HOW TO BE ALERT IN SLEEP AND DREAM?
The person who has asked says that whenever he tries to be aware, he cannot sleep. Or, if sleep is coming and suddenly he remembers that he has to be alert, the sleep is broken, and then he cannot sleep – it is difficult.
Awareness with sleep cannot be worked out directly. First you have to work with the waking. Don’t try that, otherwise your sleep will be disturbed and your whole day will be disturbed and you will feel depressed, lazy, sleepy. Don’t do that.
Remember always there is a chain and one has to move from step to step. The first step is to be aware while waking. Don’t think about the sleep at all. First you are awake while waking in the day. And when you will gather enough energy of awareness, then only the second step can be taken. Then there will be no effort really. The very energy that you have gathered through the day will remain alert inside. There will be no effort needed. If effort is needed, then sleep will be disturbed because effort is against sleep.
This happens all over the world: millions of people suffer from insomnia. And out of one hundred, ninety-nine cases are such that they are suffering because they make some effort to go to sleep. Effort is against sleep. They try many ways, how to go into sleep and the very effort is against sleep. The effort makes you alert, and the effort makes you tense, and sleep is a no-effort phenomenon. You simply go into sleep. You need not do anything. If you do, sleep will not be possible. You simply put your head on the pillow and just don’t do anything, not even wait for the sleep, because if you are waiting for the sleep you are doing something – the waiting. You simply lie down on the bed, put the light off, close your eyes and sleep comes. You cannot bring it, it happens; it is not an action.
And to understand the nature of sleep is to understand many things. Samadhi also is just like that. That’s why Patanjali will say later on that sleep and samadhi have something in common. This is their commonness: sleep comes, satori also; samadhi also comes, you cannot do anything to bring it. If you try, you will miss. If you don’t want to miss, you simply be and it comes.
So don’t make any effort to be aware while going into sleep. You will disturb the sleep and you will not gain awareness. You just work out in the day. When in the day you are more and more alert, the very current of alertness passes into sleep by its own energy. You fall asleep and still you feel a center within you, watching. A light – a small light in the beginning – burning inside, and you can watch. But don’t start it. You do while waking, and it will happen while you go into sleep.
MANY PEOPLE FEEL SOMETIMES THAT MASTER COME IN THEIR DREAMS, SO WHAT TO THINK ABOUT SUCH DREAMS?
They are not of the same type. It depends on you. Sometimes it may be just the first type of dream I call rubbish. Because you listen to the Master so attentively, an imprint is left in the mind. And you listen to him continuously every day and you meditate, and an imprint is left in the mind. It can become heavy. Sometimes the mind has to release it; it is rubbish.
But it can be of the second type also: that you would like him to be more closer. And he has created so many barriers; you are not allowed to be so much closer. In the morning you can see him; that too, from a distance. In the evening you can come, and that too with difficulty. So you have to suppress it. That suppression can cause the second type of dream. You may dream that he has come to you, or you have come to him and you are talking to him.
It can be of a third type: it may be a communication from the unconscious. If it is of the third type, then it is meaningful. It simply shows to you that you are trying to escape from me. Come closer. The unconscious is simply saying that, “Don’t try to escape and don’t remain on the periphery; come closer.”
It can be of the fourth type: something from your past life. Your mind is moving on the past track.
It can be of the fifth type also: a possibility of the future. All types are possible. These are five types of dreams. It can be a vision also, which is also a type of dream. I didn’t talk about it because it has a different quality. It has the quality of the waking life; that too is a dream. The waking life is too vast a dream. But vision has the quality of the waking life. Sometimes he comes to you, but rarely, because you have to earn it. If you see me a hundred times, ninety-nine times it will be something of the five types of dreams. But the hundredth time, he comes to you when you have earned it. Then it is a vision.
But by and by, you will have to become aware of what is what. Right now he cannot give you criteria on how to judge what is what. You will have to taste them yourself.
So first become aware while you are awake, in the day. Gather more and more energy of awareness. Make it such an overflowing stream that when you fall asleep, your body falls asleep, your mind falls asleep, but the energy, the current of awareness is so forceful it continues. Then you will be able to make distinctions. And when one becomes able to make distinctions in dreams, it is a great achievement.
And then, by and by, rubbish drops. First type of dream disappears, because a man of awareness lives so completely in the day that he doesn’t gather rubbish. Rubbish is an incomplete experience. You were eating; the food was delicious, but you couldn’t eat it too much because you were a guest – what would people think? Incomplete experience has become rubbish now. Now, in the night you will again eat. You will have to complete the experience, otherwise the mind will go on and on.
Something an incomplete mind does not like. The mind is a perfectionist: anything incomplete it doesn’t like. Your one tooth falls, and then the tongue goes again and again there because something is incomplete. Now the mind continuously… absurd, because just by touching the tongue nothing is going to happen, but the mind again and again… it never tried before when the tooth was there. Now something is incomplete.
Psychologists say that even monkeys – because they also have minds just like you – if you draw a half circle and leave the chalk there, they will complete it. Monkeys! – Because they cannot tolerate an incomplete circle, they will complete it immediately.
Mind always trying to complete things… First type of dream disappears when you become aware. You live life so completely there is no need. And then, the second type of dream disappears by and by, because you don’t live in desires. A man who is aware lives in needs, not in desires, so there is no need to wish-fulfill anything. He has nothing, so he never becomes a president of a country in the dream. He has no desires, no ambitions. He lives very ordinarily. The natural flow of life is enough. Eating food, feeling satiated, drinking water, feeling satiated, getting a good sleep – it is enough. More is not asked.
Then the third type of dream disappears. With the disappearance of the first two types, the conscious and unconscious have come so closer there is no need to communicate anything in the dream. In fact, the unconscious starts communicating while you are fully awake. Then things become simple, communication becomes exact. Then the fourth type of dream disappears. When you are so at ease with your life, aware and perfectly satiated, the past drops completely. There is no need for it to go into the past. You live in the moment; the past disappears, and then the fifth type of dream disappears. You live so totally in the moment, so aware, so utterly aware, there is no future for you.
And when all the five types of dream disappear, the unreality has disappeared, the illusion has disappeared. Now for the first time, you attain the realization of the real, the brahma.
Tags: Energy Of Awareness Patanjali
