The Spirits' Book

Allan Kardec

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425. Is there any connection between natural somnambulism and dreaming? How can it be explained?
“In somnambulism the soul has more independence and its functions are more developed than when dreaming. It feels perceptions that it does not have while dreaming, which is an imperfect form of somnambulism.”


“In somnambulism, the spirit is in total possession of itself. The physical organs suffer from a type of catalepsy and are no longer receptive to external impressions. This state most frequently occurs during sleep, because the spirit is then able to free itself from the body, which enjoys the repose that is indispensable to matter.”


“Somnambulism occurs when the spirit of the sleeper is determined to do something that requires the body. It uses the body in the same way that spirits use a table or any other material object to produce physical manifestations, or a human hand to produce written communications. When a human being is conscious of a dream, his or her bodily senses related to memory are beginning to wake up. In dreams that we are conscious of, the sensorial organs, including those related to memory, begin to awaken and imperfectly receive the impressions produced by objects or external causes, and communicate them to the spirit. The spirit, also in a resting state, only perceives confused and often disconnected sensations and without any apparent reason, oftentimes further muddled with vague memories of either the present life or previous ones. It is easy to understand why somnambulists do not remember their visions, and why most have no rational meaning. I say most because dreams are sometimes the consequence of a specific memory of events that have occurred in one of your former lives, or even a sort of premonition of the future.”

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