CHAPTER XVII

SLEEP AS AN EDUCATOR—ITS SPIRITUAL PURPOSE AND VALUE

THE most thoroughly universal means extant for accomplishing communion with the unseen universe is undoubtedly through sleep, which though commonly regarded as only a physiological necessity, providing opportunity for recuperation through periodic rest for brain and muscles, is in reality a most blessed means for enabling all of us to enjoy fellowship, one with another, regardless of distance or any other material barrier.

The accepted “Masonic” division of time into three periods of eight hours each, in every twenty-four, is certainly wise in the average, for it is found by experience that excellent health and mental vigor can generally be maintained if we devote eight hours every day to our regular business occupation, eight hours to eating, dressing, bathing and all varieties of recreation including active outdoor exercise, and eight hours to sleep.

Sixteen hours by this arrangement are well accounted for as spent in action, and it is easily possible for every one to see how during those two thirds of time, we are receiving instruction or are at least capable of receiving it; but the remaining third, the eight hours spent in sleep, is looked upon by many people as practically wasted so far as education is concerned, consequently many people of active temperament and ambitious nature, grudge the time they devote to sleep, and seek constantly to shorten it, with what disastrous results we are all familiar, but nothing can well be more self-evident than that lack of sleep is a highroad to insanity.

This pitiable contempt for “Nature’s sweet restorer, balmy sleep” is a product of feverish unrest occasioned by an ultra-physical idea of life, into which no spiritual element is allowed to enter as an appreciable benefit. We are not exercising any of our physical senses while we are sleeping, and with those who bind themselves to the sad belief that knowledge can be obtained only while we are wide awake and actively exercising our material senses, there must be a sense of repulsion felt to any phenomenon which takes us away from the active outward life in which we are so greatly interested that we desire to devote to it our every energy.

Were false beliefs concerning the spiritual and intellectual uses of sleep confined to confessed Materialists, there would be no occasion for wonder, but the reputed religious, Bible-reading world is no less astray than any Secularist community in this respect, and it certainly does seem curious that any who credit Bible doctrines should disparage sleep or doubt that dreams are often both significant and prophetic.

Two of the most remarkable Bible characters bear the honored name of Joseph, one in the Old Testament, the other in the New Testament, and though they are introduced to us as having lived many centuries apart, they were equally noteworthy for the wonderful nature of their dreams, and for their marvellous faculty of interpretation.

Joseph who wears the coat of many colors or “long-sleeved” coat as the Polychrome Bible expresses it, to distinguish him from his brothers who were less enlightened than he, was according to Genesis, the only man who in time of scarcity of crops had possessed sufficient insight to so harvest the grain when it grew plenteously, that there was abundance in store to prevent famine in time of dearth.

Pharaoh, the native king of Egypt, could dream as all men can dream, but he could not tell the significance of what he dreamed, consequently his dreams though highly significant in themselves, would have proved useless to him, had it not been for Joseph’s interpretations.

Dreams are usually couched in symbols or allegory. Seven years of plenty are represented by seven full ears of corn, and seven well-fed cattle, while seven years of scarcity are represented by seven wasted ears of corn and seven starving cattle.

To see fourteen years ahead seems truly marvelous, but it is not altogether unusual, for even in recent times and before great interest had been reawakened in psychic problems, it has often happened that sensitive people have clearly seen events a long while before they actually occurred. It is not, then, with simple dreaming, but only with interpreting of dreams that highly gifted seers are specially concerned.

There is always some degree of difficulty associated with any prediction of the future, because it may reasonably be asked, how can any seer, no matter how phenomenally gifted, possibly see something which has not occurred?

Ingenious explanations of reading the past may readily occur to us, and it seems quite feasible that Nature keeps a book of remembrance in which all events are faithfully recorded, and to that scroll of record, seers and seeresses enjoy particularly easy access.

“The future lies hidden in the womb of the past.”

This is an occult saying worthy of deep consideration. Causes have been already set in motion which are even now bringing forth results which must proceed forth in orderly, inevitable sequence. Admitting this proposition, it is by no means impossible to formulate an intelligent working hypothesis to account for the frequent fact that coming events are constantly being foretold.

Rash guesses and arbitrary statements based on the peculiar views which some people entertain concerning the most highly mystical portions of the Bible, can never be reasonably included in the catalogue of prophecies, because the foolish and decidedly unfulfilled predictions based upon such arbitrary dogmatism display no spiritual insight and such predictions are of no practical value.

All truly prophetic sight has a use and its use is susceptible of demonstration as in the case of the Josephs of both Testaments. The New Testament Joseph is said to have seen an "angel of the Lord" during his sleep, and whilst he was dreaming he received from that celestial messenger information of great importance upon which he could and did successfully act. When we are soundly sleeping, our minds disengaged from all ordinary business activities, we may hold conscious converse with spiritual beings whom, at other times, we do not hear or see.

The angels who appear unto us at certain times are not necessarily nearer to us at those times than on other occasions, but our receptive state enables us to become aware of their presence.

The phrase "unconscious mind" is very nearly unintelligible, though Dr. Schofield and other learned and able men employ it, but while we cannot reasonably speak of mind as unconscious, we can quite fairly claim that mind can function on various planes of consciousness, so much so that when we are wide awake on one plane, we are sound asleep on another.

The two states—waking and sleeping, are so distinct that they are rarely unified, thus, in one sense we are unconscious of what is going on, on one plane of action, when we are completely engrossed with what is occurring on another. Perfectly sound refreshing sleep may be quite unconnected with ordinary dreaming, yet when we wake we find ourselves wiser as well as refreshed in consequence of our profound repose.

Memory soon grows weak and fitful if sleep is broken, and there can be no worse habit than to get in the way of sleeping as people say “with one eye open.” Both eyes ought to be completely closed and the mind allowed to betake itself to other regions of contemplation than those in which it moves during the hours of the business day.

Joseph the carpenter, attending to his daily work, might not have been known as a seer in Nazareth; had any visitors met him while he was engaged in his accustomed manual task they would have seen only an industrious workman absorbed in his employment, but after business hours when the shop was closed and Joseph had retired for the night, he was no longer carpenter but prophet. A valuable book, “The Mystery of Sleep,” by Dr. John Bigelow (Harper & Bros., New York and London) is prefaced with the following quotation from Psalm 119, “I have remembered thy name, O Lord, in the night, and have observed thy law,” and this passage from Iamblichus, “The night-time of the body is the daytime of the soul.”

Dr. Bigelow quotes considerably from Swedenborg with whose philosophy he is greatly in accord, and we may well remember that the gifted seer and sage of Sweden declared that the spiritual world is the realm of causation, the material state being only a region of effects, and he distinctly taught that while we are asleep bodily we can be awake spiritually.

Dr. Bigelow insists that “It is not consistent with any rational notion of a Divine Providence that we should pass one third of our lives under conditions in which we could experience no spiritual growth or development, as would be the inevitable result of absolute rest.” Then he continues, “Sleep does not represent or imply rest in the sense of inactivity or idleness, psychical or physical” but “the suspension of our consciousness during sleep simply interrupts our relations temporarily with the phenomenal world and shelters us from its distractions and fascinations, without which spiritual growth and development—the divine purpose of our creation—would be impossible.”

The foregoing sentences are worthy of deep perusal and we particularly commend them to all those professedly religious persons who accept historically all Bible narratives concerning illumination during sleep, but reject the testimony of present-day seers to the same phenomena.

Dr. Bigelow is consistent with his religious faith and at the same time eminently scientific, when he tells us that “neither the physical nor psychical changes which we are conscious of having undergone during the hours devoted to sleep can be realized or accounted for if the activity of those faculties, respectively, were suspended” and he further states that “the involuntary subjugation of the senses periodically to sleep is one of the vital processes of spiritual regeneration, without which such regeneration would be impossible, as is evidenced by the fact that the most important events in the history of our race were initiated during sleep."

The latter is a bold statement but we believe it to be correct, and were we to devote more study than we do to the origin of great movements which have led to general enlightenment, and also to the testimonies of really influential men and women concerning their own sleep and what it has brought to them, we should revise our judgment concerning the use of this great initiator into spiritual mysteries.

One of Dr. Bigelow's strongest statements is irrefutable, for no one can deny that "all virtues favor sleep, and all vices discourage it." The further declaration that "the difference between sleep and death may be more a difference in duration than condition" receives much confirmation, alike from seers of ancient and of modern time, though it is often strictly denied by people who fail to discern that man is here and now a spiritual entity, and that deprivation of the material body implies no more than absence of a material instrument.

Dreams are certainly only experiences which we encounter while passing from one state of consciousness to another. That is why it is that, when we wake hastily, as when aroused by an alarm, we rarely remember any of our dreams distinctly, but when we awaken gradually we often remember distinctly every detail.

In seeking to cultivate what George du Maurier in "Peter Ibbetson" calls "Dreaming True" we must accustom ourselves to passing into the sleeping state contemplating serenely and assuredly some definite object with which we desire to be related during sleep, or with some friend from whom we should be glad to receive some tidings.

There are many friends who though separated physically are very near together spiritually, and though occasionally they receive some inkling of psychic association, their general feeling is that material circumstances are holding them apart. A very extreme case is that of the two leading characters in Du Maurier’s fascinating story which was founded on genuine autobiography. It is not very often that a man like “Peter Ibbettson” is condemned to a life sentence of imprisonment, or that a woman like “The Duchess of Towers” remains so many years completely faithful (even in thought) to a childhood’s companion under such exceptionally trying circumstances, but dramatic high lights are necessary to duly enforce the doctrine which Du Maurier has elucidated.

For well on to thirty years this man and woman held nightly communion in their charming fairy palace which fell into ruins when the good woman passed to spirit life; but though in the post-mortem state she could no longer commune with her lonely, sorrow stricken friend, as in days of yore, it was not long before means of communion were established, and spirit-communion in the fullest sense of the term became in their careers a demonstrated reality.

The revised version of the Psalms gives a much clearer idea of the original than does the old translation, which though not necessarily inaccurate is often obscure and unsatisfactory. “He giveth his beloved sleep” is a beautiful motto, but Psalm 127, from which it is taken, really says a great deal more, for it declares “he giveth unto his beloved in their sleep,” distinctly teaching education during slumber.

It is often admitted that remarkable enlightenment may come during periods of ecstasy or trance, but true ecstasia or entrancement differs scarcely at all from ordinary profound repose, except, as in the case of Swedenborg and a few other exceptionally phenomenal seers, when the two states of consciousness—waking and sleeping—were enjoyed simultaneously.

Nothing can be more significant to the gospel student than the case related of Jesus soundly sleeping through a storm upon one of the Galilean lakes, while his disciples who were in the boat with him were unable to sleep because they were in dread of shipwreck.

That most unwholesome teaching, which some hysterical people have taken up with, to the effect that as we grow more spiritual we shall do without sleep, is uncanny and untruthful in the extreme, and such doctrine is always associated with a morbid fear of losing or wasting time, as though strenuous external activity were a perpetual necessity—which it decidedly is not.

People who grudge time for rest never retain their waking powers to a ripe age, and the work they accomplish betrays marks of feverish haste or painful lassitude. The more spiritually-minded we become the more tranquil are our slumbers, and no one who is a keen observer need look far afield to trace the origin of that pleasing and popular expression “they are sleeping the sleep of the just.”

Wherever there is spiritual destitution there is great need of physical vigilance, therefore, sleep is dreaded as an enemy which puts us off our guard, but so soon as we have grown into a sweet consciousness of spiritual repose our bodies enjoy that calm natural slumber which is always the friend of health and the destroyer of insanity.

To employ artificial aids, such as poisonous drugs, to induce sleep is decidedly erroneous, and the visions which are conjured up during the artificial sleep induced by opium, hasheesh or any other powerful and deadening narcotic are usually unreliable.

Hypnotic treatment which induces artificial somnambulism is a subject of much criticism, and there is but one way to settle its claims intelligently, and that is by discriminating clearly between statements made by professed advocates and also by defamers of all hypnotic methods. The remarkable work accomplished by Dr. John Quackenbos of New York, has brought the word hypnotism into great dispute, largely on account of calling a process hypnotic (sleep-inducing) in cases where the intention and result were entirely in the direction of arousing a patient out of a protracted sleep which, had it continued longer, would have resulted in physical dissolution.

Dr. Quackenbos was largely reported (during February, 1906), as having restored to health by suggestive treatment a young woman who was actually dying, and was summoned back to earthly existence by the doctor’s imperative call, to which she responded. This, though wrongly advertised in many papers as a case of successful hypnotism was exactly the reverse, and called forth the following explanatory comment from Miss S. C. Clark, a prominent practitioner of spiritual healing, which, she insists, is something quite distinct from hypnotism, and so it is, for while in some cases spiritual treatment induces needed sleep it never forces it, and the unpleasant feature of hypnotism has always been the idea of more or less mental coercion connected with it.

The following extract from Banner of Light, February 17, 1906, presents the case so fairly that comment upon Miss Clark’s explanations would be superfluous:

“In the Banner’s issue of February 10th an instance is given by Dr. John D. Quackenbos of the healing of a young woman as the result of hypnotic suggestion, under the heading ‘Hypnotism Conquers Death.’

“The writer begs leave to take exception, and emphasize the fact that hypnotism, pure and simple, formed no part of the cure related. Hypnosis—as the word implies—is an artificial sleep, in which state the soul of the subject is only semi-conscious, and obeys the dictation of another and stronger will. In this instance, however, there was simply an appeal from a strong, healthy soul to the sluggish, torpid soul of the patient to arouse, to assert itself, which dormant consciousness then responded to the call and came to the front to resume the control and inspiration of its own organism. The mind awoke instead of being put to sleep, the opposite condition from hypnosis. This is spiritual healing, the power of the regnant soul made manifest, and is exercised constantly by those who do not practice hypnotism, who can ‘show you a more excellent way,’ those who serve gladly as willing instruments through whom divine agencies can bring a baptism of health and strength.

“A prominent professor of Harvard, himself an advocate of hypnotism, once affirmed that ‘the effects of hypnotism are always superficial and temporary.’ The worthy Dr. Quackenbos (perhaps unconsciously), possessed doubtless a strong healing gift, an imperative soul; for the mind, per se, has no healing power, the efficacy of the human will is limited, but the possibilities of the enfranchised spirit, in its at-one-ment with Omnipotence, are boundless.”

During natural sleep it is often possible to accomplish great good in the training of children who are often highly amenable to right suggestions when asleep, which appeal directly to their higher consciousness, which is then awake. The methods to be employed are various, but it is never necessary either to waken a sleeping child or to put a waking child to sleep, in order to give a suggestion.

When a child is naturally sleeping, you may approach the bedside and begin talking to the sleeper in a gentle but decided voice. If the child awakes continue your conversation, but do not raise your voice to any excited tone or speak in a high or aggressive key. Speak to the sleeper quietly, kindly, firmly, with assurance in every accent, and as all suggestions, to be effective, must be purely affirmational, mention only those good habits which you desire to aid the child to practice.

The inner consciousness of the sleeper receives willingly the good suggestions you kindly make, and these sink into what some modern psychologists call the "sub-self" or "subjective mind," and having found lodgment therein, they form a base for future outward conduct.

It cannot be denied that we often enjoy spiritual communion during the night, and it is altogether wrong to deny that when we are soundly sleeping we receive information which we often possess and utilize during our day hours, though we may not recollect when or how we received it.

The chief difficulty with those who postulate unconsciousness during sleep is that they do not realize that we may be temporarily forgetful of experiences which we have enjoyed in sleep, and though for a while unmindful of them still capable of recollecting them. Memory and recollection are not identical. We are all possessed of more memory than recollection and when people study to “ improve memory” they are really seeking to gain a fuller mastery over recollection.

We all know how frequently we remember, forget, and remember again. We are all conscious of how completely certain facts have slipped our memories, often for a long time, and then quite unexpectedly these memories revive without apparently any external stimulus. These facts ought to be weighed much more carefully than they generally are, and a careful weighing of them will of necessity result in our accounting for them in one or the other of the following ways—we shall either admit that we contain a receptacle of knowledge far greater than we credit ourselves with possessing, or we shall have recourse to the theory of unseen spiritual prompters who may afford the necessary stimulus to reawaken our dormant consciousness.

A great many interesting and valuable results are obtainable while we are sleeping, and among them we should note the benefit and enlightenment we often gain while sleeping, provided that before going to sleep we have rightly disposed our minds for the reception of knowledge.

A few notable historic cases of truly celebrated individuals may serve to aid the reader in an honest endeavor to verify our main contention. Shakespeare’s plays abound in allusions to sleep, and among the most striking passages we may refer to the incident of Brutus in Julius Cæsar, who cannot sleep immediately he begins to entertain the thought that Cæsar must be put to death that Rome be liberated.

Then in Henry VII we have these thrilling words describing the result of mental distress in depriving the King of sleep:

" How many thousand of my poorest subjects
Are at this hour asleep! O gentle Sleep,
Nature's soft nurse, how have I frighted thee
That thou no more wilt weigh my eyelids down
Nor steep my senses in forgetfulness? "

A prevailing misapprehension is almost universal that we can gain no good in church, at a concert, or while attending a lecture if we are sleeping. Such an error needs to be emphatically denied and all persons truly interested in the cure of nervous ailments should be the very first to protest vigorously against so nerve-wrecking a delusion.

There are many well-meaning people who would greatly enjoy attending evening functions of various kinds, were they not deterred by the fear that they might sleep during public exercises. These misguided folk need to study the literature of classic times and learn how much good sufferers were wont to receive while sleeping in consecrated temples; and as modern churches invite the public to enter for prayer, meditation and rest, church edifices may well be employed for all these uses, separately and collectively.

Working people are often sleepy in the evening but they need a change and recreation, and this cannot be obtained by remaining in the house when a strong desire is felt to go elsewhere. A new atmosphere filled with joyous and vigorous mental currents is often necessary to recuperate the weary, and after two or three hours spent in so vitalizing a surrounding the no longer tired workman or workwoman can return to home or lodging and sleep peacefully throughout the night.

We often hear people exclaim that they are too tired to sleep, and that is precisely the case, but this tiredness can often be speedily overcome in a changed and pleasant environment. Dr. Bigelow very wisely tells us that “it is not uncommon for those who have no habit or inclination to sleep during the morning hours of secular days, to be overcome with somnolency in church, soon after the devotional exercises are begun, and who find it impossible to derive any edification from them until they have lost themselves for a moment or two in absolute unconsciousness.

“Then they have no difficulty, sometimes a lively pleasure in attending to the exercises which follow. The worshiper is then withdrawn from the familiar excitement of customary avocations. It is idle to suppose that in these few moments of repose, upright in his pew, he has rested enough, in the common acceptation of that word, to repair any waste of tissue that would explain the new sense of refreshment that ensues.

“He has received in that brief retirement from the world, some reinforcements which manifestly are not dependent upon time or space for their efficacy—spiritual reinforcements only. He has removed himself, or been removed further away, out of sight or hearing or thinking, so to speak, of his phenomenal life, and nearer to the source of all life.”

Strabo referring to Moses, whom he calls an Egyptian priest, speaks of his having led those who followed him out of cities to the open country because there they might more readily commune with Deity, and also speaks of a sanctuary without idols in which great blessings were conferred on those who slept within it.

The famous Greek temple dedicated to Esculapius is said to have healed multitudes who slept in it. On many instances the presiding divinity is said to have revealed to sufferers during sleep the means they should pursue in order to get free from the ailments which oppressed them. One of the most famous instances on record of remarkable enlightenment received in sleep is two thousand years old.

Cicero made the record and Macrobius discovered it after it had been supposed lost for fifteen centuries. The vision of Publius Cornelius Scipio, the second Scipio Africanus, while he was military tribune in Africa and guest of Prince Massanissa, gives striking confirmation of the illumination we may receive while we are spiritually detached from all relation with the phenomenal world in which we spend our waking consciousness.

Scipio relates that after much talk about politics and government, and especially of his illustrious ancestor the first Africanus, a deeper sleep than ordinary came over him in which his ancestor very distinctly appeared to him and told him that the preservation of the country depended entirely upon him; at the same time the younger Scipio was informed by his ancestor that many perils confronted him, but he was assured that if he were faithful in the discharge of his every obligation, a special state of blessedness awaited him after death.

Scipio declares that though terrified, not so much at the prospect of death as at the thought that trusted friends were proving treacherous, he interrogated the spirit concerning his father Paulus, and others whom he thought had died; the spirit answered him in these words “They are alive indeed, for they have escaped from the fetters of the body as from a prison,”

Then Scipio enquired why, if the life beyond death was more glorious than this present existence, he should not hasten to it, but he received the faithful reply from Paulus who also appeared to him: "Not so, my son, unless that God, whose temple is all this which you behold, shall free you from this imprisonment in the body you can have no admission to this place: for men have been created under this condition, that they should keep that globe which you see in the middle of this temple, and which is called the earth.

"And a soul has been supplied to them from those supernal fires which you call constellations and stars, and which, being globular, are animated with divine spirit, and complete their cycles and revolutions with amazing rapidity. Therefore you, my Publius, and all good men must preserve your souls in the keeping of your bodies, nor without the order of that Being who bestowed them upon you, are you to depart from mundane life, lest you seem to desert the duty of a man which has been assigned to you by God."

After this exordium against suicide, much good doctrine was given by the father to the son, and as the spirits vanished, Scipio awoke from sleep. We have in this fine old testimony only one out of many striking narrations proving how distinguished men in all ages have enjoyed spiritual enlightenment while asleep, and what has occurred in days of old is occurring now also, and can and will continue to occur whenever opportunity is given for its occurrence.