A: Now, let us understand this very clearly. No one should try to avoid sleep. Agree with thine adversary! If you feel tired, or if you feel that a period of sleep is necessary, give in to it, lie down and have your sleep, and then get up and do your work.
It makes no difference when it is. There are times when I retire at seven o’clock in the evening, and then get up at nine, or ten, or eleven. There are times when I don’t retire until one in the morning, and then am awake at three, or four, or five. I don’t fight the sleep. If I feel the need of sleep, I lie down and have it, and then get up and work.
When you do that, you are not fighting anything. You are agreeing with your adversary, and you will find that as you progress in the work, you will require less and less sleep. But do not make a conscious effort to overcome sleep because you will not succeed, and if you do, you will not help your health. When there’s a need for being awake sixteen, eighteen, or twenty hours a day, the Spirit Itself will see that you are able to do it without any injury to yourself, whereas, if you try to make the demonstration, you may succeed by will power, but it will only be repression.
You see, in our Hebraic days, that is, in the days when we were under the Ten Commandments, we had to learn repression. We had to learn to take each one of those Ten Commandments and specifically read it, and then watch ourselves and be sure that we didn’t violate it. And if we were tempted to violate it, we had to consciously remember, “Oh no, I mustn’t violate this commandment,” and what we really did was repress. And, of course, the result is that we have lots of prisons and lots of insane asylums, all testimonies to the fact that when you repress, in the end it breaks out.
Under Grace, you do not have any “thou shalt nots.” Under Grace, you let the Spirit of God govern you, and you will find that the Spirit of God so governs you that your only desires are along the line that is natural, right, beneficial, and good, not only for you, but for all those who touch your life.
So rather than sit down to meditate or treat when sleep is trying to get the best of you, have your sleep, and then wake up and be alert and awake and do your work, and gradually you’ll find that by not fighting, you will come to the place where you will require less of sleep.
1This excerpt is from Recording 237A, 1958 Manchester Closed Class, “Spirit, Grace, and Meditation.” It is posted with kind permission from the Estate of Joel Goldsmith, which holds the copy protection on the recorded classes and the copyright on the transcripts. The full transcript of this recording is available at www.joelgoldsmith.com or by calling 1-800-922-3195.