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WRITINGS BY THE MOTHER
© Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust

Yogic sleep

It is true that for a long time I have not slept in the usual sense of the word. [Note: Written in connection with a newspaper article in which it was stated that the Mother had not slept for several months.] That is to say, at no time do I fall into [new p. 4]the inconscience [old 4]which is the sign of ordinary sleep. But I do give my body the rest it needs, that is, two or three hours of lying down in a condition of absolute immobility in which the whole being, mental, psychic, vital and physical, enters into a complete state of rest made of perfect peace, absolute silence and total immobility, while the consciousness remains perfectly awake; or else I enter into an internal activity of one or more states of being, an activity which constitutes the occult work and which, needless to say, is also perfectly conscious. So I can say, in all truth, that I never lose consciousness throughout the twenty-four hours, which thus form an unbroken sequence, and that I no longer experience ordinary sleep, while still giving my body the rest that it needs.

3 July 1927

Collected Works of The Mother, First Edition, Volume 16, pp. 3-4