Minimise Eating And Sleeping?

[Silence]

How can it be done?

Any tips from sants etc?

thanks

[ssinghuk3]

Waheguroo jee kaa Khalsa Waheguroo jee kee Fathe

http://www.sikhawareness.com//index.php?showtopic=13066&st=0 - sant jee gives a concise answer to your question. Its the first one as well.

Hope that helps

Waheguroo jee kaa Khalsa Waheguroo jee kee Fathe

Edited July 29, 2010 by ssinghuk3

[SURYADEV]

I remember a premi of santji telling me that hunger and sleep are two things that a person has complete control over.

You can eat as much as you want, or as little as you want and you can sleep as much as you want or as little as you want!

he told me it takes self-discipline, thats all. Force yourself to do it. For the first 1-2 weeks it will be hard but after that the body and mind start to adapt to the new routine.

Of course you just cannot take this to the extreme or you will suffer.

Years ago in my jawanni I tried sleeping maximum 3 hours a day at night plus having 4-6 micro-sleeps during the days. Literally 5mins each max. I found those 5mins micro sleeps to be the most refreshing I've ever had! Also I became more aware that what I ate, physical work I did, mental exertion i did really effected how tired I felt.

(Oh, and I only lasted two and half weeks before burnout!!!!!!!)

[Mr Sardar]

Health implications?

[SURYADEV]

Re: reducing what you eat.

I think I read somewhere - or maybe its just my own theory! - that if you drastically reduce your food intake you only feel hunger pangs/pain for a few weeks. After that your stomach starts to shrink, thus it adapts to the quantity of what you eat and you start to feel less hungry. Think about the people on hunger strike, I beleive that after a while they stop feeling hungry per se; though they do start to feel other pains and discomfort due to lack of nutrients.

Back to the sleep thingy. if you want to go the druggy route look up the medicine called modofinil. Its prescription only, but you can ask your chacha in your pind to 'get' you some from india.

[Mekhane'ch Jannat]

It is absurd to try and reduce eating and sleeping without first considering everything in relation to these things. Worklife requires energy. Energy for the body is from food and the body and mind rest during sleep giving necessesary energy for the day. Without considering all the interelations in your daily life reducing food and sleep arbitarily is harmful. What may be good for a sant or ascetic living in a jungle will not always work for someone working ina full time job.

[SURYADEV]

I agree with you there MJ. Also ones natural requirements need to be looked at. All outside factors being equal,SOme people need a few hours a night whereas others need a lot more just for the same amount of output.

The idea of "thora khana, thora sona" is all relative. There is no fixed number of hours or calories that all people should aim for.

Incidently, has anyone ever heard of the Low Calorie lifestyle.? Apparently , - after doing animal studies -the theory is that by drastically reducing ones calorie intake one can increase ones lifespan and vitality and youthfulness.

[Mekhane'ch Jannat]

There are other factors involved that science has not considered. I remember a story of a Sadhu who had not eaten or drank for 30 or 40 years. This was due to a blessing he received. A person who does not eat and drink as much as another person but still is as active as him, must receive power to be active from another source, as energy cannot come from nothing, activity and work requires energy. To gain these blessings is the whole science of religion, in the book of Tobit it says those who give alms will be vivified with life and those that oppress will have lifeforce taken from them, eventually. So to cut down on eating food and sleeping first you have to make sure you give to the poor and help the needy, then your need will be taken care of.

[Xylitol]

when a person does bhagti and remains celibate they gain a great deal of energy and need less sleep. particularly if they do amritvela bhagti. i heard from a mahapurkhs sevadar that the physical body needs 6 hours of complete rest a day, although the mind can be awake during that time.

[Kaljug]

You never attempt to reduce your sleep. All that will do is leave you tired and destroy your concentration.

Instead you develop your bhakti and focus on that. When your concentration naturally develops, mental chatter diminishes and all that energy that was wasted on the scattered thinking of the monkey mind becomes available to you. Furthermore, the deep sense of peace and relaxation that comes from this one pointed focus is something is that can be carried into your every day life so that you are resting while you work. A decreased need for sleep is a side effect of this.

(Like Xylitol said above, it becomes possible to maintain consciousness while in the state of sleep also. The Tibetans have worked out a whole methodology and process to develop this ability to retain undifferentiated consciousness while the body sleeps (called Dream Yoga).)

As to minimising eating, you are going to need more food the more energy you expend, and, like MJ said above, you're going to need a whole lot less if all you are doing is sitting and meditating all day. all you can really do is practice restraint in what you eat and try to maintain a Sattoguni diet if your aim is spiritual (as Harkhowale Sant ji says in the audio Neo posted).

K.

[Kaljug]

Back to the sleep thingy. if you want to go the druggy route look up the medicine called modofinil. Its prescription only, but you can ask your chacha in your pind to 'get' you some from india.

It's modafinil (Provigil in the States). I know a lot of people who use it while studying for tests because of its memory enhancing and stimulant effects (and also because it lacks the harshness of a ritalin or ephedrine/caffeine crash). Given that it has amphetamine-like affects on dopamine and norepinephrine, it's not something that I'd take longterm.

K.

[Xylitol]

does dream yoga expend spiritual energy?

is it different from astral travel or lucid dreaming?

[Kaljug]

does dream yoga expend spiritual energy?

is it different from astral travel or lucid dreaming?

Some effort is required to begin with (not sure if that's what you meant about expending spiritual energy). See here for more details on the 1st stages of practice:

http://www.plotinus.com/zhine_tibetan_dream_yoga_copy.htm

Some good books are listed at the end of the article. I recommend the one by Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche.

The first stage of dream yoga is to achieve lucidity, the next is to control your dreams, then it is to extend your meditative practice into the dream state, and the eventual aim is to maintain an unbroken and undifferentiated awareness through the whole period of sleep. The whole practice encourages one to see the whole world as maya, another type of dream, and it is said to enable one to deal with the after-death bardo state with some degree of awareness since death is just another form of dream.

K.

[Mithar]

This is a good question for those of us who want Amritvela as a part of our daily life. For me personally it is a daily struggle to wake up at amritvela. When I am lucky enough to wake up at amrit vela I find myself falling asleep while I am doing Paath or Simran. There must be a way to reduce sleep. But I guess like other rehets, the rehet of Amritvela is also gained by the kripaa of Guru Jee. Without his bakshish to us we cannot even do Bhagti. So when doing Ardas we need to literally beg our Sache Padshaah to have mehir on his servents by bestowing on us Amritvela and his Bhagti.

[laalsingh]

I am thinking of reading this e-book for a while now.

If it is possible to be aware of ourselves while in sleep, is there any way that other people in sleep can be reached?

http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/archivos_pdf/exploring_luciddreaming.pdf