. Then the material body sinks to earth. And so we have the
cosmic universe such as we know it.

What is the exact relationship between us and the death-realm of the
afterwards we shall never know. But this relation is none the less
active every moment of our lives. There is a pure polarity between
life and death, between the living and the dead, between each living
individual and the outer cosmos. Between each living individual and
the earth's center passes a never-ceasing circuit of magnetism. It is
a circuit which in man travels up the right side, and down the left
side of the body, to the earth's center. It never ceases. But while we
are awake it is entirely under the control and spell of the total
consciousness, the individual consciousness, the soul, or self. When
we sleep, however, then this individual consciousness of the soul is
suspended for the time, and we lie completely within the circuit of
the earth's magnetism, or gravitation, or both: the circuit of the
earth's centrality. It is this circuit which is busy in all our tissue
removing or arranging the dead body of our past day. For each time we
lie down to sleep we have within us a body of death which dies with
the day that is spent. And this body of death is removed or laid in
line by the activities of the earth-circuit, the great active
death-circuit, while we sleep.

As we sleep the current sweeps its own way through us, as the streets
of a city are swept and flushed at night. It sweeps through our nerves
and our blood, sweeping away the ash of our day's spent consciousness
towards one form or other of excretion. This earth-current actively
sweeping through us is really the death-activity busy in the service
of life. It behooves us to know nothing of it. And as it sweeps it
stimulates in the primary centers of consciousness vibrations which
flash images upon the mind. Usually, in deep sleep, these images pass
unrecorded; but as we pass towards the twilight of dawn and
wakefulness, we begin to retain some impression, some record of the
dream-images. Usually also the images that are accidentally swept into
the mind in sleep are as disconnected and as unmeaning as the pieces
of paper which the street cleaners sweep into a bin from the city
gutters at night. We should not think of taking all these papers,
piecing them together, and making a marvelous book of them, prophetic
of the future and pregnant with the past. We should not do so,
although every rag