Question:  When you do tapas and you are doing it for twenty hours in one go, do you sleep during that time?

Babaji:

No, during that time of five years tapas I did not sleep.  If I was doing twenty hours, four hours of time we utilised to take a little bit of food in a liquid form and to have a bath, do some yoga exercises to avoid the stiffness and any deformation.  You see, during my Guru's tapas, His body could not be looked after by people. They did not know much about tapas and how to care for the Yogi's body.  He, Himself stubbornly sat for a long, long time without trying to look after the body, so His fingers had become totally bent. His hands were locked for long periods of time and after a lot of massage, it was taken out but yet He couldn't straighten His fingers.  All the fingers had become joined. So this type of deformation can happen; the body needs to be taken care of in its own way.  Sleep may not be necessary as the brain is less used, almost nothing, so it was always in rest position. So one was feeling totally fresh and the mind was also totally controlled and in samadhi, so sleep was not necessary at that time.