Remember yourself as light
Waking, sleeping, dreaming, know you as light. Mind is divided into three divisions: waking, sleeping, dreaming and the fourth they have not given any name to it; they call it simply, turiya the consciousness.
Start with waking, while waking – moving, eating, working – remember yourself as light. As if in your heart a flame is burning, and your body is nothing but the aura around the flame. Imagine it. In your heart a flame is burning, and your body is nothing but a light aura around the flame; your body is just a light around the flame. Allow it to go deep within your mind and your consciousness. Imbibe it.
The second step is to take it into dreaming. It has become a reality, not an imagination. Through imagination you have uncovered a reality. It is real. Everything consists of light. You are light – unaware of the fact – because every particle of matter is light. The scientists say it consists of electrons, the same thing. Light is the source of all. You are also condensed light: through imagination you are simply uncovering a reality. Imbibe it – and when you have become so filled with it, you can carry it into dreams, not before. Then, while falling asleep, go on thinking of the flame, go on seeing it, feeling you are the light. Remembering it… go on…you fall down asleep. In the beginning you will start having some dreams in which you will feel you have a flame within, you are light. By and by, in the dreams also you will move with the same feeling. And once this feeling enters the dreams, dreams will start disappearing less and less dreams and more and more deep sleep. When in all your dreaming this reality is revealed – that you are light, a flame, a burning flame – all dreams will disappear, only then can you carry this feeling into sleep, never before.
Now you are at the door. When dreams have disappeared and you remember yourself as a flame, you are at the door of sleep. Now you can enter with the feeling. And once you enter sleep with the feeling that you are a flame, you will be aware in it – the sleep will now happen only to your body, not to you.
You go beyond these three states, you have transcended. If you can be aware that you are a flame, a light, that sleep is not happening to you, you are conscious. You are carrying a conscious effort. Now you are crystallized around that flame. The body is asleep, you are not.