If you eat extraordinarily, then you will sleep also extraordinarily. If you eat frugally, as much minimum required, then you can conquer over sleep. Eating, sleeping. Sleeping depends on eating.
[Posted
April 21, 2010]How much sleep do you need?
Better rested and more energetic with less sleep
High Existence Feb, 2010
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Alternate Sleep Cycles: You Don’t Really Need 6-8 Hours!
Most people only think that there is one way to sleep: Go to sleep at night for 6-8 hours, wake up in the morning, stay awake for 16-18 hours and then repeat. Actually, that is called a monophasic sleep cycle, which is only 1 of 5 major sleep cycles that have been used successfully throughout history. The other 4 are considered polyphasic sleep cycles due to the multiple number of naps they require each day. How is this possible? How is this healthy? Well the most important of every sleep cycle is the Stage 5 REM (Rapid Eye Movement) sleep, which has been shown to provide the benefits of sleep to the brain above all other stages of sleep. When changing over to a polyphasic cycle, the lack of sleep tricks the body into entering REM sleep immediately instead of 45 to 75 minutes into sleep like in the monophasic sleep. This way, you still get the benefits of 8 hours of sleep without wasting all of the time it takes to get to REM cycles, resulting in a much more efficient sleep cycle. go to story
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We can reduce our sleeping and eating, but we should remain in good health for spiritual purposes. We should not attempt to reduce eating and sleeping too rapidly or artificially; when we advance we will naturally not feel pain due to the reduction of these natural bodily processes. more
Srila Prabhupada slept not more than 3 hours at a go, taking rest at 10pm and rising at 1am to continue his translation work. In a conversation with Dr. Patel in Bombay, 1976, Prabhupada said, "Yes, that is, ultimate success is, nidrahara-viharakadi-vijitau (Song in praise of the six Goswamis of Vrindaban), when you can conquer over nidra, sleeping, ahara, eating, because animal life means ahara nidra bhaya maithuna. And spiritual life means you have to conquer over this. That is spiritual life."
Becoming free from demands of the body
lecture on SB 7.6.3, Montreal, June 16, 1968
GUEST: Swamiji, what... You said that sleep is complete waste of time.
PRABHUPADA: Yes. Because you cannot work then.
GUEST: What about dreaming?
PRABHUPADA: Dreaming is still waste of time.
GUEST: Is it possible to have Krishna consciousness when you are asleep?
PRABHUPADA: Dreaming is practically interaction of the activities, mental interaction of the activities in which you are engaged. You dream in different way; I dream in different way. So when the body is tired, it cannot work. It stops functioning. The mind works. So dreaming is the function of the mind. That's all. ...It is not from the spiritual platform. It is from the mental platform. In the spiritual platform, that is called sushupti. There is no gross or material function of this contamination. So those who are advanced, they also dream Krishna consciousness. Of course, that requires time to make little advancement. But after all, dream is the activities of the mind. Just like we work, that is the activities of the gross senses. Similarly, we work also on mental platform. That is called dream.
GUEST: Are we to take Krishna conscious dreams seriously or some illusion?
PRABHUPADA: Well, that depends on your particular position, you see. Sometimes a Krishna conscious persons dreams very seriously. Sometimes communication is there by dreams. Yes?
GUEST: Normal sleep for a man would be about eight hours. So is it possible to train the body through the use of yoga to decrease the sleep period down to about three hours or two hours?
PRABHUPADA: Oh, yes. Yes. Rupa Gosvami, he used to sleep only for one and a half hours.
GUEST: How long could the body hold up, how many years could the body...
PRABHUPADA: Well, there is no guarantee of holding up your body even if you have no sleep or have sleep. The material condition is so cruel that body can be finished at any moment. So that is no consideration. The consideration is how to advance in the spiritual consciousness or Krishna consciousness. And if you make, I mean to say, considerable advance, then the eating and sleeping and sex demand or defense, these things will be negligible. Negligible. These things are depending on our practice. Because actually, I don't depend on sleeping or eating or mating or defending. It is simply due to my bodily consciousness these things are required. But when one is actually spiritually advanced, he has no such appreciation. Just like Lord Jesus Christ, he was crucified, but he never protested because he had no bodily consciousness at all. So when one is spiritually advanced, there is no bodily consciousness. But we should not imitate. That requires advancement, as we have mentioned. Nothing has to be done in haste. But if you follow the rules and regulation, then someday it will be experienced that how we have spiritually advanced. Just like if you go on eating, not in the first morsel, second morsel, you become immediately satisfied. But when you are full in your satisfaction of hunger you feel happiness, you feel strength. Similarly, we have to follow the spiritual process, and gradually as we develop we become free from all these demands of the body. There was Raghunath das Gosvami, he was eating only say a few grains of butter every alternate day. Only a few grains of butter only. Every alternate day he was eating. So eating is also nonessential to one who is spiritual advanced. And so-called sex life, oh, that can be given up from the very beginning. And so far defense, narayana-parah sarve na kutashcana bibhyati [Srimad-Bhagavatam 6.17.28]. One who is fully spiritually conscious, he doesn't care for death. He does not know what is the meaning of death because he is living perpetually. So these things are to be experienced when you are advanced, but this is possible. This is possible from the examples of great saintly persons and from literature we can find that one can be completely free from the four demands of the body, namely eating, sleeping, defending and mating.
Eat less, sleep less
conversation, Los Angeles, June 10, 1976
pumso varsha-shatam hy ayus
tad-ardham chajitatmanah
nishphalam yad asau ratryam
shete 'ndham prapitas tamah
"Every human being has a maximum duration of life of one hundred years, but for one who cannot control his senses, half of those years are completely lost because at night he sleeps twelve hours, being covered by ignorance. Therefore such a person has a lifetime of only fifty years." [Srimad-Bhagavatam 7.6.6]
PRABHUPADA: So sleeping is waste of time. Therefore spiritual advancement means minimizing sleeping. Nidrahara-viharakadi-vijitau. About the Gosvamis' life it is said they conquered over nidra-ahara. If you eat extraordinarily, then you will sleep also extraordinarily. If you eat frugally, as much minimum required, then you can conquer over sleep. Eating, sleeping. Sleeping depends on eating. Atyahara. Atyaharah prayasash cha prajalpo niyamagrahah [Nectar of Instruction 2]. Atyahara means collecting more than necessity. One, somebody has got millions of dollars; still, he is working hard day and night to increase the bank balance. Why? You have got sufficient money; now you engage your life for spiritual advancement and take little food. God has given you enough. Why you are wasting your time in collecting money and eating more? That is misuse. Therefore Rupa Gosvami says, atyaharah prayasash cha prajalpo niyamagrahah. Ahara means eating, and ahara means collecting. So these are against bhakti principles – collecting more than necessity or eating more than necessity.
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