Yoga Sutra 11 Meditate During Sleep

ALSO, MEDITATE ON KNOWLEDGE THAT COMES DURING SLEEP.

ALSO, MEDITATE ON ANYTHING THAT APPEALS TO YOU.

THUS, THE YOGI BECOMES MASTER OF ALL, FROM THE INFINITESIMAL TO THE INFINITE.

MAN SLEEPS almost one-third of his life, twenty years approximately. But sleep has been neglected, terribly neglected. Nobody thinks about it, nobody meditates on it. This has happened because man has paid too much attention to the conscious mind.

Mind has three dimensions. Just as matter has three dimensions, mind also has three dimensions. Only one dimension is conscious, another dimension is unconscious, and still another dimension is there which is superconscious. These three dimensions are of the mind – just like the matter, because deep down the mind is also matter. Or, you can say it otherwise, that matter is also mind. It has to be so, because only one exists.

Mind is subtle matter; matter is gross mind. But ordinarily man lives only in one dimension, the conscious. Sleep belongs to the unconscious; dreaming belongs to the unconscious. Meditation, ecstasy, belong to the superconscious, just like waking and thinking belong to the conscious. So, we have to go slowly into this phenomenon of mind.

The first thing about mind to be remembered is, it is just like an iceberg – the topmost part is on the surface; you can see it, but it is only one-tenth of the whole. Nine-tenths is hidden underneath. You cannot see it ordinarily unless you move in the depth. But these are only two dimensions. There is a third dimension – as if a part of the iceberg has evaporated and has become a small cloud and hovers in the sky. It is difficult to reach the unconscious; it is almost impossible to reach that cloud – of course, part of the same iceberg, but evaporated.

That’s why meditation is so difficult, samadhi so arduous. It takes one’s total energy. It demands one’s total devotion. Only then does the vertical movement into the cloud-like phenomenon of the superconscious become possible. The conscious is there; you are listening to me from the conscious. If you are thinking what I am saying, if you are inside making a sort of dialogue with whatsoever I am saying, a sort of commentary goes on inside, this is the conscious mind.

But you can listen to me without thinking – in deep love, heart-to-heart, not in any way verbalizing what I am saying, judging what I am saying, right or wrong, no. No valuation – you simply listen in deep love, as if the mind has passed, and the heart listens and beats with joy. Then the unconscious is listening. Then whatsoever I say will go very deep to your roots.

But the third possibility is also there, that you can listen through the superconscious. Then even love is a disturbance – very subtle, but even love is a disturbance. Then there is nothing, no thought, no feeling. You simply become a void, an emptiness, end to end. And into that emptiness falls whatsoever I say and whatsoever I am. Then you are listening from the superconscious.

These are the three dimensions. While you are awake, you live in the conscious – you work, you think, you do this and that. When you fall into; sleep, the conscious, is no more functioning, it is resting. Another dimension starts working, the unconscious. Then you cannot think, but you can dream. And the whole night there are almost eight cycles of dreaming continuously. Only for a few moments you are not dreaming, otherwise you are dreaming.

Patanjali says: ALSO, MEDITATE ON KNOWLEDGE THAT COMES DURING SLEEP

You simply fall into sleep as if it is a sort of absence. It is not – it has its own presence. Sleep is not only negation of waking. If it was, then there was nothing to meditate. Sleep is not like darkness, absence of light, no. Sleep has its own positivity. It exists, and it exists as much as your waking time. And when you will meditate and the mysteries of sleep will be revealed to you, then you will see that there is no distinction between waking and sleeping. They both exist in their own right. Sleep is not just rest from waking, it is a different kind of activity, hence dreams.

Dream is a tremendous activity, more powerful than your thinking, more meaningful also, because it belongs to the deeper part of your being than your thinking. When you fall into sleep, the mind that was functioning the whole day is tired, exhausted. It is a very tiny mind, one-tenth compared to the unconscious, which is nine times bigger and greater and powerful. And if you compare it with the superconscious, comparison is not possible, because superconscious is infinite, superconscious is omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient. Superconscious is what God is. Even compared to the unconscious, the conscious is very small. It gets tired, it needs rest to be recharged. The conscious; goes off; tremendous activity starts in sleep, which is dreaming.

And why has it been neglected? – Because the mind has been trained to be identified with the conscious, so you think that you are no more in sleep. That’s why sleep looks just like a small death. You simply never think about what is going on. Patanjali says, “Meditate on it and many things will be uncovered within your being.”

It will take a little time to move into sleep with awareness because you are not even aware when you are awake. You move, in fact, in your waking also as if you are deep asleep, a somnambulist, a sleepwalker not very awake really. Just because the eyes are open don’t think that you are awake. Awakening means that whatsoever you are doing or whatsoever is happening moment to moment, you are doing it in full mindfulness. Even if I raise my hand to make a gesture to you, I am making it in full consciousness. It can be made in a robot-like way, mechanical; you are not aware of what is happening in the hand. In fact, you have not moved it at all; it has moved on its own, it is unconscious. That’s why it is so difficult to penetrate your own sleep.

But if one tries… The first effort to be made is: while you are awake, be more awake, because from there the effort has to be started. Walking on the street, walk mindfully, as if you are doing something very important. It is very significant. Each step should be taken in full awareness. If you can do that, only then you can enter into sleep. Right now you have a very faint awareness. The moment your conscious mind goes off, that faint awareness disappears like a small ripple. It has no energy; it is very, very faint, just a flicker, just a zero-voltage phenomenon. You have to bring more energy to it, so much energy that when the conscious mind goes off, awareness continues on its own – and you fall asleep with awareness. This can happen if you do other activities with awareness – walking, eating, sleeping, taking your bath. The whole day, whatsoever you are doing, it becomes just an excuse for the inner training of mindfulness. So the activity becomes secondary; awareness through that activity becomes primary. When by the night you drop all activity and you go to sleep, that awareness continues. Even while you are falling asleep the awareness becomes a watcher that, yes, the body is falling asleep. By and by, the body is relaxing. Not that you verbalize, you simply watch. By and by, thoughts are disappearing. You watch the gaps. By and by, the world is very, very distant. You are moving into the basement of your being, the unconscious. If you can fall down asleep with awareness, only then the continuity will be there in the night. That is what Patanjali means, “Meditate on the knowledge that sleep brings.”

And much knowledge sleep can bring because it is your treasure-house, your basement of many, many lives. And you have been treasuring many things there. First try to be aware while awaking, while you are in the waking state, and then, by itself, the awareness becomes so powerful that it doesn’t matter what activity you are doing – really walking, or walking in a dream makes no difference. And when for the first time you will fall asleep with awareness, you will see how gears change. You will even feel the click that the wakefulness disappears, mind is off, another realm starts. The gears of the being have changed. And between these two gears there is a small gap of neutral gear. Because whenever the gear changes, it has to pass from the neutral passage. By and by, you will become aware not only of the change of gear, but the gap between the two, and in that gap you will have your first glimpse of the superconscious.

When the conscious mind changes into, unconscious, just for a very minute part of a moment, you will be able to see the superconscious. But that is a later chapter in the story; I mention just by the way. First, you will become conscious of the unconscious, and that will bring tremendous change in your life.

When you start watching your dreams, you will find five types of dreams happening. First type of dream is just rubbish. And many thousands of psychoanalysts are just working on that rubbish. It is simply useless. It happens because in the whole day, working the whole day, you gather much rubbish. Just like the body gathers dust and you need a bath, you need a cleaning, in the same way the mind gathers dust. And there is no way; how to give a bath to the mind, so the mind has an automatic mechanism to throw all dust, rubbish. The dream is nothing but the raising of the dust that the mind is throwing – the first type of dream – and this is the biggest portion of dreams, almost ninety percent. Almost ninety percent dreams are simply dust being thrown; don’t pay much attention to them. And by and by, as your awareness will grow, you will be able to see what is dust.

The second type of dream is a sort of wish-fulfillment. There are many needs, natural needs, but the priests and the so-called religious teachers have poisoned your mind. They won’t allow you even to fulfill your basic needs. They have condemned them completely and the condemnation has entered in you, so you hunger for many of your needs. Those hungry needs, demand fulfillment. And the second type of dreaming is nothing but wish-fulfillment. Whatsoever – because of the priests and the poisoners – you have denied to your being in dreams the mind tries to fulfill it in some way or other.