The City that Never Sleeps

This evening I’m at the Radha Damodara temple. Neither large nor ornate, hidden away in an obscure gully of Vrindavana, the unassuming entrance gives no hint of what’s inside. It’s an Aladdin’s cave! The penetrating vibrations from centuries of singing, spiritual discourse and heartfelt prayer by saints of the highest calibre pulsates through the ether. The atmosphere is amplified by the overflowing pilgrims eagerly seeking divine grace. This is where it all comes alive. This is living theology. While being squashed I scan the crowd and realise I have lots to learn – the renunciation of the ascetics, the simple devotion of the white-saried widows, the innocence of the playful children, the spiritual greed of the eager pilgrims. Who knows who they all are? They’re all awake to the spiritual reality. Vrindavana is truly the city that never sleeps, early mornings to late evenings, tireless devotees entering the timeless world. 

There’s a correlation - when we snap out of spiritual slumber, we simultaneously begin to lose interest in sleep. Even Krishna is renowned for staying awake all night in Vrindavana! The ascetic saints of yore reduced their resting to one or two hours a day – and sometimes they overlooked even that. How can you forget to sleep? Is it humanly possible? I don’t think so - clearly they were accessing superhuman states due to acute spiritual absorption. When reality is better than dreams, there is no impetus to switch off. One writer says that dreams are not what happen when you go to sleep, dreams are what prevent you from going to sleep! 

So what does it mean for us? We can first ask whether we see sleep as a duty or a drug. Someone once said to me “sleep is my drug, the bed is my dealer, and the alarm clock is the police!” How we dread the first wake up call of the day! In progressive life, however, we don’t live to sleep, but rather we sleep to live. Krishna says you can’t be a yogi if you sleep too much or sleep too little. Prabhupada added - if you sleep too much you become lazy, if you don’t sleep enough you become crazy. We need sleep, and we all need a different amount – but remember, sleep is not an end in itself. 

Observing our sleep patterns can be revealing. Part of our sleep is to replenish the physical body, a percentage to recharge the cognitive functions, and then there is a portion to deal with our emotional state. When we’re attacked by boredom, lack of direction, fustration, anxiety or insecurity, we tend to slip towards oversleeping. Fighting with alarm clocks is a likely sign that life is still not in the right place. If doing nothing (i.e. sleeping) is more inspiring than doing something, it means whatever we’re doing is not inspiring enough. Purpose is the best alarm clock in the world – that reverberating chime in the heart is the real wake up call. May Vrindavana, the city that never sleeps, amplify my purpose and keep me awake with not a moment to waste.