WHAT SLEEP MAY MEAN
O Sleep, we are beholden to thee, Sleep,
Thou bearest angels to us in the night,
Saints out of heaven with palms.
JEAN INGELOW.
We know so little about sleep, positively, that anyone may assume one
thing or another about it, so long as what he assumes accords with what
we do know positively.
It has been surmised that, during sleep, the subconscious mind is
busy with the day’s impressions of the objective mind,[2] fitting and
relating them to past experiences, the sum of which makes up the man
himself. The subconscious mind is, in a sense, man’s attitude to life.
It receives suggestions more easily than the objective mind receives
them, and has more effect upon man’s understanding of life. If our last
conscious thought is a loving thought toward all living things, we have
aided the latent mind in its effort to get in tune with the infinite
harmony of life. Alice Herring Christopher, the metaphysician, once
told me that every night as she drops off to sleep she says to herself
that she is going to have a lovely time, and as a consequence she does;
and that, on waking, she tries to realize how delightful her sleep has
been.
[2] In an examination of the theory of the “subjective” and the
“objective mind,” see chap. vii.
There is an old saying that, when a baby smiles in its sleep, it is
because the angels are whispering to it, and, if we kept ourselves in
communion with the substance of things, “angels” might bring us sweet
messages, too. They surely will, if we drop to sleep as lovingly and
peacefully as a little child.
Another friend of mine, who has the faculty of wearing herself out
with the excitement of each day’s experiences, is learning to offset
this unnecessary drain upon her strength by suggesting to herself
each night, “I shall wake rested and refreshed in the morning.” By
this means she is gaining in nervous poise, and averting the numerous
“break-downs” from which she used to suffer. Having made this much
progress,—which brings her “not far from the kingdom,”—it only remains
for her to make the full claim for the fulfillment of the promise, “Ye
shall find rest to your souls,” to secure it.
For the most part, men still regard sleep as a symbol of death, that
time when we shall know nothing of what goes on about us; when,
according to general belief, we no longer grow or enjoy. We exclaim
with Hesiod, “Sleep—the Brother of Death and the Son of Night!” But
the new idea of sleep as a growing time is overcoming that old idea of
sleep as death, and is beginning to rob even the great change itself of
its terrors. We are beginning to see that sleep does not interfere with
the activity of the mind, but simply gives it an opportunity to digest
and absorb impressions. In the same way it may be that death does not
interfere with the activity of the real man, but may afford him an
opportunity to get the full meaning of the experiences he had while
sojourning in the objective world.
As it is not conceivable that life began with our individual appearance
in this world, so it is not likely that it will end when our individual
consciousness ceases. The sum of what we have learned and of what we
have done must go on, else all the learning and the doing would be for
naught. So this thing which was “I”—and will continue to be the sum
of that “I,” no matter whether I am conscious of it or not—will use
and absorb all that has been thought or done in the body, and accept or
reject its results.
It will all count in that next experience, and help us to be, as
Browning says:
“Fearless and unperplexed
When I wage battle next,
What weapons to select, what armor to endue.”
The sum of our experiences added to the sum of all that have gone
before will help us to understand life better when and wherever we are
again conscious of it, just as the experiences of each day help us to
live the next day better. In the active, waking world the perceptive
mind receives impressions which the reflective mind stores up and
brings to bear upon our daily life and thought, thus developing greater
consciousness in the individual; so the interruption of all physical
activity may be necessary to the further development of the real and
intangible man.
As one awakes each morning from a night’s sleep a new man, physically
and mentally, although not necessarily aware of any change, so may our
awakening be from the last sleep that men call death. It may be that
we shall arise to new experiences, or perhaps to further development
in a world that we cannot touch with our hands. But in either case we
may not doubt that the awakening will be good, for all life is good.
For, after all, we should know none of the joys of living if we had not
tried them. Life is consciousness, and hardly one of us would prefer
never to have lived; to have had no share in that which has meant
_man_; the growth and culmination of unnumbered centuries. Life is one,
a whole, and the “slings and arrows” of daily worries and toil are
only an unimportant part of it. And, if it is so good that we wish
to stay here and hope to enjoy it, if we can see how it has steadily
improved and beautified in the ages that have passed, we cannot fail to
see that all it may yet become will also be good.