PDF version - Geae

CHAPTER V
THE SOUL AND DIFFERENT STATES OF SLEEP
The study of sleep furnishes us with ideas of importance regarding nature and personality. We do not
generally give enough serious thought to the mystery of sleep. An attentive examination of the phenomena, the
study of the soul and its etheric form during the part of existence, which we consecrate to repose, leads us to a
more extended comprehension of the conditions of life Beyond. Sleep promises, not only restorative
properties, which science has never sufficiently emphasized, but also a power of co-ordination and of
centralization upon the material organism. It can, as we will see, provoke a considerable extension of psychic
perceptions, and a greater intensity of reasoning and of memory. What is sleep? It is simply the release of the
soul from the body. Some one has said, ‘Sleep is brother to death.’ These words express a profound truth:
sequestered in the flesh during our waking hours, the soul recovers in sleep, temporarily, its comparative
freedom, and at the same time, the use of its hidden powers. Death will be its liberation complete - definite.
In the measure that outside perceptions are veiled when the eye is shut and the ear closed, other more
powerful faculties awake in the depths of being. We see and hear by the aid of internal senses. Image, forms,
and far-away scenes unroll and succeed on another. Conversations take place with the living and the dead.
These experiences, often confused and incoherent in natural sleep, become precise and orderly in the sleep
produced by trance or somnambulism. Often the soul goes far away in sleep, and its observations and
impressions are translated into dreams. In this state an etheric cord unites it to the material organism, and by
this subtle thread the impressions of the soul are transmitted to the brain. It is by the same process that in the
other forms of sleep the soul controls, commands, and directs the earthly envelope. The walking of
somnambulists in the night through perilous places with entire security is an evident demonstration.
It is the same force, which is employed in healing the body by suggestion. The soul is liberated and
given the power to employ its forces in repairing the physical body. In the scientific reports of cases of double
personality, it has been shown that the second personality, more complete and normal than the first, came and
substituted itself for healing purposes. Suggestion is but an act of the will, which differs only from ordinary
thought by its concentration and its intensity. In general, our thoughts are multiple and floating, are born and
pass, or clash and confound themselves. In suggestion, the thought fixes itself upon one only point. It gains in
power what loses in extent. By its action it becomes more penetrating, more incisive, and awakens in the
subject on whom it is centered faculties revered in the normal state. Suggestion becomes then a lever, which
mobilizes the vital forces, and directs them toward the point where they should operate. Rightly employed, the
power of suggestion constitutes an important factor in education, and destroys pernicious habits and bad
tendencies. It produces concentration of thought-increased energy and vitality. By fixing the attention on
things essentially useful, and enlarging the field of memory, it manifests anew the internal senses and directs
them to right ends. Let us return to ordinary sleep. When the soul is not fully released, the sensations and
preoccupations of the day and memories of the past mix with the impressions of the night. In apparent
disorder, the perceptions registered by the brain unroll in the incoherence of most dreams. But in the measure
that the soul frees and elevates itself, the psychical senses become dominant, and the dreams acquire lucidity
and a remarkable clearness. They unfold, and vast perspectives open on the spiritual world-veritable domains
of the soul, penetrate hidden things, and even the thoughts and sentiments of other spirits. There is in us a
double life, by which we appertain at one time to two worlds-two planes of existence. One is en rapport with
time and space, as we conceive them in our planet, by our physical body and material life. The other, by our
deeper faculties of the soul, unites us to worlds infinite. In the course of our terrestrial existence, it is in sleep
that these faculties can find exercise, and the powers of the soul enter into vibration; then they resume contact
with the universal world, which is their country from which the flesh has separated them. They invigorate
themselves at the breast of eternal energies, to begin on awakening the penible and obscure task of daily life.
During sleep the soul can, following the necessity of the moment, apply itself in repairing the vital
losses caused by the day’s labor, and in regenerating the sleeping organism; infusing the forces of the cosmic
world. Then, when this restorative action is accomplished, it takes the course of the superior life, and exercises
its faculties of vision at a distance and penetrates hidden things.
39