The mind has three layers. First is the unconscious: when you are deeply asleep with no dreams, you are in it. The child in the mother's womb is absolutely unconscious he is just part of the mother. The child is not aware that, " i am separate"; he is just part of the mother. There is no separation, no defined existence. He is undifferentiated from the mother and from existence itself. There is no fear because fear comes only when you become aware of yourself. The child is totally at ease; he is unconscious.
At the second layer is of consciousness. It is a very small fragment. one tenth part of the unconscious has become conscious in you through training, education, society, family. It was needed for survival, so a part of you has become conscious. But that part also gets tired very soon; that is why you need sleep. In sleep you become again a child in the womb. You have fallen back, the conscious is no more there. It has become part of the unconscious. that is why sleep is so refreshing. In the morning you feel alive again, fresh, because you have fallen back into the mother's womb.
You may not have observed this ..... observe someone who is deeply asleep. More or less, he will be in the same posture in which he was in his mother's womb. And if you can be in the right posture, the sleep will follow more easily . IF you feel any difficulty in falling asleep, just feel your mother's womb, as if you are in it. Imagine it, and take the posture in which you would have been in your mother's womb. In that posture you will fall deeply asleep. You need the same warmth; otherwise the sleep will be disturbed.
That is why hot milk is good. IF you sip hot milk before you go to sleep it will be good, because that again makes you a child. Milk is child's food, and if it is hot you are again at your mother's breast. Hot milk is good for sleep only because of this reason, you fall back into childhood, you are reduced into a child. Sleep refreshes you. Why? because the conscious mind gets tired. It is just a part and the whole is unconscious. It has to fall back to the whole to become revived. It is again resurrected. That is why in the morning you feel good and morning looks beautiful - not only because morning is beautiful, but because again you have a child's eye. The afternoon is not so beautiful. The world is the same, but you have lost those innocent eyes again. And the evening becomes ugly because you are tired.
You have lived too much in the conscious. this conscious has ego as the centre. These are two ordinary states which we know. The third state, that with which tantra and yoga are concerned is the superconscious. 'superconscious' means that your whole unconscious has become conscious. In the unconscious there is no ego, you are total. In the superconscious, again there is no ego, you are total. But in between the two conscious mind has a centre - the Ego.
This ego is the problem, this ego creates problems. You cannot fall in love because than you will have to become unconscious, just as unconscious as you become in sleep. Or, if you want to rise to prayer, you have to become totally conscious like a Buddha or like a Meera. So love becomes impossible, prayer becomes impossible.
The ego creates the barrier. You cannot loose yourself and love is loosing, dispersing, dissolving, melting. IF you melt into the unconscious, it is love; if you melt into the superconscious it is prayer- but both are a melting. So what is to be done? remember this : you cannot do anything about it. Let it be deeply noted: you cannot do anything about love, about prayer. You are conscious mind is impotent, it cannot do anything. It has to be lost, It has to be put aside. And then remember surrender; whenever you want to move beyond yourself, surrender is the way - either in love or in prayer.
