"Somewhere, Dean Inger has written a sentence: 'I cannot love a valid inference. It is valid logically, rationally, but still I cannot love it.' No validity can create, can inspire love. A particular theory can be rational but it cannot inspire you to live it. Validity is of no significance as far as living is concerned.

"So the first thing to be understood is: intellect can create problems, can create solutions, but it reaches nowhere. It remains where it was. And life goes on in its own dimension, untouched. By life I mean the total being and by intellect I mean that part of your being which speculates, which thinks.

"If you go deep, then your thinking part is a very nonessential part of your being. Real life goes on without any help from your mind. You are born, you grow, you become a youth, you fall in love, you die. Everything happens below or beyond the mind. The mind is not involved at all in the deeper sources of life.

"And every problem comes from the deeper sources. That's why any intellectual approach is irrelevant. Your life comes from somewhere that your mind cannot penetrate. If you ask psychologists they will say that your life is below the mind – your life is unconscious – and the mind is the conscious. And your unconscious is nine times greater than your conscious part. Your conscious part is not functioning for twenty-four hours. The unconscious is functioning twenty-four hours. When you are asleep, the unconscious is functioning. It is regulating everything without you, and more efficiently than when you are present.

"That's why sleep is needed so much. The real need is not for sleep itself, it is only for your absence. You must be absent for some time so that your nonvoluntary mechanisms can work unhindered. 'You' are a hindrance. With your conscious mind, you are not helping the flow of life; you just create obstacles. So you need to fall totally into the unconscious for one third of your life, otherwise you cannot live.

"The unconscious can live without your conscious mind, but your conscious mind cannot live without the unconscious. If you are deprived of sleep even for a single week, you will go mad."