Continuity

Where does the soul go when the body is asleep?

I suppose it could sleep too. That, however, seems counter-intuitive. The soul is the life spirit, that within us which persists no matter the physical state – alive or dead – of the body. If souls exist outside of evolution, they should not need sleep, an historical byproduct of the light-dark cycle of earthly days.

Of course this presumes that souls or spirits or whatever you’d like to call the “I” that watches the “me”, the feeling of observing outside of acting, the essence of continuance beyond the physical form, truly exist. There are some who believe that consciousness is nothing more than an epiphenomenon of the intricate interactions occurring within the cloistered confines of our skulls. To folks who believe this, there is no place for anything to go when we sleep because nothing exists to go anywhere. I think, because I am awake. I think not, because I sleep.

And yet I wake up each day the same self who closed its eyes hours before.

“Patterns,” the non-spiritual enthusiast would argue. “Neurological circuits. Nothing more. The wiring of your house doesn’t wonder when it will be turned on if the light switch is off. Neither does the so-called self. There is simply no current. No one is home.”

Well, some charge must be persistent for the brain to still live during sleep.

“A different state of activity,” the unsouled believer argues. “The brain is made of cells. Just like all the other cells in the body, brain cells get tired. They need rest, recovery. Why seek an explanation for something – the soul – for which we have no real proof exists?”

For years, I have had a conflicted relationship with sleep. How could such a beautiful state of suspended animation, something so inevitably inviting, be marred by the unwelcome and unexpected interruption of a nightmare or a bizarre dream? It seems unfair that some nights end with a dream of flight while others arouse us with a frightful encounter. It feels gratuitous to explain dreams away as unprocessed experiences or neurotic tensions. It is intellectually naive to interpret the rare and startling real vision revealed in lucid, healing, or prophetic dreams as neuronal cleaning.

Still, the time we spend dreaming is small compared to the remainder of the time we sleep. And we sleep, on average, about a third of the time we live. So there is quite a bit of human life spent in a state of unconscious dreamlessness, supposed nothingness. Allegedly, we are consolidating memories, processing emotions, and detoxifying our brains during all those hours of emptiness. I smile at the subtle conceit nestled within such explanations. They make sense, as explanations go. But who has ever witnessed a memory being consolidated or an emotion being processed? And, uh, if that is the purpose of sleep, why and how do things from decades ago suddenly present themselves for reprocessing? Please don’t offer me the facile response that my brain didn’t it right the first, second, or five hundredth time around. That’s like saying the sun rises at daybreak because every morning when I awake there it is. We need some perspective on matters in order to draw certain conclusions. Fortunately, we have off-planet views of the relationship between the sun and earth. No similar off-personal body vantage seems possible when it comes to the strange experience of life from the perspective of my brain.

My brain. My life. My self.

It is odd how we act so possessively when it comes to our individual body parts, personal histories, and lifetimes of experiences. Stranger still though is how we don’t adopt the same attitude about the nonlocal or timefree “everywhen” nature of being. It is interesting to observe that I can be so connected to you that we think of or call each other at the same time, or that two or more people separated by space can physically feel similar sensations when only one is affected by a local force. We are all comprised of the same original atoms released at the Big Bang, we smile. We are more than individuals, we nod. We are interconnected, interdependent, we agree.

But we are nothing, we are inactive, our souls are without intent and engagement when we lie in dreamless states?

I posit something different. After more than sixty-two sun cycles, it has finally occurred to me that some essence, the core vitality I have come to believe is more than my body or my mind, is busy during the hours that my body and mind are relatively immobile. What is that “soul” doing? I can only imagine. Is it still within my form? Doubtful. Does it interact with your spirits, with those who have lived before or even after us, during the hours each day when the metaphysical is not required to supervise the sometimes disappointingly bumbling journeys of the physical? Possibly. Something else? I seem ill-equipped to reply.

If a soul can be released when a body dies, then so too can a soul travel when a body sleeps. Because there is wonder and beauty within the release of spirit to greater purpose and good. There is light from spirit within the darkness of night surrounding the body.

The soul I call mine may be at work when my body and mind are not. I think of that each night before I stretch into sleep, offer some prayers and good intentions to help direct and support my soul’s itinerary while I slumber. That reminds me that perhaps only part of “me” is really asleep. It is refreshing to feel active when I appear most at rest.

Should you find the idea too fanciful, yet are someone who believes you have a soul, do you think that the Creator/God/Yahweh/Allah sleeps? Can something that is always ever be nothing?