It will take a little time to move into sleep with awareness because you are not even aware when you are awake. In fact, in your waking also you move as if you are deeply asleep, a somnambulist, a sleepwalker, not very awake really. Just because the eyes are open don’t think that you are awake. Awakening means that whatsoever you are doing, or whatsoever is happening moment to moment, you are doing in full mindfulness. Even if I raise my hand to make a gesture to you, I am making it in full consciousness. It can be made in a robotlike way, mechanical; you are not aware of what is happening in the hand. In fact, you have not moved it at all; it has moved on its own, it is unconscious. That’s why it is so difficult to penetrate your own sleep.

But if one tries… The first effort to be made is: while you are awake, be more awake, because the effort has to be started from there. Walking on the street, walk mindfully, as if you are doing something very important. It is very significant. Each step should be taken in full awareness. If you can do that, only then can you enter into sleep. Right now you have a very faint awareness. The moment your conscious mind goes off, that faint awareness disappears like a small ripple. It has no energy; it is very, very faint, just a flicker, just a zero-voltage phenomenon.

You have to bring more energy to it, so much energy that when the conscious mind goes off, awareness continues on its own – and you fall asleep with awareness. This can happen if you do other activities with awareness – walking, eating, sleeping, taking your bath. The whole day, whatsoever you are doing becomes just an excuse for the inner training of mindfulness. So the activity becomes secondary; awareness through that activity becomes primary. By the night, when you drop all activity and you go to sleep, that awareness continues even while you are falling asleep. The awareness becomes a watcher: “Yes, the body is falling asleep and by and by the body is relaxing.” Not that you verbalize, you simply watch. By and by thoughts are disappearing. You watch the gaps. By and by the world is very, very distant. You are moving into the basement of your being, the unconscious. If you can fall asleep with awareness, only then will the continuity be there in the night. That is what Patanjali means: “Meditate on the knowledge that sleep brings.”

And sleep can bring much knowledge because it is your treasure-house, your basement of many, many lives. You have been treasuring many things there. First try to be aware while awake, while you are in the waking state, and then, by itself, the awareness becomes so powerful that it doesn’t matter what activity you are doing really – walking, or walking in a dream, makes no difference. And when for the first time you will fall asleep with awareness, you will see how gears change. You will even feel the click that the wakefulness disappears, the mind is off, another realm starts – the gears of the being have changed. And between these two gears there is a small gap of neutral gear, because whenever the gear changes it has to pass through the neutral passage. By and by you will become aware not only of the change of gear, but of the gap between the two, and in that gap you will have your first glimpse of the superconscious.

When the conscious mind changes into the unconscious, just for a very minute part of a moment you will be able to see the superconscious. But that is a later chapter in the story; I mention it just by the way. First, you will become conscious of the unconscious, and that will bring tremendous change in your life.