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It is the perfect place.

Don’t be worried about those people who come and tell you, they must be joking. Sleep well. They must be trying to disturb you, they must be trying to create some jealousy in you. They must be really jealous of you – that you are sleeping so well and snoring, and those poor people are just sitting. They want to disturb you. Don’t be worried. Go on sleeping. You have to go far, but in sleep, nowhere else.

The game was drifting off into total boredom when a man in the crowd suddenly burst into a round of applause. The man next to him said, “Why did you do that?” “Sorry,” he replied. “I was trying to keep myself awake.”

You don’t know how much difficulty people are having in keeping themselves awake. You just go into your sleep, relax into it. If you can accept it totally, that will become a great experience.

The mind always creates conflict. If you don’t sleep, the mind says, “I am feeling like it would be good if I could sleep.” If you sleep, the mind says, “You have missed something, you should not do this.”

The mind always creates conflict, friction. It is never happy with anything. Drop that mind. If sleep comes naturally, then allow it. In that very acceptance and the disappearance of the mind, you will be hearing The Diamond Sutra.

Patanjali says sleep is just next to samadhi. A good sleep, a deep sleep and samadhi are different only in one sense: samadhi has awareness, sleep has no awareness. But awareness can happen in sleep.

Don’t make trouble for yourself, don’t divide yourself. If sleep is not coming, perfectly good, keep awake, but then it will not be an effort. If sleep is coming then fall asleep, then don’t try to keep yourself awake. And I am not saying that if sleep is not coming you have to try to go to sleep. Accept whatsoever is the case. Accept reality as it happens in a certain moment. Be totally in the moment.

That’s my whole message, to be utterly with the moment.

This is desire: “I should not be asleep.” Why? “This is not spiritual,” to sit in a discourse and fall asleep. Why? Sleep is a perfectly spiritual activity, a great spiritual activity. It is as good as sitting there and thinking; dreaming is as good. Dreaming is just a primitive form of thinking, more colorful. Others are thinking, you are dreaming. What is the difference? Dream well, sleep well, relax.

One day, out of this relaxation you will start becoming aware and alert, but that alertness will have a different quality to it. It will not be forced, it will not be manipulated by you, it will come. One day suddenly in the middle of the discourse you will open your eyes, fresh, young, from the deep sleep, and something, just a word, may go into your being and will transform you.

The whole Diamond Sutra was not needed when Hui Neng heard four lines – that was enough. Sometimes a single word from a buddha is enough; it just goes like an arrow and pierces your heart and you are no longer the same.

So don’t be worried. Relax well. And if you have relaxed well and you open your eyes, some time it is possible – there may happen the meeting between you and me. And you will be so fresh from sleep, unthinking, not knowing who you are….

Don’t you know? – sometimes it happens in the morning when you wake, it takes a few seconds for you to recognize who you are, the mind takes time to come back. Sometimes you cannot even recognize where you are. Suddenly awakened in the middle of the night, everybody will wonder who he is, where he is. He will take a little time to gather himself together.

So it is possible, sleeping, one day in the middle you hear my shouting. Suddenly you wake up and you don’t know who you are and you don’t know where you are. That is the right moment I can enter in you.

So don’t be worried, whatsoever happens is good. All is accepted here. I accept you as you are, I have no “shoulds” for you.