In this matter of the wonder, the mystery, the enchantment, of sleep
and dreams, the most modern psychology and the most ancient wisdom
meet on common ground. Eastern wisdom casts such a light upon the
problems of subjectivity that it should not be lightly dismissed.
For uncounted centuries Hindu-Aryan spiritual science has recognized,
not one plane or condition of consciousness, but three; waking,
dreaming, and deep sleep--the gross, the subtle and the pure. In the
waking state--that is, with the vehicle attuned to vibrate to
materiality--the individual self is as a captive in a citadel of
flesh, aware of only so much of the universal life as chances to
enact itself before the windows of his prison. In the dream state,
when the more violent vibrations of the body are stilled in sleep,
consciousness becomes active in its subtle (four-dimensional) vehicle,
and ranges free throughout the ampler spaces of this subtler world.
In deep sleep, consciousness reverts to its pure condition--the
individual self becomes the All-Self: the rainbow, no longer
prismatic by reason of its refraction in materiality, becomes the
pure white light; the melody of life resolves itself into the
primordial harmony; sequence becomes simultaneity, and Time, no
longer "besprent with seven-hued circumstance," is swallowed up in
duration.
"_There are two paths for him, within and without, and they both
turn back in a day and a night.... After having subdued by sleep all
that belongs to the body, he, not asleep himself, looks down upon
the sleeping. Having assumed light, he goes again to his place, the
golden person, the lonely bird_" UPANISHADS.