Triluminal science, which discerns and surveys three kinds of light and darkness and three kinds of days and nights, also beholds three kinds of sleep and wakefulness in men’s souls. It beholds first of all physical sleep supervening in the night-time, that is, during physical night, and cessation from sleep and transition to wakefulness and the day’s work. It beholds secondly moral sleep in moral night, and cessation therefrom and transition to the wakefulness and work of moral day. It beholds thirdly metaphysical sleep of metaphysical night, and cessation therefrom and transition to the wakefulness of metaphysical day. All men are acquainted with the physical sleep belonging to physical night and the cessation from sleep and the transition to the wakefulness of physical day, for they have daily experience thereof. But they are ignorant of the other two kinds of sleep and wakefulness, since they are also ignorant of the kinds of days and nights corresponding thereto. Those, on the other hand, who acquire knowledge of moral light and darkness, of metaphysical light and darkness, and of the days and nights resulting therefrom, can easily acquire knowledge of the sleep and wakefulness which accompany them. Moral sleep is the condition of souls who are unacquainted with moral light and with Christ, the Sun of moral day, and who do not live in His light, inasmuch as they do not work and live in accordance with the law and commandments of Christ. They can be aroused from this dangerous sleep and be induced to awaken through the loud voice and preaching of the Gospel, from which they learn about the death and resurrection of Christ, and about the salvation through Him of every man that believes in Him and observes His law and commandments. Metaphysical sleep is the condition of those souls altogether ignorant of their own existence and unable to discern anything. From this metaphysical sleep souls can be aroused only by the ever-thinking and ever-living Spirit of God, which happens when He gives them consciousness of their own existence and at the same time incites them to seek the cause whence they have received their existence and to seek the purpose for which they exist together with other beings, which they perceive when they have consciousness. without which they can discern nothing else.
Hence, just as triluminal science beholds three kinds of light and darkness and three kinds of days and nights, so it beholds three kinds of sleep and wakefulness, viz., physical, moral, and metaphysical sleep, and a wakefulness corresponding to each kind of sleep. Now, keeping three kinds of sleep and of wakefulness before our eyes, let us ask which of the three kinds of sleep precedes the others and becomes the cause of their occurrence. lt is obvious and has to be admitted that the metaphysical sleep of ignorance precedes the physical sleep belonging to night, and this kind of sleep again precedes moral sleep, which comes last in the order of occurrence. Men’s souls have being and existence from the time of the entificative creation of the essence of matter by God, but they slumber and sleep in metaphysical sleep, being altogether ignorant of their own existence, as is also all the essence of triform matter. Adam’s soul was the first to awake or to pass out of this sleep into wakefulness. which happened when God, having formed Adam out of earth, blew into his person a breath of life and he became a living soul. While living and working during day together with its body, Adam’s soul would become tired and rest during the night-time; and such rest was called sleep. Here, then, we see that after the age-long sleep of ignorance the physical sleep of night makes its appearance to permit the body that has become tired during the day to take a rest, while the soul returns to the state of ignorance of its own existence, which ignorant state passes away with the passing of night, consciousness dawning with the dawn of day. Together with Adam, who was formed of earth, God also formed the first woman, whose name was Eve. Eve’s soul also was awaked from its age-long state of ignorance through the Spirit of God, just as Adam’s soul had been awakened before it, and like Adam’s soul it also received experience of the transitory sleep that takes place during night and of the wakefulness that recurs with day. Subsequently to this they also received experience of the third and last kind of sleep, that is, of moral sleep, concerning which we have the following to add.
After transferring Adam’s soul from the metaphysical darkness of ignorance into the little light of consciousness, God led him and guided him from without by word and law and doctrine, in accordance with the purpose and destiny for which He created him and which the man formed out of the dust of the earth was still ignorant of. Wherefore He laid down to him a law distinctive of good and evil, a law that regulated and accustomed the free will of the soul to avoid evil and to choose and elect what is good. To Adam this was the first moral light, which enlightened him to abstain from evil, that is, from any evil act that would entail death. To this moral light was opposed moral darkness, that is, any false word traducing the law and the lawgiver, and praising and recommending as something good the evil prohibited by the divine law and as something that brings a man knowledge of all things and makes him a god, or, in fewer words, as something leading to omniscience and deification. But Adam was ignorant of this moral darkness that existed in the serpent’s head, and, believing in the truth of the divine law, he acted in accordance therewith. Likewise his wife, having the same belief and the same ignorance, avoided transgressing the law, for fear of the threatened death. This ignorance due to moral darkness and their ignorance of the purpose the law had in view formed the moral sleep of the first human beings, by exploiting which deceitfully the deceitful serpent deceived the woman and through her the man, and they ate of the forbidden fruit that they might become as gods knowing good and evil. But their eyes were opened and they perceived that they were naked, and, being ashamed, they sewed fig-leaves together and made themselves aprons. Thus did the first human beings and progenitors of the human race awaken from their moral sleep of ignorance and come into knowledge of good and evil. They discerned the fact that God and His law are good, whereas the serpent and the false word of his mouth are evil. Wherefore, after the transgression, they lived obediently to God and disobediently to the Devil, and enjoined upon their children submission and obedience to the word of God.
Now just triluminal science beholds the three kinds of sleep and of wakefulness in connection with the souls of the first human beings, so it beholds them in connection with the souls of all men. The soul of every human being slumbers or sleeps in the metaphysical sleep of ignorance, out of which sleep it is aroused after it has first been sown in a woman’s womb and has been begotten nine months later joined to an infantile organic body alive and being nourished without her knowing. After a space of two or three years the ever-living and ever-thinking Spirit of God transfers the soul from ignorance into the minute light of consciousness and of self knowledge, and it begins to think and speak and to progress in knowledge and in speech. During night it sleeps and rests, and during day it is aroused and moves about, and is conscious of its own existence until the sleep that comes upon it at night, when it again loses consciousness. But the knowledge of consciousness is naturally connected with the ignorance of moral light and moral darkness, with the evil to be avoided and the good to be done; and such ignorance is the moral sleep of souls. From this sleep souls are aroused by means of voices and words and law that have their source in God or in the Devil. Those who are aroused as a result of the divine words and who live in accordance with the legislation of God, pass out of the sleep of moral night into the light of moral day and live rightly in accordance with the destiny they have. Those, on the other hand, who are aroused as a result of the false words of the Devil and who transgress the laws of God, pass out of natural ignorance into self-conceit, and think they know what they know not, and see darkness as light and undergo all the evil consequences of such unnatural life. Thus the entire human race, like its progenitors, pass out of the two kinds of sleep and of wakefulness into the moral sleep of ignorance of the evil to be avoided and of the good to be done, out of which one is aroused by means of voices and words and laws of a twofold nature, good and bad,and passes either into the light of the moral day of light-making God or into the darkness of the moral night of the Devil, who has been a manslayer from the beginning. Therefore the great struggle and the great danger of men exist in moral sleep and in their being aroused out of it and their passing thereupon into the wakefulness of moral day or into the obfuscation and blindness of moral night and of moral darkness. That is why only those who listen to the words of God and who keep them are blessed. Woe to those who allow themselves to be persuaded by the charming but false words of the deceitful Serpent and of serpent-born men.
Apostolos Makrakis 