Allan Kardec-THE Spirit's Book_ The Principles of Spiritist Doctrine (1989)

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THE SPIRITS’ BOOK
"Poor human beings! how little do you know of the commonest phenomena of your life! You
fancy yourselves to be very learned, and you are puzzled by the most ordinary things. To
questions that any child might ask, 'What do we do when we are asleep?' 'What are dreams?'
you are incapable of replying.
"Sleep effects a partial freeing of the soul from the body. When you sleep, your spirit is, for
the time being, in the state in which you will be after your death. The spirits who at death are
promptly freed from matter are those who, during their life, have had what may be called
intelligent sleep. Such persons, when they sleep, regain the society of other spirits superior to
themselves. They go about with them, conversing with them, and gaining instruction from
them; they even work, in the spirit-world, at undertakings which, on dying, they find already
begun or completed. From this you see how little death should be dreaded, since, according to
the saying of St. Paul, you 'die daily.'
"What we have just stated refers to spirits of an elevated degree of advancement. As for those
of the common mass of men, who, after their death, remain for long hours in the state of
confusion and uncertainty of which you have been told by such, they go, during sleep, into
worlds of lower rank than the earth, to which they are drawn back by old affections, or by the
attraction of pleasures still baser than those to which they are addicted in your world; visits in
which they gather ideas still viler, more ignoble, and more mischievous than those which they
had professed during their waking hours. And that which engenders sympathy in the earthly
life is nothing else than the fact that you feel yourselves, on waking, affectionately attracted
towards those with whom you have passed eight or nine hours of happiness or pleasure. On
the other hand, the explanation of the invincible antipathies you sometimes feel for certain
persons is also to be found in the intuitive knowledge you have thus acquired of the fact that
those persons have another conscience than yours, because you know them without having
previously seen them with your bodily eyes. It is this same fact, moreover, that explains the
indifference of some people for others; they do not care to make new friends, because they
know that they have others by whom they are loved and cherished. In a word, sleep has more
influence than you think upon your life.
"Through the effects of sleep, incarnated spirits are always in connection with the spiritworld;
and it is in consideration of this fact that spirits of a higher order consent, without
much re-