WAKING, SLEEPING, DREAMING, KNOW YOU AS LIGHT

WAKING, SLEEPING, DREAMING, KNOW YOU AS LIGHT. First start with waking. Yoga and Tantra divide the life of man's mind into three divisions -- the life of the mind, remember. They divide mind into three divisions: waking, sleeping, dreaming. These are not the divisions of your consciousness, these are the divisions of your mind, and the consciousness is the fourth.

They have not given any name to it in the east; they call it simply the fourth, turiya. These three have names. These are the clouds, they can be named -- a waking cloud, a sleeping cloud, a dreaming cloud. They are all clouds, and the space in which they move -- the sky -- in unnamed, left simply as the fourth.

Western psychology has only recently become aware of the dreaming dimension. Really, only with Freud, dreaming became important. But with Hindus, this is one of the most ancient concepts: that you cannot really know a man unless you know what he is doing in his dreams. Because whatsoever he is doing in his waking hours is more or less bound to be acting, false, because in the waking state of his mind he is forced to do many things.

He is not free. The society is there, rules are there, moralities are there. He is constantly struggling with his own desires: suppressing them, modifying them, moulding them in the mould the society allows. And the society never allows you to be your total being; it chooses. That is what a culture means -- culture means a choice.

Every culture is a conditioning: a choice of certain things and a denial of certain things. Your total being is not accepted anywhere; it is not -- nowhere. Certain aspects are accepted here, certain aspects are accepted there, in this country or that, but nowhere is the total human being accepted. So the waking consciousness is bound to be false, pseudo, artificial, forced. You are not real there -- just actors; not spontaneous -- manipulated. ONly in dreams are you free; only in dreams are you authentically yourself.

You can do whatsoever you like in your dreams. No one is concerned; you are alone. No one can penetrate, no one can look into your dreams. And no one is bothered: what you do in your dreams is your business, no one is concerned. They are absolutely private. Because they are absolutely private and related to no one, you can be free. So unless your dreams are known, your real face cannot be known. Hindus have been aware of it: dreams must be penetrated. But they are still clouds -- private of course, freer, but still clouds, and one has to go beyond them also.

These are the three states: waking and sleeping and dreaming. Dreaming became very primary with Freud. Now sleeping has been touched. Now many sleep labs are working in the west to know what sleep is, because it seems to be very strange that we don't know what sleep is. What really happens to you in sleep is not yet known scientifically.

And if we cannot know what sleep is, it will be difficult to know what man is, because for one third of his life he will be sleeping. One third of your life! If you are going to live for sixty years, for twenty years you will be sleeping. It is such a major part. What are you doing while you are asleep? Something mysterious is going on, and it is so essential that life is not possible without it. Something deep is happening, but you are not aware.

Waking, you are a different person; dreaming, you are again a different person. In deep sleep, you are again a different person. You can't remember even your name while deep asleep. You don't know whether you are a Mohammedan or a Christian or a Hindu. Out of your deep sleep you can't answer who you are; rich or poor -- no identity, no image.

In the waking layer you exist with the society. In the dreaming layer you exist with your own desires. In deep sleep you exist with nature, deep in the womb of nature. And yoga and Tantra say that only beyond these three you exist in Brahma, in the cosmic whole. So these three must be crossed, passed, transcended.

There is one difference. The western psychology is now interested in studying these states. Eastern seekers were interested in these states, but not in studying them. They were interested only in how to transcend them. This technique is a transcendental technique.

WAKING,

SLEEPING,

DREAMING,

KNOW YOU AS LIGHT.

Very difficult. You have to start with waking. How can you remember in dreams? Can you create a dream consciously? Can you manipulate a dream? Can you have your own dreams of your own wishes? You cannot. How impotent man is! You cannot even create a dream of your own. They too happen to you; you are helpless. But there are certain techniques through which dreams can be created, and those techniques are very helpful in transcending, because if you can create, then you can transcend. But one has to start with waking.

While waking -- moving, eating, working -- remember yourself as light. As if in your heart a flame is burning, and your body is nothing but the aura around the flame. Imagine it. In your heart a flame is burning, and your body is nothing but a light aura around the flame; your body is just a light around the flame. Allow it to go deep within your mind and your consciousness. Imbibe it.

It will take time, but if you go on thinking about it, feeling it, imagining it, within a certain period you will be able to remember it the whole day. While awake, moving on the street, you are a flame moving. No one else will be aware of it in the beginning, but if you continue it, after three months others will also become aware. And only when others become aware can you then be at ease. Don't say to anyone. Simply imagine a flame, and your body as just the aura around it. Not a physical body, but an electric body. Go on doing it.

If you persist, within three months, or somewhere near about then, others will become aware that something has happened to you. They will feel a subtle light around you. When you come near them, they will feel a different warmth. If you touch them, they will feel a fiery touch. They will become aware that something strange is happening to you. Don't say to anyone. When others become aware, then you can feel at ease, and then you can enter the second step, not before it.

The second step is to take it into dreaming. Now you can take it into dreaming. It has become a reality. Now it is not an imagination. Through imagination you have uncovered a reality. It is real. Everything consists of light. You are light -- unaware of the fact -- because every particle of matter is light.

The scientists say it consists of electrons. It is the same thing. Light is the source of all. You are also condensed light: through imagination you are simply uncovering a reality. Imbibe it -- and when you have become so filled with it, you can carry it into dreams, not before.

Then, while falling asleep, go on thinking of the flame, go on seeing it, feeling you are the light. Remembering it... remembering... remembering... you fall down asleep. And the remembrance continues. In the beginning you will start having some dreams in which you will feel you have a flame within, you are light. By and by, in the dreams also you will move with the same feeling. And once this feeling enters the dreams, dreams will start disappearing. Dreams will start disappearing: there will be less and less dreams and more and more deep sleep.

When in all your dreaming this reality is revealed -- that you are light, a flame, a burning flame -- all dreams will disappear. Only when dreams disappear can you carry this feeling into sleep, never before. Now you are at the door. When dreams have disappeared and you remember yourself as a flame, you are at the door of sleep. Now you can enter with the feeling. And once you enter sleep with the feeling that you are a flame, you will be aware in it -- the sleep will now happen only to your body, not to you.

This technique is to help you go beyond these three states. If you can be aware that you are a flame, a light, that sleep is not happening to you, you are conscious. You are carrying a conscious effort. Now you are crystallized around that flame. The body is asleep, you are not.

This is what Krishna says in Gita: that yogis never sleep. While others are asleep, they are awake. Not that their bodies never sleep. Their bodies sleep -- but only bodies. Bodies need rest, consciousness needs no rest; because bodies are mechanisms, consciousness is not a mechanism. Bodies need fuel, they need rest. That's why they are born, they are young, then they become old, and then they die. Consciousness is never born, never becomes old, never dies. It needs no fuel, it needs no rest. It is pure energy, perpetual eternal energy.

If you can carry this image of flame and light through the doors of sleep, you will never sleep again, only the body will rest. And while the body is sleeping, you will know it. Once this happens, you have become the fourth. Now the waking and the dreaming and the sleeping are parts of the mind. They are parts, and you have become the fourth -- one who goes through all of them and is none of them.

Really, this is so simple. If you are in the waking state, and then you move into dreams, you cannot be either. If you are the waking state, then how can you dream? And if you are the dreaming state, how can you fall into sleep where there is no dream? You must be a traveller, and these states must be stations, so you can move from here and there and come back again. Again in the morning you will move into the waking state.

These are states, and the one who moves within these states is you. But that you is the fourth -- and that fourth is what you call the soul. That fourth is what you call divine, that fourth is what you call the immortal element, the life eternal.

WAKING

SLEEPING,

DREAMING,

KNOW YOU AS LIGHT.

This is a very beautiful technique. But try it first in the waking. And remember, when others become aware, then only have you succeeded in it. They will become aware. Then you can enter into dream, and then into sleep, and then you can awaken to that which you are -- the fourth.