I feel that let’s be waking and cheerfully experience the unfolding of this Adventure called ‘Life’, while keeping the Divine in the Heart and in the Surroundings. Although I am also aware that in sleep/dream we also progress and then there also are these out-of-body-experience(OBE) type things which require sleep as a starting point.
Sometimes I tell my body to sleep by giving it the environment and posture, while relaxing it or opening to the Mother’s Light, and also give stillness to the Energy Body, while I (mind) am still on and awake consciously.
One time I slept like this, my mind was on, body was relaxed in sleeping posture, no movements, stillness, calmness, but my thoughts were on, indifferent attitude towards them, different kinds of thoughts and images came, no reaction, totally ignoring each one of them. Sometimes spiritual things like your talks or any spiritual readings came, and with it the delight came, it felt like 2 hours passed, but when I checked it was a 8 hours sleep, but my mind didn’t sleep a second. Interesting experience.
So, these days I keep my sleep consciously minimal; I use some tricks to do that, which I have extracted from your talks. To name a few like: Remember and Offer, Exposure to the Mother’s Light to each and every parts of the Being, Reading/Listen/Thinking more about the Mother and Sri Aurobindo, Respecting and Loving Gentle Caring and not overloading any part of the being like overthinking, Bad Body Postures, always Slow and Precise movements of the Physical, always Stepping Back in regular intervals to feel the Mother’s presence in the heart and in the surrounding etc, I can go on and on. I didn’t notice low energy, dizziness or any side effects of this minimal sleeping.
Yes, conscious sleep, as you describe, is the right thing. Sleep is needed for our consciousness to go within and come in contact with the inner founts of life, even deeper to touch the Divine Presence within us, a few precious moments of which rejuvenate us. There is also a repair and recharging of the bodily organs and their accumulated energies going on in sleep, hence the necessity, because otherwise, after a few days, the body tends to wear off and the vital may start tapping from all kinds of divine and undivine sources of the intermediate zone. But a luminous conscious sleep is fine if it can be sustained.
Affectionately,
Alok Da
