Dreams and the Soul

I just had an interesting notion. What if the dream phase of sleep, the REM cycle, isn't just a random series of chemical reactions? Research tells us that it is necessary for us to reach REM regularly or we will eventually cease to be able to function and then we will die. People deprived of REM for too long, I have heard, suffer from memory loss, a loss of ability to learn new things, and are a lot more violent and aggressive, relying more on the lower functions of the brain.

What if our dreams are real? What if, when we dream, our soul actually leaves our body and does things -- fantastic things that we remember only bits and pieces of when we wake up because our physical brain has no frame of reference to process these things. What if the problem with lack of REM sleep isn't physical at all? Sleep has long been described in litrature as a short death. And death has often been described as a long sleep. What if the reason that we suffer when we go without sleep is because our souls need to get out and be free of the animal impulses of our physical body, and do so regularly, or it will wither as a result? What if people sleep walk because their soul for some reason gets stuck to the body on its way out for the night?

Just a thought.