OSHO MEDITATION TECHNIQUES - 7

Entering Sleep Consciously

Taken from:
Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh,
Dynamics of Meditation,
Bombay, India, 1972
page 284

The moment when you are dropping into sleep
is the moment to encounter the unconsciousness.
If you can remain out of sleep, then the unconscious
will be real,
because that is the line. The very line from where you
drop into sleep is the line where you can encounter
the unconscious.

You have been sleeping everyday,
but you have not encountered sleep yet.
You have not seen it: what it is, how it comes, how to
drop into it.
You have not known anything about it.
You have been dropping daily, coming out of it,
but you have not felt the moment
when sleep comes to the mind and what happens.

So try this, and with three months effort,
suddenly one day you will enter sleep knowingly:
drop on your bed, close your eyes, and then remember,
remember that sleep is coming and
"I am to remain awake when the sleep comes".
It is very arduous, but it helps.
One day it will not happen,
another day it will not happen.
Persist every day,
constantly remembering that sleep is coming,
and "I am not to allow it without knowing.
I must be aware when sleep enters.
I must go on feeling how sleep takes over,
what it is."

One day sleep is there, and you are still awake.
That very moment
you become aware of your unconsciousness.
And once you become aware of your unconsciousness
you will never be asleep again during the day.
Sleep will be there, but you will be awake
simultaneously.
A center in you will go on knowing;
all around will be sleep,
and the center will go on knowing.

When this center is knowing,
dreams become impossible.
Then you are asleep in a different sense,
and you will be awake in the morning
in a different sense.
A different quality comes by the encounter.