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There is a saying that without a season, trees will not give fruit. Similarly, you have to prepare yourself for the higher techniques. First of all, to master the āsanas. Āsana means that posture where you feel comfortable. The definition of āsana has many different aspects. First, āsana means the sitting or lying posture. When you sleep, you make yourself very comfortable. That’s called śayān āsana, the sleeping posture. But it is also said that sleeping doesn’t need any posture. When you are tired, you can sleep anywhere. Sometimes it’s good to sleep anywhere, and sometimes it’s not good to sleep anywhere. So-called micro-sleeps while driving are also very dangerous. Sleep doesn’t search for a bed. Similarly, meditation doesn’t search for a special position. Meditation comes. It’s a question also of how you train your body, what your habit is. There is a nice story. There was one man, a king, and he had so many problems with sleeping. Sometimes pillows were not good. Sometimes the mattress was not good, too hard or too soft. The bedsheet was not good, and the next morning he used to complain to his queen. "The whole night I couldn’t sleep. This was not good, that was not good." Mosquitoes came. They put up a mosquito net. Birds were too loud, and so on. You know, in Europe they say, in German, "Prinzessin auf den Erbsen." One day, the queen and king went for a walk alone. It was about one o’clock in the afternoon, a hot day. They were coming back from the walk and they saw a shepherd. He had cut some branches from a thorny tree for his goats and sheep. The goats and sheep were also resting because it was one o’clock. There was a quite thick branch of the tree which he had cut, with many thorns on it. But he put his head on that branch. The earth was not level—up, down, some stones. He had no pillow, so he took these thorny branches as a pillow and was sleeping deeply. The goats were also relaxing, chewing. Like many people during a lecture who are chewing gum, they try to get rid of their past karma. The queen said to the king, "Look, this man is sleeping so deep and soundly. A thorny branch of the tree, stones and sand and dust on the ground, goats making noise, but still he’s sleeping so deep and relaxed. And you? Every night is a theater: 'I don’t like the pillow, I don’t like the blanket. I don’t know what this is. The room is too hot, too cold.'" The king said, "Yes, I am happy for this man, that he can sleep so well," and they went away. When the king came home, he told some of his people: "There is a shepherd there. Call him. Accommodate him in the palace for 15 days as a holiday. Give him good eating, a good bath, a bathtub with rose petals, some aromas, different shampoos, and neem powder." Your skin will be very thankful if you can take a neem bath. Nothing can be compared with neem powder or a neem bath. If you can’t sleep well, if you have a problem, if you are taking some medicine for sleeping, take a neem bath. Don’t take medicine and lie down—I mean not in the bathtub, in the bed. Your sleep will be what they call sound sleep. Nīma is known as Viṣṇu itself. "Give him good food, different kinds of dishes. Every time he sleeps, a new blanket, new bedsheet, soft pillow." Like in a multi-star hotel, you get your bed nice and clean, washed, and prepared every time. In one word: spoil him. After twenty, thirty days, the king told his people: "Give him a very hard pillow and one mattress which is a little bit uneven, used many times, and leave the window open." Now the king invites the queen to go onto the flat roof, where there’s a ventilation opening. He said to the queen, "Sit down, and I want to show you something. Be silent." The queen sat down. The king was thinking, "What is my destiny and karma? What have I done?" His life had changed. He was very happy. He forgot everything: his family, sheep, and goats. But tonight he got a hard pillow. The bed was moving a little bit. He went to sleep. He tried to change the pillow, sit up, and change his position. He changed the mattress. Again, he got up. Waking like this, he couldn’t sleep. The king said to the queen, "Is that the same shepherd who was having a sound sleep on the thorny bush branch?" She said, "Yes, but look, here he cannot sleep even." Habit. Holy Gurujī used to say, "Habit is the second nature of a man." And then that person becomes a slave of that habit. Those who are the slave of their habits will be lifelong unhappy. Therefore, āsana means where you can keep your body for a while relaxed. Also, sitting is called āsana. You’re practicing on a mat. In Hindi, we call it āsana. In Sanskrit, we call it āsana. This is your āsana. Even the bed where you sleep is an āsana. So there are many, many different kinds of āsana and definitions of āsana. Each posture has a physical, mental, and emotional effect on your being. It’s easy to work eight hours physically. But it is not easy to sit comfortably for eight hours. In an aeroplane, we are constantly looking to watch, "Still how long is it? How long is it?" Holy Gurujī said it means such rich food cannot be digested by everyone. It’s not easy to digest such rich food. Healthy and lucky and richest are they who can enjoy any kind of food and eat as much as they can. And poor are they who can’t eat everything. Therefore, habit. So you have to practice yourself for one year. Train your body to sit for at least one and a half hours without movement. Definitely, you will not get liberation because of the posture. You will not get the siddhi because of the postures. But certain experiences and achieving a certain level of consciousness require, for a certain time, the body to be motionless and conscious. But that will not replace meditation. There is a big difference between meditation and sleep. This is a level of consciousness: awakened sleep and dream. Suṣupti, svapna, and jāgrataḥ—this we call it in Sanskrit. Now, you can compare your sleep with meditation. If you are aware of your sleep, then you have a double benefit. When you go to sleep, do you know in which minute and how you entered from the awakened state to sleep? This border is very, very important. And do you know how you enter from deep sleep into the dream locus? What made you, in such a deep sleep, enter into dreams? And how do you come back from the dream to the sleep, and then go to another dream? How did you finish the dream? How did you know this is finished? And now I begin anew, the new chapters in your dream. Does your dream cause you stress? Does your dream cause you fear, or does your dream cause you happiness? Yes, every day, different dreams. Does it happen without your knowing that now you will dream? Then we don’t need a webcast. So Patañjali has spoken very clearly about these levels of consciousness. What we call the father of psychology, I would say, was Patañjali—the Patañjali Yoga Sūtra. Perfect. Beautiful. So, if you practice Yoga Nidrā, then you are sleeping very deep, but consciously. You can choose your dreams. So the techniques which you do: the first step is to observe how you go from conscious to sleep, then wake up again. Something you missed. Open your eyes. Drink a little water, and sleep again, and observe your sleep. If you do it three or four times, you will wake up in the morning very nervous. That’s it. Therefore, you have to practice first. Then you come to dream. Dream is nothing but your reality: past lives and this life’s impressions, and your intuitions or your ambitions for the future, good or bad, that you feed your subconscious with, turn into the form of visions, in color and form. The first technique to master your dream: when you wake up in the morning, remember. Second, during a dream, you know that you are dreaming. And if you don’t like that dream, you can change that dream or stop. Second step: that you wake up during a dream, open your eyes, look around the room, close your eyes, and continue the dream. Next step: during a dream you wake up, perhaps open a window (and close it if you don’t disturb your family members who are sleeping there), and continue the same dream from where you stopped. Another step: that you wake up, take your dress, take your shoes, walk around the house block, come back and sleep. If you have a dog, the dog will be very happy to go walking with you. Sleep, and the same dream continues. And the next day, you make a saṅkalpa: "I will have the same dream tonight." Now, this means you became master of your consciousness, you became master of your mind. You developed such a strong willpower that nothing can make you angry or unhappy. So, this you can do also through yoga nidrā practice, saṅkalpa siddhi, and meditation. So, practicing āsana is not only a kind of sport, but a way to master your life. So that you can understand your body, and you can lead your body in the best way, in a healthy way, and so that you can manage your body in the best and healthiest way.