THE CHASM IS BRIDGED

 
Again, let us suppose that you feel tired and fed up and that you go to sleep. What is it that you are trying to do? It is nothing but to take refuge in God -- your natural and inherent state. The whole creation therefore has this conscious or unconscious tendency to take shelter in God the Over-Soul by entering the state of sound sleep for a time.

Every time you go to sleep you are unconsciously united with the Infinite Reality. This unification involves the extension of unconsciousness over consciousness. It thus bridges over the chasm between the unconscious and the conscious. But being unconscious of the union, you do not derive any benefit from it. This is the reason why, when you wake up again from deep sleep, you become aware of the same hum-drum individual, and you begin to act and experience exactly as you acted and experienced before going to sleep.

If your union with the Supreme Reality had been a conscious union, you would have awakened into a completely new and infinitely rich life.

A Perfect Master is consciously united with the Infinite Reality. In his case the chasm between consciousness and unconsciousness is bridged, not by the extension of the unconsciousness over the consciousness, as in the man who enjoys deep sleep, but by the extension of the consciousness over the unconsciousness.

The waxing and waning of consciousness is applicable only to the limited individual. In the case of the Perfect Master, the conquest of the unconscious by the conscious is final and permanent and, therefore, his state of self- knowledge is continuous and unbroken and remains the same at all times without any diminution. From this you can see that the Perfect Master never sleeps in the ordinary sense of the word. When he rests his body he experiences no gap in his consciousness.