Health

Truth you need to know about dream-sleep

By Ma Durga on April 7, 2016 / Health

In the last article, we understood the first level of nidra (sleep) – waking-sleep. The next level of sleep which human beings go through is dream-sleep. Just like the waking-sleep, there are also two types of sleep in the dream state: sleeping during thinking and sleeping during dreaming. The first thing you realise about your dreams is that in the dream state, you experience completely confused identities For example, you may have a dream that you are going to school with your colleague, the mixed identity, or you could have mixed two separate incidents which happened when you were ten years old and forty years old and see them together in one dream. This shows that when you are dreaming, there is a discontinuity which happens in the dream.

According to a living incarnation, Paramahamsa Nithyananda (fondly known as Swamiji), he said that ‘if you are able to be aware even while the dream continues, you will be able to use your dream to enrich your life. If you can master this art, your whole life will be totally different. You can straight away achieve whatever you want. Mastering your dream means being aware even while you are dreaming and not letting the disconnection or the pause happen while you dream.’

Do you know that the Aghoris are the people who master dreams? Aghori means ‘compassionate, soft’. Aghoris belongs to a great spiritual tradition in India which works only on dreams. They use dreams state to solve all their problems and to find out the mysteries of the planet earth and the Universe. The Aghoris believe that dreams are an extension of the waking state, so they would go and ask for forgiveness of a person in waking state even though the incident happened in their dream.

Another thing you need to know about deep sleep. Deep sleep is the time when you go back to the source which you created this body. Your body was create when your mother was fast asleep, the energy which was there inside your mother’s womb when she was fast asleep, in that space, you were created. Every night you fall asleep, you actually go back to that same energy, recreate your body by doing the repair work inside your system and feeling rejuvenated and come back to live the next day. So this sleep is no way going to lead you to anguish or pain. Those who suffer from insomnia, they are depriving themselves from this natural self-renewal capability from within.

Here’s the sacred secret – if you are not daydreaming or falling asleep during your waking state, your dreams and sleep will also be continuous. If you are able to maintain the continuous flow of awareness during waking state, you will also be able to maintain that continuity in the dream state.

How to master dreams?

Swamiji gave a powerful technique from Tantra which Patanjali also speaks about in Sadhana Pada and Vibhooti Pada in Yoga Sutra.

He said – Whatever makes you feel very pleasant – it could be something, someone – just remember that, alive inside you while you fall asleep. For example, if you feel very pleasant by remembering your master, you can meditate on him, connect with him and feel him. Feel him inside your inner space visually, alive. Just remember that when you lie down on your bed – alive, vivid, visually in multi-colour, 4-D and continue to be with that intense visualization till you fall asleep. In 10 days, you will see he is there continuously, you will see his form in the dream clearly in multi-colour. If you try this technique for 10 days, you will see that the vivid visualization will penetrate your dream state within 10 days and will continue to be there throughout your dream. It means that you have mastered that dream and created a continuity in the dream. You have mastered the knowledge of how to avoid dream-sleep – this is the technique to get out of dream-sleep.

If you continue to practise this technique for 3 months, you will start experiencing his presence and his energy in the deep sleep state as well. The moment you wake up, you will know you have been with your master throughout, even though you do not remember his form, the colour of his dress etc. You know you were with him and you have been with him the whole night. This is exactly what Lord Krishna says in Bhagavad Gita – ‘A Yogi is a person who does not sleep when everybody sleeps’. It means you are awake throughout, your consciousness is awake throughout.

If you try this technique step-by-step, you will master waking-sleep, dream-sleep, and deep-sleep. There will be a continuity in all the 3 states of consciousness, then you experience the 4th state – Turiya state. If you are continuous, unbroken, conscious in all the 3 states, what you experience is called the 4th state – Turiya. Being continuous in the 3 states will lead you to joy, otherwise it will lead you to anguish and pain. One more important sacred secret: that continuity itself is a deep restful awareness that you don’t need any separate rest. This is the ultimate break you can give to yourself. The continuity is the ultimate brake from sleeping, dreaming and waking. Only when you can break your break, only then it is a real break! Living in the 4th state – Turiya is living enlightenment (Jivanmukti).

In essence, to experience the ultimate state – the Turiya state, we have to start transcending the waking state from all kinds of daydreaming and the lack of continuity in the dream state and deep sleep state. Then you simply fall into Samadhi – sleeping with awareness. Namaste 😀

Source – 108 truth of Yoga of Enlightenment by Paramahamsa Nithyananda

Are you sleeping in the waking state?

By Ma Durga on April 1, 2016 / Health

After expounding on imagination in the last article, let us move to the 4th modification of the mind – SLEEP. Patanjali gives a deeper insight into sleep in the next Yoga Sutra. The first thing we need to do is to expand our understanding about sleep, not in the narrowed way as we experience as a layman, but from the level of consciousness. If you are able to grasp this knowledge and apply in your daily life, the whole quality of your life will be transformed.

Here’s the 10th verse of Yoga Sutra “The subtle state where thoughts are not visualised is sleep or nidra”. Patanjali is not referring only to the normal sleep we experience at night, he is also talking about two other sleeps that we are not aware. The word ‘Nidra’ means disconnect.

As human beings, we all go through 3 kinds of sleep: 1) sleep which we experience during waking state, 2) the sleep which we experience during dream state, 3) sleep which we experience during deep sleep state. We go through 3 types of sleep – waking-sleep, dream-sleep and deep-sleep.

First of all, you need to know that you experience sleep during waking state. Many times you would have experienced this in your life – you are there but you are not there! Your body may be moving and doing things but you are asleep. For example, you would have started the car and driven to office for 30 mins, but only when you park your car at office and get out, you will suddenly remember that you have driven for half an hour. But you don’t remember the details how you get there, it means you were sleeping even when you were awake. I have experienced it a few times during Guru puja, a Vedic ritual to offer gratitude to my Guru, I actually forgot if I had done certain steps due to absent-mindedness.

The truth is the entire humanity is sleepwalking because we go through part of our waking state sleeping till we are enlightened. Paramahamsa Nithyananda, a living enlightened master (fondly known as Swamiji) cautions that not being available in the state in which we are, is what he calls as sleep. He says that if we can just be available in the waking state, there is no problem which can’t be solved. The key is – we need to be available there because all problems are created when we are not available and we end up messing up the whole thing. This happens when the reflection of consciousness is not there. Due to absentmindedness, people miss many things in life such as relationships, decisions and life itself. When we are absentminded in the outer activities, we may lose the things like success, fame and wealth. But if we are absentminded during inner planning, inner visualization, we will miss the links in our life, the flow which is happening inside us will be missing. That’s the worst thing that can happen to any Being! It means a kind of sleep is happening in the thought flow which does not allow us to keep the passion alive. The sleep which we experience during the thought- flow or action-flow is what leads us to anguish, we suffer due to missing too many things of the inner world. Absentmindedness in the outer world is responsible for the planning not becoming a reality. You need to know that absentmindedness in the inner world is responsible for all indecisions, addiction and the inability to keep the intensity alive in your life. The addiction here means any action performed repeatedly without awareness, it does not just confine to visible dangerous addictions such as alcohol, smoking or drugs.

How to come out of this nidra – the disconnection with life?

Whenever the nidra or waking-sleep happens, remember and bring awareness. You can try this technique. For the next 10 days, whenever you eat, be aware of how you feel in the stomach, how you feel with the whole process of digestion and cleaning. You can clearly understand what makes you feel uncomfortable and what makes you feel relaxed. Suddenly your body will tell you the right quantity, right quality and you will be able to create a diet base on that awareness. Next, be aware of your breathing, the natural breathing cycle and your breathing pattern. How your thoughts which are triggered by anger or desire affect your breathing? How your breathing elongates when you are relaxed? Start to become aware of your body, feel that you are alive inside this body, your hands and legs and your face – the different parts of your body. This technique will bring you back to awareness in waking state.

In essence, sleep in waking state is due to a discontinuity of reflection of consciousness. The waking-sleep state not only stops you from manifesting your reality but also makes you forget about the very purpose in your life which is seeking. A state of low existence which everyone needs to get out. Namaste. 😀

Note : From 108 Truths of Yoga of Enlightenment by Paramahamsa Nithyananda

Judging Life is Violence

By Ma Durga on March 10, 2016 / Health

Do you know that the more judgments you carry about life, the more you will suffer with unnecessary violence and anger?

We are always so quick to pass judgment on a particular person based on one experience or even on a particular race based on one person. The judgment you pass about a particular race, the judgments you pass about a religion, the judgment you pass about a state, the prejudices and biases you carry, are all related to this wrong knowledge – we use the past experience to judge the present situation.

Here starts the problem because not only do we throw the emotions of anger or violence on others, we start internalising them which make us suffer with unnecessary emotions. For example, you read some news about a country’s President and you say “This guy is destroying the citizens of that country! So you start to carry a strong anger against him. But you won’t be able to directly interfere in his life as you have neither the right nor power to do it. So you are just sitting with that anger and later, if you hear some misfortune has happened in that President, you are happy because your anger is fulfilled, your violence is fulfilled. This is called excess anger or unnecessary anger which is in no way directly related to your life. It is just a judgment you are carrying about life.

In the 8th Yoga Sutra of Patanjali, he tells us not to carry strong words or judgments about life based on our narrow logic from the past conditioning. All these things are based on wrong knowledge. He says “Interpreting based on past incompletions leads to misconception or wrong understanding.” We never have compassion towards the present moment, we are always violent with the present moment, that is why we kill the present with the past. We destroy the present moment with the incompletions carried forward from our past. Be very clear – abusing the present moment with the incompletions from the past is hell.

All our fears, greed, worries, whatever we think of as misfortune in life, whatever we think of as our identity, can be sorted out with this one understanding. Eternity presents itself to you in the present moment, you can touch Eternity only by touching the present moment. You can’t directly touch the past nor future, the present moment is the only way you can directly connect with Eternity. However, if you are constantly torturing it with your past, you are creating incompletion, misconception and wrong understanding. All the suffering is just with this one problem – carrying the past into the present, leading to wrong understanding. You go on interpreting life based on the past and creating problems for yourself. This is how wrong understanding leads to wrong decisions which leads to suffering.

In any situation, if you are open, fresh and alive, without the past conditioning and words, you can handle the situation directly, you can live and experience that situation completely. But when you carry a preconceived idea about the situation. You never directly face that situation, you jump to a certain conclusion and start taking actions based on that. See how many time you create a whole problem in your imagination and are ready to attack with all the weapons and arguments. One important truth is we think in a generalised way i.e. the mind always carries the incompletions from one situation from one experience and extends it to all people, all situations and all experiences. Each situation is different, but your mind always generalizes.

My Guru, Paramahamsa Nithyananda (fondly known as Swamiji) gives this ONE amazing key, he said ‘Have compassion towards the present moment’. If you look towards the present moment with a little sympathy and compassion, it will completely open a new door, you will have a new understanding about life. When you don’t have compassion towards the present moment, you always judge this moment with your past experience. This is a powerful key to unlock all your suffering from the past and see every moment as new!

In essence, stop judging life based on your past, have a little compassion towards the present moment so that you can allow yourself to fully experience life and eventually touch Eternity. Namaste 😀