Note 135 — Chapter II · (continued 2)

सुस्वप्नावस्था The fantastical conceptions of the Hindus about the states or conditions of the embodied soul are of course not always expressed in the same manner. “They are chiefly three: waking, dreaming, and profound sleep; to which may be added for a fourth, that of death; and for a fifth, that of trance, swoon, or stupor, which is intermediate between profound sleep and death (as it were half-dead), as dreaming is between waking and profound sleep. In that middle state of dreaming, there is a fanciful course of events, an illusory creation, which however testifies the existence of a conscious soul. In profound sleep, the soul has retired to the supreme one by the route of the arteries of the pericardium” (Colebrooke on the Philosophy of the Hindus, Transact. of the R. A. S. of Great Brit. and Irel., vol. II. part I. p. 25).