The Yoga of Sleep and Dreams

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Sleep - Doorway to Worlds Within

... when you sleep you have one consciousness, and when you are awake you have another. In your waking state you look at things projected outside you, in your Jeep state you see them interiorised. So it is as though in one case you were pushed altogether outside yourself, in front, and in the other it is as though you were looking at yourself in an inner mirror. ¹

THE MOTHER

*

(Concerning unconsciousness during sleep) During sleep the inner being becomes consciously active. When one wakes up, it is the waking being that is not conscious of the activities of the night. ²

THE MOTHER

*

Sleep and waking are determined ... by the mind's waking condition or activity or its cessation - when it ceases for a time, then it is the subconscious that is there on the surface and there is sleep. ³

SRI AUROBINDO

lt is the waking mind which thinks and wills and controls more or less the life in the waking state. In the sleep that

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mind is not there and there is no control. It is not the thinking mind that sees dreams etc. and is conscious in a rather incoherent way in sleep. It is usually what is called the subconscient that comes up then. If the waking mind were active in the body, one would not be able to sleep. ⁴

SRI AUROBINDO

*

The outer consciousness goes down into this subconscient when we are asleep, and so it becomes unaware of what is going on in us when we are asleep except for a few dreams. ⁵

SRI AUROBINDO

*

In the waking state it [the subconscient] is overpowered by the conscious thinking mind and vital and conscious physical mind, but in the sleep state it comes on the surface. ⁶

SRI AUROBINDO

*

Does the subconscient go on recording during sleep?

For most people, in their sleep, it is precisely what has been recorded in the subconscient during the day or previously which becomes active again and constitutes their dreams. ⁷

THE MOTHER

*

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When one is in the physical consciousness, then the sleep is apt to be of the subconscious kind, often heavy and unrefreshing, the dreams also of the subconscient kind. in­coherent and meaningless or if there is a meaning the dream symbols are so confused and obscure that it is not possible to follow it. ⁸

SRI AUROBINDO

*

The survival of the evil habits in sleep is easily explained and is a thing of common experience. lt is a known psycho­logical law that whatever is suppressed in the conscious mind remains in the subconscient being and recurs either in the waking state when the control is removed or else in sleep. Mental control by itself cannot eradicate anything entirely out of the being. The subconscient in the ordinary man includes the larger part of the vital being and the physical mind and also the secret body-consciousness, in order to make a true and complete change, one has to make all these conscious, to see clearly what is still there and to reject them from one layer after another till they have been entirely thrown out from the personal existence. Even then, they may remain and come back on the being from the surrounding universal forces and it is only when no part of the conscious­ness makes any response to these forces of the lower plane that the victory and transformation are absolutely complete. ⁹

SRI AUROBINDO

*

When the sleep is more awake, so to say, then one has

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dreams of all kinds; when there is no such awareness of dreams, it is because the sleep of the body is more deep, - the dreams are there but the body consciousness does not note them or remember that it had them. ¹⁰

SRI AUROBINDO

*

It was not half sleep or quarter sleep or even one-sixteenth sleep that you had; it was a going inside of the consciousness, which in that state remains conscious but shut to outer things and open only to inner experience. You must distinguish clearly between these two quite different conditions, one is nidra¹, the other, the beginning at least of samadhi² (not nirvikalpa³, of course!). This drawing inside is necessary because the active mind of the human being is at first too much turned to outward things; it has to go inside altogether in order to live in the inner being (inner mind, inner vital, inner physical, psychic). But with training one can arrive at a point when one remains outwardly conscious and yet lives in the inner being and has at will the indrawn or the outpoured condition; you can then have the same dense im­ mobility and the same inpouring of a greater and purer consciousness

¹ Sleep. (Ed.)
² Yogic trance in which the mind acquires the capacity of withdrawing from its limited waking activities into freer and higher states of consciousness. (Ed.)
³ [Samadhi] in which there is no thought or movement of conscious­ness or awareness of other inner or outer things. (Ed.)

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in the waking state as in that which you erroneously call sleep. ¹¹

SRI AUROBINDO

*

The sleep you describe in which there is a luminous silence or else the sleep in which there is Ananda in the cells, these are obviously the best states. The other hours, those of which you are unconscious, may be spells of a deep slumber in which you have got out of the physical into the mental. vital or other planes. You say you were unconscious. but it may simply be that you do not remember what happened; for in corning back there is a sort of turning over of the consciousness, a transition or reversal. in which everything experienced in sleep except perhaps the last happening of all or else one that was very impressive, recedes from the physical consciousness and all becomes as if a blank. There is another blank state, a state of inertia, not only blank, but heavy and unremembering; but that is when one goes deeply and crassly into the subconscient; this subterranean plunge is very undesirable, obscuring, lowering, often fatiguing rather than restful, the reverse of the luminous silence. ¹²

SRI AUROBINDO

*

Some people say that they have dreamless sleep for the

whole night. ls this possible?

They simply mean that when they come back, they are not

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conscious of having dreamed. In the sleep the consciousness goes into other planes and has experiences there and when these are translated perfectly or imperfectly by the physical mind, they are called dreams. All the time of sleep such dreams take place, but sometimes one remembers and at other times does not at all remember. Sometimes also one goes low down into the subconscient and the dreams are there, but so deep down that when one comes out there is not even the consciousness that one had dreamed. ¹³

SRI AUROBINDO

*

People's ideas of sound sleep are absolutely erroneous. What they call sound sleep is merely a plunge of the outer consciousness into a complete subconscience. They call that a dreamless sleep; but it is only a state in which the surface sleep consciousness which is a subtle prolongation of the outer still left active in sleep itself is unable to record the dreams and transmit them to the physical mind. As a matter of fact the whole sleep is full of dreams. It is only during the brief time in which one is in the Brahmaloka that the dreams cease. ¹⁴

SRI AUROBINDO

*

What is the nature of dreamless sleep?

Generally, when you have what you call dreamless sleep, it is one of two things; either you do not remember what you

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dreamt or you fell into absolute unconsciousness which is almost death - a taste of death. But there is the possibility of a sleep in which you enter into an absolute silence. im­ mobility and peace in all parts of your being and your consciousness merges into Sachchidananda. You can hardly call it sleep, for it is extremely conscious. In that condition you may remain for a few minutes, but these few minutes give you more rest and refreshment than hours of ordinary sleep. You cannot have it by chance; it requires a long training. ¹⁵

THE MOTHER

*

What is the nature of a sleep without dreams?

If one succeeds in making the mind and vital silent, and in keeping the body well asleep one can have a very still and quiet sleep, and then, if one can manage to get out of these forms and enter the higher worlds, one may reach the true repose of Sachchidananda. ¹⁶

THE MOTHER

*

What happens in sleep is that our consciousness withdraws from the field of its waking experiences; it is supposed to be resting, suspended or in abeyance, but that is a superficial view of the matter. What is in abeyance is the waking activities, what is at rest is the surface mind and the normal conscious action of the bodily part of us; but the inner consciousness is not suspended, it enters into new inner activities,

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only a part of which, a part happening or recorded in something of us that is near to the surface, we remember. There is maintained in sleep, thus near the surface, an obscure subconscious. element which is a receptacle or passage for our dream experiences and itself also a dream­ builder; but behind it is the depth and mass of the subliminal. the totality of our concealed inner being and consciousness which is of quite another order. Normally it is a subconscient part in u , intermediate between consciousness and pure inconscience, that sends up through this surface layer its formations in the shape of dreams, constructions marked by an apparent inconsequence and incoherence. Many of these are fugitive structures built upon circumstances of our present life elected apparently at random and surrounded with a phantasy of variation; others call back the past, or rather selected circumstances and persons of the past. as a starting-point for similar fleeting edifices. There are other dreams of the subconscious which seem to be pure phantasy without any such initiation or basis… ¹⁷

SRI AUROBINDO

*

Ordinarily when one sleeps a complex phenomenon happens. The waking consciousness is no longer there, for all has been withdrawn within into the inner realms of which we are not aware when we are awake, though they exist: for then all that is put behind a veil by the waking mind and nothing remains except the surface self and the outward world - much as the veil of the sunlight hides from us the

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vast worlds of the stars that are behind it. Sleep is a going inward in which the surface self and the outside world are put away from our sense and vision. But in ordinary sleep we do not become aware of the worlds within; the being seems submerged in a deep subconscience. On the surface of this subconscience floats an obscure layer in which dreams take place, as it seems to us but, more correctly it may be said, are recorded. When we go very deeply asleep, we have what appears to us as a dreamless slumber; but, in fact, dreams are going on, but they are either too deep down to reach the recording surface or are forgotten, all recollec­tion of their having existed even is wiped out in the transi­tion to the waking consciousness. Ordinary dreams are for the most part or seem to be incoherent, because they are either woven by the subconscient out of deep-lying impressions left in it by our past inner and outer life, woven in a fantastic way which does not easily yield any clue of mean­ing to the waking mind's remembrance, or are fragmentary records, mostly distorted, of experiences which are going on behind the veil of sleep - very largely indeed these two elements get mixed up together. For, in fact, a large part of our consciousness in sleep does not get sunk into this sub­conscious state: it passes beyond the veil into other planes of being which are connected with our own inner planes, planes of supraphysical existence, worlds of a larger life, mind or psyche which are there behind and whose influences come to us without our knowledge. Occasionally we get a dream from these planes, something more than a dream, - a dream experience which is a record direct or symbolic of what happens to us or around us there. As the

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inner consciousness grows by sadhana, these dream experiences increase in number, clearness, coherence, accuracy and after some growth of experience and consciousness, we can, if we observe, come to understand them and their significance to our inner life. Even we can by training become so conscious as to follow our own passage, usually veiled to our awareness and memory through many realms and the process of the return to the waking state. At a certain pitch of this inner wakefulness, this kind of sleep, a sleep of experiences, can replace the ordinary subconscious slumber.
It is of course an inner being or consciousness or something of the inner self that grows in this way, not as usually it is, behind the veil of sleep, but in the sleep itself. ¹⁸

SRI AUROBINDO

*

In the night the mental and vital, especially the vital are very active. During the day they are under check, the physical consciousness automatically represses their free play and expression. In sleep this check is removed and they come out with their natural and free movements. ¹⁹

THE MOTHER

*

In sleep we leave the physical body, only a subconscient residue remaining, and enter all planes and all sorts of worlds. In each we see scenes, meet beings, share in happenings, come across formations, influences, suggestions

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which belong to these planes. Even when we are awake, part of us moves in these planes, but their activity goes on behind the veil; our waking minds are not aware of it. ²⁰

SRI AUROBINDO

*

I was sleeping but woke up exactly when it was time to attend classes. Was it the Divine who woke me up?

Not necessarily. There is always a part of the subconscient which is awake, and it is sufficient to have the will to wake up at a certain hour to make this part awaken you. ²¹

THE MOTHER

*

Things happen there [on the vital plane] that have some connection with the nature and life here, but they happen differently because there it is not the physical beings that meet, but the vital beings of people. One can gather what is the nature of one's own inner vital being- which is often very different from the physical personality that acts in front in the body. By the acting of the consciousness in these dreams the inner parts of the being begin to be more active and have more influence on the outer nature. ²²

SRI AUROBINDO

*

In vital nightmares, which part of the being goes out of the body?

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Your vital - not the whole of it for that would produce a cataleptic state, but a portion of the vital goes out for a stroll. Some alway. go to the nastiest places and so have very bad nights - the possibilities in these nightly rambles are innumerable. It may be a very small thing, just a little portion of your being. but if it is conscious, that is enough to give you a fine little nightmare!
You know, when you sleep, the inner beings are not concentrated upon the body, they go out and become more or less independent - a limited independence, but independence all the same - and they go to live in their own domains. The mind more so, for it is hardly held within the body, it is only concentrated but not contained in the body. The vital also goes beyond the body but it is more concentrated upon the body. ²³

THE MOTHER

*

Please tell me what kind of tiring things I have been doing in my sleep.

Bodily fatigue is a physical rendering of certain activities and contacts originating in the vital. ln one's sleep one may go to evil place in the vital and meet evil beings. ²⁴

THE MOTHER

Why are the mind and vital so active at night? How could one control their activity at night?

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It is their function. So long as.one is not perfectly conscious in sleep, they will act. ²⁵

SRI AUROBINDO

*

In the sleep part of the consciousness goes out to other planes of being and sees and experiences things there. It is quite possible for the witness consciousness to follow these happenings which usually transmit themselves in a coherent transcription to the sleeping part of the consciousness the latter receives them and they appear as clear significant dreams as opposed to the incoherent dreams of the subconscient. Or else the witness consciousness may feel itself there watching the happenings as well as here. ²⁶

SRI AUROBINDO

*

At times when one goes out of the body, the body follows the part which goes out.

You are speaking of a somnambulist? But that is quite another thing. This means that the part which goes out (whether a part of the mind or a part of the vital) is so strongly attached to the body, or rather that the body is so attached to this part, that when this part decides to do something the body follows it automatically. In your inner being you decide to do a certain thing and your body is so closely tied to your inner being that without thinking of it, without wanting to do so, without making any effort, it follows and does the same thing. Note that in this matter, the physical body has

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capacities it would not have in the ordinary waking condition. For instance, it is well known that one can walk in dangerous places where one would find it rather difficult to walk in the waking state. The body follows the conscious­ness of the inner being and its own consciousness is asleep - for the body has a consciousness. All the parts of the being, including the most material, have an independent consciousness. Hence when you go to sleep dead tired, when your physical body needs rest absolutely, your physical conscious­ness sleeps, while the consciousness of your subtle physical body or your vital or of your mind does not sleep, jt continue its activity; but your physical consciousness is separated from the body, it is asleep in a state of unconscious­ness, and then the part which does not sleep, which is active, uses the body without the physical consciousness as intermediary and makes it do things directly. That is how one becomes a somnambulist. According to my experience, the waking consciousness goes to sleep for some reason or other (usually due to fatigue), but the inner being is awake, and the body is so tied to it that it follows it automatically. That is why you do fantastic things, because you do not see them physically, you see them in a different way.

It is said that somnambulism is due to serious pre­occupations and cares. Is this true? Tartini composed a sonata in this state, and when he got up in the morning. he wrote down the whole thing.

Somnambulism is not always due to preoccupations and cares! Yes, there are people who write wonderful things

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when in a state of somnambulism. But Tartini was not a somnambulist - it was in the dream-state that he wrote so­natas.

The other state is always a little dangerous, always. Unex­pected things can happen, an accident to the vital, for in­stance.

How can one be cured of somnambulism?

Quite simply, by putting a will upon the body before going to sleep. One becomes a somnambulist because the mind is not developed enough to break the inner ties. For the mind always separates the external being from the deeper conscious­ness. Little children are quite tied up. I knew children who were quite sincere but could not distinguish whether a thing was going on in their imagination or in reality. For them the inner life was as real as the external life. They were not telling stories, they were not liars; simply the inner life was as real as the external life. There are children who go night after night to the same spot in order to continue the dream they have begun - they are experts in the art of going out of their bodies. ²⁷

THE MOTHER

*

In the first and middle part of my sleep there is a great mental and vital activity but in the last part this activity subsides and I get various kinds of symbolic dreams and intimations of higher knowledge. What is the reason for this?

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In sleep one very commonly passes from consciousness to deeper consciousness in a long succession until one reaches the psychic and rests there or else from higher to higher consciousness until one reaches rest in some silence and peace. The few minutes one pauses in this rest are the real sleep which restores, - if one does not get it, there is only a half rest. It is when you come near to either of these domains of rest that you begin to see these higher kinds of dreams. ²⁸

SRI AUROBINDO

*

What is the way to pass into the psychic or the higher consciousness in sleep and rest there?

It is done unconsciously as it is. If one wants to do it consciously and regulate it, one has to first become conscious in sleep. ²⁹

SRI AUROBINDO

*

A long unbroken sleep is necessary because there are just ten minutes of the whole into which one enters into a true rest - a sort of Sachchidananda immobility of consciousness - and that it is which really restores the system. The rest of the time is spent first in travelling through various states of consciousness towards that and then coming out it back towards the waking state. This fact of the ten minutes has been noted by medical men, but of course they know nothing about Sachchidananda. ³⁰

SRI AUROBINDO

*

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Has the mind need of rest apart from the physical body and the physical brain?

Yes, an absolute need. And it is only in silence that the mind can receive the true light from above. I do not think that the mental being is liable to fatigue; if it feels tired, that is rather a reaction of the brain. It is only in silence that it can rise above itself. But from the point of view of sleep and dreams of which we were speaking, there is a very remarkable phenomenon. I have tried it out. ff you are able to establish not only silence in your head but also repose in your vital, the stoppage of all the activities of your being, and if coming out of the domain of forms you enter into what is called Sachchidananda, the supreme consciousness, then with three minutes of that state you can have more rest than in eight hours of sleep. It is not very easy, no… It is the con­sciousness absolutely conscious but completely still. in the full original Light. If you get that. if you are able to immobilise everything in you then your whole being participates in this supreme consciousness and I have well observed that as regards rest (and I mean by rest bodily rest, the repose of the muscles) three minutes of that state were equivalent to eight hours of ordinary sleep. ³¹

THE MOTHER

*

The Upanishad says that when one sleeps, one reaches pure Being. Does this apply only to the Yogi or to everyone?

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In theory, it applies to everyone. But the vast majority of human beings fall into unconsciousness, and if there is a contact with pure Being it is quite unconscious. Very few persons are conscious of this relation. It is usually the result of Yoga. ³²

THE MOTHER

*

Sleep like trance opens the gate of the subliminal to us; for in sleep, as in trance, we retire behind the veil of the limited waking personality and it is behind this veil that the sub­liminal has its existence. But we receive the records of our sleep experience through dream and in dream figures and not in that condition which might be called an inner waking and which is the most accessible form of the trance state, nor through the supernormal clarities of vision and other more luminous and concrete ways of communication developed by the inner subliminal cognition when it gets into habitual or occasional conscious connection with our waking self. ³³

SRI AUROBINDO

*

When we sleep and the surface physical part of us, which is in its first origin here an output from the lnconscient, re­ lapses towards the originating inconscience, it enters into this subconscious element, antechamber or substratum, and there it finds the impressions of its past or persistent habits of mind and experiences, - for all have left their mark on our subconscious part and have there a power of recurrence.

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...In the dream-consciousness the phenomenon is an apparently fanciful construction, a composite of figures. and movements built upon or around the buried impressions with a sense in them that escapes the waking intelligence because it has no clue to the subconscient's system of significances. After a time this subconscious activity appears to sink back into complete inconscience and we speak of this state as deep dreamless sleep: thence we emerge again into the dream-shallows or return to the waking surface.

But, in fact, in what we call dreamless sleep, we have gone into a profounder and denser layer or the subconscient, a state too involved. too immersed or too ob. cure. dull and heavy to bring to the surface its structure.. and we are dreaming there but unable to grasp or retain in the recording. layer of subconscience these more obscure dream-figures. Or else. it may be, the part of our mind which still remains active in the sleep of the body has entered into the inner domain. of our being the subliminal mental. the subliminal vital. the subtle-physical, and is there lost to all active connection with the surface parts of us. lf we are still in the nearer depths of these regions, the surface subconscient which is our sleep-wakefulness records something of what we experience in these depths; but it records it in its own transcription. often marred by characteristic incoherences and always. even when most coherent, deformed or cast into figures drawn from the world of waking experience. But if we have gone deeper in­ward, the record fails or cannot be recovered and we have the illusion of dreamlessness: but the activity of the inner dream consciousness continues behind the veil of the now mute and inactive subconscient surface. This continued dream

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activity is revealed to us. when we become more inwardly conscious. for then we get into connection with the heavier and deeper subconscient stratum and can be aware. - at the time or by a retracing or recovering through memory, - of what happened when we sank into these torpid depths. lt is possible too to become conscious deeper within our sublimi­nal selves and we are then aware of experiences on other planes or our being or even in supraphysical worlds to which sleep gives us a right of secret entry. A transcript of such experiences reaches us; but the transcriber here is not the subconscious, it is the subliminal, a greater dream-builder.
If the subliminal thus comes to the front in our dream­-consciousness, there is sometimes an activity of our sublimi­nal intelligence, - dream becomes a series of thoughts, often strangely or vividly figured. problem. are solved which our waking consciousness could not solve, warnings, premonitions. indications of the future, veridical dreams replace the normal subconscious incoherence. There can come also a structure of symbol-images, some of a mental character, some of a vital nature: the former are precise in their figures, clear in their significance: the latter are often complex and baffling to our waking consciousness, but, if we can seize the clue, they reveal their own sense and peculiar system of coherence. Finally, there can come to us the records of happenings seen or experienced by us on other planes of our own being or or universal being into which we enter: these have sometimes, like the symbolic dreams, a strong bearing on our own inner and outer life or the life of others, reveal ele­ments of our or their mental being and life-being or disclose influences on them of which our waking self is totally ignorant;

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but sometimes they have no such bearing and are purely records of other organised systems of consciousness independent of our physical existence. The subconscious dreams constitute the bulk of our most ordinary sleep-expe­rience and they arc those which we usually remember: but sometimes the subliminal builder is able to impress our sleep consciousness sufficiently to stamp his activities on our waking memory. If we develop our inner being, live more in­wardly than most men do, then the balance is changed and a larger dream-consciousness opens before us: our dreams can take on a subliminal and no longer a subconscious character and can assume a reality and significance.
It is even possible to become wholly conscious in sleep and follow throughout from beginning to end or over large stretches the stages of our dream-experience; it is found that then we are aware of ourselves passing from state after state of consciousness to a brief period of luminous and peaceful dreamless rest, which is the true restorer of the energies of the waking nature, anti then returning by the same way to the waking consciousness. lt is normal, as we thus pass from state to state, to let the previous experiences slip away from us ; in the return only the more vivid or those nearest to the waking surface are remembered: but this can be remedied, - a greater retention is possible or the power can be devel­oped of going back in memory from dream to dream. from state to state till the whole is once more before us. A coherent knowledge of sleep-life, though difficult to achieve or to keep established, is possible. ³⁴

SRI AUROBINDO