People may say that mystics, Sufis, are great occultists, very psychic people. That is not their aim; their aim is the true consciousness, the real life, the Consciousness which lies beyond: Allah. When this Consciousness is open to them, then all wisdom is open to the soul and all the books, all the learning in the world become to them mere intellectual knowledge.

You might say, "Then lazy people who are always sleeping are all saints." No, the soul also must have experience on the earth. It must learn what virtue is, it must learn to be virtuous.

By sleep we understand the covering of ourselves from the world of which we are conscious, but we do not realize that, when we are awake, we are covering ourselves from another world which, in fact, is more real; it is the self which is covered. The difference between the sleeping and the waking state is that, when we cover ourselves from what, in fact, is real, we say, "I am awake" and, when we cover ourselves from what is unreal and illusion, we say we are asleep.

The reason for this is that in the state in which we are conscious of all things around us we are able to point to things about which we have no doubt. We recognize the objects around us, therefore we say that we are awake, and during the time of sleep we think we are dreaming, we do not know where we are or what we are doing. In reality that is the very time when we are experiencing our real life.

What does our real life consist of?. Our real life consists of natural happiness, peace and purity. By purity I mean that our heart, our mind, our intelligence are pure from all worries, anxieties, pains and tortures, from bitterness or sweetness, such as we experience in the world. Otherwise our heart reflects on these things all the time and accordingly brings us suffering.

How valuable is the peace we obtain in sleep! We cannot realize this until we long for sleep which will not come. At such a time we shall realize that everything we possess in the world is worth sacrificing for the peace which sleep brings and the happiness we experience then. All the pleasures in the world afford only a glimpse of that happiness which is within us, in our innermost being. In our everyday external life that happiness is as buried. If there is a time when happiness is experienced by the soul, it is the time during which we are asleep. The little happiness we experience in this world is not real, but only a shadow which we call pleasure, whereas the true happiness which we experience by our natural life we do not call happiness, for we do not know what it is. Only its after-effects remain with us, and we feel happy when we come to the wakeful state after having had a good sleep.

The peace we experience during sleep cannot be compared with the peace we experience in the form of rest in a comfortable chair or on a couch, in the form of material comfort at home or elsewhere. The life we experience during sleep is outside a wall, a prison-wall; the pains and diseases of this world are within the prison during this time. In the waking state we are in the prison, our life is unhappy; when fast asleep we are free. The moment sleep comes to a person who is in pain and suffering all his disease is left behind; at that moment he is above all suffering and pain. This shows that during sleep we experience a life which is beyond this mortal existence.

Although man experiences sleep every day, he never realizes it as the greatest blessing of his existence, until he suffers from lack of it. Man disregards all natural blessings, and not regarding them as blessings he remains discontented. A person who can see the blessing which is in life itself will be so thankful that whatever may be lacking in his outward life will seem insignificant. The inner blessing is so much greater, compared with what is lacking in the outer world, that, indeed, there is no comparison between them.

All this shows that what develops a person and helps him to advance along the spiritual path, should be sought no further than along the natural lines of the mystery of sleep. Once this mystery is solved, the deeper question of the inner cult is solved as well. The explanation of things is so near to us and yet, at the same time, it is so far beyond our reach!