Drinking water and sleeping are both bodily needs – why is sleeping considered in the mode of ignorance?
If I understand the question right you are saying that say sleeping is a need of the body and drinking water is a need of the body but we drink water when we need but sleeping we consider in the mode of ignorance so what is the difference between these two bodily needs is that the question yeah so actually it is not that sleeping is in the mode of ignorance or rather sleeping itself is not bad Krishna says clearly in the Bhagavad Gita one who sleeps too little or sleeps too much such a person cannot be a yogi so sleeping is simply a bodily need and Krishna actually speaks this in 6.16-17 in the Bhagavad Gita which he is speaking for people who have renounced the world who have gone to the jungle 6.11 he has told about the yogis going out in the jungle and he is telling even for them that actually if they sleep too little or eat too little they cannot be yogis so why is that because the body is a machine given to us by Krishna and that machine has to be taken care of so taking care of the bodily machine is also our service to Krishna but when taking care of the bodily machine becomes an end in itself or becomes an end so that we can further pander to bodily pleasures further indulge in bodily pleasures then that is when it becomes a problem but when we see the body as a functional tool for serving Krishna and then we do whatever it takes to take care of the body then that is the way we are respecting the gift that Krishna has given to us and we are taking due care of the gift Ashila Prabhupada himself was very spiritually advanced who can be more in Krishna consciousness than Ashila Prabhupada and yet Ashila Prabhupada did do the needful to take care of his body now everyday practically he would go for a morning walk everyday he would take a massage and he would spend a substantial amount of time taking that massage so and usually he did not mix his massage with say meeting people he would usually prefer to be alone just with the person who was massaging him at that time and he would be completely relaxed so he would sleep very less but still he took care of the body whatever was necessary so similarly we we cannot we needn't we don't have to feel guilty about taking care of the needs of the body the body has functional needs then we take care of it and then we move on towards Krishna. The important thing is that we don't get so obsessed with taking care of the body's needs that we become distracted from Krishna because of that.
So as long as our purpose of the life is to serve Krishna and we have a particular vehicle which has a particular set of which has a particular nature then we have to provide what it takes what it needs Prabhupada writes in a letter to one of his disciples that when Prabhupada was there on the planet most of his disciples were very young and Prabhupada wrote that in that letter if you don't take care of your health now you will not be able to serve Krishna in the future even if you are very enthusiastic to do so so enthusiasm alone will not take us beyond bodily disease or bodily dysfunction and I met many of Prabhupada's disciples in America while I was there they did extraordinary service when they were young but they also advised that you should take care of your body otherwise it becomes very difficult to serve Krishna later so now they said that if we had taken little more care of our body we could have done so much more service but now because they neglected the body in their youth the body has got some serious issues which their service gets limited so of course we have to be always careful that we don't go to the other extreme of pandering to the body too much so basically if we have the purpose of serving Krishna clear and we try to serve him as much as we can then overall it becomes clear Prabhupada says in the Nectar of Introduction that if we come to the mode of goodness then how to advance further will be revealed from within so if we just try to overall live a regulated life especially do our sadhana properly that will bring us to the mode of goodness and then how much to take care of the body that will be duly provided for, that will be done automatically when Krishna talks about sleep as being the mode of ignorance he is especially talking about oversleeping so sleeping is a bodily necessity and although that we can say that activity is in the mode of ignorance if we are doing if we are sleeping so that we can rest so that we can serve Krishna better then that sleep is the activity may be in ignorance but the intention is in transcendence the intention is to serve Krishna but if we are sleeping so that we can escape from the problems of life if we are sleeping because we are lazy and then we oversleep then that is what will increase the mode of ignorance in us so rather than just taking the demean rather than just thinking that sleep is the mode of ignorance we can see that what is it that enables what is the balance that enables us to steadily move towards transcendence and then that way we can do what is needed for the body and then the body will help us do what is needed for Krishna.