SLEEP DURING WAKING

D: I cannot remain in sushupti as long as I like and also be in it at will, just as I am in the waking state? What is the jnani’s experience of these three states?

M: Sushupti does exist in your waking state also. You are in sushupti even now. That should be consciously entered into and reached in this very waking state. There is no real going in and coming out of it. To be aware of sushupti in the jagrat state is jagrat-sushupti and that is samadhi.

The ajnani cannot remain long in sushupti, because he is forced by his nature to emerge from it. His ego is not dead and it will rise again and again. But the jnani crushes the ego at its source. It may seem to emerge at times in his case also as if impelled by prarabdha.

That is, in the case of the jnani also, for all outward purposes prarabdha would seem to sustain or keep up the ego, as in the case of the ajnani; but there is this fundamental difference, that the ajnani’s ego when it rises up (really it has subsided except in deep sleep) is quite ignorant of its source; in other words, the ajnani is not aware of his sushupti in his dream and waking states;

in the case of the jnani, on the contrary, the rise or existence of the ego is only apparent, and he enjoys his unbroken, transcendental experience in spite of such apparent rise or existence of the ego, keeping his attention (lakshya) always on the Source. This ego is harmless; it is merely like the skeleton of a burnt rope — though with a form, it is useless to tie up anything. By constantly keeping one’s attention on the Source, the ego is dissolved in that Source like a salt-doll in the sea.

- Maharshi’s Gospel, p. 29