Leonardo Marmo Moreira

Sleep and its  implications in terms of physical and spiritual health  (Part 1)

Introduction - In our physical life, we sleep about a third of the time of our life in the somatic body. Considering the occurrence of emancipation of the soul through physical sleep, which consists of the fundamental and general emancipation of the soul, i.e., common to all individuals, it is possible to infer the great relevance of physical sleep not only for the health of the somatic body, but also for the spiritual growth of the reincarnated Spirit.

The Spirit does not necessarily remain emancipated from the body (unfolded from the physical body) during all the time of physical sleep. However, much of this time can represent "emancipation of the soul," this meaning that all incarnate men and women go through significant periods of actual spiritual experience, i.e., "outside" the physical body. 

The emancipation of the soul - Chapter VIII of the second part of The Book of Spirits (LE), entitled "Emancipation of the Soul," discusses the question, presenting various implications of this reality common to all incarnated Spirits without exception. The very objective question 401 of LE and the extraordinary answer to question 402 of LE provide exceptional introductory material to the subject. Let's look at questions 401 and 402 of the LE:

During sleep, does the soul rest as the body?

No, the Spirit is never inactive. During sleep, the bonds that bind it to the body loosen and the body does not need the Spirit. Then it moves through space and enters into a more direct relationship with the other Spirits. 

402. How can we assess the freedom of the Spirit during sleep?

We can do it through the dreams. When the body rests, the Spirit has more faculties than in the waking state. It has the memory of the past and sometimes the foresight of the future; it acquires more power and can communicate with the other Spirits, be it of this world, or of another. You often say, "I had a weird dream, a horrible dream, but it has no truth in it." You are not telling the truth. It is almost always a memory of places and things that you saw or will see in another life or another period of time. The body is asleep, and the Spirit tries to break its chains to investigate in the past or the future.

Poor men, who know so little of the most ordinary phenomena of life! You believe you are very wise, but the smallest things will embarrass you. A child asks you: “What do we do when we sleep? What are our dreams?" And you do not know how to answer.

Sleep partially releases the soul from the body. When the man sleeps, he is momentarily in the state in which he will be permanently after death. The Spirits that soon detach themselves from matter, when they die, they had intelligent dreams. These Spirits, when they sleep, seek the company of those who are superior to them: they travel, talk and are instructed in their company; they work even in works that are complete when they die. From these facts you must learn, once again, not to be afraid of death, for you die every day, according to the expression of a saint.

This, for the Higher Spirits; because, for the great majority of men - who, through death, are to remain long hours in this disturbance, in that uncertainty of which they have spoken to you - go to worlds inferior to the Earth, where ancient loves call them, or in search of perhaps even lower pleasures than the ones they had here; they will follow doctrines even more vile, more ignoble, more harmful than those they followed among you. And what causes sympathy on Earth is nothing other than the fact that we feel, when we awake, linked through our heart to those with whom we have just spent eight or nine hours of happiness or pleasure.

What also explains the strong antipathies is that we feel, deep in our hearts, that these people have a different consciousness from ours, because we know them without ever having seen them. It is also what explains the indifference, because we do not try to make new friends when we know we have those who love us and want us. In a word: sleep influences your life much more than what you think.

Due to sleep, the incarnated Spirits are always in contact with the world of the Spirits, and this is what makes the Higher Spirits agree, without much rejection, to incarnate among you. God wanted them, during their contact with evil, to be able to renew themselves in the source of good, in order not to fail, they who came to instruct others. Sleep is the door that God opened for you to contact with your friends in Heaven; it is the recreation after the work, while awaiting the great deliverance, the final freedom, which must restore them to their true environment.

The dream is the remembrance of what your Spirit saw in your sleep; but notice that you do not always dream, because you do not always remember what you saw, or everything you saw. That is because you do not have your soul in all its development; there is often nothing left but the remembrance of the disturbance which accompanies your departure and your return, to which is added the memory of what you have done or what concerns you in the waking state. Without this, how would you explain these absurd dreams to which both the wisest and the most humble are subject? Evil Spirits also use dreams to torment the weak and feeble souls.

Besides, you will soon see another kind of dream develop; a kind as old as the one you know, but which you ignore. The dream of Joan, the dream of Jacob, the dream of the Jewish Prophets and of some Indian diviners: this dream is the remembrance of the soul entirely freed from the body, the memory of this second life of which I was speaking to you a moment ago.

Try to distinguish well these two kinds of dreams, among those you remember; without this you would fall into inconsistencies and errors which would be fatal to your faith. 

Dreams are the product of the emancipation of the soul, which becomes more independent because of the interruption of active life and relationship. Hence a sort of indefinite clairvoyance, which extends to the most distant or unseen places, and sometimes even to other worlds. There is also the memory that recalls the events of the present or of the previous lives. The oddity of the images of what happens or has happened in unknown worlds, intercalated with things of the present world, form these bizarre and confused sets that seem to have neither sense nor nexus.

The incoherence of dreams is still explained by the gaps arising from the incomplete memory of what appeared to us in the dream. Like a statement in which phrases or parts of sentences have been truncated at random: the remaining fragments, being reunited, would lose all rational meaning. (Bold is ours) 

The Spirits therefore defend that there is a certain similarity between the emancipation of the soul by physical sleep and the disembodiment,  and that through this relative unfolding, depending on the intellectual-moral evolution of the Spirit and, consequently, its vibratory pattern, the kind of spiritual experience that the Spirit will have outside the body will vary significantly. Spirits link "intelligent dreams" with the ease of detachment from matter when disincarnating. ("Sleep partially liberates the soul from the body.") When man sleeps, he is momentarily in the state in which he will be permanently after death. Those who have an easy detachment from matter when they die had intelligent dreams”). 

The "Falange of the Spirit of Truth" (FST) suggests that, to a large extent, the vibratory range we will attain when we are disembodied corresponds to the vibratory regions we visit at night in our partial unfolding through our daily physical sleep ("the great majority of men - who, through death, are to remain long hours in this disturbance, in that uncertainty of which they have spoken to you - go to worlds inferior to the Earth, where ancient loves call them, or in search of perhaps even lower pleasures than the ones they had here; they will follow doctrines even more vile, more ignoble, more harmful than those they followed among you. And what causes sympathy on Earth is nothing other than the fact that we feel, when we awake, linked through our heart to those with whom we have just spent eight or nine hours of happiness or pleasure.

And the Spiritual Mentors state firmly: "In a word, sleep influences your life more than you think”.

The FST also clarifies that for Higher Spirits, the partial unfolding by physical sleep is fundamental for their success in their tasks, when in reincarnation mission. And more than that, for all incarnated Spirits, the sleep phase and the consequent partial unfolding by physical sleep creates deep contact between incarnate individualities and disincarnate Spirits ("Because of sleep, incarnated Spirits are always in connection with the world of the Spirits, and this is what makes the Higher Spirits consent, without much rejection, to incarnate among you").

And the Spiritual Mentors go further, and commented that a number of obsessive problems are fostered or at least significantly subsidized during sleep ("Evil spirits also use dreams to torment weak and fainthearted souls") (Emphasis is mine).

In this way, Spirits emphasize that sleep can help or substantially harm the lives of all incarnated individuals, for all of them unfold partially when they sleep. In this sense, it is important to emphasize that "the mind moves matter", to use the phrase that became the work title of Hernani Guimaraes Andrade. Now the mind is basically the immortal Spirit, who "directs" the perispirit, which in turn "controls" the physical body. Therefore, partial unfolding by physical sleep is a determining factor for many aspects of our lives, including spiritual, perispiritual and physical health.

Furthermore, it is relevant to note that the Spirits emphasize not only the contact with the disembodied Spirits and incarnated equally unfolded, but also a greater manifestation of predominantly soul potentialities of the soul away from the physical body. In fact, at the beginning of the answer to question 402, the Spirits stress that "when the Spirit rests, the Spirit has more faculties than in the waking state. It has the memory of the past and sometimes the forecast of the future".

Therefore, the soul outside the body has greater psychic potentialities and also greater contacts with the disincarnated Spirits and also with the incarnated Spirits that are equally unfolded. Such expansions, which occur over a long period of time, every day, and with all people, demonstrate how the deepening of the spiritual study and education in general and particularly associated with sleep, are essential efforts for our evolutionary process. Question 403 of LE reinforces this idea that our levels of spiritual perception are greater when we are outside the physical body.  

Let us see: 

403. Why do we not remember our dreams always?

Sleep, as you call it, is only the body’s rest, because the Spirit is always in motion. In sleep it regains some of its freedom and communicates with those who are dear to him, whether in this or in other worlds. But because the body is of heavy and gross matter, it hardly preserves the impressions received by the Spirit, even though the Spirit has not perceived them by the organs of the body.

The explanation given by the Spiritual Mentors to question 403 of The Book of Spirits demonstrates that we can have a level of perception of reality when in partial unfolding by physical sleep, much higher than when in the waking state. This fact is justified by the semi-material nature of the perispirit, which allows a greater understanding of the spiritual reality of the "mind" as well as a higher level of perception of the spiritual context in which the soul is inserted. 

The emancipation of the soul and its own psychic and mediumistic implications - In “The Book of Mediums “(LM) we have an interesting passage in Chapter XIV, entitled "The Mediums", inserted in the second part of the book. It is the sixth topic, called "Somnambulistic Mediums", which includes the interesting items 172, 173 and 174. Our main interest is focused on item 173, which will be copied as follows: 

173. One of our friends used as a somnambulist a little boy of 14 to 15 years old, with a very short intelligence and extremely limited instruction. In a somnambulistic state, however, he gave proof of extraordinary lucidity and great insight. This mainly in the treatment of diseases, having made numerous cures considered impossible. 

One day, attending to a patient, he described his illness with absolute accuracy. "That is not enough", they told him, "Now it is necessary to indicate the medicine. “I cannot do it”, he replied, "My angel doctor is not here”. "Who do you call the angel doctor?" “It is the one who dictates the remedies”. "So it's not you who sees the medicines yourself?" "Oh, no. Am I not saying that it is my angel doctor who indicates them?"

Thus, in this somnambulist, the one who saw the disease was his own Spirit, who did not need assistance for this. But the indication of the medicines was made by another Spirit. If he was not present, he could say nothing. Alone, he was only a somnambulist, but when assisted by what he called his angel doctor, he was a “somnambulist medium”.(Our bold).

It is evident that the young boy, who in the opinion of Allan Kardec had "very short intelligence and extremely limited instruction", had a drastic expansion in his spiritual capacity when he was out of the body, for he "gave proof of extraordinary lucidity and great insight”.

The aforementioned enlargement was, a priori, fundamentally psychic, that is, of the soul itself (soul-like individuality), when it provided the diagnosis "with absolute accuracy". Therefore, in this first situation, the boy was only a "somnambulist", that is, a "psychic paranormal". But he only recommended medication when under the guidance of the so-called "doctor angel," in which case he was a "somnambulist medium."

This extremely didactic example given by Allan Kardec in LM shows that the Spirit, clothed in his perispirit or spiritual body, but "emancipated" from the physical body, has a substantial increase in its intellectual potentialities - whether in a strictly psychic way or even constituting a psychic-mediumistic phenomenon. (To be continued on the next issue).

References:

A. Kardec, The Book of Spirits, translation by Jose Herculano Pires, Allan Kardec Publishing House, Sao Paulo, Sao Paulo. 62^nd edition. 2001.

A. Kardec, The Book of Mediums, translated by Jose Herculano Pires, Allan Kardec Publishing House, Sao Paulo, Sao Paulo. 1^st  edition. 1973.

A. Luiz [psycho-graphed by Francisco C. Xavier], Missionaries of the Light, Brazilian Spiritist Federation, Brasilia, Federal District. 1^st  Special edition. 2003.

M.P. Miranda [psycho-graphed by Divaldo P. Franco], Torments of Obsession, Livraria and Editora Alvorada, Salvador, Bahia. 2^nd edition. 2001.