Thanks to all of you for your mantram efforts! It’s fantastic to hear about your mantram practice through the first half of January 2018.
This week, we have a special mantram activity for you. It’s special because it involves falling asleep, so you will have a number of chances to practice. As you drift off to sleep this week, try to repeat the mantram. Was your sleep impacted in any way? Did you notice any results the next morning? We’d love to hear about your experience in the comments below.
If you already fall asleep using the mantram, can you give extra attention to the experience and reflect on the results you notice? Or perhaps you create an opportunity this week for a mantram nap during the day. A mantram nap is a rest, but with focus on saying the mantram and keeping it at the forefront of your mind, with falling asleep as secondary. A nap like this is a chance to practice falling asleep in the mantram, and to try out what Easwaran shares below.
This is an excerpt from The Mantram Handbook by Easwaran.
One of the most important times to use the mantram is at night, when you are going to sleep. This is the time when all our problems come home to roost – all the turmoil of the day, all the anxieties of the following morning. This is why we have bad dreams, why we don’t sleep very well and get up wishing we could sleep four hours more. So instead of falling asleep in your problems, put your book away, turn out the light, close your eyes, and begin repeating Rama, Rama, Rama or Jesus, Jesus, Jesus until you fall asleep in it. It takes some time and some effort to master this, but once you are able to fall asleep in the mantram, it will go on working its healing effect in your consciousness throughout the night.
Between the last waking moment and the first sleeping moment, there is an arrow’s entry into the depths of your consciousness. This is one of the great discoveries in the unification of consciousness. It is a marvelous moment. You are neither awake nor asleep; you are between two worlds, and the tunnel is open. At that moment, you can send the mantram in just the way a bowler bowls a strike. You have seen how a good bowler picks up the ball and cradles it in his free hand, aims, and sends the ball rolling down the lane with just the right degree of spin to score a strike. It’s very much like that with the mantram; you can learn to send the mantram right into the depths of your mind every night.
When this happens, you may hear the mantram in your dreams, reverberating in the depths of your consciousness. It is an exceedingly rewarding experience, and one which will protect you in your sleep. A friend once told me that he had long been subject to a certain recurrent nightmare, but one night, just as this nightmare was working up to its usual fearful climax, he heard the mantram echoing in his consciousness. It dispelled the fear and the bad dream, too, and that nightmare has never been back to haunt him again. So when you have learned to fall asleep in the mantram, it is goodbye to nightmares, to disquieting dreams, to that feeling that the night hasn’t exactly been refreshing.
As you are learning to fall asleep in the mantram, you are likely to be paying more attention than before to the process of falling asleep, and you may observe things which you have never noticed before. The body may give a sudden twitch, or you may hear little voices or even see things. There is nothing occult about this, and nothing to be alarmed at. If such experiences occur while you are falling asleep, pay no attention to them; just hang on to the mantram. Scientists call this twilight zone between waking and sleeping the hypnogogic state; I like to call it Alice’s Wonderland. Before we are actually asleep, the conscious mind is closing up shop and the trap door to the subconscious may open a crack to let a few stray wisps of consciousness waft out. Pay no attention to them. They are not angelic voices, and they are not clues to the innermost workings of your mind; they have no more significance than the ever-changing shapes you can see in clouds drifting by. Quite possibly this sort of thing has always happened as you fell asleep, only you were not aware enough to notice. So when you are making an effort to fall asleep in the mantram, just go on repeating it if these wisps of consciousness come your way.
Falling asleep in the mantram is not as easy as it sounds. It takes some practice, but it is well worth the effort. So if you take a nap during the day, or doze off while riding in a car or bus or plane, or wake up in the middle of the night, just treat these events as opportunities for learning to fall asleep in the mantram. This is especially helpful for those who are subject to bouts of sleeplessness. Instead of lying there watching the clock, getting anxious about how much sleep you’re missing or how you will feel in the morning, repeat the mantram. Then instead of complaining, “I missed two hours and forty-three minutes of sleep last night,” you can say, “I had two hours and forty-three minutes of uninterrupted time for the mantram.” With this change of perspective, and with the mantram soothing your mind, you may soon find yourself a complete stranger to insomnia. And of course in the morning there is nothing like the mantram for beginning the day. When your alarm goes off, you don’t have to pull the covers over your head and lie there groaning; the mantram will enable you to fling off your covers and face the challenges of the day with enthusiasm.