Part I
Sleep and aspiration
To maintain your aspiration during sleep, first of all you have to meditate quite a few hours during the day. Now, that meditation need not be in a secluded area or in front of a shrine. While working, if your mood is very high, if what you are doing is pure, devoted service, then it is a real form of meditation. When you go to sleep, you must feel that it is an extension of your conscious meditation. Do not think that you are jumping or entering from one room into another — that is to say, during the day you were in one room and at night you are going into another room. No. Only feel that right now is the time for you to stretch your legs and arms, but that what you are doing is only another type of work.If you take sleep as a brother to death, then you cannot make any progress. But if you take sleep as an extension of your meditative consciousness, then automatically the power of meditation, like a river, flows into your sleep. During the day, when you pray and meditate, you have aspiration. During sleep, you don’t have aspiration because there is a conscious break. You feel that the day has ended and now you are entering into a totally different enterprise. But if you feel that in sleep you are extending the power of your meditation, the wealth of your meditation, then it is a continuous movement. Like a train it goes on. So when you meditate during the day, please feel that it is not the real end. There is no end. While you are sleeping, feel that the train is still going on. You are the passenger. If you feel that you are inside the train, you may sleep, but the pilot is still there. He is continuing to pilot the train. The boatman is still piloting the boat. If you fall asleep, no harm, for you have faith in the boatman. If you have conscious communication with the boatman, an exchange of sweet thoughts, ideals, ideas, then it becomes very easy, for you have already established your friendship with the boatman during the day, while you were meditating. Now, do you think that while you are sleeping, the boatman will deceive you? No. The boatman will go on, go on sailing the boat. As you make inner progress, even during your sleep, you will be able to meditate. You may be fast asleep, snoring, but conscious meditation, absolutely conscious meditation, is going on.
And then, if you can gradually minimise the number of hours you sleep each night, that will be very good. If you are sleeping eight hours, you can try seven and a half hours and then seven hours, six hours, five hours, four hours, three hours, two hours, and then become a Guru like me. It is quite possible. If I did it from the age of thirteen or fourteen, why is it not possible for you? More than two or two and a half hours of sleep a night is not necessary. If you can get up at four o’clock instead of seven o’clock, three hours are at your disposal. If you take time as money or wealth, then naturally the time from four to seven is like additional money you are getting. During the day, when you are doing something, you are sharing it with others. But if you get up in the small hours of the morning, you are getting the full wealth. You don’t have to share anything that you are getting. If you want to pray, you can pray. If you want to meditate, you can meditate. If you want to write something, you can write.
Let me give you an example. By God’s Grace I can do many things at a time in the inner world. Just because I get up early in the morning I can meditate on the consciousness, on the souls of my disciples. Then, during the day, I can devote myself to the disciples’ outer problems. But if I had to start concentrating on the disciples at, say, six o’clock or seven o’clock, then I wouldn’t have time to solve any problems. Then, you know, by God’s Grace, I am a prolific writer. God knows how many things I have written by now. Here is an example. Yesterday [16 November 1973] I wrote 150 poems in one day. I am not boasting; it is all recorded. At 3:30 a.m. I started. From 2:00 to 3:30 I was doing my spiritual work, meditating on the disciples. So at 3:30 I started. Now 3:30, 4:30, 5:30, 6:30, 7:30; it goes on, goes on, goes on. Then I had to go to the U.N. for one hour. Then there were a few problems. By two minutes to eleven at night, I had completed 150 poems, and in between there were quite a few obstacles, oppositions, telephone calls and some serious problems that arose. And sometimes the physical revolts. My elbow was failing because I was not dictating these poems to anybody; I was writing myself. So you see — 3:30 to 11:00. In this way I achieved it. But if I had not begun at 3:30, I would have been nowhere. Perhaps one poem I could have written.
If you can minimise the hours of sleep, it is very good. Too much sleep means you are making friendship with death, nothing else. If you cannot make conscious progress, it is as good as death. I have a disciple who sleeps eleven and a half hours every day. I will bless her. She says that if she does not sleep eleven and a half hours, she gets an immediate headache. She is not here, so I can say it: if any disciple sleeps for twelve or thirteen hours a day, then it is my headache. It is my headache because it will be so difficult for me to take that person to God. If one has to sleep for thirteen hours, then what is one going to accomplish in life?