the same.
In sleep everything is the same, only that you are not aware. You are in the same bliss in which Buddha entered, in which Ramakrishna lives, in which Jesus has made his home. In deep sleep you are in the same blissful state, but you are not aware. So in the morning you feel the night has been good, in the morning you feel refreshed, vital, rejuvenated, in the morning you feel that the night was just beautiful – but this is just an afterglow. You don’t know what has happened, what really happened. You were not aware.
Sleep can be used in two ways. Just as a natural rest – you have even lost that. People are not really going into sleep. They continuously go on dreaming. Sometimes, for very few seconds, they touch. They touch, and they again start dreaming. The silence of sleep, the blissful music of sleep, has become unknown. You have destroyed it. Even natural sleep is destroyed. You are so agitated and excited that the mind cannot fall completely into oblivion.
But Patanjali says natural sleep is good for the body’s health, and if you can become alert in sleep it can become samadhi, it can become a spiritual phenomenon. So there are techniques on how sleep can become an awakening. Gita says that the yogi doesn’t sleep even while he is asleep. He remains alert. Something inside goes on being aware. The whole body falls into sleep, the mind falls into sleep, but the witnessing remains. Someone is watching – a watcher on the tower goes on. Then sleep becomes samadhi. It becomes the ultimate ecstasy.
And the last is memory. Memory is the fifth modification of the mind. That too can be used, misused. If memory is misused, it creates confusion. Really, you may remember something, but you cannot be certain whether it happened that way or not. Your memory is not reliable. You may add many things in it; imagination may enter into it. You may delete many things from it, you may do many things to it. And when you say that “This is my memory,” it is a very refined and changed thing. It is not real.
Everybody says that “My childhood was just paradise,” – look at the children. These children will also say later on that their childhood was paradise, and they are suffering. And every child hankers how to grow soon, how to become an adult. Every child thinks that adults are enjoying, all that is worth enjoying they are enjoying. They are powerful; they can do everything, he is helpless. Children think they are suffering, but these children will grow as you have grown, and then later on they will say that childhood was beautiful, just a paradise.
Your memory is not reliable. You are imagining; you are just creating your past. You are not true to it. And you drop many things from it – all that was ugly, all that was sad, all that was painful you drop it; all that was beautiful you continue. All that was a support to your ego you remember, and all that was not a support you drop it, you forget it.
So everybody has a great storehouse of dropped memories. And whatsoever you say is not true, you cannot remember truly. All your centers are confused, and they enter into each other and disturb.
Right memory. Buddha has used the words “right memory” for meditation. Patanjali says if memory is right, that means one has to be totally honest to oneself. Then, only then, can memory be right. Whatsoever has happened, bad or good, don’t change it. Know it as it is. It is very hard! It is arduous! You choose and change. Knowing one’s past as it is will change your whole life. If you rightly know your past as it is, you will not like to repeat it in the future. Right now everybody is thinking how to repeat it in a modified form, but if you know your past exactly as it was you will not like to repeat it.
Right memory will give you the impetus, how to be free from all lives. And if memory is right, then you can go even in past lives. If you are honest, then you can go into the past lives. And then you have only one desire, how to transcend all this nonsense. But you think the past was beautiful, and you think the future is going to be beautiful, only this present is wrong. But the past was present a few days before, and the future will become present a few days after. And every time every present is wrong, and all past is beautiful and all future is beautiful. This is a wrong memory. Look directly. Don’t change. Look at the past as it was. But we are dishonest.
Every man hates his father, but if you ask anybody he will say, “I love my father. I honor my father as anything.” Every woman hates her mother, but ask and every woman will say, “My mother, she is just divine.” This is a wrong memory.
Gibran has a story. He says, one night one mother and daughter were awakened suddenly because of a noise. They both were sleepwalkers, and the time the sudden noise happened in the neighborhood they were both walking in the garden, asleep. They were sleep-walkers.
It must have been a shock, because in sleep the old woman, the mother, was saying to the daughter that, “Because of you, you bitch, because of you, my youth is lost. You destroyed me. And now anybody who comes to the house looks at you. Nobody looks at me.” A deep jealousy that comes to every mother when the daughter becomes young and beautiful. It happens to every mother, but it is inside.
And the daughter was saying, “You old rotten… Because of you I cannot enjoy life. You are the hindrance. Everywhere you are the hindrance, the obstacle. I cannot love; I cannot enjoy.”
And suddenly, because of the noise, they were both awakened. And the old woman said, “My child, what are you doing here? You may catch a cold. Come inside.” And the daughter said, “But what are you doing here? You were not feeling well and this is a cold night. Come, mother. Come to the bed.”
The first thing that was happening was coming from the unconscious. Now they are again pretending; they have become awakened. Now the unconscious has gone back, the conscious has come in. Now they are hypocrites. Your – conscious is hypocrisy.
To be truly honest with one’s own memories one will have to really pass through arduous effort. And you have to be true, whatsoever. You have to be nakedly true, you have to know what you really think about your father, about your mother, about your brother, about your sister-really. And what you have in the past, don’t mix, don’t change, don’t polish; let it be as it is. If this happens, then, Patanjali says, this will be a freedom. You will drop it. The whole thing is nonsense, and you will not like to project it again in the future.
And then you will not be a hypocrite. You will be real, true, sincere – you will become authentic. And when you become authentic, you become like a rock. Nothing can change you; nothing can create confusion.
You become like a sword. You can always cut whatsoever is wrong; you can divide whatsoever is right from the wrong. And then a clarity of mind is achieved. That clarity can lead you towards meditation; that clarity can become the basic ground to grow – to grow beyond.
Tags: Sleep And Memory
