TPL (Text) -- 7

On Those Things Which Occur During Sleep

54 When, in the imaginations that occur during sleep, the demons battling against the desiring part themselves show, and we run towards, meetings with acquaintances and banquets of relatives and choruses of women and as many other things as result in pleasures, then in this particular part of the soul we are ill and the passion has strength. When, again, they greatly disturb the irascible part, forcing us to travel roads on the edge of precipitous canyons and bringing forth armed men and venomous and carnivorous beasts, and we, then, are frightened before such roads and we flee being pursued by the beasts and men, let us make provision for the irascible part and invoking Christ in vigils, let us make use of the medicines already spoken of.

55 The natural movements of the body in sleep that are free of images notify us that our soul is to a certain extent in health; the fixing of images is a token of illness. And consider the vague and unformed persons a token of the passion which is old, but the persons in sharp relief a sign of the present wound.

56 We will detect the sure signs of dispassion during the day, on the one hand, through the thoughts; at night, on the other hand, through the dreams. And we say that dispassion is health of the soul and that its [i.e. the soul’s] nourishment is gnosis, which very thing alone has the custom to unite us to the holy powers, if indeed it is natural that union with the bodiless [powers] should result from a like disposition.

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