Sandhya: The nectar moment

Remember the true name
And meditate on its glory in the ambrosial hour.

The Hindus call it sandhya which literally means evening; it is used to designate the hour of prayer at twilight and at dawn. Nanak calls it amrit vela which means nectar or ambrosia time. It is an even more appropriate name. The Hindus have been working on this path for thousands of years. In search of the reality of existence and exploring consciousness, they have found paths in almost all directions; almost nothing is left undiscovered. They have gradually determined that in the twenty-four hours of the day there are two short periods of sandhya.

In the night when you retire to bed, there is a short period when you are neither asleep nor awake. At this particular moment your consciousness, so to speak, changes gears. In changing the gears of the car, you have to move through the neutral gear before going to the second gear. So for a moment, the car is in no gear.

Sleep and wakefulness are two very different states. When awake you may be filled with misery; in sleep you become an emperor! You do not even wonder that the one who is a beggar in the day can be a king at night. You are in an altogether different gear. You are on a plane of consciousness that is entirely different from your ordinary daytime consciousness; and these two levels have nothing to do with each other. Otherwise you would have remembered for an instant, that you are a beggar and why have you become a king? But when you dream you are entirely identified with the dream. You experience the waking hours of the day as a different existence altogether from the world of sleep. You enter an entirely different world.

In the day you are a saint, at night you are a sinner – and do you even wonder at it? Have you ever doubted your dreams while dreaming? Once you do the dream will break apart, for doubting is part of wakefulness; it is a part of waking consciousness. In dreams you are not conscious of the fact that you are dreaming.

There are many orders of seekers where the spiritual exercise is taught that when they prepare to sleep at night, they should keep one thought in mind: “This is a dream… this is a dream.” It takes three years for this remembrance to become strong enough for the seeker to recognize the dream as a dream – at which point it breaks. From then on, there are no dreams for him, because now the gears are not separate. The two planes of consciousness merge into one: now he is awake even when sleeping. This is what Krishna means when he says the yogi is awake when others sleep. The wall between the compartments has fallen and now it is one big room.

Both in the night when you are about to fall asleep and in the morning just as sleep departs and you are about to awake – these are the two moments when consciousness, in its process of changing gears, drops for a moment into neutral, when you are drifting between sleeping and waking consciousness. This is the time that Hindus call sandhya and Nanak calls amrit vela. Sandhya kal is a scientific term. Kal means hour, and sandhya refers to middle, neither here nor there – neither belonging to this world nor to that. At the moment of sandhya kal you are nearest to God; therefore the Hindus have made use of this time for prayer. Amrit vela, nectar time, is sweeter – the moment you are nearest to ambrosia.

It all happens in this temporal body: with one mechanism of the body you sleep, with another you awake. All dreams pertain to the body. All waking and sleeping happens to the body. Behind this body is hidden a you, who never sleeps, never awakens. How can he who never sleeps, awaken? There is a you who never dreams, because that requires sleep, and that never sleeps. Behind the various states of this body hides the ambrosia, the nectar that is never born, never dies. If you succeed in locating the sandhya kal, you will come to know of the bodiless within the body; you will know the master hidden behind the slave. You are both. If you look at the body alone, you are the slave; if you look at the master within, you become the master.

So, says Nanak, there is only one thing worth doing and that is to meditate on the glory of satnam, the true name, in amrit vela. You will gain nothing by going to temples making various demands. Nothing will result from worship and sacrifices, by offering leaves and flowers, because what sense is there in offering him what is already his? There is only one thing worth doing – pray in the ambrosial hour.

Sandhya kal lasts but a moment, but your mind is never in the present, therefore you always miss it. Every day it comes – once in every twelve hours you are nearest to God, but you miss him, because your eyes are not alert enough to the present, to catch this subtle moment.

As you sit here now, are you here or have you gone to your office and started your daily work? Are you involved in what I say or are your thoughts engaged in thinking about what I say? If so, you will miss the present.

If you want to catch the ambrosial moment, you must become conscious of the present at every moment! When you eat, let only eating be – no other thought should fill your mind. When you bathe – bathe only; no other thought should be in the mind. When you are in your office, let your thoughts be only of the work, not thinking of home. When you go home, forget about the office. Be completely, wholly, within each moment and not here, there and everywhere. This way the subtle sight will develop gradually and you will be able to see the present moment.

It is only after this, that you can meditate in the nectar hour, because that is a very subtle moment. It passes by in a flash. You may be thinking of something else and the moment has come and gone!

Before falling to sleep, lie in bed completely relaxed. Still the mind in every way, don’t let any thoughts drag you here and there, or else you will miss the moment. Let the mind become like the cloudless sky: not a trace of a cloud, that’s how empty the mind should be. Keep watching, be alert; because when the mind becomes empty there is the danger of your falling asleep. Keep watch within. If you succeed in remaining awake, soon you will hear a sound – the changing of gear – but it is a very, very subtle sound. If thoughts are rambling within, you will never hear it. Then you will be able to witness the day turn into night, waking turn into slumber, and also sleep turning into awakening. You stand apart, witnessing the various processes.

The one who is witnessing, the seer, is the nectar. Then you will easily observe waking consciousness fading out and sleep coming in; and in the morning you will see slumber depart and consciousness dawning. When you become capable of seeing both sleep and awaking, you will stand apart from both. You become the seer. This is the nectar moment. Nanak says, at this moment – the amrit vela – let your experience be of his glories.

Osho, The True Name, Vol 1, Ch 3, excerpt (translation from Hindi)