s afterwards in
corresponding events. In the same way, how many times it happens that a
question which one cannot solve in the world of wakefulness, is solved in
the world of dreams. In wakefulness the eye sees only for a short
distance, but in dreams he who is in the East sees the West: awake he sees
the present, in sleep he sees the future. In wakefulness, by means of
rapid transit, at the most he can travel only twenty farsakha an hour; in
sleep, in the twinkling of an eye, he traverses the East and West. For the
spirit travels in two different ways: without means, which is spiritual
traveling; and with means, which is material traveling: as birds which
fly, and those which are carried.

In the time of sleep this body is as though dead; it does not see nor
hear, it does not feel, it has no consciousness, no perception: that is to
say, the powers of man have become inactive, but the spirit lives and
subsists. Nay, its penetration is increased, its flight is higher, and its
intelligence is greater. To consider that after the death of the body the
spirit perishes, is like imagining that a bird in a cage will be destroyed
if the cage is broken, though the bird has nothing to fear from the
destruction of the cage. Our body is like the cage, and the spirit is like
the bird. We see that without the cage this bird flies in the world of
sleep; therefore if the cage becomes broken, the bird will continue and
exist: its feelings will be even more powerful, its perceptions greater,
and its happiness increased. In truth, from hell it reaches a paradise of
delights, because for the thankful birds there is no paradise greater than
freedom from the cage. That is why with utmost joy and happiness the
martyrs hasten to the plain of sacrifice.

In wakefulness the eye of man sees at the utmost as far as one hour of
distance, because through the instrumentality of the body the power of the
spirit is thus determined; but with the inner sight and the mental eye it
sees America, and it can perceive that which is there, and discover the
conditions of things and organize affairs. If, then, the spirit were the
same as the body, it would be necessary that the power of the inner sight
should also be in the same proportion. Therefore it is evident that this
spirit is different from the body, and that the bird is different from the
cage, and that the power and penetration of the spirit is stronger without
the intermediary of the body. Now, if the