Question: Has God ever fallen asleep during meditation?

Sri Chinmoy: Yes, on very rare occasions God has fallen asleep during His meditation, but His sleep is not the sleep of ordinary human beings. He keeps His body-consciousness separate from His soul-reality. The cosmic gods and goddesses, especially the goddesses, laughed at God when He fell asleep during His meditation. But God proved to them that His sleep was not an ordinary sleep where one loses one's conscious awareness. He told them what they were doing, where they were, what was in their being — in their thought-world, their desire-world and their aspiration-world — while He was sleeping. They were at once fascinated and baffled. He also told them that there is a term in Sanskrit called Yoga Nidra, Yogic sleep. The Master Yogis have the capacity that allows them to take complete rest by sleeping and even snoring, while retaining perfect conscious awareness of what is happening both in the inner world and in the outer world.

There are human beings who suffer from lack of sleep. In one of our scriptures, Chandi, which is like the Bhagavad-Gita, God the Mother is invoked to grant the boon of sleep in a specific prayer. Many have offered that prayer and their prayers have been fulfilled. Now, God can grant us only the things that He Himself has. He has awareness and if you want awareness, He will give it to you. If He has sleep and you want sleep, He can give it to you. If He does not have the capacity to sleep at His sweet Will, how can He grant the sleep-quality to you, who always needs it so badly?