I take little rest during daytime. So on the whole, three to four hours. But actually I do not like to sleep.
Mukunda: Śrīla Prabhupāda, you're going to outdo Shakespeare soon. You'll have written more English words than William Shakespeare. (Prabhupāda laughs) Maybe you already have.
Hari-śauri: I don't think Shakespeare's brought out fifty-six books.
Mukunda: The Encyclopedia Brittanica wrote to us asking for...
Prabhupāda: They have said...
George Harrison: These books are such a lot of work. I don't know how he did it all.
Gurudāsa: While everyone else sleeps, Prabhupāda...
George Harrison: Yes.
Prabhupāda: At night I don't sleep. Not that because I am nowadays sick. But generally I don't sleep. At most two hours. At most.
Hari-śauri: I think it's a long time since you've taken any rest at night.
Prabhupāda: I take little rest during daytime. So on the whole, three to four hours. But actually I do not like to sleep.
George Harrison: No, it's a waste of time.
Prabhupāda: I think it is, when I go to sleep, I think that now I'm going to waste my time. I actually think like that.
George Harrison: What's the word for..., the call it a little, little death. Sleep is the little death.
Prabhupāda: The śāstra also, Prahlada Mahārāja describes the sleeping is waste of time. You find out that verse.
Hari-śauri: It's in Seven, Two?
Prabhupāda: Seventh Canto. He's estimating you have got hundred years at most. Out of that, fifty years lost, sleep. And then twenty years playing as child, a boy. And in old age, another...
Hari-śauri:
- puṁso varṣa-śataṁ hy āyus
- tad-ardhaṁ cājitātmanaḥ
- niṣphalaṁ yad asau rātryāṁ
- śete 'ndhaṁ prāpitas tamaḥ
- (SB 7.6.6)
"Every human being has a maximum duration of life of one hundred years, but for one who cannot control his senses, half of those years are completely lost because at night he sleeps twelve hours, being covered by ignorance. Therefore such a person has a lifetime of only fifty years."
Prabhupāda: Fifty years immediately minus. Then out of the fifty years?
Hari-śauri:
- mugdhasya bālye kaiśore
- krīḍato yāti viṁsatiḥ
- jarayā grasta-dehasya
- yāty akalpasya viṁśatiḥ
- (SB 7.6.7)
"In the tender age of childhood, when everyone is bewildered, one passes ten years. Similarly, in boyhood, engaged in sporting and playing, one passes another ten years. In this way, twenty years are wasted. Similarly, in old age, when one is an invalid, unable to perform even material activities, one passes another twenty years wastefully."
- durāpūreṇa kāmena
- mohena ca balīyasā
- śeṣaṁ gṛheṣu saktasya
- pramattasyāpayāti hi
- (SB 7.6.8)
"One whose mind and senses are uncontrolled becomes increasingly attached to family life because of insatiable lusty desires and very strong illusion. In such a madman's life the remaining years are also wasted, because even during those years he cannot engage himself in devotional service."
Prabhupāda: So hundred years finish. (laughs) Fifty years, twenty years, twenty years and ten years.