WHAT OCCURS IN SLEEP

   How many people remember, on awakening, their ex-eriences during sleep? It seems natural that, if we live in the spirit world while the physical body is at rest, we would remember something of that life when we returned to physical consciousness. Silver Birch here tells why a memory of that other life is so seldom registered on our physical brains:

　YOUR world of matter makes it difficult for you to remember in the smaller consciousness what takes place in the larger. You will not begin to live until you have died.

　Sometimes, in your world, when the spirit rises and effects for a time close union with those who seek to inspire it from my world and you are at one, then you catch for a brief, fleeting moment the happiness that belongs to a world that is supernal.

　Practically everybody visits my world during sleep, for it is part of the preparation made by the Great Spirit to accustom the spirit body to its future habitation, so that when the final separation is made there will be no shock and the newly-arrived spirit will gradually accustom itself to its surroundings as memories stir within it, just as you remember gradually when you return to the scenes of your childhood.

　The degree of spirit which can be reached is dependent upon the state of the soul evolution. All can travel in spirit, but some are limited in their range.

　Some people travel in sleep to the darker spheres of the spirit world, either because that corresponds with their own soul-state or because it is the action of their own free will as they desire to be used in service.

   There are many in my world who can be helped by bring-ing to them the spiritual bodies of those who are in your world. You will find it in the Bible, where it tells how the Nazarene descended into what they called hell. That was not during the sleep-state, but it is the same law.

　It is possible to train oneself to remember the experiences during sleep, but it requires concentrated effort because you will have to train the consciousness to register its impressions on the brain cells. That would be easier for some than for others. It depends on how closely the two bodies are knit. Those who find it easiest to remember are those who would make the best mental mediums.

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Questions and Answers:

   ＨOW can dreams be accounted for? Some of them can scarcely be accepted as memories of spirit travels.

　There are dreams and dreams. Some of them are capable of physical explanation, as they are only the reflex action of a brain which is hushed for a while. Some of them are caused by the food you eat. But beyond all these, there are the dreams which are the memories of your experiences in our world, which you retain in very fragmentary form. The reason why your dreams are often distorted is that when you come to the planes of spirit you are freed from the restrictions of earth and, in the effort to remember spirit experiences in earthly limitations, you get distortion.

　Does the communicating spirit know whether he has registered on our consciousness in sleep state?

　No, not always. We do not always know at séances, at the time, how much is transmitted. It is often the same when impressing people.

　If during sleep, we frequently meet our guides, why is it that such meetings are so rarely referred to in séance messages?

　They are. The questioner will know about them one day. for they are registered in his soul. Even if he cannot recall that memory now through the cells of his brain, one day he will be able to bring it to the surface. You know, things are true whether you know of them or not.

   If our spirits leave the physical body during sleep and the body is left, as it were, untenanted, what is there to prevent some wandering earth-bound spirit from possessing or obsessing it? Is any spirit guide “on duty" to guard it against mal-occupation?

　What prevents this happening is the natural law that you cannot be obsessed by undeveloped spirits unless you are in a condition to be obsessed. The spirit is not in the body, for the spirit does not belong to the same rate of vibration as the body. You—the real youーare not inside the body. You are not tucked in between your heart and your lungs. You are consciousness expressing itself through the earthly machinery of your physical body.

　All that happens when you sleep is that the consciousness, instead of expressing itself through the physical body, ex-presses itself through the spirit body and, because of that, it is expressing itself in the planes of spirit. There is no question of another coming in. It is not as if you have opened the door of your body and someone walks into the body and shuts the door. It is not like that at all. It is that the consciousness, still in charge of the body, expresses itself on another plane and returns as soon as it is time for it once more to associate itself with the physical body.

　Does that mean that when a person is obsessed, the intruding spirit has received the permission of the spirit of the person ob-sessed?

　No, but the person obsessed has created within himself the conditions that make obsession possible. It is all a question of the individual. It is the same as when you are filled with a desire for love and service you attract those higher ones who can use you. It is the same law. The law does not work only for good. It works also the other way. All laws which can be used for the greatest service can also be abused, for as high as you can rise so low can you sink. As low as you can fall, so correspondingly can you rise to the heights. It is the same law. It depends on the way you choose to apply yourselves to it.

　Are prophetic dreams "transmitted” to the recipient from your side?

　Sometimes they are. Sometimes they are prompted by their own loved ones, who try to warn them. At other times, it is the experience of the spirit body itself which, freed from the limitations of earth, is able to glean something of the future and to bring back in the form of a dream a warning of what it has seen ahead in the path of time.

　If the spirit leaves the body in sleep, how is the body animated and why does it not cause death?

　Because the silver cord is still attached and consciousness remains. Once the silver cord is severed and the connexion between the physical body and the spirit is gone, there is no more animation.

　Where is the spirit, or that part which survives after death, when a person is under an anæsthetic?

　I do not know. It might be anywhere. It depends on the evolution of the person as to how far it can go and where it goes.

　Is there a difference between the state of unconsciousness caused by a brain injury, and unconsciousness in sleep?

　Oh, yes. When you are unconscious because of an injury that is something which interferes with the normal harmony between your spirit and your body. When you sleep, that is the normal thing, for the spirit knows that every night the vibrations of the physical body slow down and the spirit prepares itself by coming to our world. One is the normal part of your experience and the other is an abnormal hap-pening that interferes with your make-up. In one case the spirit leaves the body voluntarily, and in the other it is forced out because the body is unfit for it to function through it.