Does the soul leave the body during dreams?
So, does the soul leave the body at the time of dreaming? This is a question which has certain assumptions in it. That, first of all, the soul is spiritual. And to map the spiritual of the material is something which is not very simplistically done.
You may say that the soul is present in the region of the heart. You may say the soul is one-tenth of the tip of a hair. But then what is the tip of a hair? How do you define the tip of a hair? What is the dimension of the tip of a hair? We could just change a little bit.
We could call this much as a tip or we could call this much as a tip. One-tenth thousandth of a tip would completely change based on that. So, the point of this one-tenth thousandth of a tip of a hair is to indicate that it is extremely small.
The soul is extremely small. It's not necessarily a literal expression of size. Because not precise in that sense, the tip of a hair is not defined over there.
Similarly, the location of the soul also. The soul is spiritual. And the location of the soul, whether it is in the body or it is outside the body, that is not important.
What is important is that the soul is attached to the body. As long as the soul is attached to the body, the soul stays intact. Sometimes people can have near-death experiences when they perceive themselves from outside the body.
They have out-of-body experiences as a subset of near-death experiences. So, still, although they perceive themselves from outside the body, their attachment is still to that body. And that's why they have to enter into that body again and continue to live on.
Now, moving onwards, so, during a dream state, the soul, can it leave the body? Yes, it can. Or it can be present in the body. So, during dreams, the soul can go somewhere else or simply the consciousness of the soul can go somewhere else.
Both possibilities are there. It is not necessary that it has to be one or the other. And depending on the depth of the sleep, depending on the intensity of the sleep, there are different levels of dysfunctionality that can come up in the body.
Normal sleep involves dysfunctionality of most of the senses, except for the sense of sound, which is more active. The other senses are completely innocent. There is still some consciousness in the body, but it's at a very reduced level as compared to the waking state.
So, there are certain phenomena which may involve a greater level of dysfunctionality in the body. And the key thing is not whether the soul is in the body or outside the body. The soul is spiritual.
And to map it to a physical location itself is an assumption, a flawed assumption, a loaded conception. The important thing is that the soul's connection with the body is through its identification, projection and attachment. The soul attaches itself to the body because of its identification and projection.
So, projection means, like a person playing a video game, an attachment. A person can be in the body only when he is awake. So, during sleep, the soul can be in the body or the soul can be within the body.
But as long as the soul's attachment to the body is there, the soul is not liberated from existence. And depending on specific situations, the different levels of dysfunctionality in the body may come up during the state of sleep. Does that answer your question? You said for 12 hours my soul is out of my body.