Osho on Secrets of Sleep and difference between Sleep and Samadhi

Osho on Secrets of Sleep and difference between Sleep and Samadhi

Osho - The Upanishads say there are four stages or four steps of human consciousness. First, the waking state of consciousness. Just now you are in the waking state of consciousness. The second, the dreaming state of consciousness, when you dream in the night. The third, the sleeping state of consciousness, when you don't dream, simply sleep, deep sleep. These three are known to you. Then the fourth, when all these three have disappeared and you have transcended them. This fourth is simply called turiya; turiya means the fourth.

The first three, which need your will and effort, belong to the waking consciousness. The fourth and fifth belong to your sleeping consciousness, to your dreaming consciousness. The sixth belongs to your sleeping consciousness. And the seventh will belong to the turiya, the transcendental state of consciousness.

Osho Sleep Samadhi

In deep sleep mind disappears, because there is not even dreaming, no content. In deep sleep you have fallen back again into your nature. That's why deep sleep refreshes you. In the morning you feel alive again, rejuvenated, young, vital, because in deep sleep you had fallen again to your original nature. You were no more an ego, you were no more a mind -- you were just part of nature. While you are deep asleep you are just like a tree or a rock, you are no more an individual. You have become part of the ocean, of course unknowingly, unconsciously.

If this can happen knowingly, consciously, sushupti, deep sleep, becomes samadhi, becomes ecstasy. In sushupti, deep sleep, you touch the same point which Buddha touches, which Ramakrishna, Ramana, Eckhart or Jesus touch. But they go to that point conscious, you go to that point unconscious. You move into your nature but you are not aware of what is happening. They also move to the same nature, but they are aware.

That is the only difference between sleep and samadhi; otherwise they are the same.
Alert, conscious, aware, you move into yourself, you are enlightened. Unconscious you move every night, but that doesn't make you enlightened. You give yourself to nature. Tired of your ego, tired of your day-to-day activities, the routine, tired of your personality, you fall into a sleep. Nature reabsorbs you, recreates you, gives you back your vitality in the morning.

So if a person is ill, very ill, the physicians will try first to give him deep sleep, because nothing will help, no medicine can help if you are not falling back to your nature. If an ill person can go into deep sleep, even without medicine he will become healthy. So the first effort of the physician is to help you to fall into deep sleep, because nature spontaneously rejuvenates.

If you go to Sufi monasteries you will see there many persons very sleepy, as if someone has hypnotized them. They will look like zombies -- as if they are walking in sleep, working in sleep, following orders in sleep. And monasteries were created because of such things.
A person who is in the fifth stage will have many difficulties in the world because he will move sleepily. He is constantly deep in his nature, as if fast asleep. He will have to make effort to be awake. He will be introverted, he will not be interested in the outside world. He would like more and more time to move inwards. You will be able to see from his eyes also; they will be droopy, tired. He doesn't want to look out, he wants to look in. His face will show the same state as that of a hypnotized medium. The face will be relaxed, as if he can fall any moment into sleep. He will become just like a child again.

The child in the mother's womb sleeps twenty-four hours a day for nine months; never awakens, just sleeps, goes on sleeping for nine months. Those nine months are needed, because if a child awakens then the growth will be hindered. In those nine months of deep sleep his whole body is created. Nature is working. The waking consciousness will create disturbance in nature, so the child sleeps completely.

Then the child is born and after his birth he sleeps less and less. Twenty-four hours he was sleeping in the womb; out of the womb he will sleep twenty-three hours, then twenty-two hours, then twenty hours, then eighteen hours. His sleep will come to eight hours only when he has become sexually mature -- that is at fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, somewhere around there. Then his sleep will remain fixed because now the body has grown up completely, biologically. He can reproduce, he can now himself give birth to a child, he is sexually mature. Now there is no work left to do in the body; the body has stopped working, no new creation is going on. Eight hours sleep will do.

Then as he becomes old, after fifty, there is less and less sleep. Old men cannot sleep; four hours, three hours, then two hours, then even one hour will be too much, they will not be able to sleep. If you can understand this then when you get old you will not be worried. There is no need now for more sleep. And if you can understand this then you will not force small children to be awake when they feel sleepy.

Every family tortures children, because you want them to behave like you. If you get up early in the morning, at five, you would like your children also to get up in brahmamuhurt. You are foolish. That is destructive to children, they need more sleep. You can drag them and they cannot do anything because they are helpless. Sleepy they will get up. You can force them to sit and read. Sleepy they will somehow do it. You force small children, and then when you become old and when they become old, they will think that if they cannot sleep for eight hours then something is wrong. Nothing is wrong. An old man doesn't need... there is no new work in the body. Sleep will be less and less.

When this fifth stage happens the seeker will become again like a small child. He will feel sleepy, he will need more sleep, he will be more introverted. His eyes will like to be closed more than open, because he is not interested in looking outside, and a new work has started in his being again. Now he is again a child. Something new, phenomenal, is happening now; alchemically a new being is created again. He himself has become the womb now. He will feel more sleepy.

Monasteries were needed for such people, because in the world people will not tolerate you in this stage. They will say, "You have become lazy! Go to the doctor, take some activizers. This is not good." You will look dead and dull, your shining face will become dull. People will think you are ill or that somebody has hypnotized you. You will look like a zombie. Monasteries were needed for the fifth stage, really. The first three can be done in the world, but after the fourth you will need.... And in the fifth you will certainly need a monastery where people understand you.

Meher Baba used to sleep for forty-eight hours, sixty hours when he was in the fifth stage. Ramakrishna would fall asleep for weeks and he had to be taken care of, he had to be fed milk while he was asleep. The body was to be taken care of. Very loving friends, disciples who would care, were needed to help him. For two weeks he would remain as if in a coma. He became so introverted that it was impossible to open the eyes. The whole energy was moving inwards. If he had been left alone he would have died.

Monasteries will be needed for such people, masters will be needed for such people, because they have again become children. Somebody has to mother them. The monastery becomes your mother, and there people know what is happening, where you are and what you need. In this stage only milk can be fed; nothing else will be good for the body, because the man has again become a child. Anything solid will disturb him, just milk will be enough.

He has to be taken care of just like a child. He will be asleep and you need not disturb him, because the more he remains in this state the sooner the sixth will follow. If you disturb him then he will remain in the fifth, and he will feel just as you feel if something awakens you in the morning suddenly -- an alarm clock, or something else -- the whole day you feel depressed. If the sleep is disturbed, ordinary sleep, the whole day you will feel disturbed, frustrated, angry, irritated -- anything will create the irritation -- and you don't know what has happened. It is because you were taken forcibly from your nature; when you were deep in it, suddenly you were called. An alarm is dangerous, because you have to come suddenly to the surface.

People who understand will not disturb anybody's sleep, one must come out of it gradually. But this is for ordinary sleep. When the person is in the fifth state then it is a very deep sleep -- you don't know about it. It is falling to the original nature so deeply that it is very difficult to be pulled out. Nobody should disturb. That's why monasteries were made deep in the hills, forests, where nobody would come. Nobody would disturb anybody unnecessarily, and only a few people would be there who knew.

Sometimes a seeker will remain for months at a time in sleep, and then very loving care is needed, no disturbance. He is being created again. And this can happen continuously even for nine months, just as it happens in the womb. And when the seeker comes out of it he will be totally new. A new child is born, the old man is no more. He will be completely, totally fresh. You look into his eyes and they will have a depth, an abysslike depth. You cannot find the bottom. You can go in and in and in and there is no end to it.
This is what Jesus says: "Unless you become like children again, you will not enter into the kingdom of my God." The fifth stage will make you again a child.

Source - Osho Book "Vedanta : Seven Steps to Samadhi"

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