Chapter 13 – Night Practice 1: Theoretical Aspects
Dormiens vigila
While asleep, stay awake.
In that which is night to all beings,
the enlightened one is awake.
That in which all beings are awake,
is night to the enlightened one.
Bhagavad-Gītā 2.69
Night practice is a set of techniques designed to induce a state of
psychic sleep, and to use your nights for the purpose of self-
transformation. When performed during the day, night practice is
a quick and sure way to recover from stress and fatigue. Higher
stages of night practice deal with conscious astral travelling, for
which a few preparatory techniques are suggested in the next
chapter.
13.1 Critical times
Where do you go after you die?
According to the Tibetan and Hindu sciences of dying, the moment
of death is critical, for it determines the conditions of your
journey after life. Like attracts like. A resonance is said to take
place between the contents of your mind at the very moment of
death and the place to which you will be attracted. A verse of the
Bhagavad-Gītā puts it in these terms:
yaṃ-yaṃ vā ‘pi smaran bhāvaṃ tyajaty ante kalevaram taṃ-tam
evai’ ti...
Whatever object/state someone thinks of at the final moment of
leaving their body, that and that alone they attain. (8.6)
There is a story from the Buddhist tradition of a man who had led
a very virtuous life. As he lay dying his nephew sat by his
bedside, pretending to grieve but secretly coveting the
inheritance. The man got very angry when he saw that his
nephew's grief was fake. The dying can easily read the minds of
those around them, for they are already half in the astral. His
anger was enough to propel him straight into a burning hell,