Gnosis Through Sleep Deprivation?, Alternative means to achieve gnosis. Options

I've been practicing meditation for a few months now, and have yet to achieve gnosis through traditional methods. I've been told by more than one person that my difficulty may stem from my clinical anxiety disorder, which makes it extremely difficult for me to quiet my mind. I've considered attempting gnosis through various other means, such as chemical means (drugs), corporal mortification, or tantra, but I want to explore other possibilities before going to extreme lengths. One possibility that I've been considering is sleep deprivation. College has provided many opportunities for me to practice staying awake for long periods of time (gotta love those eleventh hour psychology research papers), and one thing that I've noticed is that when I stay awake longer than 24 hours at a time, I start to experience brief moments where I'm awake but my mind blanks out completely or becomes obsessively focused on some minute detail, such as a the shape of a dent in a wall or the tone of color on a street sign. Is this gnosis, or something similar? Also, has anyone here used sleep deprivation as a means of achieving gnosis? Any other recommendations would be appreciated.

This post has been edited by buddhasmash: Nov 9 2006, 02:57 PM

Sleep deprivation is an excellent means of achieving gnosis. There really is a method for anyone who wants to attain mystical insight. Some people use this method, another is fasting, exhausting oneself through physical labor, intense extended concentration upon a single thought or state of mind, whirling until you litterally can't make heads or tails of the world around you.

One method that may simulate sleep deprivation is to take a melatonin tablet, go about your business, then sit down when it begins to work on you and keep yourself conscious by allowing your mind to run. Eventually the melatonin defeats the chatter and you will blank out as though you'd been up for a day and a half. This method is difficult to control, but time to gnosis is sometimes under three hours, and you'll have a nice rejuvinating sleep afterwards. You might try timing it to about three to five hours before you would normally go to bed.

Melatonin is one of the hormones that initiates dreaming, so you'll probably have fairly vivid dreams afterwards - the longer you can stay conscious while your body falls asleep, the more vivid your dreams will be, and they will be related to whatever thoughts you held in mind at the last. If you thoughts suddenly stop on their own, you'll know you're about to fall asleep, so at that point you might want to focus particularly on being 'open'. While it's difficult to describe in words, there will come a point at which you'll feel a kind of full body pulse, and you'll know you're headed in the right direction. You can also practice astral projection from this state, but if you simply stick around and pay attention, gnosis will occur.

peace