Who is it that speaks? Ah! it is not a being of this world: then I am dead; may God forgive my offences.
SPIRIT.
You may defer your repentance to another opportunity, for you are not dead, but merely asleep.
SLEEPER.
Doubtless I listen to one whom I must believe; yet this sleep appears to me very singular. I lay down on that couch from weariness, and felt the approach and weakness of sleep, when suddenly I found myself two persons; and here I am talking and reasoning apart from the other portion of me, which is asleep. According to my past observation, this is not a common way of going to sleep.
SPIRIT.
You have never slept in any other way; but I will explain the mystery. The mind of man is from a divine origin, but subject to numberless infirmities by confinement within the body; and were it never released during life it would become altogether worthless. To prevent this, sleep has been contrived, which is not, as mortals suppose, a suspension of the mind, but a separation of it from the body, and by these continual escapes it is cleared from some of the evils which it contracts. During this freedom, which you call sleep, the mind converses with heavenly beings as you now do with me, and sees many things that recall it to its purity.
SLEEPER.
May I venture then to ask why I do not remember to have conversed with any heavenly being before? I have great success in sleeping, but have enjoyed no such interviews as you describe.
SPIRIT.