There is a profound and very real relationship between God-realization and sound sleep. The eternal desire of the soul is to become one with God, but because consciousness attaches itself to the gross, the soul seems to become one merely with the gross. In the stone state, for instance, gross consciousness makes the soul identify itself with the stone although, in reality, the soul is all the time one with God. To make this clearer, let us suppose that you take opium or an intoxicating drink. You feel elated or depressed, although there is no radical change in your body, and it is only the consciousness that is affected and gives rise to your feelings. Thus you, as an individual soul, are twenty-four hours within and one-with God, although you feel merely gross-conscious.

Again, let us suppose that you feel tired and fed up and that you go to sleep. What is it that you are trying to do? It is nothing but to try to take refuge in God—your natural and inherent state. The whole Creation therefore has this conscious or unconscious tendency to take shelter in God the Over-Soul by entering the state of sound sleep for a time.