– Doz­ing again, my dear? – the mas­ter asked aloud. He made a show of stern­ness, for a dis­ciple, after all, needs admon­ish­ing, but he was espe­cially fond of this dis­ciple, so inwardly he was more caring than stern.

– I only nod­ded off for a moment – the dis­ciple excused him­self, eager, young, ready to act, yet forever fall­ing asleep. Dis­ciples are like that: even the chosen fol­low­ers of Jesus kept fall­ing asleep when their mas­ter, cross­ing the spheres of the uni­verse, stood before God.

– A man sleeps away dec­ades of his life, but you, I think, even more. If you keep doz­ing, how will you attain enlight­en­ment?

The dis­ciple was ashamed, but there was noth­ing he could do. An almost mor­bid drowsi­ness kept steal­ing over him, and for all that he went to bed early, and some­times rose later than the pre­scribed hour, he kept drop­ping off. He did not yet sus­pect that it was the struggle with him­self that had worn him out, but his mas­ter knew it full well.

– And if we meas­ure it by wak­ing to the truth, people sleep away their whole lives… You must not be like that!

– Mas­ter, help me over­come sleep! – the dis­ciple pleaded.

– Over­com­ing wear­i­ness is wear­i­some, I know… For many, sleep is merely a somat­ic func­tion, a com­pul­sion that springs from bod­ily exist­ence. Oth­ers think it a waste of time, because it takes time away from activ­ity. But we are not con­tent with such explan­a­tions. Since we are com­pelled to sleep, let us put that, too, to spir­itu­al use.

– Spir­itu­al sleep?

– Sleep is one of the work­ings of con­scious­ness. Wheth­er awake, asleep or in med­it­a­tion, man is part of an extraordin­ar­ily intric­ate net­work – on a less con­scious plane he under­goes the pulsing of the uni­verse, on a high­er level he takes part in it.

– All I exper­i­ence is the down­ward pull of sleep, when I can­not keep my eyes open and everything goes dark before me…

– We know little of dreams as a dimen­sion of exist­ence, and cul­tiv­ate them little. Sleep, and still more dream-vis­ion, is an altered state of con­scious­ness. Today you may feel sleep as a com­pul­sion, but if you learn to dir­ect it… Every man sleeps, yet not every­one remem­bers his dreams.

– Usu­ally I too remem­ber only that I dreamt some­thing, but what it was I can­not recall. It is as if I were under a spell, my dreams sweep me along, and by the time I wake, everything has faded away.

– Never mind. Whatever the memory does not keep is as it should be. The truly import­ant things remain, wheth­er you exper­i­enced them awake or dream­ing. Such is dream work…

– Dream work? – the dis­ciple's eyes lit up.

– Yes, yes. Long ago my own mas­ter spoke to me of this too, but I did not under­stand… Slowly, dec­ades later, I begin to sense what he meant. My sleep and his dream-vis­ion are not the same. And yet he invited me to accom­pany him in his dreams. The dream-jour­ney does not unfold in the outer world but sets out from with­in. On the shared dream path you too go wherever the mas­ter leads.

– Would you lead me too? – the dis­ciple asked hope­fully. – But why do I remem­ber noth­ing?

– Do not think only of tak­ing part in my dreams at night, in your sleep. I could not fol­low my mas­ter on the inner dream jour­ney, and never exper­i­enced it. And yet I feel that when I am awake, even then I walk in his dreams, even then I live in his dream. You can do this too. If you are faith­ful, every door will open before you. Do not rum­mage in your sur­face con­scious­ness; you may remem­ber noth­ing at all, and yet you will always be able to choose rightly. Will you try to make my dreams come true?

– I would like to dream togeth­er with you…