In sleep the ray lights up the natural brain but does not control it, so that we have those funny, inconsequent dreams which we remember.
In deep sleep the ray leaves the natural body and lights the spiritual body (soul and spirit), which is then free. The spiritual body may go away and enjoy the most surprising, delightful adventures—the dreams which fade out as we awaken. You see, the natural body was left behind at rest, missed all the fun, and so has nothing to remember.
In waking meditation and clear vision the ray lights up the spirit. "I was in the spirit," says St. John, and so begins his Book of the Revelation.
In the last deep sleep the spiritual body departs from the natural body, and cannot get back into it. That shattered or worn-out machine is scrapped, and the event is the birth of the earth-free Man. We call it death.
Now as to the places we go to in deep sleep and at death. An ordinary piano has seven octaves or forty-nine notes. Each of these is a set of waves in the air, large and slow for the low note, small and swift for the high note. We call these waves vibrations. You can see the wires vibrate. The visible earth has three great chords of vibration, known to us as land, sea, and air. But the visible earth is rather like the stone or core of a fruit and the invisible pulp of that fruit is arranged in layers like the flakes of an onion, layer on layer, just as in the piano there are forty-nine layers of vibration.
In deep sleep or at death we enter a group of layers, a world outside our world, with land, sea, and sky which are clearly visible to the eyes of the soul. The soul is keyed to its vibrations. That world has many names, the Hades of the Greeks, the Purgatory of the Catholic Churches, the Astral Plane of the Mystics.
Somewhere in its sixth layer is the country which we call Dreamland, and close by in its seventh layer is Fairyland. They are just as real as London or New York, and we are about to visit them in this happy story.
Beyond the Astral World are the Heavens Spiritual and the Heavens Celestial, where dwell spirits only, of just men made perfect, and of the holy angels. These also are quite real, but we shall not see them until we can believe.
How do I know all this? By reading books which are open to every student. But with the deepest humility and the utmost reverence I give my word of honor that I have seen enough for myself to know that the books are honest.
Now at last may I speak quite clearly about two people of this story, Mrs. James Fright the Quakeress, and Bill Fright her son? Both of them were seers. They had the rare gift of "dreaming true," of remembering the dreams of the deep sleep. The woman also had won by clean living, prayer, and meditation the greatest of all human faculties, the vision of the spirit, the keys of Heaven.