Swami Shivapadananda on prayer-power and managing sleep
SWAMI SHIVAPADANANDA
DAILY READINGS
From Mother Radha's recordings of Swamiji
Day 530
[Pictured: His Holiness Swami Shivapadananda in 1972]
Devotee: Can we pray for somebody else's welfare, health and protection?
Swamiji: God listens to your prayer and He supplies your wants, so why shouldn't He supply the wants of others when you lovingly ask Him on their behalf? But you cannot pray for another person if you think of your God as a dead thing. Ask God with faith. Ask Him with a pure heart and with a heart which is full of love for your deity because it is a loving God that you are worshipping.
Prayer works because thought is a living force and any thought which is positive has more strength than a negative one. And because you are praying from the subtle body it must affect the other person's subtle body.
Devotee: How do great souls [mahatmas] cope with so little sleep?
Swamiji: Happiness and peace are some of the things that make you less tired. The thought of God makes you blissful and therefore very little sleep is needed.
Devotee: One of Arjuna's names was, 'He who has controlled sleep.' What does that mean exactly?
Swamiji: It means when he wanted to go to sleep he would sleep. And if he did not want to go to sleep he would not sleep. You must control your sleep as you control a motor car. You drive the car when you want to drive it; and you don't drive the car when you don't want to drive it.
Devotee: What should guide us in our attempt to control sleep?
Swamiji: You must eat less in the evenings, do not eat a heavy meal. You must choose a particular time at which to go to sleep. To start with you can take the assistance of an alarm clock or a servant to get you up at a certain time. When you become conscious in bed [in the mornings] you must throw off the blankets and get out of bed straight away. Do not think of the comfort of the body while you are still in the bed because at that time the body will be accustomed to being in bed. This I have experienced myself.
The other day a child was sleeping upstairs in my room. When we woke her up she said, 'Give me two minutes more. Please, just two minutes.' We left her for two minutes then woke her again. She did not believe two minutes had gone. So you must get up then and there.
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words in these postings, in context. Every teaching or instruction that he gave
was specific to the people who were with Swamiji at the time.
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