You will not believe how closely, how deeply, we are connected to sleep. How a person will live his life depends totally on how he sleeps. If he does not sleep well, his entire life will be a chaos: all his relationships will become entangled, everything will become poisonous, filled with rage, he will be unhealthy.  If, on the contrary, a person sleeps deeply, there will be freshness in his life — peace and joy will continuously flow in his life, he will be healthy.  Underlying his relationships, his love, everything else, there will be serenity. But if he loses sleep, all his relationships will go haywire. He will have messed up life with his family, his wife, his son, his mother, his father, his teacher, his students — all of them. Sleep brings us to a point in our unconscious where we are immersed in God — although not for too long. Even the healthiest person only reaches to his deeper level for ten minutes of his nightly eight hours’ sleep. For these ten minutes he is so completely lost, drowned in sleep, that not even a dream exists.

In sleep we reach the same place we do in meditation. The only difference is that in sleep we are unconscious, while in meditation we are fully conscious. If someone were to become fully aware, even in his sleep, he would have the same experience as in meditation.  For example, if we were to put a person under anaesthetic, and in his unconscious state bring him on a stretcher to a garden where flowers are in full bloom, where fragrance is in the air, where the sun is shining and the birds are singing, the man would be completely unaware of all this. After we brought him back and he was out of the anaesthesia, if we asked him how he liked the garden, he would not be able to tell us anything. Then, if you were to take him to the same garden when he was fully conscious, he would experience everything present there when he had been brought in before, In both cases, although the man was brought to the same place…he was unaware of the beautiful surroundings in the first instance, while in the second instance he would be fully aware of the flowers, the fragrance, the song of the birds, the rising sun. So, although you will undoubtedly reach as far in an unconscious state, to reach some place in an unconscious state is as good as not reaching there at all.

In sleep, we reach the same paradise we reach in meditation, but we are unaware of it.  Each night we travel to this paradise, and then we come back — unaware. Although the fresh breeze and the lovely fragrance of the place touch us, and the songs of the birds ring in our ears, we are never aware of it. And yet, in spite of returning from this paradise totally unaware of it, one might say, “I feel very good this morning. I feel very peaceful — I slept well last night.”

What do you feel so good about? Having slept well, what good happened? It cannot be only because you slept, surely you must have been somewhere; something must have happened to you. But in the morning you have no knowledge of it, except for a vague idea of feeling good. One who has had a deep sleep at night gets up refreshed in the morning. This shows the person has reached a rejuvenating source in sleep — but in an unconscious state. One who is unable to sleep well at night finds himself more tired in the morning than he was the previous evening. And if a person does not sleep well for a few days it becomes difficult for him to survive, because his connection with the source of life is broken. He is unable to reach the place it is essential he should….

In New York, at least thirty percent of the people cannot sleep without tranquilizers. Psychologists believe that if this condition prevails for the next hundred years, not a single person will be able to sleep without medication. People have completely lost sleep. If a man who has lost sleep were to ask you how you go to sleep, and your answer were, “All I do is put my head on the pillow and fall asleep,” he will not believe you. He will find this impossible and suspect there must be some trick he doesn’t know to it — because he lays his head on the pillow too, and nothing happens.

God forbid, but a time may come, after a thousand or two thousand years, when everyone will have lost natural sleep, and people will refuse to believe that, a thousand or two thousand years before their time, people simply rested their heads on their pillows and fell asleep. They will take this as fiction, a mythical story from the Puranas. They will not believe it to be true. They will say, “This is not possible, because if that isn’t true about us, how can it be true about anyone else?”

It is hard to believe there was a time when a man could close his eyes and go into meditation — because now, when you sit with your eyes closed, you reach nowhere; inside, thoughts keep hovering around and you remain where you are. In the past, meditation was as easy for those who were close to nature as sleep is for those who live close to nature. First meditation disappeared; now sleep is on its way out.  Those things are first lost which are conscious; after that, those things are lost which are unconscious. With the disappearance of meditation the world has almost become irreligious, and when sleep disappears the world will become totally irreligious. There is no hope for religion in a sleepless world.

Sleep is not total as long as one is dreaming — one keeps moving between the states of sleep and wakefulness. Dreaming is a state in which one is half asleep and half awake. To be in a dream means, even though your eyes are closed, you are not asleep; external influences are still affecting you. The people you met during the day, you are still with them at night in your dreams. Dreams occupy the middle state between sleep and wakefulness. And that you don’t remember in the morning that you dreamed all night is beside the point. Much research on sleep is being carried out in America. Some ten big laboratories have been experimenting on thousands of people for about eight to ten years.

Americans are showing interest in meditation because they have lost sleep. They think that perhaps meditation may bring their sleep back, that it may bring some peace into their lives.  That’s why they look upon meditation as nothing more than a tranquilizer. When Vivekananda first introduced meditation in America, a physician came to him and said, “I enjoyed your meditation immensely. It is absolutely a non-medicinal tranquilizer. It’s not a medicine and yet it puts one to sleep — it’s great.”  Yogis are not the reason their influence is growing so much in America — the lack of sleep is the real cause. People’s sleep is in a mess, and consequently life in America is filled with heaviness, depression, tension. And so in America we see the growing need for tranquilizers — somehow, to bring sleep to people.  Each year, millions of dollars are being spent on tranquilizers in America. Ten big laboratories are conducting research on thousands of people who are being paid to undergo nights of rather uncomfortable, painful sleep. All kinds of electrodes and thousands of wires are attached to people’s bodies, and they are examined from all angles to find out what is happening inside them. One incredible discovery these experiments have revealed is that man dreams almost the whole night. Waking up, some people said they didn’t dream, while some said they did. But in fact, all of them dreamed. The only difference was that those with better memories remembered dreaming, while those with weaker memories could not recall dreaming. But it was found that a completely healthy person was able to slip into a deep, dreamless sleep for ten minutes.

Dreams can be scanned through machines. Nerves in the brain remain active during our dreaming state, but as the dream stops, the nerves cease to be active as well, and the machine indicates a gap has occurred. The gap shows that, at that time, the man was neither dreaming nor thinking — he was lost somewhere.

It is interesting that the machines keep recording movement inside the man while he is in the dreaming state, but as soon as he falls into dreamless sleep, the machine shows a gap. They don’t know where the man disappeared in that gap. So, dreamless sleep means the man has reached a place beyond the machine’s range. It is in this gap that man enters the divine. The machine is unable to detect this space in between, this gap. The machine records the internal activity as long as the man is dreaming — then comes the gap and the man disappears somewhere. And then, after ten minutes, the machine starts recording again. It is difficult to say where the man was during that ten-minute interval. American psychologists are very intrigued by this gap; hence they consider sleep the biggest mystery.

You sleep every day, yet you have no idea what sleep is. A man sleeps all through his life, and yet nothing changes — he knows nothing about sleep. The reason you don’t know anything about sleep is that when sleep is there, you are not. Remember, you are only as long as sleep is not, and so you come to know only as much as the machine knows. Just as in the face of the gap the machine stops and is unable to reach where the man has been transported, you cannot reach there either — because you are no more than a machine as well.

Since you do not come across the gap either, sleep remains a mystery; it remains beyond your reach. This is so because a man falls into wakeless sleep only when he ceases to exist in his ‘I-am-ness’ . And therefore, as the ego keeps growing, sleep becomes less and less. An egoistic person loses his capacity to sleep because his ego, the ‘I’, keeps asserting itself twenty-four hours a day. It is the ‘I’ that wakes up, the same ‘I’ that walks on the street. The `I’ remains so present the entire twenty-four hours that at the moment of falling asleep, when the time approaches to drop the ‘I’ , one is unable to get rid of it. Obviously, it becomes difficult to fall asleep. As long as the exists, sleep is impossible. And as long as the ‘I’ exists, entering into existence is impossible.  Entering into sleep and entering into existence are exactly one and the same thing; the only difference is that through sleep one enters into existence in an unconscious state, while through meditation one enters into existence in a conscious state. But this is a very big difference. You may enter existence through sleep for thousands of lives, yet you will never come to know existence. But if, even for a moment, you enter meditation you will have reached the same place you have reached in deep sleep for thousands and millions of lives — although always in an unconscious state — and it will transform your life totally.

The interesting thing is, once a person enters meditation, enters the emptiness where deep sleep takes him, he never remains unconscious — even when he is asleep.

Ananda lived with Buddha for many years, for years he slept near Buddha. One morning he asked Buddha, “For years I have been watching you sleep. Not once do you ever change sides; you sleep the whole night in the same position. Your limbs stay where they were when you laid down at night; there is not the slightest movement. Many times I have got up at night to check whether you have moved. I have stayed up nights watching you — your hands, your feet, rest in the same position; you never ever change sides.

Do you keep some kind of a record of your sleep the whole night?” “I don’t need to keep any record,” Buddha replied. “I sleep in a conscious state, so I find no need to change sides. I can if I want to. Turning from one side to another is not a requirement of sleep, it’s a requirement of your restless mind.” A restless mind cannot even rest in one place for a single night, let along during the day. Even sleeping at night, the whole time the body shows its restlessness.

If you watch a person asleep at night you will see he is continuously restless the whole time. You will find him moving his hands in much the same way he does when he is awake during the day. In his dream at night, you will find him running and panting in much the same way it happens with someone during the day — he feels out of breath, tired. At night, in dreams, he fights in much the same way he fights during the day. He is filled with passion during the day, at night as well. There is no fundamental difference between the day and the night of such a person, except that at night he lies down exhausted, unconscious; everything else continues to function as usual. So Buddha said, “I can change sides if I want to, but there is no need.”

But we don’t realize…. A man sitting in a chair keeps jiggling his legs. Ask him, “Why are your legs jiggling like that? It’s understandable if they move when you walk, but why are they moving when you are sitting in a chair?” No sooner do you say this than the man will stop immediately. Then he won’t even move for a second, but he will have no explanation as to why he was doing it. It shows how restlessness within causes agitation in the entire body.  Inside is the restless mind; it cannot be still, in one position, even for a moment. It will keep the whole body fidgeting: the legs will move, the head will shake; even sitting the body will change sides.

That’s why, even for ten minutes, you find it so difficult to sit still in meditation. And from a thousand different spots the body urges you to twitch and turn. We do not notice this until we sit with awareness in meditation. We realize then what sort of a body this is; it doesn’t want to remain still in one position even for a second. The confusion, the tension, and the excitement of the mind stir up the entire body.

For about ten minutes everything disappears in wakeless sleep — although these ten minutes are available only to one who is completely healthy and peaceful, not to everyone.  Others get this kind of sleep anywhere from one to five minutes; most people get only two, or one minute of deep sleep.  The little juice we receive in that one minute of reaching to the source of life we apply to making our next twenty-four hours work. Whatever little amount of oil the lamp receives in that short period, we utilize it to carry on our lives for a full twenty-four hours. The lamp of one’s life burns on whatsoever amount of oil it receives then. This is the reason the lamp burns so slow — not enough oil is collected to make the lamp of life burn brightly, so it can become a flaming torch.

Meditation brings you slowly to the source of life. Then it is not that you keep taking a handful of nourishment out of it, you are simply in the source itself. Then it is not that you refill your lamp with more oil — then the entire ocean of oil becomes available to you. Then you begin to live in that very ocean. With that kind of living, sleep disappears — not in the sense that one doesn’t sleep anymore, but in the sense that, even when one is asleep, someone within remains wide awake. Then dreams no longer exist. A yogi stays awake, he sleeps, but he never dreams — his dreams disappear totally. And when dreams disappear, thoughts disappear. What we know as thoughts in the wakeful state are called dreams in the sleeping state. There is only a slight difference between thoughts and dreams: thoughts are slightly more civilized dreams, while dreams are a little primitive in nature. Of the two, one is the original thought.

In fact, children, or the aboriginal tribes, can think only in pictures, not in words. Man’s first thoughts are always in pictures. For example, when a child is hungry he does not think in words, “I am hungry.” A child can visualize the mother’s breast; he can imagine himself sucking the breast. He can be filled with the desire to go to the breast, but he cannot form the words.  The word formation starts much later; pictures appear first….

The language of words is handy during the day, but it is not useful at night. We again become primitive at night. We disappear in sleep as we are. We lose our degrees, university educations, everything. We are transported to a point where the original man once stood.  That’s why pictures emerge at night in sleep, and words appear during the day. If we want to make love during the day, we can think in terms of words, but at night there is no way to express love except through images.

Thoughts do not seem as alive as dreams. In dreams the whole image appears before you.  That’s why we enjoy watching a movie based on a novel more than reading the novel itself.  The only reason for this is that the novel is in the language of words, while the movie is in the language of images. In the same manner, you feel greater joy being here and listening to me live. You would not feel the same joy listening to this talk on a tape, because here the image is present, on tape there are only words. The language of images is nearer to us, more natural. At night words turn into pictures; that’s the difference there is.

The day dreams disappear, thoughts disappear too; the day thoughts disappear, dreams disappear as well. If the day is empty of thoughts, the night will be empty of dreams. And remember, dreams don’t allow you to sleep, and thoughts don’t allow you to sleep, and thoughts don’t allow you to awaken.   Make sure you understand both things: dreams do not let you sleep, and thoughts do not let you awaken. If dreams disappear, sleep will be total; if thoughts disappear, awakening will be total.  If the awakening is total and the sleep is total, then not much difference exists between the two.  The only difference is in keeping the eyes open or closed, and in the body being at work or at rest. One who is totally awakened sleeps totally, but in both states his consciousness remains exactly the same. Consciousness is one, unchangeable; only the body changes. Awake, the body is at work; asleep, the body is at rest.

Why God is not attained in sleep, he can be attained if you can remain awake even in your sleep. And so in sleeping method — sleeping in awareness, entering into sleep with awareness. That’s why I ask you to relax your body, to relax your breathing, to calm down your thoughts. All this is a preparation for sleep. Therefore, it so often happens that some friends go to sleep during meditation — obviously; this is a preparation for sleep. And, while preparing for it, they don’t know when they go to sleep. That’s why the third suggestion: stay awake inside, remain conscious within; let the body be totally relaxed, let the breathing be totally relaxed, more relaxed that it normally is while sleeping. But stay awake within. Within, let your awareness burn like a lamp so you don’t fall asleep.

The initial conditions of meditation and sleep are the same, but there is a difference in the final condition. The first condition is that the body should be relaxed.

If you suffer from insomnia, the first thing a doctor will teach you is relaxation. He will ask you to do the same thing: relax your body, don’t let any tension remain in your body; let your body be totally loose, just like cotton fluff. Have you ever noticed how a dog or a cat sleeps? They sleep as if they are not. Have you ever noticed a baby sleeping? There is no tension anywhere — its arms and legs remain unbelievably loose. Watch a youth and an old man — you will find everything tense in them. So the doctor would ask them to relax.

The same condition applies to sleep: the breathing should be relaxed, deep and slow. You must have noticed that jogging, the breathing becomes faster. Similarly, when the body exerts itself at work, the breathing becomes faster and the blood circulation increases. For sleeping, the blood circulation should slow down — the situation should be just the opposite to jogging — and then the breathing will relax.  So the second condition is: relax your breathing….

So the conditions for meditation are primarily the same as those applicable to sleep: relax your body, relax your breathing, let go of thoughts. And so, for sleep as well as for meditation, the initial conditions are equally true. The difference is in the final condition. In the former you remain in deep sleep; in meditation you remain fully awake — that’s all.

There is a deep relationship between sleep and meditation. However, there is one very significant difference between the two: the difference between a conscious and an unconscious state. Sleep is unawareness, meditation is awakening.”