The Spiritist review — Journal of psychological studies — 1858

Allan Kardec

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Sleep


Poor men! How little you know about the most ordinary phenomena that exist in your life! You think highly of yourselves; you think that you have a vast knowledge and remain speechless before these simple questions framed by all children: “What do we do when we are asleep? What is the meaning of dreams? I don’t have the pretension of making you understand what I want to explain, since there are things that your spirit cannot yet submit to, because one can only admit what one can comprehend.

Sleep entirely frees the soul from the body. When we are asleep we are momentarily in the same state that we shall definitely be after death. The spirits that have quickly detached from matter, on the occasion of their death, had intelligent dreams; those, when sleeping, meet again with the society of other beings that are superior to them; that travel, talk to them and are enlightened by them. They even work on tasks that they find finalized when they die. This, once more, must teach us that we should not fear death, as we die every day as once stated by a Saint.

All this was said with respect to the superior spirits. The large majority of men, however, who may remain in that perturbation for long hours, in that uncertainty that you were told about, those individuals go to worlds that are inferior to Earth, attracted by old affections, or to look for pleasures that are even of a lower level than those found here. They will then learn doctrines that are even more vile, ignoble and harmful than those that they profess among you. What establishes the sympathy on Earth is nothing else but the fact that we feel attracted by the heart, as we wake up, to those with whom we have just spent eight or nine hours of pleasure or happiness. What also establishes the irresistible antipathy is that, deep there in the heart, we know that those creatures have a different conscience, with respect to us; hence we know them not having ever setting our eyes on them. It is this that also explains the indifference, since we don’t seek to make friends when we know that we have others that love us and wish us well. In one word, the sleep influences your lives more than you think.

Through sleep, the incarnated spirits are always in contact with the spiritual world, allowing then that the superior spirits, without much repulse, do agree to come to incarnate in your environment. God wanted that during the contact with vices they could reinforce their virtues in the source of goodness, so as not to fail, as they come to instruct others. Sleep is the door that God opened to them to meet their friends from heaven; it is the break after the work, waiting for the great liberation, the final liberation that should reintegrate them back to their real world.

A dream is the memory of what your spirit saw during the sleep. Notice, however, that you do not always dream since you do not always remember some of what you have seen or everything that you have seen. It is not your soul in its full detachment; often it is nothing more than the memory of the perturbation that follows our departure or arrival, added to the memory of what you have done or that worries you during the waking state. Without that, how can we explain those absurd dreams, of the scholars as well as of the simplest person? The evil spirits also use the dream to torment the weak and pusillanimous souls.

As a matter of fact you will soon see the development of a new kind of dreams. It is as old as the one you know but ignored by you. It is the dream of Joan of Arc, of Jacob, of the Jewish prophets and of some Indian foretellers. Such a dream represents the memory of the soul, entirely separated from the body; the memory of that second life that I was telling you about, some time ago.

For the dreams that you retain the memory try to distinguish well between those two kinds, as without it you shall fall into contradictions and cause dismal mistakes to your faith.

OBSERVATION: When required to provide his name, the spirit who dictated the communication answered: “What for? Do you think that it is only the spirits of your great men that come to tell you good things? Then, all of those that you don’t know and that do not have a name in your world are worthless? Know this that many just use a name to satisfy you.”

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