Each night, as my Spirit roams
In vast spheres of slumber,
I become a hermit, renouncing all title, Body‐form, possessions, opinions, and beliefs— Breaking my self‐erected prison walls
Of flesh and earthly limitations;
I am an all‐pervading Son of God,
No longer lumped in dingy clod,
Nor tied by thick cords to birth and death,
To petty self‐importance, social standing,
Or the duty‐mirage of self‐interested activity.
There in sleep’s altered dimension
I have no country to claim me as its own,
No church, mosque, or temple to tell me what I owe to it; I am neither Western nor Oriental,
Not encased in a hide of racial inheritance.
In dreamland’s limitless domain
My Spirit revels in its freedom;
Freedom alone is my true religion!
Roaming gaily through that countryside, gypsy‐like, I pilfer joy everywhere.
There is none to dictate to me,
I am free, now, to rule myself!
Behold, the once‐bonded slave has become a god! This sleeping mortal: the awakened, deathless Lord! The unseen, unheard God am I,
Drinking, breathing gladness;
Gliding in winged glory
Over endless continents!
Free from all haunting fears
Or any possible crash and shattered skull; No solids, there, to knock against,
No lurking waters to drown me in their depths; No dank, clinging vapors to choke me,
No fire to burn my cringing flesh.
Free from even the memory
Of that all‐demanding, fragile body,
I spread myself o’er all space:
All things am I!
Could anything or anyone dare injure me?
Nothing could even touch me!
Vastness itself could not bear
To strike my little self,
For it would mean only smiting itself.
Unknown to all but Myself,
I wake, walk, dream,
Eat, drink, ride about in Joy,
Being myself the Joy so long I sought—
The Joy all seek.
So little, ah, so little was I
While dreaming in my half‐asleep state of wakefulness! Now at last, awake in truth, I have no boundaries:
My state may be described, now, as sleepless‐wakefulness!
