Sleep and ADC
Let us next consider the common but marvelous phenomena of sleep.
There is a vast accumulation of data proving that the ego or individual can
and does leave the body during sleep. The blood recedes from the brain, which
can then no longer function. Yet much mental activity may take place, together
with many authentic experiences of far-away places. A person can, during sleep,
solve intricate problems which have beaten him during the day. He can also tell
the time and awaken at any hour decided upon. He can function in a complex world
of happenings which he calls ‘dreams’.
We are told that if the ego leaves the physical body during sleep he does so
clothed in his mental and astral ‘bodies’, in which he is as mobile as
electricity. The physical body is left enveloped in its etheric body or couble,
that counterpart of the human being formed of ‘condensed ethers’, through which
the life-forces are fed to the tissues from the surrounding ethers.
Man’s various ‘bodies’ are linked together by a vital elastic cord, operating
rather like an electric current without the wire. This cord is a kind of
umbilical cord which joins the ego and his vehicles to that part of Mother Earth
which is his physical body. When it snaps he is born into the ‘after-life’ and
we say that he is dead. This cord is referred to in the Bible as the ‘Silver
Cord’. As long as it is intact the traveling ego is able to get back into his
body as surely as a telephone message can travel along the wire.
We are told that the only difference between ‘life’ and ‘death’ is the sundering
of this subtle link which binds a person to his physical body.
A strong desire to see a friend may often take the sleeper to see that friend,
who may be either awake in his physical body or himself traveling, while
‘asleep’, in the astral realms.
In this way, it is said, many important meetings and actions are rehearsed by
the people concerned days before they occur. This would explain why one often
has the feeling of knowing just what is going to be said or done. It is possible
in that way that many prophecies are given.
In this connection we should notice the extreme significance which all ancient
nations attached to dreams. The power clearly to remember one’s dreams was
cultivated assiduously by the priesthood, as was also the ability to interpret
the dream. An adept in these matters was held in highest esteem by the nation,
whose affairs were regulated according to the instructions or prophecies so
given. Joseph of the Old Testament was such a case. Cheating or incompetence in
these matters was a heinous crime. Josiah of the bible was told that false
dreamers should be put to death. Alexander the Great spoke of dreams as the
greatest chance man has of acquiring knowledge.
Martin Luther said that the correct translation of ‘He giveth His beloved sleep’
is ‘He giveth to His beloved during sleep.’
The whole history of the Bible, as well as many other ancient histories,
revolves round the importance of visions, prophecies and dreams.
What are we doing now about this interesting activity which takes up nearly a
third of our living hours?
The first step would be to obtain through concentration and practice a clearer
recollection of our dreams. To do this it is necessary to try to visualise the
Astral Plane as it really is. This is difficult because once we are free in the
Astral World conditions are utterly different. Then around us pulsates the
living malleable astral stuff, which is free from the laws of gravitation, and
which moulds itself at once into form under the impetus of our minds. If we want
a horse, for example, we involuntarily and rapidly build one with our thoughts,
and it is only such a horse as our powers of visualization and observation can
produce! So we are told that at night the astral realms are peopled with
sleepers surrounded by their ‘dreams’ or creations, which are sometimes
ludicrous in the incompleteness of their conception. Apparently a person can,
therefore, either actually meet his friend in sleep or converse with his own
conception of his friend, which he has created. How near he gets to his desire
depends on the extent of his concentration and will-power.
Another condition of the Astral World is that many things can be happening in
the same spot without being aware of one another, as it were, the different
grades or vibrations of astral stuff flowing through and interpenetrating
without losing their separate identities (in much the same was as we when in
physical bodies can walk right through in ‘ghost’). Here we enter the realm of
the Fourth Dimension. If we have had no personal experience of it, we can only
understand it by studying the thousands of descriptions given to us throughout
history by those who had.
The jar of returning from those subtler realms into the heavy vibrations of our
physical bodies, at the moment of awakening, usually shatters the memory of our
experience. We retain at best a jumbled and inconsequent translation of our
dream. This is where the need of training comes in. We should concentrate on
exercising a strong grip upon ourselves at the instant of awakening. By this
simple expedient we may soon learn consciously to profit by our nightly
experiences.
Also, before sleeping we should tune our minds to our highest aspirations, as
this will determine the realms we are able to reach. If the mind is clogged with
petty earthly considerations, such as the price of food or a quarrel with a
neighbor, its owner is naturally drawn to the same type of vibration when asleep
in the astral world.
Let us now consider what is said to happen when Death has snapped the Silver
Cord, and the person is finally separated from his physical body. We are told
that often it may take a little while for the individual to realize that he is
‘dead’. But for some time prior to this he has been building in the astral stuff
the kind of Heaven or after-life to which he aspires.
Of course, thousands build a Heaven with golden streets and angels playing on
harps. These numberless living ‘thought-forms’ cohere by the law of attraction
into one great whole, so that the conventional ‘Heaven’ is actually there
awaiting its owners.
Those who expect, because of their guilt, hell-fire and goblins, have created
that charming reception for themselves also!
The miser will probably have made for his use a heaven full of nothing but gold
pieces. The Eastern pasha will certainly get his Paradise of Houris. The
disbeliever in after-life will have created for himself a horrible blank abyss.
We are told, then, that people remain imprisoned in their self-constructed
Paradises until they become so weary of the limitations of their own desires
that they are gradually freed from them, and the mind is able to expand and
aspire to fresh ideals. Eventually the ego is free to pass through these lower
astral realms, known as Purgatory, purged finally of petty wishes and
conceptions, and enjoy the higher states of Paradise to which it has learnt to
orient itself.
We have heard of the Third Heaven and the Seventh Heaven, without probably
giving a second thought to those terms. There are apparently vistas of amazing
worlds ahead of us which only open up to our understanding in measure as we
develop our minds and our aspiration to meet them.
We must realize that life on the Physical Plane is but a fraction of the whole
and that the Sage or Yogi of both East and West is endeavoring to train his mind
to a state of continued unbroken consciousness throughout waking, sleeping,
death, and onwards to the next incarnation upon this earth.
In this way does a man finally become a god.
