Q: During sleep one has often the impression of entering into a region of light, of higher knowledge, but on waking up one brings back only the impression, the memory. Why?
That is because in the ladder of being which climbs from the most external to the highest consciousness, there are gaps, breaks of continuity, and when the consciousness rises, descends and goes up again, it passes through some kind of dark holes where there is nothing. Then it enters into a sleep, a sort of unconsciousness, and wakes up as best it can on the other side and hardly remembers what it has brought back from above. This is what happens very frequently and particularly in the state called samādhi. People who enter into samādhi find out that between their active external consciousness and their consciousness in meditation, there lies a blank. Up there, they are almost necessarily conscious—conscious of the state in which they find themselves—but when coming down again towards their body, on the way they enter into a kind of hole where they lose everything—they are unable to bring back the experience with them. Quite a discipline is needed to create in oneself the many steps which enable the consciousness not to forget what it has experienced up there. It is not an impossible discipline but it is extremely long and requires an unshakable patience, for it is as if you wanted to build up in you a being, a body; and for that you require first of all the necessary knowledge, but also such a prolonged persistence and perseverance as would discourage many. But it is altogether indispensable if you want to take part in the knowledge of your higher being. [The Mother, CWM 4]
