As the eagle of the mountains, having soared high in the air above the earth, wings its way back to its resting place, being fatigued by its long flight, so does the soul, having experienced the life of the phenomenal, relative and mortal, return finally unto itself, where it can sleep beyond all desires, and beyond all dreams.

—Chandogya Upanishad

In spite of the spectacular advance of scientific knowledge which now enables us to attempt what was always thought impossible, we still remain ignorant of our own selves. We are able to conquer time and space in the objective universe, achieving a walk, and then a rendezvous, in outer space, but the realm of our own inner consciousness is still terra incognita for the large majority of people. This age of technology has focused our attention on the external and phenomenal, and driven us to absorb ourselves in the multiplicity of sensuous perceptions made increasingly available through the radio, television, and all the other electronic media and audio-visual aids. We depend more and more on the experiences of outer sounds and external sights, finding no time or inclination for introspection or silent thinking. This makes for nervous tension and emotional unbalance, and indeed would lead to madness did not sleep intervene and compel each and every one to withdraw from the outer world and turn inwards.

We all admit the physiological advantages derived from sleep, and psychology today is exploring the sphere of dreams. But the spiritual state beyond dreams is still unknown and unacknowledged. In that state, which all experience when the body is asleep and the dreams woven of our desires have been set at rest, we touch the hem of the radiant garment which clothes our transcendent and immortal Self. The door to the knowledge of that larger Self lies beyond the dream state. Therein lies the secret of our Divinity.

This truth, ignored and even ridiculed in our materialistic and mechanistic civilization, was known to the ancients and is recorded in all great spiritual traditions. From the very beginning sleep was inaugurated by ecstasy: "And God sent an ecstasy upon Adam, and he slept."

In the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, the psychology of the three states of consciousness, waking, dreaming, and the state beyond dreams, is set forth in a masterly fashion: "The Spirit of man has two dwelling places: both this world and the other world. The borderland between them is the third, the land of dreams."

In ancient Greece, Homer assigned two gates to two kinds of dreams, the Gate of Horn and the Gate of Ivory, the former to true dreams, the latter to false ones. Virgil repeats the idea:

There are two gates of sleep, whereof one is said to be of horn, and thereby an easy outlet is given to true shades; the other gleams with the sheen of polished ivory, but false are the dreams sent by the spirits to the world above. (Aeneid, VI)

Pliny is quoted as saying that there are two types of dreams, the ordinary ones which are caused by physiological and emotional disturbances, and true dreams, "sent by the Gods." While science continues to explore the outer world, modern psychology is increasingly aware of the dream state, the borderland between the two worlds, "this world and the other world." Only a few, the spiritually and mystically inclined, firmly convinced of the reality of the Divine Self, are conscious of that "other world."

The ordinary dreams of the svapna or dream state are psychic experiences rooted in the personal consciousness, while those beyond the svapna state are spiritual experiences pertaining to that dimension of human consciousness which transcends the personality.

While a student of psychical research, a psychiatrist, a psychotherapist can occasionally gain a useful clue to the character of his patient by looking into the ordinary dreams of the latter, there is considerable risk in making the patient probe into his svapna state without sufficient knowledge of the dangers involved and without the protection that only spiritual awareness can ensure. The need of this cycle is the cultivation by many of faith in the existence of the Spirit, "the gold-gleaming Genious, swan of everlasting," and the leading by them of the life necessary to unfold awareness of that Spirit.

Rightly did René Guénon remark: "Nineteenth-century materialism closed the mind of man to what is above him; twentieth-century psychology opened it to what is below him."

The issue between gross and brutal materialism, which denies all but the eternal phenomenal world, and the believer in the psychic is not yet determined. To the materialist there is only the outward man. To the psychical researcher the true man is the man below the mind. That is the sphere of dreams, the "unconscious," or rather the "subconscious" of modern psychology.

The present cycle of human evolution is one of considerable upheaval. A great psychic mutation is taking place and, as is the case with all new developments in their early phases, it is accompanied by many distressing signs. The old values are being discarded and new ones have not yet emerged. Many have lost all sense of purpose. To them life has become meaningless, and we witness much confusion and destruction, leading to a sense of blank despair.

To the wise one who know this change was due, there is no cause for despair. They see behind the present distress but the false starts and the misguided attempts which precede a new period of growth. Our epoch, however, is not without its dangers, and among these is that of the development of psychic powers and faculties. Strange and abnormal things are happening more and more, and, as foreseen by Madame Blavatsky as far back as 1887, "psychologists will have some extra work to do, and the psychic idiosyncrasies of humanity will enter on a great change" (Lucifer, November 1887). It was precisely to guide humanity safely through this critical period that the Theosophical Movement of our era was started, stressing the need for a clean and unselfish life, reiterating the ancient teachings, calling upon man to seek the life of the Spirit, that life which transcends the personality and belongs to the innermost consciousness. Sleep is a door to that realm if we make our waking life pure and noble.

"This is done by an increase of concentration upon high thoughts, upon noble purposes, upon all that is best and most spiritual in us while awake," explains W. Q. Judge, whose death anniversary will be commemorated on the 21st of March, the day of the Spring Equinox. In grateful memory of his labour of love, we give below a few extracts from his writings. May they inspire many to seek the Way to the Light of the Spirit, and thus gain "the free space of spiritual life":

The daily waking life is but a penance and the trial of the body, so that it too may thereby acquire the right condition. In dreams we see the truth and taste the joys of heaven. In waking life it is ours to gradually distil that dew our normal consciousness.

Our dreams present and opportunity to us as waking men and women to so live that the Inner Self may more easily speak to us.

But there are dreams and dreamers. Not every person is a real dreamer in the old sense of that term. Some dreams are visions of the night. The real man then sees many facts of life, of history, of family, of nations. He is not bound by the body then, and so makes immediate conclusions.

To remember what happens during sleep is to be a conscious seer.

We must be patient, because it takes time to find out how to walk, and much time is spent in getting hold of clues. A great deal depends on purity of thought and motive, and breadth of view.

The subject is one of enormous extent as well as great importance, and theosophists are urged to purify, elevate, and concentrate the thoughts and acts of their waking hours so that they shall not continually and aimlessly, night after night and day succeeding day, go into and return from these natural and wisely appointed states, no wiser, no better able to help their fellow men. For by this way, as by the spider's small thread, we may gain the free space of spiritual life.

To fully define Theosophy, we must consider it under all its aspects. The interior world has not been hidden from all by impenetrable darkness. By that higher intuition acquired by Theosophia—or God-knowledge, which carries the mind from the world of form into that of formless spirit, man has been sometimes enabled in every age and every country to perceive things in the interior or invisible world. Hence, the "Samadhi," or Dyan Yog Samadhi, of the Hindu ascetics; the "Daimonion-photi," or spiritual illumination of the New-Platonists; the "sidereal confabulation of souls," of the Rosicrucians or Fire-philosophers; and, even the ecstatic trance of mystics and of the modern mesmerists and spiritualists, are identical in nature, though various as to manifestation. The search after man's diviner "self," so often and so erroneously interpreted as individual communion with a personal God, was the object of every mystic, and belief in its possibility seems to have been coeval with the genesis of humanity, each people giving it another name. "By reflection, self-knowledge and intellectual discipline, the soul can be raised to the vision of eternal truth, goodness, and beauty—that is, to the Vision of God—this is the epopteia," said the Greeks. "To unite one's soul to the Universal Soul," says Prophyry, "requires but a perfectly pure mind. Through self-contemplation, perfect chastity, and purity of body, we may approach nearer to It, and receive in that state, true knowledge and wonderful insight."

—H. P. Blavatsky