Yoga Nidra: Sleeping Into Divine
One man a Zen master woke up from bed and started weeping. His disciples were perplexed. Zen masters are unpredictable. Their ways of teaching are mysterious, untraditional. One disciple, a chief disciple, asked the master: why are you weeping? Master said last night I dreamt that I was a butterfly and flying in the garden. Disciple asked: it was just a dream, why are you crying. Master said: I do not know whether I dreamt that I became a butterfly or whether the butterfly is dreaming now that it is a master with so many disciples.
Both thoughts were transient, not permanent. But do we understand? We always think that whatever we are is permanent. We try to possess it, identify with it.
We have 4 states: waking, dreaming, deep sleep and one more. If we understand these states we can live more joy fully. There are two states of mind and two states of consciousness overlapping to create 4 states in all. In waking state we are with thoughts and I consciousness. In Sanskrit this is called jagrat. In deep sleep we have no thought; we have no I consciousness. We do not have any identification or thoughts. This is shusupti in Sanskrit. In the dream state, swapna, we have only thoughts but no I consciousness. We may think of ourselves in very many different forms. Once we think of I, we come out of the dream. As soon as you feel you are dreaming you will wake up. There is a fourth state where there are no thoughts but we know who we are. In Sanskrit this state is called turiya or samadhi. This state is unknown to Western philosophers and psychologists and they have no name for it.
Every student of spirituality needs to understand these states. These are different layers of our Being. In jagrat you use the physical body, the sthula sarira. In dream state swapna, you see your subtle body, sukshma sarira. You may be sleeping in LA, but see yourself in Bharat with your parents. You are using your subtle body. The third body is karana sarira that is used in deep sleep. It is conscious, sub conscious and unconscious states in these three states. Whatever is unfulfilled in conscious state, anything you suppress is brought back in your dream or sub conscious state. If you fast while waking, you dream of feasting at night. If you are afraid of snakes, and suppress thoughts of them in the conscious state, you will dream of snakes. If your boss mistreats you and you can not deal with him consciously you will seek revenge in your dreams. Your suppressed anger, hidden fears, violence or sexual desires will come out in dreams. In the unconscious deep sleep or karana sarira state your mind is processing all information you have collected. If you see hundred things you look at only two things, you observe and take in only 2 things consciously. The rest goes into your unconscious.
My driver had been driving me for 6 months between our ashram outside Bangalore to the City Centre and back. I told him one day to go to a place near a mosque. He said he had not seen any mosque where I wanted to go. I explained to him where it was. Still he didn't agree. Finally I took him through each point. He remembered a Hanuman temple, but the mosque which was opposite the temple was at least 5 times bigger. He sees this every day, remembers the small temple but not the much bigger mosque. His Hindu conditioning does not let him consciously record the mosque. His eyes see the mosque but mind does not record it.
All that you see but not record or what your mind thinks is not useful to you goes into the unconscious. What is recorded is based on your mental conditioning. In a house we all live in one place but not together; after honeymoon husband and wife do not live together. They live only with the idea that each one has of the other. Each looks at the other through the mental conditioning one forms of the other and judges through that conditioning. You remember the coffee your wife dropped on you, not all the wonderful meals she cooked for you. It is like reading a 100 page novel you are left with only 2 pages, from which you are made to reconstruct the original novel. Out of 100 observations you record only 2 and judge the other person. How many times do you look into each other's eyes? It is only through the eyes that you see the real person, identify the real person. We are afraid to look into another person's eyes because we want to hide things; we do not want people to know who we are. We prefer to live with the conditioning, the template, the image and not the real person.
Only one state, one body is under your control, the other two are not. That's why you can not enjoy life. I went to the Universal Studio in LA. Some one asked me: what can you, a Swami, enjoy there? I said, fool, sanyas is the ultimate luxury a man can have. When you see a rose, whatever you enjoy, I enjoy many times more; because I live with three bodies, while you live with only one. If I ask you to raise your right hand, you all will, because you can control the physical body. If I ask you to focus on your third eye, can you? You can not because your subtle body is not under your control. You can not sleep whenever you want because that body is not under your control. When I come out in the morning I come out with a lot of written papers. Because the third body is under my control I do not need much time to rest; quantity of sleep can be less but quality will be high. God gave you 100 acres but you use only 33 acres; rest is desert. An enlightened man lives all 100 acres.
Unless you are joyful how can you enjoy, whether Universal Studio or anything else? Anything can depress you, since you have mastered the art of worrying. If everything goes well today you will think that tomorrow something bad will happen. The subtle body creates depression if it's not under your control. You do not live and enjoy the present. You worry now about the past and future. You enjoy only from photos, instead of enjoying the scenery. Quality of life becomes so much more when you bring these two bodies under control.
In Zen tea ceremony a cup of tea brings you great joy, when you focus on it. The master brings all 3 bodies under control as you meditate on the pouring of the tea. You do not even have to drink the tea. When you normally eat or drink do you feel the satisfaction? You only feel hunger and thirst. You eat and drink for energy. Do you feel energetic after eating? You feel lazy instead. If you feel darkness when the sun rises there is something wrong. If you understand this you will live life well.
Tantra says: Only a person who has all these three bodies under control can enjoy a relationship, otherwise you can only procreate.
In our ASP we have one session on sex, there is one on muladhara chakra. People ask, you are a sanyasin, how can you talk about sex? If you are sixty and married you can, how can you; you do not even have that experience? I say, you all can only reproduce, not enjoy sex. An ordinary man can switch a light on and off. Only an electrician knows the circuit. Without switching on each light on and off he can diagnose any problems and rectify. It is not necessary for me to go and see; I know the circuit. Before a man enters grihasta in the olden days, he was trained in spiritual ways. Westerner philosophers say that this is reverse; you should first experience and then you turn spiritual. Eastern mystics say that unless you control all these 3 bodies you can not enjoy life fully. Understand your Being before you enter life. Nectar is not something special you will be given; whatever you are given will taste as nectar. Getting these 3 bodies under control allows you lead life fully, you will see what life is.
Tantra says: Only once a man really enters into a relationship; when he goes beyond the relationship.
What is the fourth state where there is no thought but only I consciousness, the awakened state. Each religion has its own different concepts about how to lead one's life; but they all agree on one thing. Man is asleep, all masters agree. What does this mean, what all masters agree upon? It is very difficult to make all masters agree.
Vedas say: if two sages agree on something, be careful, one is a fake. In my birthplace Tiruvannamalai there is a promise from God Shiva that he will appear in 3 forms: as the deity in the temple; as the hill Arunachala; as an enlightened Master from that place. Many enlightened masters have come from there. People say: Ramana was silent but you are going around the world talking. I say that enlightenment possesses me, and expresses the way it wants. Enlightened masters are unique, they blossom in different ways; but they all agree on this.
Buddha says: you dream when you are awake. You don't have to fall asleep to dream. You will day dream even when you are awake. In the night you see stars. In the day they are still there but you can not see, because of the sun. If you get into a deep well without water, you can see stars even in the day. When you are not active you dream. Because of continuous activity you do not notice your dreams, but you dream on. You need to understand. All this is not a ritual. People ask me: please tell me how I can worship and love a 18 handed Kali? I say first start loving your 2 handed wife. First understand your life and then you can go into religion. All your love for God is just a fantasy. That's truth. You dream even when you are awake. That's why master say that we are all asleep.
The great Russian Master Gurdjeef had a disciple who asked him how to be enlightened. He taught him a technique and says you must do this for 3 months continuously without leaving this house. The disciple meditates for 3 months. At the end of 3 months his master takes him for a walk into the town. The disciple says I feel everybody here is asleep even though they are doing something. What has happened? Master says nothing has happened to these people, something has happened to you, you are now awakened.
In olden days a town crier went around waking people beating a drum and shouting. Such a man in the court Janaka, an enlightened monarch said: wake up not only from your sleep and dreams, wake up from your waking state, your desires, and your mind. He cried: jagrat, jagrat, wake up, wake up.
Masters caution you to wake up even from your awakened state. The state where you do not day dream is the awakened state, the enlightened state, the fourth state, where you are in consciousness but without thoughts, dreams and desires. This is like a sky without any clouds or stars, it is pure space. In this state there is pure consciousness. In Sanskrit it is called turiya or Samadhi.
Some people experience this while meditating in our ASP classes as if you have lost all thoughts but still awake. When you reach this state you become Buddha, the awakened one. Ramana says: A man who is not enlightened is like a man in a dream, going in and out of dreams. Till you are enlightened you do not know what really life is. You see till then what you want to see, not what is. You just pick a few things from reality and claim to see reality. This is what Sankara means when he says the whole world is maya. Maya is that which is not there; that which is not real. You are seeing what is not, that's maya.
When I was 10 I was taken to an enlightened Master called Annamalai Swamigal in my home town. He used to give out candies at the end of his discourses and all the children used to go for the candy. He was saying: every thing is maya. You are the self. You are not affected by pain. You are beyond pain and suffering.
I was excited; went home took a knife and cut myself on my thigh to see if I felt pain. Naturally I felt pain, blood came out, I was taken to the Doctor for stitches, and my mother beat me. After 2 days I went to this Swamigal and complained. I was bothered because I did not understand what he meant.
Krishna says to Arjuna: Atman can not be killed by weapons, not burned by fire, not wetted by water and so on. Arjuna was cleverer than me. He tested it by killing other people. I tested it on myself.
Annamalai Swamigal said lovingly: son, now you will not understand what I said. I will teach you a meditation technique. Practice it and you will understand. When I said I will find it difficult, he said just try, that's enough. Whenever you have time, sit down and see where your thoughts are coming from, who you are; focus on Who Am I? He asked me who I was. I said I was Rajasekaran and my grand father was a big landlord. He said: ask yourself who is Rajasekaran? Who says that name? I tried. I did not even know it was meditation.
When I was twelve, one day in the evening when I was sitting on a rock in the Arunachala hillock, I felt something opening within me, something burst within me and I started seeing in all directions even though my eyes were closed, all 360 degrees. I could also feel that everything around me was me. The rock I was sitting on, the sky above. The temple behind me, the hillock before me, all these I could see all at once and then feel that was me.
When Annamalai Swamigal said there would be no pain I did not understand; but after that experience never again I felt any pain or suffering.
If you take up this one technique you too can realize this. Meditation should be done playfully, not seriously with a long face. We find it difficult to laugh. Kids find it difficult to be serious; they can laugh all the time. You tell them to stop, make them like you, idiots. You want to be comfortable. Have you ever see an ugly kid? You never can.
Have you seen a single grown up man who is beautiful or graceful? Seriousness makes you ugly. You disrespect your life when you carry a long face. Don't try to be enlightened in half an hour, like you want to earn a million dollars in one year. You postpone your enlightenment through seriousness. Seriousness is not sincerity. Be sincere but relax. When I say relax, people ask what to do. Doing is natural, but relaxing is unnatural. Don't ask for another technique to relax. Whatever you understand by relaxation you do. Relax from the idea that you should relax.
नालिनदलगतजलमतितरलम् तद्वज्जीवितमतिशयचपलम् । विद्धि व्याध्यभिमानग्रस्तं लोकं शोकहतं च समस्तम् ॥
nalinidalagatajalam atitaralam tadvaj-jivitam aticayacapalam, viddhi vyadhy-abhimana-grastam lokam sokahatam ca samastam
The water on the lotus-leaf is very unsteady; so also is life extremely unstable. Know that the entire world is devoured by disease and conceit, and smitten with sorrow.
Bhaja Govindam 4