If you can make it part of your dreaming, if it can be absorbed into a dreaming process, then it cannot help you. You can dream anything, and then it will not look like an alarm. It will have become something else. You have entered a temple and the bells are….; now there is no need to wake up. You have changed the alarm, the real thing, into a dream, and a dream cannot be disturbed by another dream, it can only be helped.

These techniques are all artificial in a way. They are just devices to help bring you out of your dreaming state, but you can make them also part of your dream. Then you miss the point. Then you miss the point! Try to understand this because this is very basic. And once understood, it will be helpful; otherwise you can go on deceiving yourself.

For example, I say, “Take a jump into sannyas.” That is just a device. Your old identity is broken; your old name becomes as if it belongs to someone else. You can look at your past more detachedly. You can be a witness. You are aloof, a distance is created. I give you a new name and a new robe just to create the distance. But you can make it part of your dreaming; then you will miss the whole point. You can still think in terms of the old – that the old man, A, has taken sannyas. You feel, “I have taken sannyas.” “I” remain the old. “I” have changed my robe, my name, but “I” remain the old and the old continues. Now this sannyas is just something added to the old. It is not discontinuous, it is continuous. If it is continuous, if you have taken sannyas, you the old one, if you have changed your robe and name, you have missed the point.

You must be dead, you must not be the old now. You must feel that the old has died, that this is a new entity which you never knew, that this is not a growth out of the old. This is discontinuous with the old. Then the device will have helped. Then the alarm will have worked and the technique is useful. You are not missing the point. All these techniques are such that you can miss or you can use them; it depends. But remember well, the techniques are just techniques. If you understand the spirit, you may become alert even without any technique.

For example, the alarm clock may not be needed. Go deeply into it. Why do you need an alarm clock? If you want to get up early in the morning at three, why do you need an alarm clock? Deep down you know that you can deceive yourself, and deep down you know that if you really want to get up at three, you will get up at three and no clock is needed. But with the clock, the responsibility is put off. Now you will not be responsible. Now if something goes wrong, the clock is responsible. You can sleep with ease now. Now the clock is there; you can sleep without any disturbance.

But if you really want to get up early at three, you will get up early at three. No clock is needed. This very intensity to get up will bring the happening. This will to get up at three may be so intense, you may not be able to sleep at all, and there will be no need to get up; you will already be awake the whole night. But to sleep well the clock is needed. Then you can go to sleep. But you can deceive. When the alarm goes off, you can deceive; you can dream about it.