In the book Spiritist Review – Journal of Psychological Studies of 1858, published in 2015, by the United States Spiritist Council, there is a dissertation from an unknown spirit about sleep.

It supplies a complete survey of what sleep means to souls at different levels and why our dormant state is vital for us.

The Chapter, “Dissertations From Beyond the Grave: Sleep” starts at page 557.

“Poor human beings! How little you know about the most ordinary phenomena that exist in your life! You think highly of yourselves; you think that you have a vast knowledge and remain speechless before these simple questions framed by all children: “What do we do when we are asleep? What is the meaning of dreams?” I don’t have the pretension of making you understand what I want to explain, since there are things that your spirit cannot submit to, because one can only admit what one can comprehend.

Sleep entirely frees the soul from the body. When we are asleep we are momentarily in the same state that we shall definitely be after death. The spirits that have quickly detached from matter, on the occasion of their death, had intelligent dreams; those, when sleeping, meet again with the society of other beings that are superior to them; that travel, talk to them and are enlightened by them. They even work on tasks that they find finalized when they die. This, once more, must teach us that we should not fear death, as we die every day as once stated by a Saint.

All this was said with respect to the superior spirits. The large majority of people, however, who may remain in that perturbation for long hours, in that uncertainty that you were told about, those individuals go to worlds that are inferior to Earth, attracted by old affections, or to look for pleasures that are even of a lower level than those found here. They will then learn doctrines that are even more vile, ignoble and harmful than those that they profess among you. What establishes the sympathy on Earth is nothing else but the fact that we feel attracted by the heart, as we wake up, to those with whom we have spent eight or nine hours of pleasure or happiness. What also establishes the irresistible antipathy is that, deep there in the heart, we know that those creatures have a different conscience, with respect to us; hence we know them not having ever setting our eyes on them. It is this that also explains the indifference, since we don’t seek to make friends when we know that we have others that love us and wish us well. In one word, the sleep influences your lives more than you think.

Through sleep, the incarnated spirits are always in contact with the spiritual world, allowing then that the superior spirits, without much repulse, do agree to come to incarnate in your environment. God wanted that during the contact with vices they could reinforce their virtues in the source of goodness, so as not to fail, as they come to instruct others. Sleep is the door that God opened to them to meet their friends from heaven; it is the break after the work, waiting for the great liberation, the final liberation that should reintegrate them back to their real world.

A dream is the memory of what your spirit saw during the sleep. Notice, however, that you do not always dream since you do not always remember some of what you have seen or everything that you have seen. It is not your soul in its full detachment; often it is nothing more than the memory of the perturbation that follows our departure or arrival, added to the memory of what you have done or what worries you during the waking state. Without that, how can we explain those absurd dreams, of the scholars as well as of the simplest person? The evil spirits also use the dream to torment the weak and pusillanimous souls.

As a matter of fact you will soon see the development of a new kind of dream. It is as old as the one you know but ignored by you. It is the dream of Joan of Arc, of Jacob, of the Jewish prophets and of some Indian fore-tellers. Such a dream represents the memory of the soul, entirely separated from the body; the memory of that second life that I was telling you about some time ago.

For the dreams that you retain the memory try to distinguish well between those two kinds, as without it you shall fall into contradictions and cause dismal mistakes to your faith.” {pp. 557-559]

At the end of the spirit’s communication we are being told that some dreams can hold valuable information for us. It is our responsibility to separate the important and relevant dream from the vast majority of nonsense dreams we all have.

I talk about my dreams and how they have helped guide my life in my book, 7 Tenets of Spiritism – How They Impact Your Daily Life. There are definitely dreams that are meant to supply us with vital information, either to warn us of a possible event or to gently push us onto another path.

Lastly, I believe what the spirit revealed to us illustrates the limitation and uses of our physical body. Our souls live in a temporary spacesuit which require periodic communication with the mother ship. It is as if when we don’t have enough sleep we run out of oxygen and our body begins to shut down, without the resupply of air from the surface. We are submerged here on the surface of earth and we need to ascend periodically to refresh ourselves in the rarefied atmosphere of a higher plane.

To learn more about why we are reincarnated and how the process works, I suggest my book, The Case for Reincarnation – Your Path to Perfection. It details how while we are in the spirit world we actively plan our lives on earth and build the blueprint to provide the lessons we require in our physical life.