That is absurd.

Where is that old man's soul?
He has slept for years.

Has not his soul been somewhere else in the meanwhile?
If we could keep him asleep for centuries, or for scores of centuries, like that frog found alive in a rock, would his soul--able by the hypothesis to pass through rocks or universes--stay by him?
Could an ingenious sinner escape damnation for a few thousand years by being hypnotised?
Verily the soul is a very unaccountable thing, and what is still more unaccountable is that I believe in it.

Suppose the case of the ingenious sinner.

Suppose that he could not escape by his clever trick.