Question: Is that why it is harder to get up after you have been asleep for a longer time? Sometimes when I sleep shorter it is easier to get up.

Sri Chinmoy: The difficulty is that when you sleep for a long time you make unnecessary friendship with your lethargy-enemy. When you have less sleep, at that time you don’t lose anything. From a medical point of view sleep is necessary. For the body’s sake it is necessary, absolutely necessary, and if the body fails, then how are you going to pray and meditate? But each time you are fast asleep for an hour or more, unless one is realised, it is like being underneath water.

Each time we sleep for 6, 7, 8 hours, we make friends with our failure from a spiritual point of view. For the body’s sake it is necessary to sleep. Otherwise, how will you meditate? But if the body does not need sleep and you sleep, then it is a terrible, terrible mistake. The physical body does not want, does not need 6, 7, 8 hours’ sleep at a time. Two to three and a half hours at a time is enough for the seekers, for those who pray and meditate.